Blizzard deployed a new WoW: Forever beta build on 24 September, and its development notes are among the longest of the beta so far. Every class gets changes. Feral's Mangle is renamed Primal Bite, Holy Strike is rebuilt for every Paladin, a batch of healing-over-time spells can finally land critical hits, and Shaman totems lose their stacking. There is also a new, optional Cooldown Manager in testing for five classes.
Gamepad players, Tauren herbalists and anyone fed up with the respawn timers in Elwynn Forest get changes as well.
The realms went down for maintenance earlier that day, with no ETA beyond a couple of hours:
We took the Beta down for maintenance and to deploy a new build. We don’t have an ETA just yet, but it should take at least a couple of hours.
We’ll have a full change log (development notes) as well as updated known issues post here soon.
They came back the same day, with a short thread pointing players to the notes:
A player wrote:
Today, we updated the WoW Forever Beta with a new build that includes the following updates. Change Log Bugfixes Fixed a bug with casters not playing their precast animations and sometimes standing while casting. Changed the sound effect that plays while jumping in water to be more aesthetically pleasing. Adjusted Human death sounds. Fixed an issue where attempting to craft items or cast spells was causing players to stand up while waiting to obtain their Campfire buff. Players may now buff …
The full change log is in the development notes thread, whose title now reads Updated October 1. Everything below comes from the build notes as posted on 24 September:
Today, we updated the WoW Forever Beta with a new build that includes the following updates.
Change Log
- Bugfixes
- Fixed a bug with casters not playing their precast animations and sometimes standing while casting.
- Changed the sound effect that plays while jumping in water to be more aesthetically pleasing.
- Adjusted Human death sounds.
- Fixed an issue where attempting to craft items or cast spells was causing players to stand up while waiting to obtain their Campfire buff.
- Players may now buff each other, cast, and craft while waiting for their Campfire buffs.
- Players may now obtain a Campfire buff if they are sitting, sitting in a chair, sleeping, lying down, or using the kneeling emote.
- Resolved an issue where Huey Sunnydale’s legs failed to render properly.
- Fixed an issue that made a Season of Discovery rune ability visible.
- Fixed an issue where Pet Happiness was not decreasing once your pet was at max loyalty.
- Fixed an issue causing the Undercity Canal ooze to be much brighter than intended.
- Removed a setting that could disable fog in an unintended manner.
- Resolved a water display issue and fixed various other display artifacts on Mac.
- Fixed a memory leak causing gradual performance degradation for some players.
- Fixed an issue where in-game mail could ignore surnames.
- Classes
- If you have not recently changed your talents, the cost is now 1 silver to re-spec. This is temporary for the Beta only. After your first talent reset, the subsequent cost will be much higher, but it will drop to 1 silver after 1 hour has passed.
- Druid
- Corrected an issue and now Rejuvenation can land critical hits.
- Corrected an issue and now Tranquility can land critical hits.
- Wrath base damage increased ~50%.
- Thorns will now dynamically update its values based on the caster’s spell power.
- If the caster cannot be found or is too far away, Thorns reverts to its base values.
- Feral
- Mangle has been renamed Primal Bite. Its signature debuff has been removed, so the former name no longer accurately represented the ability.
- All talents referencing Mangle now reference Primal Bite.
- The Primal Fury talent has been renamed and the icon replaced with the original Blood Frenzy name and icon.
- Fixed a bug where Feral Charge (Cat) could be cast on allies.
- Restoration
- Corrected an issue and now Wild Growth can land critical hits.
- Hunter
- Pets
- Furious Howl Attack Power bonus reduced 40%.
- Sonic Blast ability now properly available to Bat pets.
- Tame Beast no longer works on Beasts that are higher than the Hunter’s level.
- Marksmanship
- Talenting out of Lone Wolf will no longer cause the Hunter to have -4% damage while their pet is active.
- Survival
- Corrected an issue and now Lacerating Strikes can land critical hits.
- Strider Kick now increases movement speed by 30% for 3 seconds.
- Mage
- Arcane Missiles no longer checks line of sight on each missile, just once at the beginning of the channel. So targets moving out of line of sight during the channel will not prevent the missiles.
- Fire
- Wake of Fire buff duration has been increased to 30 seconds (was 20 seconds).
