Priest and Warrior deep dive: baseline Shadow Word: Death, Penance and a Rage overhaul

Priests and Warriors are the latest classes to get the full deep dive treatment for WoW: Forever, and both come out of it noticeably changed. The Priest gains Fear Ward and Devouring Plague on every race, gets Shadow Word: Death as a baseline spell, and picks up Penance, Binding Heal and Prayer of Mending as talents. The Warrior gets a Rage rework that stops armor and absorb shields from cutting your Rage income, baseline Victory Rush and Tactical Mastery, and three major cooldowns that no longer share a timer.

The general talent structure is the same for both classes. Talents start at level 10 and keep the familiar one-point milestone talents at 11, 21 and 31 points, now joined by a new 16-point milestone (Blizzard calls these gold medal talents). Respecs, including Legacy talents, happen at a class trainer in one of the major cities, and Dual Specialization unlocks at level 40. As always, Blizzard notes that abilities and talents may keep changing during the beta.

Priest

Blizzard frames the Priest as the most versatile healer in the game: the only one that mixes heal-over-time spells, direct heals and damage absorption shields. The changes lean into that while handing every Priest tools that used to depend on race or talent choices.

New baseline abilities

• Fear Ward: Now available to all Priests at level 20, regardless of race.
• Devouring Plague: Now available to all Priests at level 20, regardless of race.
• Divine Spirit: Divine Spirit is now baseline for all Priests, learned at level 30.
• Shadow Word: Death: A new baseline ability at level 32. Deals instant Shadow damage, but if the target survives, the Priest takes 10% of their maximum health in damage. 15 second cooldown.

Fear Ward going universal is the headline for anyone who raided as a Priest in the original game, where it was a racial spell that dictated which Priests got invited to certain fights. Devouring Plague was likewise a racial; both are now simply part of the class.

Changes to existing spells

• Fade: Threat reduction effect doubled.
• Prayer of Healing: Prayer of Healing no longer heals the Priest's own party. It now heals all members of the target's party, plus their pets. Raid healers assigned to another group will love this.
• Renew: Renew from multiple Priests can now be active on the same target.

Racial Priest spells

Each race still has two Priest spells unique to it. All of them have been re-evaluated, and Gnome Priests get a brand new pair.

• Gnome: Gnome Priests learn Confounding Flash at level 10, which confuses up to 5 nearby enemies for 3 seconds (broken by damage), with a 0.5 second cast and a 2-minute cooldown. At level 20 they learn Contingency Plan, an instant ward on a friendly target lasting 30 seconds. If the target's health drops below 35%, they instantly get a damage absorb shield and a heal-over-time effect, both of which stack with Renew and Power Word: Shield. 5-minute cooldown.
• Dwarf: Dwarf Priests keep Desperate Prayer unchanged. Their new level 20 spell is Chastise, an instant attack that damages and immobilizes a target for 2 seconds, usable only on Humanoids, with a 2-minute cooldown.
• Human: Human Priests learn Divine Grace at level 10. It instantly heals a friendly target below 50% health and removes Weakened Soul from them. It cannot be cast on yourself and has a 5-minute cooldown. Feedback is unchanged.
• Night Elf: Night Elf Priests still learn Starshards at level 10, now with substantially more damage but a 30 second cooldown. Elune's Grace is still learned at level 20 and now reduces the chance for melee and ranged attacks to hit the Priest by 50% for 15 seconds or until 3 attacks have missed, on a 5-minute cooldown.
• Troll: Troll Priests keep Hex of Weakness and Shadowguard unchanged.
• Undead: Undead Priests keep Touch of Weakness unchanged and learn Dark Sacrifice at level 20, which spends your own health to gain Mana over time. The Mana gain is increased by Spirit.

Contingency Plan is the standout here: an emergency shield and heal that fires on its own is exactly the kind of insurance a dungeon healer wants on the tank.

