Druid Class Overview

Druid in Classic has historically only been available to Night Elf for Alliance and Tauren for Horde, however World of Warcraft: Forever adds the new Skyborne race as an option for both factions with slightly differing racials. Each Race offer different benefits including, but not limited to:

• Night Elf — Night Elves offers increased Dodge chance, an on-use Crit Chance increase, and harder to detect stealth in Cat Form from Shadowmeld. Night Elves also become Wisps when they die, and can run back to their bodies faster.
• Tauren — Taurens offer increased Health, chance to Hit and an AoE stun in the form of War Stomp. They also gain Plainsrunning, which increases your movement speed the longer you have been running!
• Skyborne — Skyborne gets an active ability that lets them glide down, increased haste and they deal more damage to Elementals. Additionally, Alliance Skyborne can activate a ley line to get increased health and mana regen, whereas Horde Skyborne run 10% faster.

Revive is a new out-of-combat resurrection spell that we get in addition to our pre-existing Rebirth battle-res spell. This is particularly valuable in dungeon groups where you don't always have other classes around who can resurrect the dead.

Omen of Clarity is now baseline and works on both offensive spells and heals (in addition to melee attacks). Specs (particularly Restoration Druid) will have various ways of best taking advantage of these procs.

The Balance spec in World of Warcraft: Forever inherits its own version of the "Eclipse" system from later editions of the spec which rewards alternating Wrath and Starfire. Here are some of the highlights:

New Talents: Eclipse & Balance of Nature. Each of our new key talents encourages you to alternate your Wrath and Starfire casts though interesting Eclipse is both more flexible (stacks up to 4) and more powerful than Balance of Nature further up the tree. The latter might see tuning over the Beta period to give you a bit more flexibility in this area. The core concept for both is great and should make our rotation much more fun.

Updated Talent: Nature's Grace. Now gives us 10% spell casting speed (and global cooldown reduction) for 3 seconds on a non-periodic crit. We have a lot of crit synergy through the tree, so this should be fairly fun to play with.

More Mana, Less Threat: Changes to the Reflection and Subtlety talents should mean that mana and threat are smaller issues to a spec that historically had issues with both. Omen of Clarity is also baseline now and can proc off spells in addition to melee attacks.

Moonkin Form changes: Moonkin Form now offers your party a crit chance increase to all spell and ability types instead of just being spell crit. As a result, it is also exclusive with Ferals Leader of the Pack which does the same thing.

Overall, Balance players can look forward to a lot of great Druid theming like being able to transform into a moonkin, while getting enough rotation updates to make it feel like a spec with more depth. Some of the rougher edges have also been substantially smoothed out.

There have been several changes or additions both to the Feral talent tree and in the other talent trees that will change a lot for both Feral Druid tanks and DPS. Feral will also benefit from several spell changes, as well as a change to all damage over time effects allowing them to Critically strike.

New Spell: Berserk. A 3-minute cooldown that enhances the form you are currently in for 15 seconds. In Bear form it removes the cooldown of Mangle and causes it to hit 3 targets. In Cat form it increases the chance for all your Combo Point generators to Critically Strike by 100%. During Berserk you are immune to fear effects.

Upgraded spell: Tiger's Fury. Tiger's Fury now acts as a 15% Physical damage increase for 6 seconds, on a 30-second cooldown. It no longer costs any Energy and can instead be combined with the new talent King of the Jungle which causes Tiger's Fury to generate 60 energy. Making it a potent cooldown for short bursts of damage.

New spells: Mangle and Lacerate. Mangle and Lacerate are new rotational abilities for Bear Form, with Mangle being a talent and Lacerate being learned from a Druid trainer at higher levels. These spells offer a deeper rotation for Feral tanks in Bear form, with Mangle being a large single target hit on a 6-second cooldown, and Lacerate generating extra threat and applying a bleed to the target, stacking up to 5 times. Both cost Rage and work as your core rotational buttons alongside Maul which you will likely use to dump excess Rage.

Changed Talent: Furor. While Furor is part of the Restoration tree it is mainly a Feral talent, and has served a very strong role in the past, forming the core of Powershifting where you would deplete your Energy, leave cat form and re-enter to regain energy through Furor and other sources. The new Furor causes you to still gain 10 Rage when entering Bear form, and when entering Cat form the amount of energy gained depends on how much energy you had when you left Cat form and how long it was since you left it. This means that when you enter Cat form after extended periods of time you will start with a full Energy bar, but power shifting will no longer net you any additional Energy. This means it is now a talent you don't necessarily need to talent into for content where you will spend extended periods of time in your forms.

Outside of all these changes and additions there are many new or altered talents that will have an impact on your gameplay. Talents like Genesis and Rend and Tear will put an extra emphasis on Bleed abilities like Rake and Rip. Predatory Instincts and the fact that your damage over time effects can Critically Strike might also increase the value of gear with Critical Strike chance bonuses a fair bit more than before.

The Restoration spec in World of Warcraft: Forever is quite different from previous "Vanilla" versions of the spec. It actually has quite a lot in common with later editions. Here are some of the biggest changes:

New Spell: Wild Growth. A party-wide heal-over-time effect on a short cooldown. Wild Growth could end up being a core component of our raid and dungeon healing.

Spell Upgraded: Swiftmend no longer removes a heal-over-time effect from the target. This makes Swiftmend an incredible spot heal, and you should expect to use it a lot. It still requires a heal-over-time effect be active on the target, though even casting Rejuvenation -> Swiftmend in a sequence is still extremely fast.

New Key Talent: Gift of the Earthmother: reduces the global cooldown of Rejuvenation, Swiftmend and Wild Growth by 0.5s (so they will have a 1s global cooldown). This allows us to cover a group in Rejuvenation extremely quickly. It also improves how quickly we can react to incoming damage.

Heal over time effects can now crit! This greatly increases the number of items that'll be good for us. HoTs also tick fairly often which reduces the natural variance crit chance has.

Likely more mana regeneration. Our Reflection talent now lets a much greater percentage of our mana regeneration (via spirit) continue while in combat. We'll need to see what the items look like to know for sure but this very likely means that we'll have quite a lot more mana to play with.

This iteration of Restoration Druid should have a larger focus on heal-over-time effects and a smaller focus on direct healing spells like Healing Touch. It also has room for incredibly flexible builds, which we'll explore throughout the Beta testing cycle.