WoW Forever Beta Update Reworks Racials and Adds a New Player Tutorial

Posted on by

Blizzard has pushed a new World of Warcraft: Forever beta build, with the October 15 update focused on racial ability changes, class tuning, bug fixes, and a fresh tutorial experience for new players.

The patch also adds a few practical options, including a Bloom Intensity slider under Advanced graphics settings and an Auto Attack/Auto Shot toggle for Hunters, with gamepad support included.

  • Racial weapon specializations are being replaced in several cases. Humans now get Ruthless for 2% increased critical strike chance, Orcs get Savage for 1%, and Dwarves get Earth Fury for 2% increased critical damage and healing.
  • Tauren Endurance now boosts critical damage and healing instead of hit chance, while Plainsrunning now also adds mounted movement speed and requires more consistent movement to maintain.
  • Troll Regeneration has been doubled to 20%, while several racial cooldowns, including Cultivation, War Stomp, and Walk on Air, have been shortened.
  • Skyborne abilities get several usability buffs, including higher haste on Wind Blessed and movement casting for Skysight and Read Leyline.
  • Elemental Convergences and Leylines should appear in more places across most Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor zones.

There’s also a more old-school combat timing change: wands and Hunter Auto Shot now require the player to stand still for 0.5 seconds before firing, matching early versions of World of Warcraft. Hunters get a few other notable fixes too, including visible arrows when bows are drawn, pets correctly benefiting from Expertise, Fire traps scaling with Attack Power, and the ability to keep one Fire Trap and one Ice Trap active at the same time.

Druids mostly get cleanup and aura changes. Moonkin Aura now only increases spell critical strike chance and is raid-wide, while Leader of the Pack now only boosts melee and ranged critical strike chance and is also raid-wide. Several Feral and Rejuvenation issues were fixed, including Faerie Fire threat in Bear forms.

Mages see the biggest class pass in this build. Frost Blast is a new level 24 spell meant to cover some of the old low-rank Frostbolt utility, Arcane Blast has been redesigned around a stacking Intellect-to-spell-damage bonus, and Arcane Wrath has been added as a new 16-point gold medal talent. Fire and Frost also get talent and control changes, including Ice Lance dropping to a 200% bonus against frozen targets, down from 300%.

The build includes several general bug fixes as well, including corrected creature health regeneration out of combat, fixed drink tooltips, and a fix for extra-bright fog on lower shadow settings.

Further reading: Official WoW: Forever Beta Development Notes