- Developers’ notes: Wake of Fire was difficult to make proper use of while leveling, due to the Mage needing to restore mana between combat. The increased duration should help smooth out the experience.
- Hot Streak buff duration has been increased to 20 seconds (was 15 seconds).
- Ignite no longer double dips on % damage increase modifiers.
- Paladin
- Retribution Aura will now dynamically update its values based on the caster’s spell power.
- Fixed a bug causing the Flash of Light cast animation to not play at the end of the spell cast.
- Fixed various issues with Consecration.
- Fixed an issue where Consecration would fail to apply its increased damage effect to some targets.
- Fixed an issue where Consecration’s Z axis wasn’t functioning consistently.
- Fixed an issue where Consecration could pull targets vertically above or below the caster.
- Holy Strike’s % of weapon damage per rank changed to 25%/29%/32%/36%/39%/43%/46%/50% (was 25%/25%/30%/30%/35%/35%/40%/40%).
- Developers’s notes: This increases Holy Strike’s damage at all points while leveling, and increases how much it contributes to your rotation. Early ranks of Holy Strike didn’t always feel like an upgrade when purchasing a new rank, and we wanted to adjust that.
- Fixed a bug with Echo of Justice, causing it to have a higher than intended chance to activate.
- Righteous Fury: Holy threat increase increased to 60% (was 90%).
- Holy
- Holy Strike’s cooldown lowered to 10 seconds (was 12 seconds).
- Improved Holy Strike removed from the Talent Tree.
- Developers’ notes: Even though there are sometimes cases where talents feel ‘required’ by classes, like Relentless Strikes for Rogues, having one that reduces the cooldown of a core ability so early on in a healing talent tree made this feel like a talent that was required. So we’ve removed it and made its behavior baseline.
- Light’s Vigil’s tooltip has been reorganized to make it more clear that the damage component is the only version that returns some of the Mana cost.
- Holy Power now increases the Critical Strike chance of Holy Strike by 15% and retains all of its old effects.
- Retribution
- Vengeance now activates off of non-periodic critical strikes.
- Vengeance’s maximum stacks lowered to 3 (was 5).
- Two-Handed Weapon Specialization’s damage increase reduced to 2/4/6% (was 3/6/9%).
- Sacred Arbiter now increases the damage of Holy Strike by 20% (was 10%).
- Twist of Light now additionally reduces the Mana cost of your Seal spells by 20%.
- Priest
- Corrected an issue and now Renew can land critical hits.
- Power Word: Shield can now always overwrite an existing Power Word: Shield on a target that does not have Weakened Soul.
- Gnome
- Corrected an issue and now Contingency Plan can land critical hits.
- Confounding Flash now has a cast visual. The casting visual is now more Holy oriented than Arcane and the sounds have been updated to match.
- Night Elf
- Starshards now correctly gains resistance to spell pushback from the Twilight Focus talent.
- Undead
- Dark Sacrifice no longer breaks Crowd Control that breaks on damage.
- Dark Sacrifice’s tooltip now correctly displays that the Mana gained from the ability scales with Spirit.
- Rogue
- Sap now correctly flags the Rogue for PvP when used on a target that is PvP flagged.
- Shaman
- Lightning Bolt: Damage on ranks 3 and 4 increased to make these spells always upgrades over previous ranks (despite changing cast times).
- Windfury Totem: Buff from this spell now displays as “Windfury Totem” instead of “Windfury Totem Passive”.
- Flametongue Totem: Buff from this spell now displays as “Flametongue Totem” instead of “Flametongue Totem Effect”.
- Flametongue Totem no longer has a duration and is instantly replaced when placing another totem.
- Flametongue Totem is no longer able to be stacked by repeatedly casting Flametongue Totem.
- Flametongue Totem no longer stacks with Flametongue Weapon.
- Flametongue Totem no longer stacks with Windfury Totem.
- Tranquil Air Totem, Windfury Totem, and Grace of Air Totem no longer stack together even if used by different Shamans in the same group.
- Elemental
- Swapped the positions of the Elemental Fury (Row 3) and Elemental Alacrity (Row 6) talents.
