The problem is... although I think gnomes are ugly, human mages are too muscular to be mages...and I hate the dress-like leg armor they have. Furthermore, I imagine it would be fun to play a tiny gnome that deals massive amounts of damage.
If you find Male Human too unfit for mage, then you can go a female human maybe. Otherwise I would probably go Gnome for the looks as it suits them better.
Just think back on how many posts you've seen from the horde side bitching about how much they hate getting killed by gnomes. How much they hate gnomes in general.
Roll gnome and dip your tiny little sack in their face every time you kill one of them, then giggle while bunnyhopping away from their dead body. You can almost hear the filthy horde players throwing their mice and keyboard against walls in anger every time.
100% worth it fam.
+ good racials
Hold that thought for a bit - 5% extra Intellect might sound good on paper but I think it's pretty shit. Even with the best possible gear available, you will likely not going to see more than 150 Int on your gear at max level, maybe 200 buffed and full blown epic gear. That's about 10 extra Int or pretty much 0.16% extra crit chance. I wouldn't go crazy over it.
Looks has always been very important to me, you're not gonna be able to play a character until naxx and beyond if want to be human but forced yourself to be gnome justbecause of some stupid racial. The only time you should pick racials over looks is if the advantage of the racial is very great. A good example of this is Shaman or Hunter on the Horde side, Orc racials are gonna make you a lot more powerful in PvP.
Looks has always been very important to me, you're not gonna be able to play a character until naxx and beyond if want to be human but forced yourself to be gnome justbecause of some stupid racial. The only time you should pick racials over looks is if the advantage of the racial is very great. A good example of this is Shaman or Hunter on the Horde side, Orc racials are gonna make you a lot more powerful in PvP.
I recommend never pick racials over looks in Classic WoW.
You have convinced me, I will roll human mage. If someone is interested, long ago I found a comparison between gnome and human mage regarding dps differences. TLDR: gnome has slightly more dps and human goes oom a bit earlier.
stats in the exact same gear (t2), self buffed, no talents.
In that gear you are losing 27int, 0.46% crit.
(obviously lesser gear with less int - you lose less, higher gear - you lose more) (apart from 5%, gnomes also have higher base int). in a raid you also have all kind of buffs, kings, elixirs, world buffs etc. so it would be even more, more int = more difference.
by theorycraft addon an average frostbolt (including crit) will hit for 849 for gnome, 847 for human.
~
with a standard frost/arcane build (without clearcasting so it wouldnt affect testing) with mage armor.
gnome mage did 45 frostbolt casts before going full oom
human mage did 43 frostbolt casts before going full oom
gnome - 7248 max mana
human - 6843 max mana
dps difference in that given example was
378.9 dps - gnome
376.3 dps - human
though obviously it depends on crits/resists procs. gnome is definitely critted more than average there, though it got 1 more resist, so it quite equaled, though it can vary.
but on average it should be few points of dps difference to gnome ofc(cos it got +0.4% crit). by theorycraft addon, gnome expected to do 373 dps, human 371. pure frostbolt spam without anything.
~
so summing up its a few point of a dps differences (cos of a few extra crit), plus human goes oom couple of casts faster than gnome, cos gnome got extra mana.
You would want to roll gnome mage if you are going to PvP.
Escape artist is just way more powerful than perception, especially when you are a mage since Arcane Explosion (rank 1) pretty much replaces it.
As a gnome you also have the added benfit of being a lot smaller than human. As a gnome you can for example fit into the fence of Dun Baldar ram ranch building in Alterac Valley, where no other races can fit. Great for PvP.
Another little thing to add is that you won't face any gnome mages in PvP, except for duels :D
Roll human if you are going to do alot of rep grinds, otherwise gnome is better for everything. Humans get 10% Diplomacy and Gnomes get Escape Artist, , +Int and +Engineering.
You would want to roll gnome mage if you are going to PvP.
Escape artist is just way more powerful than perception, especially when you are a mage since Arcane Explosion (rank 1) pretty much replaces it.
As a gnome you also have the added benfit of being a lot smaller than human. As a gnome you can for example fit into the fence of Dun Baldar ram ranch building in Alterac Valley, where no other races can fit. Great for PvP.
what do you mean with arcane explosion replaces escape artist? Does this have something to do with free casting (or whatever it is called in English)?
Btw: They may use the new gnome models for Classic which are bigger than the old gnomes. I couldn't find a reliable source though.
He meant arcane explosion replaces perception. Spamming a low rank (for Mana purposes) of AE will pop rogues out of stealth.
Magezi He means that Arcane Explosion basically replaces Perception because damage breaks stealth and Arcane Explosion has a pretty big range and it's spammable
Btw: They may use the new gnome models for Classic which are bigger than the old gnomes. I couldn't find a reliable source though.
Blizzard is using the original character models. I don't know why I'm having such a hard time finding it, but there was a blue post talking about this that I can't find. They considered the new character models but thought it would look weird with the rest of the low rest art assets, so it's going to be the original models only.
Which kind of sucks because I like the new ones, but Blizzard's already settled this.
Only problem playing a Gnome is you will get punted all the time. Oh the memories.
- small (I still don't know if Classic uses old or new height models and running animation)
I tried to jump to the npc located in Arathi Highlands as a gnome, the one on the broken bridge, couldn't make the jump, tried like five times.
Don't roll Gnome.