I guess, especially with people min-maxing and maybe thinking over a lot of options right now, we might talk race in ESO once again?
In my opinion, nothing really has changed though, only that the outliers are, more then ever, shoehorned into specific roles / specs while others just have become more general useful. The "usefulness" however should not relate to max parses only but general performance in a diverse set of roles for players that do not yet want to move beyond veteran dungeon content.
Lets start with the "worst" one first - unsurprisingly, stamina focused.
Wood Elves
Though I deem them rather interesting and absolutely a worthy pick in PvP, outside of it, they don't really have a place. Without any "real" benefit that is playstyle agnostic, their passives tell us to play them as stamina damage dealers. Penetration can be useful for magica as well - though magica easily caps it - but well, we'll be nice and consider this a 2% damage bonus. Besides from it? Well, we got 2k stamina, movement speed, very nice stamina recovery - that's it.
Now you could say: lets play them for lore reasons! Oh no, forget it. The stealthy race ain't stealthy.
So my verdict here is: Wood Elves are not close to the best even in their intended roles. For a lot of roles they are the worst possible pick (tank, mag dps, heal) and there isn't anything to make up for it.
Redguard
Generally speaking: Good for stamina builds, suprisingly good tanks, but they do not really excel at anything aside from stamina builds and even here, we have superior options. The benefit of cheaper weapon skills is niche, nice and interesting. But sustaining was never as easy as today, thus having a whole race build around (stamina-)sustain seems like a waste.
Argonians
Well, pretty much one issue only: Why only a healing bonus? Overall the race would lend itself great to a variety of playstyles. But a healing only bonus really, really hurts them - especially with their overall bonuses being mediocre only.
...
And I kinda want to stop here, because we are almost arriving at a trend: 258 extra spell- and weaponpower is desirable for everyone. So is dual resource or dual resource regeneration. If we look at tanks, sustain that is not bound to normal recovery (because it stops when blocking) also is way more useful then other methods. More Life? Also desireable, being tankier is nice for everyone.
So in all honesty, what I would love to suggest would be a flatout buff to all racial passives. Why now? Well, everyone was nerved with U35 and would like to see some buffs - buffing all races should make all players a little bit happier. And with hybridization in mind, I think every race should be able to perform relatively well in at least two roles when it comes to PvE. Something like Wood Elves that are mediocre even in their one and only intended role is bad design.
Edited by Klingenlied on September 9, 2022 1:17AM