- Developers’ notes: Critical Strike damage increases early on in trees are exciting for other specializations, but its not as exciting for the core specialization while leveling, since they don’t have enough critical strike chance to really appreciate it. So we’re moving one of the better talents for Elemental Shaman functionality, earlier in the tree, to allow them to feel like they’re hitting important progression moments (something Elemental has lacked in the early levels). We understand that this affects Enhancement Shaman’s critical strike damage with spells, but we will use this room created to add more to Enhancement Shaman in the future.
- Lava Burst damage on ranks 1 and 2 increased to be about 10% more base damage than the Lightning Bolt rank learned around the same level.
- Enhancement
- Rage of the Far Seer (Row 7) no longer increases the Shaman’s Spell Casting Speed.
- Developers’ notes: Rage of the Far Seer’s spell casting speed was not necessary to include for the core functionality of this ability. So we removed it.
- Restoration
- Corrected an issue and now Riptide can land critical hits.
- Warlock
- Tooltip of Life Tap has been updated to correctly display the amount of Life converted, and only states that it scales with Spirit.
- Voidwalker Sacrifice now correctly scales with 10% of the Warlock’s spell healing.
- Warrior
- Sunder Armor: Corrected the threat values on all ranks, including a small increase to threat generated from Attack Power.
- Protection
- Swapped the positions of the Bastion (Row 5) and Focused Rage (Row 6) talents.
- Developers’ notes: We wanted to give players Focused Rage sooner to smooth out progression, as opposed to more damage from Bastion. This should smooth out some of the feeling while leveling as Protection before obtaining Shield Slam.
- Arms
- Bloodthrill’s chance to activate increased to 4/8/12/16/20% (was 2/4/6/8/10%).
- Bloodthrill only activates off of Main Hand melee attacks. This includes Cleave and Heroic Strike.
- Slam’s cooldown has been increased to 18 seconds (was 15 seconds).
- Improved Slam now reduces the cooldown of Slam by 1.5/3 seconds.
- Races
- Gnome
- Changed Eureka on every class to a 10% discount on Mana, Rage, or Energy abilities.
- Human
- Changed the Will to Survive visual to match Dispel Magic instead of Will of the Forsaken.
- Tauren
- Cultivation now has a player-level requirement for every Herb. The level required is equal to the Herb’s level required to pick it divided by 5. Herbs that require a higher than 300 Herbalism skill to pick can be Cultivated at player level 60.
- Touch of the Grave no longer breaks CC or activates from spells and abilities that don’t have a damage component to them.
- Developers’ notes: This means that Shadow Word: Pain activates it on cast, but not on periodic damage. Distract won’t activate it, you can’t pull Rogues and Druids out of Stealth with Distract and it activating, and you won’t activate it off of Pickpocketing. Spells like Polymorph already didn’t get broken by Touch of the Grave, but Polymorph will no longer be able to activate it.
- Cooldown Manager
- The Cooldown Manager in World of Warcraft: Forever is intended to enhance gameplay by pulling critical information from the buff bar or action bar and placing it in a fully customizable location. By default, the Cooldown Manager is disabled, and it can be enabled in Options under the Gameplay Enhancement settings.
- Druid, Mage, Priest, Warrior, and Warlock are available for testing the Cooldown Manager.
- Additional classes will become testable in future updates.
- The most desired feedback for this feature is currently: spells that you wish were tracked by default.
- The Cooldown Manager does not yet support spell ranks. This will be resolved in a future Beta update.
- Gamepad Support
- Class specific flyouts have been added to the action bar interface of some classes.
- Shapeshift flyout for Druids.
- Pet control and pet spell flyouts for Hunters and Warlocks.
- Aura flyout for Paladins.
- Stance flyout for Warriors.
- The pet bar no longer replaces the bottom gamepad action bar for Hunters and Warlocks.
- New options have been added to the Gamepad (Alpha) section of the game options.
- Use Compact Action Bar: Replaces the normal gamepad action bar layout with one that only shows the currently active action bar at any given time.
- Fixed Party Targeting: While in a non-raid party, rather than having the directional pad act as directions in the party interface, each button on the directional pad is assigned to a specific party member.
- Swap Target Modifier Sides: Swaps sides of the friendly and hostile targeting modifiers, putting friendly targeting on the right and hostile on the left.
