Blizzard designers Kris Zierhut and Aidan Moon answered questions about all nine classes on the second WoW: Forever podcast. Here's what's changing on the beta, and the reasons they gave.

Key takeaways

• Beta this week: the level cap rises to 30 with 21-point talents, the City of Dalaran and Excavation Site: Wetlands dungeons open, and the Darkspear Islands battleground arrives. Every class also gets a blog post.
• Warriors: critical strikes give extra rage again, 75% more than a normal hit, starting with this week's build. A fix for getting too little rage from taking damage should follow next week.
• Druids: power shifting, the trick of leaving Cat Form and shifting straight back in to refill energy, is gone. A new Feral talent, Shifting Power, turns mana into energy instead. Wrath also hits 50% harder.
• Rogues: Deathmark will replace Thousand Cuts as Subtlety's 31-point talent. It marks a target, builds up from the damage you deal to it, then bursts 6 seconds later for a big hit. No date yet.
• Paladins: Champion of the Light, a Retribution talent that turns your Intellect into spell damage, will use 60% of your Intellect instead of 100% and stop boosting healing in the upcoming patch.
• Damage budget: each class has a damage target, so any buff means a cut somewhere else. Hybrids, the classes that can also tank or heal, aim for about 5% less damage in their damage specs.
• Still in discussion: raid-wide versions of party buffs, and how to give Warlock Fear back the range it lost by mistake. More Mage buttons will probably come in the next few weeks. Ice Block for every Mage isn't planned.

Forever Podcast Ep. 2: Speedrunning Classes

The big picture

• Fewer buttons, on purpose. Zierhut wants three or four core buttons per spec, counting abilities with cooldowns under 10 seconds. Bigger cooldowns come on top, spread out from 15 seconds to two minutes. Leaving time between presses lets you react: use a consumable, stun, interrupt or help a groupmate in danger.
• A damage budget. Blizzard wants bosses to take about as long to kill as they did in 2004 and 2005. So each class has a damage target, and every buff gets paid for with a cut somewhere else. After the first pass on talents, every spec did too much damage and had to be dialed back. One talent point is worth about 1% damage.
• Hybrids give up a little damage. A hybrid is any class that can fill more than one role: everyone except Hunters, Mages, Rogues and Warlocks. Warriors count, since they can tank. In the original game, hybrids did much less damage but brought unique buffs. Zierhut called that a mistake, because hybrid damage kept getting raised until hybrids had both. Now every spec should be competitive, and hybrids instead lack some tools and buffs that pure classes have. Hybrid damage specs aim for about 5% less damage, and healing done on top of damage, as Shadow Priests do, counts against that budget.
• Spell power from level 10. Casters can now find spell power gear from level 10, starting with weapons. The goal is for casters to care about gear while leveling, the way Warriors and Rogues do. To keep them from getting too strong, base spell damage was lowered by about what typical questing gear adds back.

Druid

• Wrath hits 50% harder. Early in development, Wrath was made free to cast, with wand-like damage. Free Wrath meant Druids never ran out of mana, so a mana cost came back, but the damage was never raised to match. That left Wrath far too weak until you get Starfire. You'll feel the full 50% from level 1 to 10, since you have no spell power gear yet. At level 60 it adds only about 2% to Druid damage, which the team expects to offset with a small Druid nerf elsewhere.
• Power shifting is gone. Power shifting means leaving Cat Form and shifting straight back in to refill your energy. Zierhut removed it for three reasons: it was never intended, it confuses new players, and it used up every spare global cooldown, leaving no room for new abilities.
• Shifting Power replaces it. This new Feral talent, Shifting Power, costs the same mana as shifting into Cat Form and gives you 40 energy, on a 16-second cooldown. Improved Shifting Power cuts that to 8 seconds. Moon, who designed it, said it brings back power shifting's habits of using Innervate on yourself and drinking mana potions. It also makes Intellect on gear matter for Ferals again. Shifting Power takes the place of Tiger's Fury, which has been removed.

