Do you support bringing back the Vanilla racial-based "priest abilities"?

[Relapses]

I imagine it'd make it even worse actually. Lets say, using a classic example, dwarf priests have the best racial. Now all priests, regardless of faction, are pressured to go dwarf to keep up.

That's where the maybe comes in. At least with cross-faction instancing the possibility of going Dwarf is on the table. Without it, you'd see entire guilds going Alliance just to take advantage of it, essentially creating a reverse scenario of what led to our current Horde-dominated endgame hellscape.

I think as others have said, racially skinning abilities would be cooler and help bring out race/class fantasy more than tieing a cosmetic preference to power levels.

This could work, for sure, but Blizzard would need to go all-out on such a feature and it'd likely be a lot of work. This wouldn't be something they'd add in a .x patch.

[Divada]

Priest Racials in Vanilla gave the game a lot more flavor. I miss them. My troll priest had a fun swirly purple orb. Almost useless but it was fun.

[OwenBurton]

That's where the maybe comes in. At least with cross-faction instancing the possibility of going Dwarf is on the table. Without it, you'd see entire guilds going Alliance just to take advantage of it, essentially creating a reverse scenario of what led to our current Horde-dominated endgame hellscape.



This could work, for sure, but Blizzard would need to go all-out on such a feature and it'd likely be a lot of work. This wouldn't be something they'd add in a .x patch.

They could simply try to revamp and update the priest abilities - much like they did with the human and blood elf racials, to make them more equal and balanced to each other. I know they're removed and re-added lots of different class features and abilities with every expansion.

[cparle87]

Because racials are already a problem, this would be even worse, people would start picking only one race because the abilities are stronger and you would need to do something similar to other classes as well, and blizzard can't balance that

This. I remember raiding as Alliance in vanilla. It was dwarf priest or go home cause fear ward was just too good to pass up. It would be like if only one shaman race had bloodlust or only one druid had race battle rez or innervate.

[Froggy]

I always thought it was weird they only did this for Priest. Would be amazing to have race specific abilities for each class, though admittedly that would be a massive undertaking.

[ZazuuPriest]

undead preists being the only ones with devouring plague would require a complete rework of shadow priests. its a terrible idea

[Kralljin]

I always thought it was weird they only did this for Priest. Would be amazing to have race specific abilities for each class, though admittedly that would be a massive undertaking.

They wanted to do it for every class / race but ran out of time, priests kept theirs because they argued that Priests were sort of seen as spiritual leader of each race, so they kept theirs to represent that.

[azshanna]

It would force people to play certain races like undead because of DP which would makes a huge gap between an undead sp and another races. Alliance community os already smashed due to horde superior
r racial such as Goblin rocket jump.

[LionSinMaikeru]

I don't, because inevitably one priest race will become the meta.

IMO, that's a poor reason to remove flavor.

If people really want to pick a specific race to give them an edge - who cares? There will always be min-maxers and things to do. It exists currently in the game.

Having the unique abilities for each Priest race was a nice perk and should return.

[Biomega]

No.

Race shouldn't have any impact on power. It should be purely cosmetic, or non-combat related QoL stuff.

Let people be whatever race they want, and not worry about it affecting their gameplay. Nobody wants to feel bad for rolling what they love and fearing they're letting their group down because of it. That's just grief you don't need.

[gd8]

They brought a lot of flavor but they need to just do race-themed class skins now, the vanilla model doesn't work with the modern game's balancing

[OwenBurton]

No.

Race shouldn't have any impact on power. It should be purely cosmetic, or non-combat related QoL stuff.

Let people be whatever race they want, and not worry about it affecting their gameplay. Nobody wants to feel bad for rolling what they love and fearing they're letting their group down because of it. That's just grief you don't need.

Well, you could simply justify removing all racials by that same token. You could even, I guess, argue that tauren being so huge affects them sometimes entering buildings, so we should make every race the same height and build.

[Biomega]

Well, you could simply justify removing all racials by that same token.

Yes. I'm in favor of that, too. Remove the combat aspects, and go all-in on the non-combat stuff. Give them cool shit of all kinds, just nothing that's actual performance power.

[Sanguinerd]

Always thought that was quite cool so would be a very welcome return for me. Meta slaves can fuck off.

[zysis]

Clearly not a vanilla player considering Blood Elves didn't exist. But yeah it was good times. With today's cookie cutters you won't see it return. There's very few people left who play a class / spec if it isn't the most efficient strategy available. Sheeple will just roll what the flavor of the month is and run with it, others will then cry about their race being broken and then we all have a repeat of the terrible expac that was Shadowlands.

- - - Updated - - -

They wanted to do it for every class / race but ran out of time, priests kept theirs because they argued that Priests were sort of seen as spiritual leader of each race, so they kept theirs to represent that.

Stop making stuff up, that's not true at all. Priest was given racials to encourage people to play them. *cough* Beta proves this.

[Kralljin]

Stop making stuff up, that's not true at all. Priest was given racials to encourage people to play them. *cough* Beta proves this.

Unfortunately i don't have access to a WoW Vanilla Beta, so feel free to take your own advice unless you can prove it.

[username993720]

No.
There are classes for these, like the Priestess of the Moon or the Shadow Hunter.

[Triceron]

To be honest, they just need to rein in some of the abilities and there wouldn't be an immediate 'meta' that picks one race over all others.

Fear Ward was easily a broken mechanic because 'Fear' was such a strong NPC boss ability that could screw your entire raid, especially Dragon boss fights.

Tone down the Forsaken racials, change Fear Ward to something else, and the rest are fine.

[OwenBurton]

Yes. I'm in favor of that, too. Remove the combat aspects, and go all-in on the non-combat stuff. Give them cool shit of all kinds, just nothing that's actual performance power.

I don't understand, I always thought the racial benefits were mostly minimal. Was Fear Ward truly so broken in the original game? The other priest abilities were very formidable also.

[Triceron]

I don't understand, I always thought the racial benefits were mostly minimal. Was Fear Ward truly so broken in the original game? The other priest abilities were very formidable also.

It was because certain boss mechanics were literally built around fear fucking up the Tank positioning, and causing a domino effect of tail swipes and dragon breaths killing the rest of the raid. I honestly don't think it would be as bad as it would be adding it back today, where the only big issue is PVP balance.