On September 24 Blizzard took the WoW Forever beta down for a few hours and brought it back with the first big weekly update. The official notes run several screens long. Here they all are, sorted by what actually affects you.
In short: resetting talents now costs 1 silver during the beta; Eureka!, the gnome racial, now cuts 10% across every class; the feral druid's Mangle is now called Primal Bite; the paladin's Holy Strike hits harder and comes off cooldown faster; elemental shaman and protection warrior get a key talent earlier; and an optional Cooldown Manager is here.
First: resetting talents costs 1 silver (beta only)
If you haven't respecced recently, resetting your talents costs 1 silver. The next reset right after jumps a lot (Wowhead measured it at around 5 gold), but it drops back to 1 silver once an hour has passed. Blizzard says this is temporary and beta-only, meant to encourage testing builds. Normal prices come back at launch.
This is the time to try branches in the talent calculator and take them into the game without going broke.
Class changes
Druid
- Wrath does 50% more base damage (approximate, per Blizzard).
- Rejuvenation, Tranquility and Wild Growth (Restoration) can now crit. It was a bug.
- Thorns now scales with your spell power. If the druid who cast it is out of range or offline, it falls back to its base values.
- Feral Combat: Mangle is now called Primal Bite. Blizzard removed the bleed that gave it its name, so the name no longer fit. Every talent that referenced it now references Primal Bite.
- The talent Primal Fury gets its original name and icon back: Blood Frenzy.
- Fixed: Feral Charge in cat form could be cast on allies.
Hunter
- Pets: Furious Howl gives 40% less attack power. Bats now have Sonic Blast. Tame Beast no longer works on beasts higher level than the hunter.
- Marksmanship: dropping the Lone Wolf talent no longer leaves you with -4% damage while you have a pet out.
- Survival: Lacerating Strikes can now crit, and Strider Kick gives 30% movement speed for 3 sec.
Mage
- Arcane Missiles only checks line of sight when the channel starts: if the target breaks line of sight mid-cast, the missiles still land.
- Fire: Wake of Fire now lasts 30 sec (up from 20) and Hot Streak, 20 sec (up from 15). Blizzard says Wake of Fire was hard to make use of while leveling, since mages have to stop to regenerate mana between fights.
- Ignite no longer double-counts percentage damage increases.
Paladin
The paladin is the class that changes the most.
- Holy Strike hits harder at every rank: 25/29/32/36/39/43/46/50% of weapon damage (up from 25/25/30/30/35/35/40/40%). Blizzard says the early ranks didn't feel like an upgrade when you bought them.
- Righteous Fury: the Holy threat bonus drops to 60% (down from 90%).
- Retribution Aura now scales with your spell power.
- Consecration: several fixes (its increased damage wasn't applying to some targets, it failed on slopes, and it could pull enemies from above or below).
- Fixed Echo of Justice, which was jumping more often than intended, and the Flash of Light cast animation.
- Holy: Holy Strike's cooldown drops to 10 sec (down from 12) and the Improved Holy Strike talent is gone — it did exactly that. Blizzard pulled it from the tree because, sitting that high in a healing branch, it felt mandatory. Holy Power now adds a 15% crit chance to Holy Strike. Light's Vigil now makes clear that only the damage portion returns mana.
- Retribution, beyond the notes: this build's client data also removes the Crusade talent (+2% damage, +2% more against Demons and Undead). Blizzard's notes don't mention it.
- Retribution: Vengeance now procs off direct crits (not periodic ones) and caps at 3 stacks (down from 5). Two-Handed Weapon Specialization drops to 2/4/6% (down from 3/6/9%). Sacred Arbiter raises Holy Strike damage by 20% (up from 10%). Twist of Light also cuts the mana cost of your Seals by 20%.
Priest
- Renew can now crit.
- Power Word: Shield can now always replace another shield if the target doesn't have Weakened Soul.
- Racial spells: Contingency Plan (gnome) can now crit, and Confounding Flash (gnome) has a cast animation, more Holy than Arcane. Starshards (night elf) now benefits from Twilight Focus against interrupts. Dark Sacrifice (undead) no longer breaks crowd control that breaks on damage, and its tooltip now says the mana scales with spirit.
Which racial spell each priest race gets is on the priest page.
Rogue
- Sap now flags the rogue for PvP if used on a target that's already tagged.
Shaman
- Lightning Bolt: ranks 3 and 4 hit harder so they always upgrade the previous rank.
- Totems: Flametongue Totem no longer has a duration, and it no longer stacks with itself, with Flametongue Weapon, or with Windfury Totem. Tranquil Air Totem, Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem no longer stack with each other even when placed by different shamans.
- Elemental: Elemental Fury (row 3) and Elemental Alacrity (row 6) swap places. Blizzard wants elemental shamans to feel a power spike earlier, and warns this pulls some spell crit damage away from enhancement shamans, which it plans to make up for later. Lava Burst (ranks 1 and 2) does 10% more base damage than a Lightning Bolt of the same level.
- Enhancement: Rage of the Far Seer (row 7) no longer speeds up spellcasting.
- Restoration: Riptide can now crit.
Warlock
- Life Tap now shows correctly how much health it converts and that it scales with spirit.
- Voidwalker Sacrifice scales with 10% of your healing power.
Warrior
- Sunder Armor: fixed the threat on every rank, with a bit more scaling from attack power.
- Protection: according to the notes, Bastion (row 5) and Focused Rage (row 6) swap places, so you get Focused Rage before Shield Slam. In the client data we checked they are still in their old spots; we'll update the calculator once the client reflects it.
- Arms: Bloodthrill now procs twice as often (4/8/12/16/20%, up from 2/4/6/8/10%), but only from main-hand attacks (including Cleave and Heroic Strike). Slam goes up to an 18 sec cooldown (from 15), and Improved Slam cuts it by 1.5/3 sec.