- Swap Friendly Target Action Sides: Swaps the directional pad and face button actions when using the friendly targeting modifier.
- Swap Hostile Target Action Sides: Swaps the directional pad and face button actions when using the hostile targeting modifier.
- Fixed an issue preventing edit mode layouts from being applied while the gamepad UI is enabled.
- Updated Map and Quest Log bindings.
- New hover functionality for POI pins.
- Updated support for Compact Raid Frame Manager and Role Poll Frames.
- Items
- A handful of guns and bows were not correctly consuming or using ammunition. They have been corrected.
- A number of quests have had their rewards updated to be the correct item level.
- A small number of early caster rewards have been adjusted.
- Wizard Oil: Minor Wizard Oil has been reverted to Classic Era value of 8 spell power, Lesser Wizard Oil to 16, and Wizard Oil to 24. Brilliant Wizard Oil remains unchanged.
- Wands: Wands no longer gain any additional damage from the user’s spell damage.
- Quests
- Resolved an issue where several dungeon quests were shareable, which granted the receiving player a quest item when shared.
- Dalaran - Faction adjustments. Spawns are now present in the area just outside the city entrance.
- Dun Morogh - Snow Leopard Prowler has a much faster respawn time.
- Dun Morogh - Resolved an issue where some players were unable to loot the rifle for “Treacherous Cold”.
- Durotar - Reduced the respawn time for the escort NPC for “Lost in the Shadows”.
- Elwynn Forest - The quest “Book Return” now properly removes the extra Book Bag from the player’s inventory when the quest is completed.
- Elwynn Forest - Increased the amount of crates for the quest “Stolen Enchanting Supplies”.
- Elwynn Forest - Murloc camps around Crystal Lake should respawn more quickly. Mrrglrlrlrmgrr!
- Elwynn Forest - Mother Fang respawns a bit more slowly, and does not always drop a green item.
- Elwynn Forest - Shinyfinder Narf respawns more quickly. The quest item may now be looted by all party members.
- Elwynn Forest - Nimsy now respawns more quickly.
- Elwynn Forest - You can now learn skinning from Helene Peltskinner even while you have a quest with her.
- Elwynn Forest - Increased the amount of supply spawns for “Stolen Enchanting Supplies”.
- Elwynn Forest - Jasperlode Mine and Fargodeep Mine are a little more deadly than intended for solo players, so we’re taking their candles away. We do not anticipate any fallout from this theft.
- Mulgore - Water Pitchers now respawn faster for the quest “A Humble Task”.
- Silthus - Khonsu’s arrival has been removed from the beta phase, and in the future will return to Azeroth once more.
- Silverpine Forest - Pyrewood Village worgen respawn more quickly.
- Teldrassil - The objective count for the quest “Bounty: Gnarlpine Furbolg” has been reduced to 15 (was 20).
- Undercity - The Skyborne quest “Exploring the Horde” now completes the objective to talk with Lady Sylvanas Windrunner. Dark Lady watch over you
- Westfall - Increased the spawn rate of the Defias Messenger.
- Zephras Isle - The High Order Skyborne quest “Catching Wind” has been redesigned and adjustments were made to the spawns at the Overlook Standing Stones in Shen’dar Highlands.
- Zephras Isle - The druids of Nightclaw Cavern now award credit for “Wounds of Betrayal” properly when healed.
- Zephras Isle - “A Firm Response” no longer fails to grant credit to players.
- User Interface
- Updated the Nameplate selection display.
- Personal Resource Display textures are updated.
New to this build - Known Issues
- Banes and Curses do not properly track if you drop your target and re-acquire a target with an existing bane or curse.
- Healthstone cooldown cannot be tracked.
- Priest tracks all spells by default.
- Arcane Blast cannot be tracked.
- Mana gem requires an additional spell to be cast by the mage to properly begin tracking its cooldown.
- Creating or changing party composition may transfer players to a different world instance. We’re working on improvements and will provide an update soon.
- Pet cooldowns cannot be tracked.
- Item enhancements (such as Windfury or rogue poisons) cannot be tracked
- The minimap in Stormwind has display issues and will be fixed in a later build.
- Personal Resource Display doesn’t show combo points.
