Human’s shield proficiency is pretty dang good on a whole bunch of classes that can’t use shield (at least until you get high enough level to multi class 1 in fighter for both heavy armor and shield).
thing is you can do half high elf get the shield and also a badass magic cantrip to set peeps on fire, also can’t be put to sleep or charmed
high-elf cantrip scales off int and is generally pretty bad (if you have high int, you’re a wizard and already have that cantrip and plenty of other options).
Wood-elf gets movement speed
You don’t have to pick firebolt, though. You can pick Friends for advantage on almost every single charisma check in the game. You can pick minor illusion to distract people and make enemies move into spots you’d prefer them to be in, like if you want to push someone off a ledge.
