Some of the Nexus races had passives before, but besides for the elves infravision, alot of them were not very useful. For example trolls could regenerate health as well as stamina, but it wasn’t overly useful as the ticks were too slow to be relevant in combat and regenerating outside of combat took so long it was better just to use a charge of mend.
I think theres a lot you could potentially do with racial passives, from activated abilities to passives to profession bonuses.
For instance the troll regenerate passive would be better as an activated ability that either worked like a miniature meditate on a long cooldown or gave you fast ticks of regen for a short period. Then as a passive they could be resistant to poisons and diseases (goes along with regen).
The trick would be making sure every race got some fairly balanced racials and kept with their racial flavor. Like dwarves could have a blacksmithing profession bonus, but also maybe they get a small bonus percentage to armor, possibly an extra 5-10% or something depending how armor numbers were looking.
Elves would get their night vision, Sprites would passively have levitate. Maybe elves would get a passive bonus for missile skill or damage. Sprites for daggers possibly.
Ogres could maybe have a thick skin passive, reduces damage by 2% and adds a passive stun resistance or some such.
In that way you could have races that lent themselves to different roles, but in different ways. If you wanted to maximize damage reduction maybe you go Ogre, but if you want a better solo tank with some sustain maybe u go troll. And then have like your Renis and sprite have some caster attributes that can fit one style or another, etc