WoW: Forever's 2 November notes: more class damage, faster early spawns, gamepad play
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Blizzard's development notes dated 2 November raise damage for classes across World of Warcraft: Forever and give higher-level creatures more health to match. Forever is a new version of World of Warcraft, and it launches on 4 November. The notes also make respawns generally faster in low-level zones and say gamepad support has reached "a complete functional state". Here's what changes for you.
Why Blizzard raised damage
A class is the kind of character you play, like a Mage or a Warrior. Blizzard says that during the beta, the test version before launch, it tried to hold each class roughly to the power it had in Classic, its earlier re-release of the original game. That meant every new thing it added had to come at the cost of something else. The cuts left some iconic abilities feeling lackluster, in Blizzard's words.
So over the last two weeks it raised damage on classes across the game. To make up for it, higher-level creatures got more health. Blizzard also says it was "likely hasty" in borrowing fixes from later eras of the game, and some of this round's changes are about that.
Its aim, it says, isn't perfect equality in the numbers. It wants every class to feel valuable to the groups it joins.
What comes next is spelled out too. Apart from bugs and serious outliers, Blizzard doesn't plan big tuning changes, adjustments to how strong each class is, before the raids, fights built for a large group, open next month. Once it has enough data from players leveling past 30, a character's level being how far it has grown, and trying a wide range of content, it expects a large tuning pass. The classes will keep changing over the months and years ahead, it says, just as they did after the original launch in 2004.
What everyone notices on day one
- Training costs. Training is paying a class trainer to learn new abilities. The total cost from level 1 to 60 is now between 206 and 207 gold, the game's money, for every class. Most abilities learned at the same level cost the same, except abilities a Priest gets from its race, the people your character comes from. Blizzard says Warlock costs are cut by what it expects their pets' Grimoires, books that teach the pet its spells, to cost.
- Action bars. New spells no longer add themselves to your action bars, the rows of buttons on your screen. You place them yourself.
- Bags. New bags no longer equip themselves into empty bag slots. You equip them by hand.
- Respawns. A respawn is a monster or object coming back after it's killed or taken. Blizzard changed the rates for launch crowds: generally faster in low-level zones, the early areas of the world, fastest in starting zones, where new characters begin, and slower as you level. It says some competition for spawns is expected and part of the game. Once the launch rush of low-level characters settles, it'll turn the low-level zones down to more typical rates.
- Base stats. Every race now starts with the right base stats, the starting numbers, like Strength, that set how strong a character is. Blizzard's example: a Tauren Warrior now starts with 5 more Strength than a Human Warrior, as intended, where it was wrongly 2.
The biggest change for each class
These are the headline lines from each class's section of the notes, not all of them. The patch notes page carries the whole post.
| Class | Headline changes |
|---|---|
| Druid | Bear Form and Dire Bear Form threat bonus raised to 115% (was 50%), to make up for Blessing of Salvation, a Paladin spell, being removed. New Poised at level 32: out of combat at full Energy, your next Energy ability costs 10 less. Shred, Claw, Ravage, Rip, Rake, Ferocious Bite and Pounce all hit harder. Feral, the tree for fighting in animal forms, gets two 31-point talents, one for Bear play and one for Cat play |
| Hunter | Aimed Shot's bonus damage up about 110% on every rank. Arcane Shot and Serpent Sting hit harder. All traps share one 30-second cooldown |
| Mage | Frost Blast and the Piercing Ice talent are gone. Ice Barrier now adds 15% Frost damage for 1 minute, plus 5% while it holds. Arcane Blast's extra Mana cost per stack drops to 100% (was 175%) |
| Paladin | Salvation, Mass Salvation, Revoke and Blessing of Light are gone. Righteous Fury trains at level 10 (was 16). New talents include Oath of Light, Shieldsworn and Unsealed Wrath |
| Priest | Binding Heal is replaced by Holy Binding: heal someone else with Flash Heal and you get 50% of that healing too. Shadow Word: Death hurts you for 30% of your maximum Health if it fails to kill (was 10%), and not at all if it misses |
| Rogue | New ability Shank at level 24, a 5-Energy strike with the weapon in your second hand that can't miss and generates 15 Energy (25 at rank 2, level 44). Poised arrives at level 18. New talents include Composure, Boot Knife and Death Mark |
| Shaman | Lava Burst is gone, replaced by Call of Thunder, 5% more critical strike chance for Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning. Lightning Bolt's base damage goes up on every rank, the top rank's by 80%. Stormstrike deals 150% normalized weapon damage (was 100%) on a 6-second cooldown (was 8) |
| Warlock | Wrack's base damage a second at level 60 goes from 36 to 86, in effect. Pets get 2 Health per point of your Stamina (was 7.5) |
| Warrior | Defensive Stance, the Warrior's tanking stance, has its threat bonus raised to 80% (was 30%). Slam's cooldown drops to 15 seconds (was 18). New talents in Fury, one of the Warrior's trees, include Reckless Swings and Improved Whirlwind |
A few plain words for that table. Threat is how much a monster wants to attack you, so a tank, the player who soaks up the hits, wants lots of it. A talent is a choice that shapes your character as you level, picked from trees of choices for each class, and a 31-point talent sits deep in a tree. A cooldown is the wait before you can use something again. Energy, Mana and Rage are what abilities cost, and a stack is one layer of a bonus that builds up. A rank is a stronger version of the same spell learned later. Health is how much damage you can take, Stamina is the stat that raises it, and a critical strike is a hit that lands for extra damage.
