I think the ones that are really hurt are the dumber races. With a race that has 20 int or above you can master all of your weapons simply by ranking alone for the first 25 ranks which is incredibly easy to do. I was trying to get a warrior put together for Empire. I went fire giant with the first, ranked to 16th and couldn't help but laugh at the fact that nothing besides bash was 90% or better (I only practice up to 90%). I deleted. Next I rolled up a duergar and ranked to 21. I had 3 things at 90%. I deleted. That's ranking alone (except for 2 ranks with the duergar) and spamming whatever I had to spam as I learned.

The recent change involving skill increase upon ranking helps some, but if I've read correctly wiser raises get bigger increases. Well, that's fantastic if you're one of the smarter raises (who also tend to be wise) or a minotaur, but the orcs, duergar, and fire giants of the world are getting shafted again (2% here, 3% there).

If you're going with this newfangled harder=better learning system change the skill increase upon level system to be rank based:

1-10 = 3% increases.
10-20 = 5% increases.
20-30 = 7% increases.
30-42 = 10% increases.
42-51 = 13% increases.

This also adds a little extra incentive to rank up rather than sitting at 36 or 42 or whatever. That's the one thing I like about the harder=better learning system, it almost forces some type of exp gains.