Priest talents

Discipline

• Power in Light: Power in Light is a new row 1 talent that increases Smite and Penance damage against targets afflicted by your Holy Fire.
• Wand Specialization: Wand Specialization now needs only two talent points for the same benefit.
• Twin Disciplines: Twin Disciplines is a new row 1 talent that increases damage and healing done by instant cast spells.
• Silent Resolve: Silent Resolve now also reduces the duration of Stun, Fear and Silence effects on you.
• Holy Precision: Holy Precision increases your chance to hit with Holy spells by up to 18%. Blizzard says it is meant to remove the need for hit on healing Priests, who are not expected to wear hit gear.
• Improved Power Word: Shield: Slightly larger increase per talent point.
• Mental Agility: Mental Agility moves from row 4 up to row 3, costs only 3 talent points for the same effect and now also benefits Smite and Holy Fire.
• Meditation: Mana benefit from Spirit increased substantially.
• Improved Inner Fire: Improved Inner Fire gives a larger armor bonus and now also increases charges.
• Mental Strength: Mental Strength now increases Intellect by a larger percentage instead of increasing Mana by a percentage. The article says it moved from row 4 up to row 4, which looks like a typo, so its exact row is unclear.
• Soul Warding: Soul Warding is the new 16-point gold medal talent. It reduces the cooldown and Mana cost of Power Word: Shield and requires Improved Power Word: Shield.
• Improved Mana Burn: Improved Mana Burn reduces the cast time of Mana Burn by more.
• Penance: The new 21-point gold medal talent. Channeled over 2 seconds with a 12 second cooldown, it deals damage every second to an enemy or heals an ally every second.
• Renewed Hope: Renewed Hope is a new talent that requires Soul Warding. It increases the critical strike chance of Flash Heal, Binding Heal, Lesser Heal, Heal, Greater Heal and Penance on targets with Weakened Soul, and each of those heals shortens Weakened Soul on the target.
• Divine Aegis: Divine Aegis makes critical heals create an absorb shield on the target for 12 seconds, based on a percentage of the amount healed. It does not stack.

Removed: Unbreakable Will has been folded into Silent Resolve, Improved Power Word: Fortitude and Divine Spirit are now baseline, and Force of Will is gone.

Discipline finally has a real identity as a shield healer. Soul Warding, Renewed Hope and Divine Aegis all play off Power Word: Shield and Weakened Soul, and Penance gives the tree a proper capstone at 21 points.

Holy

• Twilight Focus: Formerly Healing Focus, Twilight Focus now grants pushback protection on all spellcasts, but costs 3 talent points instead of 2.
• Blessed Recovery: Blessed Recovery now also triggers from any attack dealing more than 30% of your maximum health in a single hit.
• Inspiration: Inspiration now triggers from all non-periodic critical heals.
• Improved Healing: Improved Healing now also reduces the Mana cost of Penance and Prayer of Mending.
• Searing Light: Searing Light has been redesigned to increase all Holy damage done, but by a smaller percentage. Holy Fire damage now also has a chance to make your next Holy Nova cost no Mana.
• Binding Heal: Binding Heal is the new 16-point gold medal talent: a new spell that heals both the Priest and their current target, with a 1.5 second cast and no cooldown. Blizzard says it is tuned to be as good as Flash Heal even when the Priest needs no healing.
• Litany of Light: Litany of Light refunds part of a healing spell's Mana cost whenever it has a different name from the previous healing spell you cast.
• Spiritual Guidance: Spiritual Guidance now gives a spell damage bonus of roughly one third of its spell healing bonus.
• Spiritual Healing: Spiritual Healing now needs only 3 talent points for the same benefit.
• Prayer of Mending: Prayer of Mending is the new 31-point gold medal talent and requires Spirit of Redemption. On a 10 second cooldown, it places a 30 second effect on the target that heals them the next time they take damage or receive non-periodic healing, consuming a charge. It then jumps to another party or raid member within 20 yards and keeps going until it has healed 5 times. Each target can only have one Prayer of Mending active.

Removed: Improved Prayer of Healing and Lightwell.

Litany of Light is an interesting one: it rewards rotating heals rather than spamming one, which pairs neatly with Binding Heal having no cooldown. Losing Lightwell will not cause many tears.

