Big class day continues as we get another insightful look at the changes coming to two more classes. We already got a deep-dive for Druids and Hunters, as well as a shorter video look at Warriors, Rogues, and Shamans. But now it’s time for Priests to show us what they got, and to get even more details on Warrior changes!
Priests are getting more flexibility across all three specs. The Fear Ward and Devouring Plague racials are also available to all Priests starting at level 20. Divine Spirit and Shadow Word: Death are also joining the baseline ability cast. Warriors get the biggest changes, related to Rage generation mostly. It no longer gets diminished by damage reduction or absorption when taking damage. Rage generation also got normalized for attacks, now only depending on weapon speed and not damage done.
There’s many more changes below, with examples of talent changes and removals, baseline ability and class changes, and more.
With each class update, the goal is to keep the spirit of original World of Warcraft in mind while giving players more ways to make their character feel their own. For Priests and Warriors, that work takes shape in two very different combat identities: one built around Light, Shadow, healing, and protection, and the other around weapons, Rage, stances, and battlefield momentum.
The updates below are focused on broadening useful choices without moving either class away from what makes it recognizable. Priests gain wider access to important tools and new talent options that support healing, utility, and Shadow-focused damage. Warriors see adjustments that make Rage more reliable, bring certain utility forward as baseline functionality, and sharpen the role of each specialization.
Talents become available starting at level 10 and continue using a familiar structure, including one-point milestone talents at 11, 21, and 31 points, now joined by a new 16-point milestone. To change your talents, including Legacy talents, visit a class trainer in one of the major cities. Dual Specialization also becomes available at level 40.
Please note that class abilities and talents may continue to evolve throughout the beta test and are subject to additional changes.
Walking the Path of Light and Shadow with the Priest Class
Priests can shape their path through Discipline, Holy, and Shadow, offering support through protection, healing, and damage. In World of Warcraft: Forever, the Priest continues to draw from the power of Light and Shadow, with updates that expand its toolkit while keeping the class’s familiar role as a versatile spellcaster intact.
Their updates focus on expanding flexibility across Discipline, Holy, and Shadow while preserving the class’s command of healing, protection, Light, and Shadow. Fear Ward and Devouring Plague are now available to all Priests at level 20, Divine Spirit is baseline at level 30, and Shadow Word: Death joins the class as a baseline ability at level 32, while refreshed racial abilities and talent updates add new options for support, healing, and damage-focused play.
Baseline Abilities
- Fear Ward: This ability is now available to all Priests at level 20, regardless of race.
- Devouring Plague: This ability is now available to all Priests at level 20, regardless of race.
- Priest Racial Abilities: Each race of Priest has two spells unique to their Race. They have been fully re-evaluated, and new ones have been added for Gnome Priests:
- Gnome:
- Confounding Flash: Learned at level 10. Confuses up to 5 nearby enemies for 3 seconds. Effect broken by taking damage. 0.5 second cast time. 2-minute cooldown.
- Contingency Plan: Learned at level 20. Places a ward on a friendly target for 30 seconds. If that target’s health drops below 35%, the target is instantly protected by a damage absorb shield and gains a heal-over-time effect. These two effects can be stacked with Renew and Power Word: Shield. 5-minute cooldown. Instant cast.
- Dwarf:
- Desperate Prayer: Unchanged.
- Chastise: Learned at level 20. Damages and immobilizes a target for 2 seconds. Only useable on Humanoids. Instant cast, 2-minute cooldown.
- Human:
- Divine Grace: Learned at level 10. Instantly heals a friendly target below 50% health and removes Weakened Soul from that target. Cannot be cast on self. 5-minute cooldown.
- Feedback: Unchanged.
- Night Elf:
- Starshards: Still learned at level 10. Damage increased substantially but now has a 30 second cooldown.
- Elune’s Grace: Still learned at level 20. Now reduces the chance for melee and ranged attacks to hit the Priest by 50% for 15 seconds or until 3 attacks have missed. 5-minute cooldown.
- Troll:
- Hex of Weakness: Unchanged.
- Shadowguard: Unchanged.
- Undead
- Touch of Weakness: Unchanged.
- Dark Sacrifice: Learned at level 20. Cannibalize your own health to gain Mana over time. Mana gain increased by Spirit.
- Gnome:
- Fade: Threat reduction effect doubled.
- Prayer of Healing: Instead of healing the Priest’s own party, this spell now heals all the members of the target’s party and their pets.
