An Overview Of The Orc Race for Character Classes in Blizzard's World Of Warcraft MMORPG
Waaaagh - err, wrong game.
The Orcs are the unofficial leaders of the Horde, and they are in turn lead by their warchief, Thrall, the powerful Shaman. At the beginning of the events of Warcraft 3, Thrall managed to free his people from the internment camps where they were imprisoned by the forces of the Alliance. It’s the memory of that imprisonment that keeps the Alliance and Horde at each other’s throats, even with all of their mutual enemies and past alliances of convenience.
The Orcs themselves hail from the planet of Draenei, which has since been sundered and transformed into the world of Outland. They engaged the humans of the Alliance in two wars as they attempted to escape their dying world for the still-living one of Azeroth.
The Orcs are known for their blood lust, which was exacerbated by the demonic influence of the Burning Legion. Thrall’s over-riding goal has been to try to break his people of their old habits - one that has been only partly successful, seeing as all players seem to do is kill things. All Orcs have skin colored green in some fashion. Orcs have limited capacity for arcane magic, but they have a long history of being involved with demons.
Player Orcs can choose from playing the Warrior, Rogue, Hunter, Warlock and Shaman classes. Their racial mount is the riding worg. Their racial abilities are blood fury, hardiness, command and axe specialization. This is a very good assortment, but arguably the best ability on the list in terms of how much it augments a class is command, which increases the amount of damage done by Hunter and Warlock pets by 5%.
Although Warlocks do not get a very significant portion of their damage from their pets, Hunters - particularly beast mastery Hunters - do. This makes it so that Orc Hunters produce significantly more damage than any other Horde race, making them the clear best choice for the class.
Hardiness gives Orcs an addition 15% resistance to all stunning effects, which is quite useful in PvP, but simply won’t be used as often as racial abilities like will of the forsaken and warstomp. The axe specialization is minorly useful, but not nearly enough to encourage the player to choose axes over another superior weapon of a different type.
Blood fury provides an attack power or spell damage boost that lasts for 15 seconds while decreasing the effects of healing on the character by 50%. The bonus changes depending on the level of the Orc in question and their class. It’s a good way to get the most out of damage boosting cooldowns, making the Orc a great choice for a damage dealing class.
This post is part of the series: WoW Race Guides
A collection of overviews of the various races in World of Warcraft.
