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Forever’s classes keep the shape you remember and lose the friction around it. Hunters can leave the pet in the stable. Druids drink potions without leaving Cat Form. Every Priest race gets spells worth choosing it for. Warriors get their Rage swings back.
All four classes follow the same few rules, and knowing them makes every build choice easier.
The Ground Rules: One New Rung, One Budget
Sixteen points. Talents unlock at level 10 and keep the 1.12 layout, including the one-point milestones at 11, 21, and 31 points. The new rung is 16, and it is where most of the headline abilities sit, from Summon Hawk to Shifting Power to Binding Heal. Blessing of Kings and Improved Mark of the Wild no longer cost talent points. You respec at a class trainer in a major city, and Dual Specialization arrives at level 40. In the beta, a respec currently costs just 1 silver if you have not changed talents recently.
Three or four buttons. The part of every rotation that cycles faster than every 10 seconds is kept to three or four abilities. When every global cooldown is spoken for, a lucky proc is a nuisance. Leave gaps, and the stun, the dispel, or the potion becomes something you actually get to do. Cooldowns from 15 seconds to a few minutes are where the spikes belong.
One budget. Bosses should take about as long to kill as they did in 2004 and 2005, so each class has a damage budget and every buff gets paid for somewhere else. In testing every spec ran too hot and was trimmed, and by Blizzard’s count about half of the damage growth in the early expansions came from talents rather than gear. Ask for a buff and something else gets cut. It is a monkey’s paw.
Hybrids pay about 5%. Blizzard does not want a heavy hybrid tax. The target is roughly 5% less damage on hybrid DPS specs, in return for being able to fill more than one role. They are also not meant to out-heal dedicated healers, so a Feral Druid or Retribution Paladin does not replace the healer in your group.
Casters care about loot. Spell power now appears on gear from level 10, and spell coefficients were lowered to match what ordinary leveling gear provides. A mage gets stronger from a drop, not from the spell itself.
Tier sets are evolving across beta builds. At the time of the developer deep dive, early raid set bonuses were eight-month-old drafts slated for revision; subsequent October beta builds (70374 and 70425) have already begun updating class item sets, which you can inspect on each class guide and the PvP rank sets page.
Hunter: The Pet Is Optional Now
Classic Hunters brought a pet everywhere. Forever lets you leave it in the stable on purpose. Marksmanship’s 11-point talent, Lone Wolf, adds 20% damage to every attack while no pet is out, and Sniper Shot at 31 points, a 4-second cast with a 45-yard range, rewards the pure-sniper idea.
The baseline kit also grew. Aimed Shot is yours at level 20 without a talent, Arcane Shot no longer shares its cooldown, and Multi-Shot now does. Traps work in combat, at the cost of a 30-second cooldown, and Frost and Fire traps track their cooldowns separately.
Pets get more to do. They scale from your gear and stop taking player stat buffs. Every family learns Bite or Claw and Dive or Dash, plus one signature ability: the Wolf’s Furious Howl for party attack power, the Bear’s three-target Swipe, the Crocolisk’s Dismember that cuts healing taken by 50%. Foxes are a new family with Trickster’s Dance, which raises dodge and attack speed for 12 seconds. For the pet build, Summon Hawk is the new 16-point Beast Mastery talent.
Survival gets Strider Kick at 21 points and Lacerating Strikes at 31, and Counterattack moves up to 16. Survival has two ways to play. You can stay in melee and work Mongoose Bite, Strider Kick, Raptor Strike, and traps. Or you can shoot from range until Mongoose Bite lights up, run in, unload, and step back out. Blizzard has not picked a winner yet. The Auto Shot timing around melee weaving is in a bug state and is being fixed, and stable slots are planned to grow, so carrying the right pet for a given encounter is a realistic plan. Read the Hunter class guide for both builds.
Druid: Never Leave the Form
In Classic, a Druid who wanted a potion in a fight dropped out of Bear Form, drank, and paid Mana to shift back. Forever removes that tax.
- Potions and almost every similar consumable work in form without cancelling it, Rage potions and Thistle Tea included. Engineering bombs are the exception, apart from the new SAF-T and EZ-Thro recipes.
- Weapon enchants and procs all work, including weightstones, the Crusader enchant, and Windfury Totem.
- Doors, objects, and racials such as Shadowmeld, War Stomp, and Walk on Air work without a shift.
- New baseline spells: Nature’s Grasp at 10, Revive (an out-of-combat resurrection) at 12, Omen of Clarity at 20, and Lacerate for Feral at 42.
