Blizzard's Priest and Warrior class deep dive for World of Warcraft: Forever (WoW: Forever for short) went up on 30 September. Blizzard's post lists their ability and talent changes. The short version: every Priest gets Shadow Word: Death at level 32. Warriors no longer lose Rage to their own armor, and every Warrior gets Victory Rush at level 20.

The Priest is a spellcaster who heals, shields allies or deals Shadow damage. The Warrior is a melee fighter, built for close-up combat, who spends Rage, a resource that builds up in a fight. Blizzard says both classes may keep changing through the beta, the test version people can play before release. For the Hunter and the Druid, see our piece on that deep dive.

How do talents work in WoW: Forever?

Talents are upgrades you buy with points to shape a character inside their class, laid out in three trees for each of these classes. Blizzard says they start at level 10 and keep a familiar structure. The one-point milestone talents at 11, 21 and 31 points stay, and a new one joins at 16 points. The tables below list the milestone talents the post names.

To change your talents, Legacy talents included, you visit a class trainer, the in-game teacher for your class, in one of the major cities. Dual Specialization, a second saved talent setup, opens at level 40.

What changes for Priests?

A Priest's three trees are Discipline (shields and support), Holy (healing) and Shadow (damage). Here are the baseline changes, the ones every Priest gets.

Ability	The change
Fear Ward	Every Priest gets it at level 20, whatever their race
Devouring Plague	Every Priest gets it at level 20, whatever their race
Divine Spirit	Baseline, learned at level 30
Shadow Word: Death	New for every Priest at level 32: instant Shadow damage, but the Priest takes 10% of their max health if the target survives
Prayer of Healing	Now heals the target's whole party and their pets, not the Priest's own
Renew	Can now be active from several Priests on the same target
Fade	Its threat reduction is doubled

Threat is how badly a monster wants to hit you. A cooldown is the wait before you can use an ability again.

What changes for Priest racial spells?

Every Priest race has two spells of its own, and Blizzard says it went over all of them again. Gnome Priests get two new ones.

Race	Spell	What it does now
Gnome	Confounding Flash	New at level 10: confuses up to 5 nearby enemies for 3 seconds
Gnome	Contingency Plan	New at level 20: a 30-second ward that shields and heals an ally who drops below 35% health
Dwarf	Chastise	Level 20: damages the target and pins it in place for 2 seconds, Humanoids, the game's person-shaped enemies, only
Human	Divine Grace	Level 10: an instant heal on an ally below 50% health that also clears Weakened Soul
Night Elf	Starshards	Much more damage, now on a 30-second cooldown
Night Elf	Elune's Grace	Cuts the chance of melee and ranged attacks hitting you by 50% for 15 seconds, or until 3 miss
Undead	Dark Sacrifice	Level 20: trades your own health for Mana over time

Desperate Prayer, Feedback, Hex of Weakness, Shadowguard and Touch of Weakness are unchanged. Weakened Soul is a lingering effect some Priest spells check for, and Mana is what a Priest spends to cast.

Priest milestone talents

Tree	Points	Talent	What it does
Discipline	16	Soul Warding	A shorter cooldown and a lower Mana cost on Power Word: Shield, the Priest's shield spell
Discipline	21	Penance	Cast over 2 seconds: damages an enemy or heals an ally every second, 12-second cooldown
Holy	16	Binding Heal	Heals the Priest and their target at once, with no cooldown
Holy	31	Prayer of Mending	A heal that jumps from ally to ally until it has healed 5 times
Shadow	16	Vampiric Embrace	Now lasts 30 seconds on a 1-minute cooldown

Other Priest talents in the post include Divine Aegis, where a critical heal, an extra-strong one, also leaves an absorb shield, a barrier that soaks up damage. Litany of Light refunds some Mana when you switch between healing spells. Devouring Contagion makes Devouring Plague jump to a new enemy when its target dies. Shadowform, a shadowy form a Priest takes on, now allows every non-healing spell while in it, and halves the Mana cost of Shadow spells.

Holy Precision is a talent built for healers. Blizzard says it's there so a healing Priest doesn't need hit chance on gear it isn't expected to wear. Lightwell and Improved Prayer of Healing are removed.

Our favourite is Shadow Word: Death. It's instant Shadow damage, but if the target survives you take 10% of your max health. On a 15-second cooldown, it grades your judgement every time.

What changes for Warriors?

A Warrior's three trees are Arms (weapon mastery), Fury (raw damage) and Protection (tanking with a shield). Tanking means drawing the enemy's attacks onto yourself. Stances are the fighting modes a Warrior switches between.

Start with Rage. Blizzard kept the old formula for Rage from taking damage, with one big change: armor is ignored. It now counts every hit as if your armor always cut its damage by 50%. Wearing armor no longer cuts the Rage you gain, and neither does a damage-absorbing shield like Power Word: Shield. Rage from dealing damage now depends on your weapon's speed. Critical strikes, the extra-hard hits, give 75% more Rage than normal ones in the post, and Blizzard's 1 October notes raise that to 100%.