Talent resets cost 1 silver on the beta
If you have not changed your talents recently, a respec now costs 1 silver. After that first reset the next one costs much more, but the price drops back to 1 silver once an hour has passed. Blizzard says this is temporary and applies to the beta only. Given how many talents moved rows in this build, the timing is good.
Druid
Druid gets crit fixes for its heals and a large damage increase for its basic nuke.
- Rejuvenation can now land critical hits (this was a bug).
- Tranquility can now land critical hits.
- Wrath base damage increased by about 50%.
- Thorns now updates its values based on the caster's spell power. If the caster cannot be found or is too far away, Thorns falls back to its base values.
The Wrath change matters most. A 50% increase to base damage changes how a caster Druid levels, especially in the early levels where base damage makes up most of the spell's output.
Feral Combat
- Primal Bite: Mangle is now called Primal Bite. Its signature debuff was removed, so the old name no longer described the ability. Every talent that mentioned Mangle now mentions Primal Bite.
- Blood Frenzy: the Primal Fury talent now uses its original Blood Frenzy name and icon again.
- Feral Charge: fixed a bug where the Cat version could be cast on allies.
Primal BiteRank 1
200 Rage5 yd range
Instant
Requires Level 25
Bite the target, dealing 100% normal damage plus 26 and generating a high amount of threat.
Restoration
- Wild Growth can now land critical hits.
Hunter
Pets
- Furious Howl: its Attack Power bonus is reduced by 40%.
- Sonic Blast is now available to Bat pets as intended.
- Tame Beast no longer works on Beasts above the Hunter's level.
The Tame Beast change closes off the trick of taming a pet several levels above you while levelling.
Marksmanship
- Lone Wolf: leaving Lone Wolf untalented no longer gives the Hunter -4% damage while the pet is out.
Survival
- Lacerating Strikes can now land critical hits.
- Strider Kick now also increases movement speed by 30% for 3 seconds.
Mage
- Arcane Missiles checks line of sight once, at the start of the channel, instead of on every missile. A target that moves out of sight mid-channel no longer stops the missiles.
Fire
- Wake of Fire: buff duration increased to 30 seconds (was 20 seconds). Blizzard says the buff was hard to use while levelling, because Mage players had to stop and drink between fights. The longer duration should help it last into the next pull.
- Hot Streak: buff duration increased to 20 seconds (was 15 seconds).
- Ignite no longer double dips on percentage damage increase modifiers.
The Ignite fix is a quiet nerf for Fire at higher levels, since stacked damage modifiers were being counted twice. The longer Hot Streak window helps make up for it.
Paladin
Paladin has the biggest section in the notes, and most of it is about Holy Strike.
- Retribution Aura now updates its values based on the caster's spell power.
- Flash of Light: fixed a bug where the cast animation did not play at the end of the cast.
- Consecration: several fixes. It now applies its increased damage effect to every target it should, its Z axis works consistently, and it can no longer pull targets that are vertically above or below the caster.
- Holy Strike: weapon damage per rank is now 25%/29%/32%/36%/39%/43%/46%/50% (was 25%/25%/30%/30%/35%/35%/40%/40%). Blizzard says this raises Holy Strike's damage at every point while levelling and gives it a bigger place in the rotation. Some early ranks barely felt like upgrades when you bought them, and every rank is now a real step up.
- Echo of Justice: fixed a bug that gave it a higher chance to activate than intended.
- Righteous Fury: the Holy threat increase is now 60% (was 90%). The notes say increased, but the number went down.
Holy StrikeRank 2
9 Mana5 yd range
Instant
Requires Level 12
An instant strike that causes 29% weapon damage plus an additional 15 to 19 as Holy damage.
Holy
- Holy Strike: cooldown lowered to 10 seconds (was 12 seconds), now baseline.
- Improved Holy Strike has been removed from the talent tree. Blizzard compares it to Relentless Strikes for Rogue: some classes do have talents that feel mandatory, but a talent that cuts the cooldown of a core ability this early in a healing tree felt required. The effect is now built into the ability instead.
- Light's Vigil: the tooltip has been reorganised to make it clearer that only the damage version returns some of the Mana cost.