Compared: what the game files already carry
Our talent calculator and class abilities list read the game's own files, and both were on build 1.60.1.70753, the version of the game program from 2 November, when we wrote this. A build doesn't always match the notes, and this one carries some of these changes and not others. Here's what we checked.
| Class | What the files of build 1.60.1.70753 show |
|---|---|
| Druid | Predatory Discipline, Bloom and Poised are in and Berserk is out, but Rend and Tear keeps its old numbers |
| Hunter | Barrage, Lightning Reflexes and Trueshot Aura keep their old numbers |
| Mage | Piercing Ice is out, and Frost Blast is off the spell list |
| Paladin | Oath of Light, Shieldsworn and Unsealed Wrath are in |
| Priest | Holy Binding is a talent, but Binding Heal is still listed as a trainable spell |
| Rogue | Poised is in, but Composure, Boot Knife and Death Mark aren't, Murder still is, and there's no Shank |
| Shaman | Lava Burst is still a talent, Elemental Mastery still has its old name, and Lightning Overload keeps its old numbers |
| Warlock | Shadow and Flame keeps its old numbers |
| Warrior | Reckless Swings and Improved Whirlwind aren't there, and Defiance keeps its old numbers |
So until a build that carries the rest arrives, both show some of these changes and not others. They follow the files, so they move when the files do.
Races, gamepads and the rest
The notes repeat the race changes Blizzard posted earlier, for completeness. Racials are the bonuses a character gets from its race, and our racials piece goes through those changes race by race. A few Undead fixes in these notes aren't in that piece, among them: Cannibalize, an Undead racial ability, can once again be used while immune to Physical damage, and Touch of the Grave, another, now triggers as often as it should.
Gamepad support, playing with a controller instead of a mouse and keyboard, "has entered a complete functional state", Blizzard says. Movement, spells, interactions and menus all work on a controller, and you set it up in Edit Mode, the screen for arranging the interface, and the Options menu.
The rest is mostly fixes and smaller changes: quests, a battleground, and roots from procs, effects that pin a target in place when something triggers, now growing weaker when repeated on the same target. Some satyrs, a kind of monster, were filed as humanoids by mistake. They're demons now, and Blizzard says they're "100% more scared of Paladins." Launch details are in our 4 November piece.
Common questions
What changed in Blizzard's 2 November WoW: Forever notes?
World of Warcraft: Forever is a new version of World of Warcraft. Blizzard's development notes dated 2 November raise damage for classes, the kind of character you play, across the game, and give higher-level creatures more health to match. They make respawns, monsters and objects coming back after they're killed or taken, generally faster in low-level zones, the early areas of the world. Training class abilities, paying a trainer to learn them, now costs between 206 and 207 gold, the game's money, from level 1 to 60. And Blizzard says gamepad support, playing with a controller, has entered a complete functional state.
Will Blizzard change class balance after WoW: Forever launches?
Blizzard expects to, but not right away. A class is the kind of character you play, and tuning is adjusting how strong each one is. Blizzard's notes of 2 November say that, apart from bugs and serious outliers, it doesn't plan big tuning changes before the raids, fights built for a large group, open next month. Once it has enough data from players leveling past 30, a character's level being how far it has grown, and taking on a wide range of content, it expects to do a large tuning pass. It says the classes will keep changing over the months and years ahead.
How much does class training cost in WoW: Forever?
Training is paying a class trainer to learn new abilities, a class being the kind of character you play, and gold is the game's money. Blizzard's notes of 2 November say the total cost to train class abilities from level 1 to 60 is now between 206 and 207 gold for every class. Most abilities learned at the same level cost the same to train, except abilities a Priest, one of the classes, gets from its race, the people a character comes from. Warlocks, a class that fights beside a pet, have their costs cut by what Blizzard expects their pets' Grimoires, books that teach the pet its spells, to cost.
Written by 0hp from the publisher's own announcement, linked above, and every specific in it was checked against that page by a second pass before it published. Independent, and not affiliated with the publisher. Dates are announced or labelled as estimates. How this site is written, and how to correct it.