Blizzard also says players are hitting some bugs with Rage generation in the beta. It's hunting the root cause, and that may take a couple of weeks. Its notes for the 8 October build then say several bugs in the Rage gained from taking damage are fixed, and that the typical Warrior or Druid should gain more Rage from taking damage.

Ability	The change
Tactical Mastery	Baseline at level 14: keep 10 Rage when changing stances
Victory Rush	Learned at level 20: an instant attack on a 30-second cooldown that heals you for 10% of your max health, unlocked for 20 seconds each time you kill a non-trivial enemy
Recklessness, Retaliation, Shield Wall	No longer share a cooldown
Retaliation and Shield Wall	Cooldown cut to 15 minutes
Rend	Its damage now scales strongly with Attack Power
Thunder Clap	Usable in Defensive Stance, with a 6-second cooldown and less threat
Battle Shout	A smaller Attack Power bonus, with Improved Battle Shout built in
Sunder Armor	Can be used even if the target has a more powerful Expose Armor, another armor-cutting effect, and its threat scales with Attack Power

Attack Power is the stat that makes melee hits land harder. Blizzard says Battle Shout was trimmed because both factions, the game's two sides, now have both Shaman and Paladin buffs. Shamans and Paladins are two more classes, and buffs are the helpful effects they cast.

Warrior milestone talents

Tree	Points	Talent	What it does
Arms	16	Spearing Strike	15 Rage, 20-second cooldown: a weapon hit that knocks the target off its mount, double damage on a mounted target, a Dragon or a Giant
Fury	16	Raging Blows	In the post: Whirlwind hits with both weapons when dual-wielding, and Cleave costs less Rage (since changed, more below)
Protection	16	Vanguard	Charge now works in Defensive Stance

In Arms, Weaponmaster replaces four talents. The four weapon talents for Axes, Maces, Swords and Polearms are gone, and this one talent gives a bonus based on the weapon you hold. Improved Slam moves from Fury to Arms, and Slam no longer delays your auto attack, the swing your weapon makes on its own.

In Fury, Bloodthirst no longer heals. It now grants 10% movement speed for 10 seconds. In the post, Boundless Rage raises your maximum Rage and Precision raises your chance to hit, though the beta's newest build drops both (more below). In Protection, Shield Specialization now has a chance to give 5 Rage on a block, up from 1. Bastion adds damage while a shield is equipped, and Focused Rage lowers the Rage cost of every offensive ability.

Our favourite is Victory Rush. Kill an enemy that counts, and for 20 seconds you can land a hit that heals you for 10% of your max health. That's welcome healing on a class Blizzard says can't easily recover from taking too much damage.

Compared: the post against our talent calculator today

Our talent calculator is built from the beta's own game files, now Forever build 1.60.1.70450 of 16 October. Every new Priest talent the post names is in it, on the row the post gives. That build changed two older Priest talents the post names: Mental Strength now sits on row 2 of Discipline, not the row 4 the post gives, and Shadow Affinity, whose threat cut the post says rises slightly, is gone from Shadow.

The Warrior's Fury and Protection trees have moved on since the post. Improved Cleave, Boundless Rage and Precision are gone. Furious Precision, which raises your chance to hit with your off-hand weapon, sits on row 3 of Fury, and Raging Blows now just lowers the Rage cost of Cleave and Whirlwind. Blood Craze no longer mentions Bloodthirst, and Dual Wield Specialization raises off-hand damage and Rage, not your chance to hit. Bastion is on row 6 and Focused Rage on row 5, the other way round from the post. Three more lines of the post place or name a talent differently from the calculator, so here is how we read them.

The post says	The calculator shows	Our reading
Vampiric Embrace moves to "row 3" as the 16-point talent	Row 4, the 16-point row	The row number looks like a slip, since row 4 is where the 16th point lands
Iron Will moves "to row 2 of Arms", in the Fury list	Row 1 of Protection	The calculator puts it in Protection, and row 2 of Fury now holds Lingering Rage, a new talent
"Unbridled Rage" gets a higher chance	Unbridled Wrath, on row 2 of Fury	We take this to be the same talent under its old name, though its text in the files doesn't have the post's 2 Rage for a two-handed weapon

Where the two differ, we go by the beta's own files. We refresh the calculator as new beta builds appear. The Priest class page and the Warrior class page show which of their abilities are new since Classic Era, the re-released original game.

What they still can't do

Blizzard says both classes keep weaknesses.

• Priests are the most flexible healers, with both heals over time and direct heals, plus shields that soak damage. But they wear cloth armor and have few ways to escape. As Shadow, they deal strong damage over time but lack the full range of extra tools a class like the Warlock brings.
• Warriors remain the masters of melee combat. They are unique among melee classes at steady damage to several enemies at once. But they lack easy ways to recover after taking too much damage.

Blizzard says it will keep reviewing how these changes play in dungeons, PvP (player versus player fights) and the open world.