WoW Forever Beta Adds Cooldown Manager Testing and More Class Tuning

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Blizzard has updated the World of Warcraft: Forever beta with a September 24 build focused on class tuning, bug fixes, gamepad support, and the first round of testing for a new Cooldown Manager.

The Cooldown Manager is disabled by default and can be turned on under Gameplay Enhancement settings. For now, it’s available to test on Druid, Mage, Priest, Warrior, and Warlock, with more classes planned for later beta updates. Blizzard is specifically looking for feedback on which spells should be tracked by default. Spell ranks aren’t supported yet.

  • Druid gets several crit fixes, including Rejuvenation, Tranquility, and Wild Growth. Wrath’s base damage is also up by about 50%, and Mangle has been renamed Primal Bite.
  • Hunter pet tuning includes a 40% reduction to Furious Howl’s attack power bonus, Sonic Blast support for Bat pets, and a fix preventing Tame Beast from working on higher-level beasts.
  • Mage changes include Arcane Missiles checking line of sight only at the start of its channel, longer Wake of Fire and Hot Streak buff durations, and an Ignite damage modifier fix.
  • Paladin sees several Holy Strike adjustments, including a 10-second cooldown for Holy, baseline Improved Holy Strike, and revised weapon damage scaling across ranks. Righteous Fury’s Holy threat bonus is now 60%, down from 90%.
  • Shaman totem stacking rules were tightened, with Flametongue Totem no longer stacking with Flametongue Weapon or Windfury Totem, and several air totems no longer stacking across multiple Shamans.
  • Warrior changes include corrected Sunder Armor threat values, a higher Bloodthrill proc chance, and a longer Slam cooldown of 18 seconds.

The build also lowers beta talent respec costs to 1 silver if you haven’t recently changed talents. Blizzard says that’s temporary for beta testing. After a reset, the cost rises again, then drops back to 1 silver after an hour.

Gamepad support got class-specific flyouts for things like Druid shapeshifting, Hunter and Warlock pets, Paladin auras, and Warrior stances. There are also new alpha options for a compact action bar and fixed party targeting.

On the bug-fix side, the patch addresses casting animation problems, Mac display artifacts, a memory leak causing gradual performance drops for some players, pet happiness not decreasing at max loyalty, and in-game mail ignoring surnames. Known issues remain, including cooldown tracking gaps for pet cooldowns, Healthstones, Arcane Blast, item enhancements, and some curse or bane tracking cases.

Further reading: Official WoW Forever Beta September 24 notes