World of Warcraft: Forever's release is just around the corner, but developer Blizzard is making one final pass at the game's racial abilities before launch in response to beta feedback. The changes include tweaks to tauren, humans, orcs, dwarves, and Skyborne elves. Blizzard said it prioritized racial identity, which means some races will naturally be slightly more effective than others at certain combat roles.
In some places where they had replaced role or class-focused racials with generic ones, they're rolling those changes back. The exception to that mindset is weapon-specialization abilities, which existed for humans and orcs both in WoW Classic and early on in Forever's beta and made each race more effective with specific types of weapons.
Blizzard said it's doing a tuning pass on some of the remaining passive bonuses to help ensure they aren't skewing outcomes in a way that limits player preferences. Humans have lost some of their power in combat, with Ruthless now only granting 1% critical strike chance instead of 2%. In exchange, their Human Spirit passive has been buffed from 5% to 10%.
Tauren have seen significant changes, with massive buffs to their unique Plainsrunning ability but a loss to some of their combat effectiveness. Orcs have seen their 1% crit chance removed and replaced with an earlier passive, Command. Dwarves have had their critical damage passive removed, instead replaced with a 1% chance to hit with attacks and spells.
Skyborne elves have seen their haste bonus from Wind-Blessed reduced to 2% from 3%. They also now benefit more from using their Skysight and Read Leyline abilities at elemental convergence or leyline sites, with stronger effects that persist through death. WoW: Forever arrives November 4.