- Shadow Word: Death: Added as a baseline ability to all Priests at level 32. Deals instant Shadow damage to the target but if the target is not killed by this spell, the Priest takes 10% of their max health in damage. 15 second cooldown.
- Divine Spirit: Now baseline to all Priests, learned at level 30.
- Renew: Renew can now be active from multiple Priests on the same target.
Talents
Discipline
- Power in Light: (New row 1 talent.) Increased Smite and Penance damage done to targets afflicted with your Holy Fire.
- Wand Specialization: Now only requires two talent points for the same benefit.
- Twin Disciplines: (New row 1 talent.) Increases damage and healing done by instant cast spells.
- Silent Resolve: Now also reduces the duration of Stun, Fear, and Silence effects on you.
- Holy Precision: Increases chance to hit with Holy spells by up to 18%. This talent is intended to remove the need for hit chance on healing Priests, who are not expected to wear gear that increased hit chance.
- Improved Power Word: Shield: Slightly more increase per talent point.
- Mental Agility: Moved from row 4 up to row 3. Now costs only 3 talent points for the same effect and also benefits Smite and Holy Fire.
- Meditation: Mana benefit from spirit increased substantially.
- Improved Inner Fire: Benefit to armor increased, and now also increases charges.
- Mental Strength: Moved from row 4 up to row 4. Now increases Intellect by a larger percentage instead of Mana by a percentage.
- Soul Warding: This new 16-point gold medal talent reduces the cooldown on Power Word: Shield and its Mana cost. Requires Improved Power Word: Shield.
- Improved Mana Burn: Reduction to cast time of Mana Burn increased.
- Penance: (New 21-point gold medal talent.) Channeled over 2 seconds with 12 second cooldown. Can target enemies to deal damage every second, or allies to heal damage every second.
- Renewed Hope: (New talent.) Requires Soul Warding. Increases critical strike chance of Flash Heal, Binding Heal, Lesser Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, and Penance when casting on targets with Weakened Soul. Each of those spells also reduces the duration of Weakened Soul on the target each time the target is healed.
- Divine Aegis: Critical heals create an absorb shield for 12 seconds on your target based on a percentage of the amount healed. This effect does not stack.
Removed talents: Unbreakable Will has been combined into Silent Resolve, Improved Power Word: Fortitude and Divine Spirit are now baseline abilities, Force of Will has been removed.
Holy
- Twilight Focus: Formerly Healing Focus. Now grants pushback protection on all spellcasts, but costs 3 talent points instead of 2.
- Blessed Recovery: Now also triggers from any attack that deals more than 30% of your maximum health in a single hit.
- Inspiration: Now triggers from all non-periodic critical heals.
- Improved Healing: Now also reduces Mana cost of Penance and Prayer of Mending.
- Searing Light: (Redesigned.) Now increases all Holy damage done but by a lesser percentage. In addition, it now grants a chance for Holy Fire damage to make your next Holy Nova cost no Mana.
- Binding Heal: (New 16-point gold medal talent.) New spell with no cooldown. Heals the Priest and their current target. No cooldown, 1.5 second cast. Tuned to be as good as Flash Heal even if the Priest needs no healing.
- Litany of Light: Each time you cast a healing spell, you are refunded part of its Mana cost if the name of the spell is different than the previous healing spell you cast.
- Spiritual Guidance: Bonus to spell damage reduced to approximately one third as much as the bonus to spell healing.
- Spiritual Healing: Now only needs 3 talent points for the same benefit.
- Prayer of Mending: (New 31-point gold medal talent.) Spirit of Redemption required. 10 second cooldown. Places a spell with 30 second duration on the target that heals the target the next time they take damage or receive non-periodic healing, consuming a charge. Then the spell jumps to another nearby party or raid member within 20 yards. It continues jumping until it heals a total of 5 times. Each target may only have one Prayer of Mending active.
Removed talents: Improved Prayer of Healing, Lightwell.
Shadow
- Shadow Focus: Moved to row 1 up from row 2. Instead of reducing the target’s chance to resist, it increases the chance for Shadow spells to hit.
- Shadow Affinity: Threat reduction to Shadow spells increased slightly.
- Shadow Reach: Moved to row 2 up from row 4. Now requires only 2 talent points for the same effect.
- Improved Psychic Scream: Blackout is now a pre-requisite.
- Improved Mind Flay: New row 3 talent. Requires Mind Flay. Increases the damage and range of Mind Flay but reduces its movement speed slowing effect.
