alliance classFollow

Gnomes have a higher intellect. Mages require intellect. The 5% intellect bonus given by the Expansive Mind trait is calculated after adding bonuses from gear, so it continues to offer an advantage even at high levels. So, every 20 intellect you get from gear gives you +1 intellect.

Humans get a 10% increase to Spirit, which is alright. I don't know the math about it, I've never been much of a spirit fan, since mages have an endless supply of food and water.

Draenei get a free healing spell, which can be useful depending on the situation, plus a 1% bonus to hit for yourself and your party.

If it were me, it wouldn't really make a difference, I would just pick my race based on which starting zone I know the best of the three, so that way I can get to my level 10-20 zone of choice the fastest.

For raiding, I'd say probably draenei though gnome is close. Draenei get a heal and +1% spell hit. A free heal over time (which is affected by +healing which a mage will have a decent amount of) can be invaluable in raids for survivability. The +1% spell hit means fewer +hit gems which means more +damage and +crit or +haste.

Gnomes get 5% more INT which means more mana and spell crit. This is also great for raiding and escape artist for pvp is um... BIG YAY. It has saved me so much. Between blink and escape artist, it's hard to catch a gnome.

Humans have an easier time with Rep though!!!

I'd have rolled a gnome, but honestly, I hate their emotes. So I rolled a human for diplomacy & perception.

There's a lot of rep grinding to this game... ;-)

My mage is a BE but my pally is a human. I love perception, i wish my mage was a human sometimes to help avoid getting pwnd by rogues sneaking up on me. Although for those times that it does happen, escape artist would be awesome