Racial Traits (Horde)

Racial Traits (Horde)


Tauren

Racial Traits

War Stomp: One of the more useful activated racial abilities, Taurens are able to stun any enemy within melee range (five yards) for two seconds with War Stomp. Although two seconds won’t be a deal breaker in most melee situations, you can use it to interrupt spellcasting, or to start a quick retreat when you’ve become overwhelmed. Note that there is a short casting time, though, so you can’t Stomp while running.
Endurance: Your maximum health is automatically increased by five percent. This is obviously going to be most useful for warriors, but any class can make some use of it.
Cultivation: All Tauren get +15 to their Herbalism skills. This will let you grab Snakeroot as soon as you pick up the Herbalism skill, and will let you bypass the skilling caps even before you find a new skill trainer.
Nature Resistance: Automatic +10 to your Nature resistance.
Classes Allowed
Tauren are able to choose between the Warrior, Druid, Shaman, and Hunter classes.

Orc

Racial Traits

Blood Fury: When activated, you’ll boost your Strength by 25%, but will cause you to lose around 25% of your health, spread out over the duration of the effect (20 seconds). Obviously this is going to be most useful for classes that need to get up close and personal with their enemies, such as Warriors, but the health drain can be significant if you don’t have a healer around. If you’re planning on using Blood Fury a lot, then you might want to make a macro that gives your party members advance notification.
Hardiness: Hardiness is pretty incredible for a passive ability: all Orcs will automatically get 25% resistance to stun and knockout effects. Although this won’t protect you from roots or snares, there are a whole lot of enemies that will attempt to stun you, so avoiding a quarter of those will undoubtably save your life a few times during your adventuring career.
Command: All Orcish pets get an extra 5% melee damage. This is obviously inconsequential if you’re not a warlock or a hunter, and it’s not even all that great then, except when you reach exceedingly high levels; pets are more often intended to be distractions rather than real damage-dealers. If you use a Succubus a lot, though, or invest a lot of your hunter’s talent points in Beast Mastery, then this might be something you desire.
Axe Specialization: All Orcs get a blanket +5 to their axe skill.
Classes Allowed
Orcs are able to choose between the Warrior, Rogue, Hunter, Warlock, and Shaman classes.

Troll

Racial Traits

Berserking: When you have less than 20% of your life remaining, you can activate Berserking to increase your melee and spellcasting speed by 25% for a short while. This can obviously be useful to activate just before a priest heals you up, or when soloing an even-match mob, but you hopefully won’t be dropping that low on life too often.
Regeneration: If it’s in Dungeons and Dragons, it must be true! Regeneration gets you an extra 10% health regeneration bonus, and lets you regenerate health at 10% of normal speed while in combat. (You normally don’t regen health at all during battle.) This is just plainly useful, as it’ll help you cut your downtime between fights, perhaps without having to resort to eating or first aid.
Beast Slaying: All trolls get a 5% damage bonus when fighting Beast-class enemies. Again, this is pretty useful, as beasts are among the most populous group of enemies in the game, but won’t have a huge effect until you boost your damage up into the hundreds of points-per-attack range.
Throwing Weapons Specialization: Trolls get +5 to their Throwing Weapons skill. This is possibly the least useful passive ability of any race. Although throwing weapons are in the game, there are very few that are actually useful or preferable to a good gun or bow; perhaps they’ll get a little developer attention in the future, but at the moment, nobody’s going to see a Throwing Weapon Specialization and say "Ooh, I’ve got to be a Troll!"
Classes Allowed
Trolls are able to choose between the Shaman, Warrior, Rogue, Hunter, Mage, and Priest.

Undead

Racial Traits

Will of the Undead: When activated, you’ll become immune to fear, charm, and sleep effects for 20 seconds. Although it is an activated ability, this is still tremendously useful, as there are plenty of enemies that will attempt to fear you or sleep you, mostly of the Humanoid variety (or in PVP).
Cannibalize: The Undead are the only race to acquire two activated abilities, with Cannibalize being the second. When activated, you’ll be able to consume a nearby corpse to triple your health regeneration rate for 15 seconds. If you haven’t taken a severe amount of damage, this will probably top out your health bar, thus making it a good way to decrease downtime between fight. Still, though, food serves pretty much the same purpose, so at best, this is essentially just going to save you an inventory slot. It can only be used every three minutes, though, so you won’t be able to constantly cannibalize corpses, no matter how entertaining it is.
Underwater Breathing: Undead PC’s can breath four times as long while underwater as the other races can, due to the whole no-lungs thing. Pretty much every quest that requires you to go underwater will either be timed so that any race can complete it without drowning, though, so this is usually just a party trick. It can come in handy if you’re trying to avoid a PVP foe who’s been dogging you for a while, or if you feel compelled to go searching for clams (which sometimes contain pearls).
Shadow Resistance: Automatic +10 to your Shadow resistance. Comes in pretty handy when fighting priests in PVP.
Classes Allowed
Night Elfs are able to choose between the Warrior, Rogue, Hunter, Priest, and Druid classes.