- Vampiric Embrace: Moved to the row 3 as the 16-point gold medal talent. Now lasts 30 seconds with a 1-minute Cooldown.
- Shadow Weaving: Now benefits only the casting Priest and not other party or raid members. Percentage increase to damage decreased moderately.
- Silence: No longer requires Improved Psychic Scream as a pre-requisite.
- Devouring Contagion: (New row 5 talent.) Reduces the mana cost of Devouring Plague, and when a target dies while afflicted with Devouring Plague, Devouring Plague will jump to a new enemy within 5 yards with the same remaining duration.
- Early Demise: (New row 6 talent.) Increases Shadow Word: Death’s critical strike chance on targets below 20% health.
- Shadowform: Now allows all non-healing spells to be cast while in Shadowform, reduces the Mana cost of all Shadow spells by 50%, and increases the critical strike damage bonus of Shadow spells by 100%. Bonus to Shadow damage dealt decreased.
Removed talents: Improved Vampiric Embrace.
Priests continue to be the most versatile healer in World of Warcraft which is identifiably their most important strength. While other healers focus on heal-over-time spells (HoTs) or direct heals, Priests can do both while having the unique capability of providing damage absorption shields which provide damage mitigation.
As Discipline, they can lean even more into that strength with talents that improve upon Power Word: Shield. However, Priests are also a very vulnerable class with their limitation of wearing cloth armor and few ways to escape enemies.They instead need to rely on the support of friends with tanking or control abilities, while making those allies even stronger through their buffs and healing capabilities.
As Shadow, Priests can harness the power of darkness to deal powerful damage-over-time (DoT) but lack the full utility in that role that could be found on a class such as the Warlock. Overall, Priests bring a valuable set of tools that make them an asset for any party or raid.
Forged in Battle: Warrior Class Updates
Warriors charge into battle through Arms, Fury, and Protection, turning Rage, stances, and weapon mastery into momentum on the battlefield. In World of Warcraft: Forever, the Warrior continues to stand at the front line with updates that reinforce its familiar role as a durable, hard-hitting combatant while creating more room for each specialization to shine.
Base Class Abilities
First, we want to acknowledge that there are some bugs players are experiencing with Rage generation in the beta, and we are working on tracking down and identifying the root cause. It may take a couple weeks to track down as our engineers work through a variety of tasks.
- Rage:
- Rage from taking damage: We kept the original formula for Rage generation from taking damage, but with one big change. Rage gain from damage is calculated by ignoring Armor. So, wearing Armor will no longer reduce the Rage you gain. We are using the old formula as if you always had 50% damage reduction from Armor. Rage gain also ignores all damage absorption effects, so Power Word: Shield will no longer decrease Rage gained.
- Rage from dealing damage: We have fully-normalized this Rage. Rage gained is now based on the speed of the weapon that dealt the damage. In the launch beta, we gave no additional Rage for dealing critical strikes. We are re-adding that. Critical strike will now give 75% more Rage than non-critical strikes.
- Tactical Mastery: Learned at level 14. Allows the Warrior to keep 10 Rage when changing Stances. Can be further improved with Arms talents.
- Victory Rush: Learned at level 20. 30-second cooldown instant attack that deals damage (increased by Attack Power) and heals the Warrior for 10% of maximum health. Activated for 20 seconds every time you kill a non-trivial enemy.
- Recklessness: No longer shares a cooldown with Shield Wall and Retaliation.
- Retaliation: No longer shares a cooldown with Recklessness and Shield Wall. Cooldown reduced to 15 minutes.
- Shield Wall: No longer shares a cooldown with Recklessness and Retaliation. Cooldown reduced to 15 minutes.
- Rend: Now gains significant damage scaling from Attack Power.
- Thunder Clap: Now gains significant damage scaling from Attack Power. Useable in Defensive Stance. Cooldown increased to 6 seconds. Threat rebalanced (reduced) to account for being usable in Defensive Stance.
- Battle Shout: Attack Power bonus reduced to compensate for both factions having both Shaman and Paladin buffs. But benefit of Improved Battle Shout also baked in.
- Sunder Armor: Now usable even if the target has a more powerful Expose Armor effect active. Threat generated now scales with Attack Power.
Talents
Arms
- Improved Tactical Mastery: (Formerly Tactical Mastery.) Each point now increases the Rage retained when shifting stances by 3 to a maximum of 25.
- Improved Overpower: Moved from row 3 up to row 2.
- Anger Management: Tooltip clarified, but no functionality change.