Shadow

• Shadow Focus: Shadow Focus moves up from row 2 to row 1 and now increases the chance for Shadow spells to hit instead of reducing the target's chance to resist.
• Shadow Affinity: Shadow Affinity reduces threat from Shadow spells slightly more.
• Shadow Reach: Shadow Reach moves up from row 4 to row 2 and needs only 2 talent points for the same effect.
• Improved Psychic Scream: Improved Psychic Scream now has Blackout as a prerequisite.
• Improved Mind Flay: Improved Mind Flay is a new row 3 talent that requires Mind Flay. It increases Mind Flay's damage and range but reduces its movement slow.
• Vampiric Embrace: Vampiric Embrace moves to row 3 as the 16-point gold medal talent, and now lasts 30 seconds with a 1-minute cooldown.
• Shadow Weaving: Shadow Weaving now benefits only the casting Priest rather than other party or raid members, and its damage increase is moderately lower.
• Silence: No longer requires Improved Psychic Scream.
• Devouring Contagion: Devouring Contagion is a new row 5 talent that reduces the Mana cost of Devouring Plague. When a target dies with Devouring Plague on it, the plague jumps to a new enemy within 5 yards with the same remaining duration.
• Early Demise: Early Demise is a new row 6 talent that increases Shadow Word: Death's critical strike chance on targets below 20% health.
• Shadowform: Now lets you cast all non-healing spells 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%. Its bonus to Shadow damage is lower.

Removed: Improved Vampiric Embrace.

The Shadow Weaving change is the big one for raids. Shadow Priests no longer pump up every Warlock's damage, so they will have to earn their spot on their own output. The Shadowform overhaul helps with that: halving Shadow spell costs addresses the Mana problems Shadow always had, and doubling the crit bonus makes Early Demise a real execute. Blizzard is open about Shadow lacking the utility of a Warlock in the damage role.

Warrior

Blizzard describes the Warrior as the master of melee combat: able to deal damage and mitigate it, uniquely strong at sustained damage against multiple melee targets, carrying buffs and debuffs only Warriors provide, but short on ways to recover after taking too much damage.

Rage changes

Blizzard opens with an admission: there are bugs with Rage generation in the beta, and the team is still tracking down the root cause. It may take a couple of weeks, as the engineers are working through a variety of tasks. If your Rage feels off right now, that is probably why.

The intended design changes are:

• Rage from taking damage: The original formula is kept, with one big change. Rage is calculated ignoring armor, as if you always had 50% damage reduction from armor, so better armor no longer reduces your Rage. Rage gain also ignores all damage absorption effects, so a Priest's Power Word: Shield will no longer cut your Rage.
• Rage from dealing damage: Fully normalized, based on the speed of the weapon that dealt the damage. The launch beta gave no extra Rage for critical strikes; that is being re-added, with crits granting 75% more Rage than non-critical strikes.

That first change fixes one of the most frustrating quirks of the original game, where gearing up a tank and getting shielded by your healer actively made you worse at generating threat.

Baseline abilities

• Tactical Mastery: Tactical Mastery is learned at level 14 and lets the Warrior keep 10 Rage when changing stances. Arms talents improve it further.
• Victory Rush: Victory Rush is learned at level 20. It is an instant attack with a 30-second cooldown that deals damage increased by Attack Power and heals the Warrior for 10% of maximum health. It becomes usable for 20 seconds each time you kill a non-trivial enemy.
• Recklessness: 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: Thunder Clap now gains significant damage scaling from Attack Power and is usable in Defensive Stance. Cooldown increased to 6 seconds, and its threat has been reduced to account for Defensive Stance use.
• Battle Shout: Battle Shout gives less Attack Power, to compensate for both factions having access to Shaman and Paladin buffs, but the benefit of Improved Battle Shout is now built in.
• Sunder Armor: Sunder Armor can now be used even if the target has a stronger Expose Armor active, and its threat now scales with Attack Power.

Victory Rush is a welcome answer to the Warrior's long-standing downtime problem while levelling, and Thunder Clap in Defensive Stance gives tanks a real area threat tool without stance dancing.

Warrior talents

Arms

• Improved Tactical Mastery: Formerly Tactical Mastery, Improved Tactical Mastery now raises the Rage kept when switching stances by 3 per point, to a maximum of 25.
• Improved Overpower: Improved Overpower moves from row 3 up to row 2.
• Anger Management: Anger Management has a clearer tooltip, with no change in how it works.
• Spearing Strike: Spearing Strike is the new 16-point gold medal talent. An instant attack for 15 Rage on a 20 second cooldown, it deals a percentage of weapon damage and dismounts the target. Damage is doubled if the target was mounted, a Dragon or a Giant.
• Bloodthrill: Bloodthrill is a new row 5 talent. Main hand attacks against enemies afflicted by Rend have a chance to activate Overpower for 6 seconds.
• Weaponmaster: Weaponmaster is a new row 5 talent that rolls every weapon specialization into one. Axes and Polearms grant increased critical strike chance, Maces and Staves ignore some of the target's armor, and Swords have a chance to grant an extra melee auto attack.
• Improved Slam: Improved Slam moves from Fury to row 6 of Arms and has been redesigned as a 2-point talent. It reduces the cooldown, global cooldown and cast time of Slam, and Slam no longer delays or interrupts your auto attack swing.