Warrior

• Rage from crits is back. From this week's build, a critical strike gives Warriors and Druids 75% more rage than a normal hit. Crit rage was removed while the team tested rage that doesn't grow with your damage, to stop a loop where more damage meant more rage and even more damage. Zierhut said players made a good case that a swingy rage bar is part of what makes Warriors fun. Since Warriors now get stronger as their crit rises, that power will be trimmed elsewhere.
• Rage from taking damage is bugged. Warriors currently get less rage from taking hits than intended. The fix misses this week's build, and Zierhut hopes to have it out next week.
• Recklessness stays at 30 minutes. In testing, short cooldowns on Recklessness, Shield Wall and Retaliation pushed Warrior damage far too high. The choice was a big Warrior nerf or a long cooldown, and the long cooldown also keeps Recklessness a rare high point.
• Bloodthrill procs more often. This Arms talent gives your main-hand hits a chance to let you use Overpower on a target bleeding from your Rend. It works a bit like Taste for Blood in Wrath of the Lich King. It stays random, with hot and cold streaks, so it never becomes a fixed rotation button.
• Slam is on a cooldown now. Using Slam well meant timing it around your weapon swings, which the team felt asked too much of players. The designer who answered isn't fully happy with it and would rather have a low-damage Slam you can press all the time. That version caused rage problems, but Warriors now seem to have spare rage, so it may be revisited. Feedback is welcome.
• Warriors are the kings of cleave. Zierhut wants Warriors to do the best sustained damage on fights with several bosses or lots of adds. Other classes got limited cleave on purpose: Retribution has no Divine Storm, and Feral cats get no Swipe.

Paladin

• Lay on Hands drops to 20 minutes. An hour was "just excessive" for a spell that also costs all your mana. Twenty minutes still makes you choose which boss gets it.
• Champion of the Light gets a nerf. This Retribution talent turns part of your Intellect into spell damage. Holy Paladins worried it was strong enough to force them deep into the Retribution tree. In the upcoming patch it uses 60% of your Intellect instead of 100%, and it no longer boosts healing.
• Twist of Light replaces seal twisting. Seal twisting meant swapping Seals right before a swing to get two Seals' effects on one hit. This 31-point Retribution talent builds that in: when you switch Seals, your next swing also applies the one you replaced. Some players called it restrictive, but it works out to one Seal press per swing, about half your global cooldowns, and Paladins have plenty to spare.

Rogue

• Deathmark is coming to Subtlety. It will replace Thousand Cuts as the tree's 31-point talent, with no date yet. Deathmark marks a target, builds up from the damage you deal to it, then bursts for a big hit after 6 seconds. The idea is to pool energy, apply the mark and unload. In PvP a marked target can run or use a cooldown, so Eviscerate may often kill faster.
• Why it's changing. PvP Rogues asked why so many new talents revolve around damage over time, since that damage breaks crowd control like Sap and Blind. Right now Subtlety's main finisher is Rupture, a bleed, and Thousand Cuts is built around it: each Rupture tick makes your next Hemorrhage or Backstab cheaper. The designer who answered said of that setup, "I don't really like how it's panning out," and named Deathmark as the replacement.
• No extra energy. There are no plans for more energy regeneration, since white hits, Slice and Dice and poisons already add a lot of damage. Rogues pay no hybrid cost, and on standstill boss fights they "will be the highest single target damage dealers in the game."

Shaman

• Totem twisting is gone. Totem twisting meant swapping between two totems, usually Windfury and Grace of Air, to keep both buffs up. It relied on a timing quirk the original developers never intended, and it was hard for new players to learn. Letting groups keep both buffs would also mean nerfing Warriors and Rogues further to stay within the damage budget.
• Raid-wide buffs are an idea. Party buffs only reach your five-player group. So a 20-player raid wants a Shaman and a Feral or Balance Druid in each of its four groups. The team has discussed making some of those buffs raid-wide, with Leader of the Pack and Moonkin Aura as candidates, but nothing is promised.
• Maelstrom Weapon only affects Lightning Bolt. This Enhancement talent builds stacks from your melee hits that make your next Lightning Bolt faster and cheaper. Healing spells were left out so Enhancement can't heal too much mid-fight, and Chain Lightning was left out so Warriors stay the cleave class. The goal is for Enhancement to mix a little spellcasting into its melee, so spell power still matters.
• Maelstrom Weapon feels weak until you have all five points. Each stack cuts Lightning Bolt's cast time by 4% per talent point. So only a full five points makes a five-stack bolt instant. Possible fixes include more damage per stack or more frequent procs. Don't expect the Wrath of the Lich King version, though: five talent points are worth about 5% damage, far less than that version gave.
• Restoration levels a bit easier. Lightning Bolt now casts faster without talents, and the talent that took a full second off its cast now takes half a second. The goal is to make leveling as Restoration feel a little better.