- Holy Power now also increases Holy Strike's critical strike chance by 15%, on top of all its old effects.
Retribution
- Vengeance now activates from non-periodic critical strikes.
- Vengeance: maximum stacks lowered to 3 (was 5).
- Two-Handed Weapon Specialization: damage increase reduced to 2/4/6% (was 3/6/9%).
- Sacred Arbiter now increases Holy Strike damage by 20% (was 10%).
- Twist of Light now also reduces the Mana cost of your Seal spells by 20%.
For Retribution, damage moves away from passive weapon bonuses and towards Holy Strike, with Seal costs reduced to fit. You can test the new layout in the Paladin talents calculator.
Priest
- Renew can now land critical hits.
- Power Word: Shield can now always overwrite an existing Power Word: Shield on a target that does not have Weakened Soul.
Race-specific Priest abilities
Priest still has its racial spells, and several of them were fixed:
- Contingency Plan (Gnome) can now land critical hits.
- Confounding Flash (Gnome) now has a cast visual. It looks more Holy than Arcane now, and its sounds were updated to match.
- Starshards (Night Elf) now gets spell pushback resistance from the Twilight Focus talent as intended.
- Dark Sacrifice (Undead) no longer breaks crowd control that breaks on damage, and its tooltip now shows that the Mana it grants scales with Spirit.
Rogue
- Sap now flags the Rogue for PvP when used on a PvP-flagged target.
Shaman
Shaman totems get a lot of cleanup, and it ends with far fewer stacking buffs.
- Lightning Bolt: damage on ranks 3 and 4 increased, so each is always an upgrade over the previous rank even though the cast times change.
- Windfury Totem: the buff now shows as Windfury Totem instead of Windfury Totem Passive.
- Flametongue Totem: the buff now shows as Flametongue Totem instead of Flametongue Totem Effect.
- Flametongue Totem no longer has a duration and is replaced instantly when you place another totem.
- Flametongue Totem can no longer be stacked by casting it repeatedly.
- Flametongue Totem no longer stacks with Flametongue Weapon.
- Flametongue Totem no longer stacks with Windfury Totem.
- Tranquil Air Totem, Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem no longer stack, even when different Shamans in the same group cast them.
The last change matters most for groups. Bringing two Shamans for stacked air totems no longer works, so you have to choose one totem.
Elemental
- Elemental Fury and Elemental Alacrity swap places: Elemental Fury moves from row 3 to row 6, and Elemental Alacrity moves from row 6 to row 3. Blizzard's reasoning is that an early critical strike damage boost is exciting for other specs, but a levelling Elemental Shaman does not have enough crit chance to feel it. Moving one of Elemental's better talents earlier gives the spec the progression moments it has lacked in the early levels. Blizzard acknowledges this hurts Enhancement's spell crit damage and says the freed-up room will be used to add more to Enhancement later.
- Lava Burst: damage on ranks 1 and 2 increased to about 10% more base damage than the Lightning Bolt rank learned around the same level.
Enhancement
- Rage of the Far Seer (row 7) no longer increases the Shaman's spell casting speed. Blizzard says the haste was not needed for the ability's core function.
Restoration
- Riptide can now land critical hits.
Warlock
- Life Tap: the tooltip now shows the correct amount of Life converted and only says that it scales with Spirit.
- Voidwalker Sacrifice now scales with 10% of the Warlock's spell healing, as intended.
Warrior
- Sunder Armor: threat values corrected on every rank, including a small increase to threat from Attack Power.
Protection
- Bastion and Focused Rage swap places: Bastion moves from row 5 to row 6, and Focused Rage moves from row 6 to row 5. Blizzard wanted Warrior tanks to get Focused Rage sooner instead of extra damage from Bastion, which should make levelling as Protection smoother before Shield Slam.
Arms
- Bloodthrill: chance to activate increased to 4/8/12/16/20% (was 2/4/6/8/10%).
- Bloodthrill only activates from main hand melee attacks, which includes Cleave and Heroic Strike.
- Slam: cooldown increased to 18 seconds (was 15 seconds).
- Improved Slam now reduces Slam's cooldown by 1.5/3 seconds.
Arms ends up with double the Bloodthrill procs but a slower Slam unless you take Improved Slam, which now competes for points.