- Spearing Strike: (New 16-point gold medal talent.) An instant attack for 15 Rage with a 20 second cooldown. Deals a percentage of weapon damage to target and dismounts them. If the target was mounted, a Dragon, or a Giant, damage is doubled.
- Bloodthrill: (New row 5 talent.) Your main hand attacks on enemies afflicted with Rend have a chance to activate Overpower for 6 seconds.
- Weaponmaster: (New row 5 talent.) Combines the benefits of all weapon specialization talents into a single talent. You gain a different bonus based on your equipped weapon. Axes and Polearms grant increased critical strike chance. Maces and Staves ignore some of the target’s armor, and Sword have a chance to gain an extra melee autoattack.
- Improved Slam: Moved from Fury to row 6 of Arms and redesigned. Only 2 points. Reduces the cooldown, global cooldown, and cast time of Slam, and Slam no longer delays or interrupts your melee auto attack swing time.
Removed talents: Axe Specialization, Mace Specialization, Sword Specialization, and Polearm Specialization all removed. These are now a part of the Weaponmaster talent.
Fury
- Booming Voice: No longer modifies Shout durations. That modification is now baseline.
- Iron Will: Moved from Protection to row 2 of Arms. Now reduces duration of Stuns instead of increasing resistance to them.
- Unbridled Rage: Chance increased. Now grants 2 Rage if the weapon equipped is a two-handed weapon.
- Improved Cleave: Now reduces the Rage cost of Cleave instead of increasing its bonus damage.
- Blood Craze: Now also triggered by attacks that deal more than 20% of your maximum health in a single hit and by striking a target with Bloodthirst.
- Boundless Rage: New row 3 talent. Increases your maximum Rage.
- Dual Wield Specialization: Now also increases chance to hit with off-hand weapons.
- Raging Blows: (New 16-point gold medal talent.) Causes your Whirlwind to hit with both weapons when dual-wielding and reduces the Rage cost of Cleave.
- Enrage: (Redesigned.) Now has a chance to trigger from taking any damage.
- Precision: New row 5 talent. Increases chance to hit.
- Death Wish: Minor redesign. Now increases all damage taken while active instead of decreasing Armor and Resistances.
- Flurry: Total increased attack speed reduced by 5%.
- Bloodthirst: Minor redesign. No longer heals the Warrior. Instead increases movement speed by 10% for 10 seconds. Damage retuned to have a base value and less scaling from Attack Power.
Removed talents: Improved Demoralizing Shout and Improved Battle Shout are now Baseline abilities.
Protection
- Shield Specialization: Now has chance on Blocks to generate 5 Rage instead of 1 Rage.
- Anticipation: Now grants twice as much Defense Skill per talent point.
- Improved Bloodrage: Now increases initial Rage and Rage over time, instead of just initial Rage.
- Master of Defense: New row 3 talent. Requires Shield Specializaton. Grants a chance to gain 5 Rage when the Warrior Dodges or Parries while a shield is equipped.
- Improved Revenge: (Redesigned.) Now increases damage done by Revenge instead of a chance to Stun the target.
- Defiance: Now requires a shield equipped to increase threat in Defensive Stance.
- Improved Disarm: Now reduces the cooldown on Disarm instead of increasing its duration.
- Vanguard: New 16-point gold medal talent. Charge is now useable while in Defensive Stance.
- Improved Shield Wall: (Redesigned.) Now reduces the cooldown on Shield Wall by a large amount.
- Bastion: New row 5 talent. Increases all damage done while you have a shield equipped.
- Focused Rage: (New row 6 talent.) Reduces the Rage cost on all offensive abilities.
- Shield Slam: Damage scaling from Block Value increased.
Removed Talents: Improved Shield Block and Improved Taunt are now baseline abilities; One-Handed Weapon Specialization has been removed.
Warriors remain the masters of melee combat. They can both dish out melee damage and mitigate damage done to them. They have a unique strength in dealing sustained damage to multiple melee targets, found on no other melee class. They have a powerful toolkit to solve nearly any problem, but they lack the tools to easily recover from taking too much damage. And they have unique buffs and debuffs that only Warriors can supply. Any party or raid is happy to add a Warrior as either a tank or damage dealer.
As beta testing continues, we’ll keep reviewing how these updates play in dungeons, PvP, and the open world. Your feedback will remain an important part of that process, and we look forward to seeing the builds, strategies, and playstyles Priests and Warriors bring to World of Warcraft: Forever.