Hunter

• More stable slots are coming. Stable slots start few but will grow, with more ways to unlock them. The idea is to collect pets and bring the one whose ability suits each fight.
• Auto Shot is bugged. Meleeing and then stepping back to range currently delays your next Auto Shot. That's a timer bug the team is working on. The same timing work covers wands and the 0.5-second wind-up before each shot. That may act a little oddly on the beta this week, with a fix planned for the next build.
• Melee weaving is intended, in Survival. Zierhut described two ways to play Survival. You can stay in melee with Mongoose Bite, Strider Kick (a new kick that also boosts your run speed), Raptor Strike and traps. Or you can shoot from range, run in when your shots make Mongoose Bite usable, unload your melee abilities and step back out.
• The dead zone stays. That's the short gap where a Hunter is too close to shoot but not in melee range. It's the weakness that balances Hunters' strength at long range. If you hate it, the advice was simple: "go survival."

Warlock

• Destruction mixes Fire and Shadow on purpose. An all-Fire Warlock would just be another flavor of Fire Mage, and probably a weaker one. Incinerate is probably still the core spell, with Shadow spells mixed in for the most damage. The current version may not push you hard enough to use both, so the team is looking for ways to nudge players toward the mix.
• Fear lost range by mistake. A Classic talent raised the range of all Affliction spells, Fear included. Forever's version only covers damaging spells, so Fear lost the bonus, which the designers called an oversight. Fear could get 30 yards baseline, which may be too strong in PvP, or another Affliction talent could add the range.
• Demonic Sacrifice and Master Demonologist now work together. In Classic they clashed. Demonic Sacrifice buffs you for sacrificing your demon, Master Demonologist only works with a demon out, and summoning a new demon cancelled the sacrifice buff. Forever's new 31-point Demonology talent stops a different demon from cancelling it, and the two talents' bonuses now line up. Sacrifice your Imp for 15% more Shadow damage, then summon your Succubus for another 10% Shadow damage from Master Demonologist. Swap the pair for double Fire.
• Soul Link and Siphon Life stays a PvP build. This dueling favorite splits points between the Affliction and Demonology trees. Asked if it will be toned down, the designers said they're fine with a PvP-only build that was never used in PvE. Blizzard doesn't balance around duels. The bar is that every Warlock build can hold its own in a battleground.
• Imp out of mana? A new talent, Fel Mending, gives your demon a share of the mana you gain from Life Tap. In testing, the Imp never ran out of mana.

Mage

• No Ice Block for every Mage, for now. Asked about making Ice Block baseline, the first answer was "No, too strong." Guest Sodapoppin then argued that Frost is the only real PvP spec because it has Ice Block. The answer softened: it "might be okay," but would water down what makes Frost special. It isn't planned at this time.
• The Blizzard and Cone of Cold nerfs target gold bots. Gold bots, mostly Frost Mages, farm gold by kiting whole dungeon packs. The Blizzard nerf was aimed at that. Testers could still kite packs using Cone of Cold, so its slow now lasts a couple of seconds less. That leaves a moment when the pack isn't slowed and can hit you. The designers still want strong Mage AoE in raids, just not 20-mob solo pulls.
• More buttons are likely. Some Mages feel they have too few buttons to press. The team is looking hard at adding more to each Mage spec, probably within the next few weeks.

Priest

• Shadow is a damage spec first. Shadow hits much harder now, but it lost raid utility like Vampiric Touch, Misery and Shadow Weaving, which boosted the raid's mana or damage. Asked about that trade, the designers said Priests should be brought for their damage first, with utility on top. Shadow can still heal the party with its vampiric abilities, now on a cooldown. It can't restore party mana, though, because Blizzard didn't want a Burning Crusade-style mana battery.
• Tier sets will be reviewed. Asked about a five-piece Priest set bonus, the team said the tier sets were designed about eight months ago. Classes have changed a lot since, so checking whether the sets still make sense is one of the last jobs before the beta ends.
• Smite Priests: "We want it to be a thing." Holy keeps its full healing, so it pays a bigger hybrid cost and does less damage than the dedicated damage specs. In testing, Holy even out-damaged some damage specs when a Paladin's Judgement of the Crusader was on the target, since that debuff makes the target take more Holy damage. Holy was toned down afterward.
• Discipline or Holy? Discipline has stronger shields and is probably a little better at keeping a tank alive. Holy is probably a little better at healing a whole party. Discipline also gets a quiet boost: in Classic, Warrior tanks often cancelled Power Word: Shield because absorbed damage gave no rage. In Forever, Warriors still get rage while shielded, once the rage bug is fixed.

What's next
Class blog posts land through the week, and the next episode covers dungeons and raids. The team has also heard the feedback on character models and some Druid forms, but has nothing to announce yet.

Sources

• Blizzard News: Watch Now! WoW: Forever Podcast Ep.2, Speedrunning Classes
• YouTube: WoW: Forever Podcast Ep. 2

Source: Blizzard · Forever Podcast Ep. 2.