Racial changes
- Eureka (Gnome): now a 10% discount on Mana, Rage or Energy abilities for every class.
- Will to Survive (Human): the visual now matches Dispel Magic instead of Will of the Forsaken.
- Cultivation (Tauren): every herb now has a player level requirement equal to the herb's required Herbalism skill divided by 5. Herbs that need more than 300 Herbalism skill can be cultivated at player level 60.
- Touch of the Grave no longer breaks crowd control, and no longer activates from spells and abilities without a damage component. Blizzard's examples: Shadow Word: Pain triggers it when cast but not from periodic ticks. Distract no longer triggers it, so you cannot use Distract to pull Rogues and Druids out of Stealth, and Pickpocketing no longer triggers it either. Polymorph was already safe from being broken by it, and now no longer triggers it at all.
The Cooldown Manager enters testing
WoW: Forever has a Cooldown Manager that takes key information from the buff bar or action bar and places it anywhere you like. It is off by default and can be turned on under Options, in the Gameplay Enhancement settings.
- Druid, Mage, Priest, Warrior and Warlock can test it in this build. More classes will be added in later updates.
- The feedback Blizzard wants most right now is which spells you wish were tracked by default.
- Spell ranks are not supported yet. Blizzard says this will be fixed in a future beta update.
Several of the new known issues are about the Cooldown Manager. They are listed at the end of this article.
Gamepad support
- Class flyouts have been added to the action bar for some classes: a Shapeshift flyout for Druids, pet control and pet spell flyouts for Hunters and Warlocks, an Aura flyout for Paladins and a Stance flyout for Warriors.
- Pet bar: it no longer replaces the bottom gamepad action bar for Hunters and Warlocks.
- Use Compact Action Bar: a new option that replaces the normal gamepad bar layout with one that shows only the active action bar.
- Fixed Party Targeting: in a non-raid party, each directional pad button is assigned to a specific party member, instead of acting as directions in the party interface.
- Swap Target Modifier Sides: puts friendly targeting on the right and hostile targeting on the left.
- Swap Friendly Target Action Sides: swaps the directional pad and face button actions when using the friendly targeting modifier.
- Swap Hostile Target Action Sides: does the same for the hostile targeting modifier.
- Edit mode: fixed layouts not applying while the gamepad UI is enabled.
- Map and Quest Log bindings have been updated, including new hover functionality for POI pins.
- Raid tools: updated support for the Compact Raid Frame Manager and Role Poll frames.
All the new options are in the Gamepad (Alpha) section of the game options.
Items and consumables
- Ranged weapons: a handful of guns and bows that were not consuming or using ammunition correctly have been fixed.
- Quest rewards: a number of quests now give rewards at the correct item level.
- Caster rewards: a small number of early caster rewards have been adjusted.
- Wizard Oils: reverted to Classic Era values. Minor Wizard Oil gives 8 spell power, Lesser Wizard Oil 16 and Wizard Oil 24. Brilliant Wizard Oil is unchanged.
- Wands no longer gain extra damage from the user's spell damage.
The wand change hurts low-level casters, especially Priests and Warlocks who use wands to finish off mobs, and makes spell damage gear less useful in the early levels.
Quests and world
Most of the quest changes are respawn fixes, and Elwynn Forest gets the most attention.
- Dungeon quests: several dungeon quests could be shared, which gave the receiving player a quest item. That is fixed.
- Dalaran: faction adjustments, with spawns now present just outside the city entrance.
- Dun Morogh: Snow Leopard Prowler respawns much faster, and some players can now loot the rifle for Treacherous Cold again.
- Durotar: the escort NPC for Lost in the Shadows respawns faster.
- Elwynn Forest: Book Return now removes the extra Book Bag when you complete it.
- Elwynn Forest: Stolen Enchanting Supplies gets more crates and more supply spawns (the notes list it twice).
- Elwynn Forest: murloc camps around Crystal Lake respawn faster.
- Elwynn Forest: Mother Fang respawns a little more slowly and no longer always drops a green item.
- Elwynn Forest: Shinyfinder Narf respawns faster, and every party member can now loot the quest item.
- Elwynn Forest: Nimsy respawns faster.