Shifting Power replaces power shifting. Tiger’s Fury is gone. Feral gets a 16-point talent, Shifting Power, in its place: it costs the Mana of shifting into Cat Form and gives 40 Energy on a 16-second cooldown, which Improved Shifting Power cuts to 8. Classic power shifting was unintuitive, filled every global cooldown, and made no sense as a fantasy: you turn human, turn back into a cat, and somehow you are re-energized. Shifting Power keeps the rhythm and puts Intellect back on a Cat’s gear list. The redesigned Furor stops the old trick of weaving Bear Form for Energy.
The other new signature talents are Primal Bite for Bears at 16 points, Berserk for Feral at 31, Wild Growth for Restoration at 31, and Insect Swarm for Balance at 16. Wrath’s base damage has also gone up about 50% since the deep dive. You feel that most at levels 1 to 10, with no spell power yet, and it adds only about 2% at level 60, so expect it to be retuned.
Versatility still has a price. Druids can fill any role, but they cannot snare, Silence, or interrupt, and their healing leans on heals over time that need planning. If Balance bounced you off early, retry it, and check what you learn at each level in the spellbook and the Druid class guide.
Priest: A Fuller Toolbox
Priests were already the healer with the widest range, and the missing pieces now arrive on time. Fear Ward and Devouring Plague belong to every Priest at level 20 regardless of race, Divine Spirit is baseline at 30, and Shadow Word: Death arrives at 32. Prayer of Healing heals the target’s party instead of your own, and Renew from several Priests now stacks on one target.
Racial spells were rebuilt, and that changes the race choice. Gnomes get Confounding Flash at 10 and Contingency Plan at 20. Humans get Divine Grace, Dwarves get Chastise, Night Elves get an Elune’s Grace that cuts incoming hit chance by 50%, and Undead get Dark Sacrifice. Check the Priest class guide before you pick.
On the talent side, Discipline gets Penance at 21 points and Soul Warding at 16. Holy gets Binding Heal at 16 and Prayer of Mending at 31. Shadow moves Vampiric Embrace to 16, and Shadowform now allows any non-healing spell while halving the Mana cost of Shadow spells.
Each tree has a stated purpose. Discipline’s shields are stronger than Holy’s and suit keeping a tank alive. Holy is better at healing a whole party at once. Shadow is brought for damage first, with some utility on top, and is not meant to be a Mana battery. Smite-style Holy builds are intended, but with Judgement of the Crusader up they out-damaged some DPS specs in testing and were trimmed. A shorter Holy Fire cast time is under discussion.
Warrior: Rage Gets a Second Chance
How Rage works now. Rage from damage taken ignores your armor, calculated as if you always had 50% armor reduction, and it ignores absorbs, so Power Word: Shield no longer cuts your Rage. Rage from damage dealt is normalized to weapon speed, and critical strikes give extra Rage, 100% more as of the October 2 build. Blizzard is also chasing a bug that makes Warriors gain less Rage from damage taken than intended.
New tools. Tactical Mastery at level 14 keeps 10 Rage when you change stance, and Victory Rush at 20 heals you after a kill. Recklessness, Shield Wall, and Retaliation no longer share a cooldown, and Thunder Clap works in Defensive Stance. In the Arms tree, Spearing Strike at 16 points knocks a target off its mount, and Weaponmaster folds the weapon specializations into one talent.
Fury was rebuilt on October 2. Whirlwind always strikes with both weapons, and Lingering Rage, Furious Precision, and Gore Drinker are new talents. Protection now has a route to the middle of the tree for Warriors who do not carry a shield.
Warriors are built to be the kings of cleave, with more sustained multi-target damage than any other melee class. Recklessness keeps a long cooldown on purpose: shorter versions pushed damage far too high, and it is meant to be a high point instead of a permanent state. Slam is on a cooldown so you do not have to manage a swing timer. Read the Warrior class guide before you choose Fury or Protection for leveling.
Four Things to Do in the Beta
- Try the 16-point talent first. Shifting Power, Lone Wolf, and Binding Heal are where Forever differs most from 1.12. Open the talent calculator and compare it with the 1.12 path.
- Recheck Warrior builds after every patch. Rage and Fury are still moving. The level 30 update lists the October 2 Warrior and Druid changes.
- Look for what no longer needs a talent. Aimed Shot, Fear Ward, Revive, and Victory Rush are baseline now, and the spellbook shows the level each one arrives.
- Hold off on gear plans built around tier sets. Blizzard has said the current bonuses will be revisited before launch.
Read the full announcement on Blizzard News