An Overview Of The Draenei Character Race in Blizzard's World Of Warcraft MMORPG

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The Alliance finally gets a race with hooves.

The Draenei are a technologically advanced dimensional traveling race that hail from Draenor, the same planet that the Orcs hail from. The playable Draenei in World of Warcraft come from the Exodar, a crash-landed cross dimensional spacecraft that now serves as their capital city.

Draenei are the only Alliance race that can play as the Shaman, and the only race in the game that can be either a Shaman or a Paladin. They share common lineage with the Broken and Eredar - demonically corrupted versions of the Draenei. The Draenei fled their home planet after the Burning Legion corrupted it thoroughly, and the magical energies released there caused it to break asunder and transform into the Outland. They have blue-tinted skin, massive hoof-like feet and very broad shoulders.

Draenei can play as Warriors, Priests, Mages, Hunters, Paladins and Shaman. They have two of the most powerful racial abilities in the game - Gift of the Naaru, a heal-over-time spell that scales with level, and inspiring or heroic presence, which either raises the physical or spell hit chance by everyone in the character’s party by 1% depending on whether the character in question is a physical damage class or a spell casting class. Their presence aura becomes relatively less powerful as more characters reach their maximum “hit cap,” but it is still very useful for dual-wielding classes that need a substantial amount of hit rating to reach it.

They also get +5 to jewelcrafting, which gives no significant benefit even if the character chooses to follow that profession. They also gain an extra 10 points of shadow resistance, which is nice, but not significant bonus for most situations.

Gift of the Naaru is especially useful while soloing - particularly for classes such as warriors that have to spend a lot of time restoring their health during downtime. It heals 35 + 15 health per level over a period of 15 seconds, with a three minute cooldown. It’s not enough to main heal a group, sure, but it certainly can reduce downtime and even help out a healer in a pinch. It’s a nice bonus for Paladins, as it gives them a heal-over-time spell that they would otherwise lack.

Their racial mount is the Elekk, which resembles an elephant. Their starting areas, Azuremyst and Bloodmyst Isles, are one of the fastest early leveling areas in the game, and it’s quite easy to get a new Draenei character to 20 in relatively short order there.

This post is part of the series: WoW Race Guides

A collection of overviews of the various races in World of Warcraft.

  1. World Of Warcraft Race Guide: Dwarves
  2. World Of Warcraft Race Guide: Trolls
  3. World Of Warcraft Race Guide: Orcs
  4. World Of Warcraft Race Guide: The Undead
  5. World Of Warcraft Race Guide: Night Elves
  6. World Of Warcraft Race Guide: The Draenei