Removed: Axe Specialization, Mace Specialization, Sword Specialization and Polearm Specialization, all now part of Weaponmaster.

Weaponmaster means an Arms Warrior no longer has to respec when a better weapon of a different type drops, which alone is worth the price of the talent point. Spearing Strike, meanwhile, is going to make mounted players in world PvP very unhappy.

Fury

• Booming Voice: Booming Voice no longer extends Shout durations; that effect is now baseline.
• Iron Will: Moved over from Protection and now reduces the duration of Stuns instead of increasing resistance to them. The article lists it in the Fury section but describes it as a row 2 Arms talent, so its final home is not entirely clear.
• Unbridled Rage: Chance increased, and it now grants 2 Rage if you have a two-handed weapon equipped.
• Improved Cleave: Improved Cleave now reduces Cleave's Rage cost instead of increasing its bonus damage.
• Blood Craze: Blood Craze now also triggers from attacks dealing more than 20% of your maximum health in a single hit, and from striking a target with Bloodthirst.
• Boundless Rage: A new row 3 talent that increases your maximum Rage.
• Dual Wield Specialization: Dual Wield Specialization now also increases your chance to hit with off-hand weapons.
• Raging Blows: Raging Blows is the new 16-point gold medal talent. Whirlwind hits with both weapons when dual-wielding, and Cleave costs less Rage.
• Enrage: Redesigned to have a chance to trigger from taking any damage.
• Precision: A new row 5 talent that increases your chance to hit.
• Death Wish: Minor redesign. It now increases all damage taken while active, instead of lowering your armor and resistances.
• Flurry: Total attack speed increase reduced by 5%.
• Bloodthirst: Minor redesign. It no longer heals the Warrior and instead increases movement speed by 10% for 10 seconds. Its damage now has a base value with less scaling from Attack Power.

Removed: Improved Demoralizing Shout and Improved Battle Shout are now baseline.

Fury gets a lot more help with hit chance, between Precision and the off-hand bonus on Dual Wield Specialization, and Raging Blows makes dual-wield Whirlwind a much stronger area option. Bloodthirst losing its heal stings a little, though Victory Rush now covers some of that ground for every Warrior.

Protection

• Shield Specialization: Shield Specialization now has a chance on Blocks to generate 5 Rage instead of 1.
• Anticipation: Anticipation now grants twice as much Defense Skill per talent point.
• Improved Bloodrage: Improved Bloodrage now increases both the initial Rage and the Rage over time, instead of just the initial Rage.
• Master of Defense: Master of Defense is a new row 3 talent that requires Shield Specialization. It grants a chance to gain 5 Rage when you Dodge or Parry with a shield equipped.
• Improved Revenge: Improved Revenge has been redesigned to increase Revenge's damage instead of giving it a chance to Stun.
• Defiance: Now requires a shield equipped to increase threat in Defensive Stance.
• Improved Disarm: Improved Disarm now reduces Disarm's cooldown instead of increasing its duration.
• Vanguard: The new 16-point gold medal talent makes Charge usable in Defensive Stance.
• Improved Shield Wall: Improved Shield Wall has been redesigned to reduce Shield Wall's cooldown by a large amount.
• Bastion: A new row 5 talent that increases all damage done while you have a shield equipped.
• Focused Rage: Focused Rage is a new row 6 talent that reduces the Rage cost of all offensive abilities.
• Shield Slam: Shield Slam gets more damage scaling from Block Value.

Removed: Improved Shield Block and Improved Taunt are now baseline, and One-Handed Weapon Specialization has been removed.

Protection is clearly being pushed toward sword and board. Defiance, Bastion and Master of Defense all care about having a shield, and Vanguard finally lets tanks Charge in without leaving Defensive Stance. Combined with the armor-blind Rage formula, shield tanks should have far fewer dry spells than they did in the original game.

Blizzard's forum announcement for the deep dive is short and points to the full article:

You can try these builds in the Priest talents and Warrior talents calculators, keeping in mind that Blizzard is still reviewing how all of this plays in dungeons, PvP and the open world, and that the Rage bugs are still being hunted.