Blizzard's September 24 update to the World of Warcraft: Forever beta changes four racials and all nine classes, opens the Cooldown Manager to testing, adds gamepad options and fixes items and quests. Here is what matters to players, from Blizzard's notes, with one line per class.
Racials: Eureka!, Will to Survive, Cultivation, Touch of the Grave
- Gnome, Eureka!: every class gets the same 10% discount on its Mana, Rage or Energy abilities.
- Human, Will to Survive: its visual now matches Dispel Magic, not Will of the Forsaken.
- Tauren, Cultivation: each herb requires a character level equal to the Herbalism skill needed to pick it, divided by 5: level 30 for a 150-skill herb, level 60 for herbs above 300 skill.
- Undead, Touch of the Grave: it no longer breaks crowd control or triggers from abilities that deal no damage. Shadow Word: Pain triggers it on cast, not on its periodic damage; Distract, Pick Pocket and Polymorph no longer do, so Distract can't pull Rogues and Druids out of Stealth through it.
Full tooltips for every race are in our racials guide.
The Cooldown Manager
The Cooldown Manager moves key information from your buff bar or action bar into interface elements you can place and customize. It is off by default: tick Enable Cooldown Manager in Options, under Gameplay Enhancements. Druids, Mages, Priests, Warriors and Warlocks can test it now, other classes later, and Blizzard mainly wants to know which spells you'd like tracked by default.
For now it doesn't support spell ranks, which Blizzard will fix, and it can't track the Healthstone's cooldown, pet cooldowns, Arcane Blast or item enhancements such as Windfury and Rogue poisons. Priests track every spell by default.
Gamepad support
New flyouts put Druid shapeshift forms, Hunter and Warlock pet controls and pet spells, Paladin auras and Warrior stances on the gamepad action bar, and the Hunter and Warlock pet bar no longer takes over the bottom bar. The Gamepad (Alpha) options gain:
- Use Compact Action Bar: shows only the active action bar.
- Fixed Party Targeting: in a party, not a raid, each directional pad button targets one member.
- Swap Target Modifier Sides: friendly targeting on the right, hostile on the left.
- Swap Friendly Targeting Action Sides and Swap Hostile Targeting Action Sides: swap the directional pad and face button actions for that modifier.
Items and the 1-silver respec
- Wizard Oil is back to its Classic Era values: 8 spell power for Minor Wizard Oil, 16 for Lesser Wizard Oil, 24 for Wizard Oil. Brilliant Wizard Oil is unchanged.
- Wands no longer gain damage from your spell damage.
- A handful of guns and bows now consume ammunition correctly.
- Some quest rewards now have the right item level; compare them in our item database.
For the beta only, a respec costs 1 silver if you haven't changed your talents recently. After a reset the price climbs, then drops back to 1 silver an hour later. Try builds first in our talent planner.
Quests, fixes and known issues
Several dungeon quests can no longer be shared to hand out quest items. Snow Leopard Prowlers in Dun Morogh and the Crystal Lake murlocs in Elwynn Forest respawn faster, and the Gnarlpine furbolg bounty in Teldrassil asks for 15 instead of 20. A memory leak that slowly degraded performance is fixed.
New known issues: creating or changing a party can move players to another world instance, and the Stormwind minimap displays incorrectly. Blizzard's full list also warns of Lua errors if you open the Legacy pane with Y before level 25, and notes that guild charters can be turned in unsigned for now.
Class changes in brief
Our classes overview and its class guides cover these in depth:
- Druid: Wrath deals about 50% more base damage; Mangle becomes Primal Bite.
- Hunter: Furious Howl's Attack Power bonus drops 40%; beasts above your level can't be tamed.
- Mage: Wake of Fire lasts 30 seconds (was 20), Hot Streak 20 (was 15).
- Paladin: Holy Strike deals more weapon damage from rank 2 on, with a 10-second cooldown (was 12).
- Priest: Renew can crit; Power Word: Shield can overwrite an existing one on a target without Weakened Soul.
- Rogue: Sap flags you for PvP when used on a flagged target.
- Shaman: Flametongue Totem no longer stacks with Flametongue Weapon or Windfury Totem.
- Warlock: the Voidwalker's Sacrifice scales with 10% of your spell healing.
- Warrior: Slam's cooldown rises to 18 seconds (was 15); Bloodthrill triggers twice as often.
These are beta values, and Blizzard keeps adjusting them build by build until the test closes on October 21.
