I hate to admit it, but the horde racial bonuses are better than alliance; especially for PVP. That’s why Horde seems to win AV like 80-90% of the time. They are just a little harder to kill than alliance. Alliance makes up for lack of individual strength in sheer numbers. I guess they just reproduce faster (have you seen the troll females – kinda scary).
The Horde racial bonuses only whiff a couple of times, and even then, not too terribly badly. If you can get over the rough edges, horde characters are a little stronger than their alliance counterparts. The one and only exception to this is that it’s a little hard to beat a night elf rogue. Other than that, Horde usually has a better stat setup on one race or another. Let’s check it out.
Orcs – Orcs have the best base attribute points so you can really hardly go wrong with them for any of the five choices. Combine that with the fact that these four bonuses have something for all five class choices and it boils down to this: when in doubt – you won’t be wrong choosing an orc.
> Enrage – increases damage while lowering healing taken. If you get in a bind or want to get a leg up, enrage is nice to use. Combine this with increased pet damage and beastial wrath and orc hunters have the biggest, maddest kitties around.
> Resistant to stun affects. Great against those pesky night elf rogues.
> Pet damage increased – +5% for both hunters and warlocks. This can turn into a serious dps buff if you spec to take full advantage of it.
> Axe skill increased – nice little bonus for those who like those cleaver type weapons.
Undead – can be a little gross, but completely annoying to alliance players. Let’s see why:
> Will of the Forsaken – makes the undead immune to sleep, charm and fear affects. You can even use this after you’ve been affected. I really stinks to not be able to fear or sleep these guys, or have them wake up ½ second after you do.
> Consume corpses to regain health. They don’t even need to carry around food – just eat what you kill.
> Underwater breathing increased 300% – now that’s a big increase, can save you quite a bit in underwater breathing potions.
> Shadow resist – minor, but not a total waste.
Tauren – These brutes lend themselves to tank duty and are just the best at close range melee fighting.
> Stomp – stuns nearby opponents. All warriors have a skill similar to this in Thunder Clap, but a Tauren gets another skill that works just as well. It can be really hard to overcome.
> Maximum health increased – 5% can be a gob of hit points in the right gear and the right buffs. Tank city.
> Herbalism skill +15 – at last a decent increase to a non-combat skill.
> +10 Nature resistance – not too shabby.
Troll – these fellows have two really good bonuses, and excel at both PVP and PVE.
> Berserk – 10%-30% increased attack and casting speed. 10% speed increase if you are above 50% or so life, 30% increase below 25%, this can make all the difference in a PVP battle. It stinks to be just ahead of a troll shaman and then he goes berserk and waxes you.
> Increased regeneration – life regained at 10% faster rate than other races. This even happens in battle. So it’s almost as good as the Tauren bonus to maximum health. For prot warriors, go Tauren, DPS guys may consider a Troll.
> Increased damage vs. beasts – Nice buff for PVE grinding and questing.
> Throwing and bow weapons +5 – again, not horrid for a hunter.
Blood elves – I’m not too sure about the blood elf bonuses. They are either pretty good, or the worst in the Horde. I’m leaning toward worst – but let’s look at them and you can judge for yourself.
> +10 to enchanting – again with the profession increase, not as good as tauren, better than most.
> Mana Tap – Drain mana from opponents – it would be great if it added the mana to your pool (it doesn’t) or if it drained enough mana to hinder the other person’s casting (not even close). This does set up a way to get some emergency mana when used with the silence skill arcane torrent.
> Arcane Torrent – The silence skill stops casting for a whopping 2 seconds. That’s not very long. If you have built up charges from drain mana, it returns some to you when you use this skill. This is what I mean – this is either a really great couple of sills, or not worth much. Seems to become less valuable as you level. Can provide you with one strategic spell interrupt per PVP battle however.
> +5 to all magic resistances – now we’re talking. Not a big resistance pool, but at least it’s resist all.
So now you can see why some people say that Horde are just better characters. They have better racial bonuses. When you get into comparing them according to attributes, it widens the gap even further. By taking both bonuses and attributes into account you can see why I choose an orc hunter for BM spec and a troll hunter for anything else. Trolls have 5 more base points in agility than Orcs.
Granted, the attribute stuff will sort of even itself out in the end, but things like +5% are much bigger – things like the Tauren max life pool. At the end of the day, if you really know what you are doing, you can play any class from any race and do well with them. But by the same token, someone who really knows what they are doing can be brutal with the right class and race combined.