Races
- Eureka! (gnome): every rank now cuts mana, rage or energy cost by 10%. It used to range from 15% for priests to as much as 50% for mages and warlocks. The 10% bonus damage is unchanged. Already updated on the gnome page.
- Touch of the Grave (undead): no longer breaks crowd control or procs off spells or abilities that don't deal damage. Shadow Word: Pain triggers it on cast, but not from its periodic damage; Distract and pickpocketing no longer trigger it, so it won't pull rogues or druids out of stealth.
- Cultivation (tauren): each herb now requires a minimum level, equal to the Herbalism skill it needs divided by 5. Herbs that need more than 300 Herbalism can be gathered at level 60.
- Will to Survive (human): animation change only.
The Cooldown Manager
A Cooldown Manager is here: it pulls the important information from your buffs and action bars and lets you place it anywhere on screen. It ships off: turn it on in Options, under the gameplay settings. For now it only works with druid, mage, priest, warrior and warlock, and it still doesn't understand spell ranks. Blizzard is asking players which spells they want shown by default.
If you'd rather use addons, check the list of addons that already work in Forever.
Gamepad
Class-specific dropdown menus on the action bar (druid shapeshift forms, hunter and warlock pets, paladin auras, warrior stances), an optional compact bar, a D-pad assigned to each party member, and more options under the Gamepad (Alpha) section.
Items
- Some bows and guns weren't consuming ammo. Fixed.
- Several quest rewards had the wrong item level, and some low-level caster rewards were adjusted.
- Wizard Oil: the first three go back to their Classic Era values (8, 16 and 24 spell power). The brilliant one is unchanged.
- Wands no longer gain damage from your spell power.
Quests and zones
The list is long. Here's what stands out most:
- Several dungeon quests could be shared and would still hand out the quest item. Not anymore.
- Dun Morogh: the snow leopard from Grund and Gozwin (Snow Leopard Prowler) now respawns much faster.
- Elwynn Forest: more crates for "Stolen Enchanting Supplies", the murlocs at Crystal Lake and several other objectives respawn faster, and the Jasperlode and Fargodeep mines lose their candles — they were proving too dangerous to solo.
- Teldrassil: "Bounty: Gnarlpine Furbolg" now asks for 15 (down from 20).
- Silithus: Khonsu's arrival is being pulled from the beta for now; it'll return later.
- Isle of Zephras: the Order Eminent quest "Catching Wind" was redesigned, and credit was fixed on two others.
- Dalaran: faction and enemy adjustments at the city entrance.
Fixes worth noting
- The campfire now grants its buff while sitting (including in a chair), lying down, sleeping or kneeling, and you can cast spells, buff and craft while you wait.
- Casters have their pre-cast animation back and no longer just stand there.
- An option that could unintentionally remove the fog has been removed.
- Fixed a memory leak that was slowly tanking performance, plus water rendering bugs on Mac.
- In-game mail no longer ignores surnames.
- Pet happiness once again drops even at max loyalty.
Outside the patch notes: the rest of that week
- Statistics pane. On the character sheet (C key), the last tab now tracks deaths, honorable kills by battleground and by continent, bosses killed, and more.
- Forced name changes. Blizzard is forcing name changes for players who break its naming policy and has pulled beta access from repeat offenders. First-and-last names open up more room, but they still follow the same rules. Ideas that pass, in the name generator.
- The official podcast launched its first episode, with Josh Greenfield and Tim Jones.
- Hall of Thanes: now has all four bosses confirmed and five quests. Find it on its page.
Known issues in this build
Blizzard is flagging these new bugs, most of them tied to the Cooldown Manager: it doesn't track poisons and curses correctly when you switch targets, nor does it track your healthstone, Arcane Blast, pets, or weapon enchants. Forming or changing a party can send you to a different world instance, and Stormwind's minimap is rendering incorrectly.
What this means for you
- Holy paladin: you no longer need to spend a point on Improved Holy Strike. If you had a saved build, revisit it.
- Retribution paladin: less passive damage from two-handed weapons in exchange for a stronger Holy Strike. Worth retesting your builds.
- Elemental shaman and protection warrior: the talent you actually want arrives earlier. Low-level builds change.
- Feral druid: Mangle and Primal Fury change names, not their spot in the tree.
- Gnome mage or warlock: Eureka! no longer gives you half off your mana cost. It's still an offensive racial, just a much more modest one.
Our talent calculator is already up to date with this build (40 talents changed, Improved Holy Strike and Crusade gone, and elemental shaman in its new order). If you had a Druid, Paladin or Shaman build saved, the calculator warns you that the data changed.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to reset talents in the WoW Forever beta?
Since September 24, 1 silver if you haven't respecced recently. Do it again within an hour and it costs a lot more (around 5 gold), then drops back to 1 silver once that hour passes. This is beta-only.
What happened to Eureka!, the gnome racial?
Every rank now cuts the mana, rage or energy cost of your next three damaging abilities by 10%. Before, mages and warlocks had 50%, warriors 40%, rogues 20% and priests 15%. The 10% bonus damage is unchanged.
Why is Mangle now called Primal Bite?
Blizzard removed the bleed effect that gave it its name, so they renamed it. Talents that referenced it now reference Primal Bite instead.
What is the WoW Forever Cooldown Manager?
An in-game option that shows your important cooldowns and buffs wherever you want them on screen. It ships turned off and is enabled in Options. In the beta it only works with druid, mage, priest, warrior and warlock.
Are these changes final?
No. This is a beta, and Blizzard keeps adjusting it week to week. This article covers what the official notes from September 24 say.
