This week, the WoW: Forever Podcast was joined by Senior Game Designer Josh “Aggrend” Greenfield, Aidan “Zirene” Moon, Principal Designer Kris Zierhut, and special guest Sodapoppin! In this episode, the team spoke about Class design philosophy and the upcoming changes to the level 30 beta.
Here, we’ll summarize all of the key topics of the podcast and give you the perspective of both the developers and players alike. If you’d like to watch the full episode, be sure to check out the video above.
Level 30 Beta
In today’s beta update, players will be able to reach the new level cap of 30. With this level cap increase, players will gain access to their class’s 21-point “gold star” talents, which should provide an immense boost to power throughout the duration of the beta.
While Aggrend does mention two brand-new dungeons coming as part of this beta, he recently corrected himself, stating:
| This week the Excavation Site is available, and the City of Dalaran dungeon is coming in a future beta update. |
In addition to new content, the team will also be releasing Class Blogs for every Class in WoW: Forever, similar to their most recent Priest & Warrior Deep Dive.
Class Rotation Philosophy
The first thing that the team considers when thinking about Class design is the class fantasy. That being said, the team wants to ensure that classes are pushing more than one button in every boss encounter, and they want to give players room to push their big cooldown and utility buttons as well.
While the goal for most classes is to have a standard 3-4 button rotation, the team wants to leave space for players to be able to observe their environment to help support their teammates with an off-heal, a stun, or to slow a mob that’s running away.
Druid
In the most recent update, Druid’s Wrath damage was increased by a whopping 50%. This was due to a combination of factors, including an experiment with making the Wrath ability free to cast (similar to a caster’s wand) and the recent changes to early-game Spell Damage on gear. Ultimately, the team recognized that these changes hindered Druids’ damage significantly while leveling and decided to increase the initial damage by an amount that would provide a significant buff to Druids while leveling, but would not dramatically impact their damage at end game.
WoW Forever Beta Development Notes – Updated September 24
Druid
- Wrath base damage increased ~50%.
In WoW Forever, the ability for Druids to power-shift has been removed. This is because the gameplay was not easy to understand for new players, and the devs wanted to simplify the rotation. While this change was made with new players in mind, the team also included a new talent called Shifting Power.
This talent will allow players to exchange Mana for Energy while they are in Cat Form. There are also additional talents that reduce the cooldown of Shifting Power to 8 seconds.
Warrior
There has been a buzz about Warriors and the normalization of Rage generation since the beginning of the WoW Forever Beta. The developers have acknowledged that there is a bug where Warriors are not gaining as much Rage when taking damage. While the fix for this issue will not be available during this week’s update, the team is confident that it will be fixed as part of next week’s beta update.
One thing that will be going out as part of this week’s update is the Warrior’s ability to generate an increased 75% of Rage from Critical Strikes. Principal Designer Kris Zierhut states that the goal of Warrior DPS is to make them the “kings of Cleave damage.”
Paladin
Holy Paladin players have been worried that they would have to spec deep into the Retribution tree to unlock the Spell Damage and Healing Spell talent – Champion of the Light.
As part of today’s beta update, the Champion of the Light talent will be changed from 100% down to just 60% and will no longer increase Healing Power.
Shaman
Totem Twisting was removed to make the game more approachable. Having numerous buffs or benefits from the same totemic element was never intended. To reduce the need for so many Shamans, some of the benefits of totems could be changed to be raid-wide instead of party-wide.
The team wants Enhancement Shaman to care about Spell Power on gear. The new Maelstrom Weapon talent gives Shaman an incentive to weave in Lightning Bolts between their normal melee rotation.
Hunter
To allow for a higher variety of Pets and Pet abilities, the number of Stable slots will be increased in WoW Forever.
The devs envision two playstyles for Survival Hunter. One will allow players to stay in melee range and use all of their melee abilities and traps. The other will encourage players to use their melee abilities and then step out to weave in a ranged attack or ability.
While this podcast was just a preview of all of the Class changes coming in WoW Forever, there will be additional blog posts coming later. If you’d like to watch the full podcast, you can do so here!