- Elwynn Forest: you can learn Skinning from Helene Peltskinner even while you have one of her quests.
- Elwynn Forest: Jasperlode Mine and Fargodeep Mine were more dangerous than intended for solo players, so Blizzard removed their candles. Fewer kobolds inside should make the mines easier to clear alone.
- Mulgore: Water Pitchers for A Humble Task respawn faster.
- Silithus: Khonsu's arrival has been removed from the beta phase. Blizzard says it will return to Azeroth in the future but gives no date.
- Silverpine Forest: Pyrewood Village worgen respawn faster.
- Teldrassil: Bounty: Gnarlpine Furbolg now needs 15 kills (was 20).
- Undercity: the Skyborne quest Exploring the Horde now completes the objective to talk with Lady Sylvanas Windrunner.
- Westfall: the Defias Messenger spawns more often.
- Zephras Isle: the High Order Skyborne quest Catching Wind has been redesigned, and the spawns at the Overlook Standing Stones in Shen'dar Highlands were adjusted.
- Zephras Isle: the druids of Nightclaw Cavern now give credit for Wounds of Betrayal when healed.
- Zephras Isle: A Firm Response now gives credit as it should.
Interface and bug fixes
- Nameplates: the selection display has been updated.
- Personal Resource Display: its textures have been updated.
- Casting animations: fixed casters not playing their precast animations and sometimes standing while casting.
- Water: the sound when jumping in water has been changed to something more pleasant.
- Human death sounds have been adjusted.
- Campfire: crafting or casting no longer makes you stand up while you wait for the buff. You can now buff each other, cast and craft while waiting, and the buff works while sitting, sitting in a chair, sleeping, lying down or using the kneeling emote.
- Huey Sunnydale's legs now render properly.
- Season of Discovery: fixed an issue that made a Season of Discovery rune ability visible.
- Pet Happiness now decreases again once a pet reaches max loyalty.
- Undercity Canal: the ooze is no longer much brighter than intended.
- Fog: removed a setting that could disable fog in an unintended way.
- Mac: fixed a water display issue and various other display artifacts.
- Performance: fixed a memory leak that made performance slowly get worse for some players.
- Mail: in-game mail no longer ignores surnames.
Known issues
The updated known issues post lists two quest problems as resolved in the next build: Sentinel Lynessa Duskblossom running too fast and spamming her Strike ability during Escaping Ban'ethil in Teldrassil, and Snowbound in Loch Modan giving more experience than intended.
Resolved Issues
- Teldrassil - During the quest “Escaping Ban’ethil”, Sentinel Lynessa Duskblossom runs a bit too fast and spams her Strike ability. This is fixed in the next beta build.
- Loch Modan - “Snowbound” gives more XP than intended. This is adjusted in the next beta build.
Known Issues - New September 24
- Banes and Curses do not properly track if you drop your target and re-acquire a target with an existing bane or curse.
- Healthstone cooldown cannot be tracked.
- Priest tracks all spells by default.
- Arcane Blast cannot be tracked.
- Mana gem requires an additional spell to be cast by the mage to properly begin tracking its cooldown.
- Creating or changing party composition may transfer players to a different world instance. We’re working on improvements and will provide an update soon.
- Pet cooldowns cannot be tracked.
- Item enhancements (such as Windfury or rogue poisons) cannot be tracked
- The minimap in Stormwind has display issues and will be fixed in a later build.
- Personal Resource Display doesn’t show combo points.
The new issues for this build are mostly about the Cooldown Manager:
- Banes and Curses do not track correctly if you drop your target and pick up a target that already has one.
- The Healthstone cooldown cannot be tracked.
- Priests track all spells by default.
- Arcane Blast cannot be tracked.
- The Mana gem only starts tracking its cooldown after the Mage casts another spell.
- Pet cooldowns cannot be tracked.
- Item enhancements such as Windfury or Rogue poisons cannot be tracked.
- Creating or changing a party can move players to a different world instance. Blizzard says it is working on improvements and will post an update soon.
- The minimap in Stormwind City has display issues, to be fixed in a later build.
- The Personal Resource Display does not show combo points.
The party issue is the one most likely to affect normal play. If your group keeps ending up in different copies of the world, that is a known problem, not something on your end.