Blizzard has published its next World of Warcraft: Forever class deep dive, outlining planned Priest and Warrior changes that broaden both classes’ baseline toolkits and substantially revise their talent trees. The plans matter for players choosing a class or preparing builds: Priests gain several former race- or talent-specific tools more broadly, while Warriors are set to receive a reworked Rage model and more flexible defensive cooldowns.
The developer says the changes remain in beta and may continue to evolve.
Priest: wider baseline access and revised racial spells
Priests are planned to receive Fear Ward and Devouring Plague as level-20 baseline abilities for every race. Divine Spirit becomes baseline at level 30, and Shadow Word: Death joins the class at level 32.
Several existing spells are also changing:
- Prayer of Healing will heal members of the target’s party and their pets, rather than the Priest’s own party.
- Renew can be active from multiple Priests on the same target.
- Fade will have double its current threat-reduction effect.
Blizzard has also re-evaluated Priest racial spells. Gnome Priests receive two new abilities: Confounding Flash, a short-duration confuse affecting up to five nearby enemies, and Contingency Plan, a protective ward that triggers when an ally falls below 35% health. Other racial updates include redesigned functionality for Human Divine Grace, Night Elf Elune’s Grace, and Undead Dark Sacrifice, while several spells remain unchanged.
New Priest talent options
The Priest talent trees add new milestone choices, including a new 16-point milestone alongside the familiar 11-, 21-, and 31-point talents.
For Discipline, Soul Warding reduces the cooldown and Mana cost of Power Word: Shield, while Penance becomes a 21-point channeled spell that can damage enemies or heal allies. Holy gains Binding Heal, which heals both the Priest and their current target, and the 31-point Prayer of Mending, which can jump among nearby party or raid members after its healing triggers. Blizzard says the spell continues jumping until it has healed a total of five times, with only one active Prayer of Mending allowed on each target.
Shadow’s planned changes include Devouring Contagion, allowing Devouring Plague to jump to a nearby enemy when an afflicted target dies, and an expanded Shadowform. Under the listed design, Shadowform permits all non-healing spells, reduces Shadow-spell Mana costs, and increases Shadow critical-damage bonuses, with a reduced direct Shadow-damage bonus.
The update also removes or consolidates several older talents. For example, Improved Power Word: Fortitude and Divine Spirit are no longer talents because those effects are baseline, while Holy’s Lightwell is listed for removal.
Warrior Rage and baseline ability changes
Warriors' incoming Rage is intended to ignore Armor and absorption effects. Outgoing Rage is normalized around weapon speed. October beta update: the October 1 notes increased the critical-strike bonus from the deep dive's 75% to 100% extra Rage.
The October 8 build fixes incoming Rage bugs involving player health, critical and crushing damage multipliers, and absorbs. Blizzard also rebalanced its armor assumptions by level and expects typical Warriors and Druids to gain more Rage from taking damage.
Several Warrior tools are becoming baseline or receiving revisions:
- Tactical Mastery will be learned at level 14, retaining 10 Rage on a stance change; Arms talents can improve it further.
- Victory Rush will be learned at level 20 and activated after killing a non-trivial enemy, providing an attack that also heals the Warrior for 10% of maximum health.
- Recklessness, Retaliation, and Shield Wall will no longer share a cooldown. Retaliation and Shield Wall are each listed with 15-minute cooldowns.
- Rend and Thunder Clap gain significant Attack Power scaling. Thunder Clap will be usable in Defensive Stance, with a six-second cooldown and adjusted threat.
- Sunder Armor can be used even when a stronger Expose Armor effect is active, and its threat will scale with Attack Power.
Warrior talent tree revisions
Arms gains Spearing Strike as its 16-point milestone: an instant attack that dismounts its target and deals doubled damage against a mounted target, Dragon, or Giant. The tree also adds Weaponmaster, combining the old weapon-specialization talents into one option whose bonus depends on the equipped weapon type.
October 1 update: Whirlwind now strikes with both weapons without a talent. Raging Blows reduces Cleave and Whirlwind costs by 3 Rage instead. Fury gains Lingering Rage, Furious Precision and Gore Drinker; Death Wish replaces Enrage as Flurry's prerequisite. Dual Wield Specialization no longer grants off-hand hit; Furious Precision supplies the new off-hand hit option. Bloodthirst's Attack Power ratio rises to 45%.
Protection adds Vanguard, allowing Charge in Defensive Stance, as its 16-point milestone. Bastion increases damage while a shield is equipped, and Focused Rage reduces the Rage cost of offensive abilities. Blizzard also lists Improved Shield Block and Improved Taunt as becoming baseline rather than remaining Protection talents.
Talents are planned to be available from level 10, with respecialization—including Legacy talents—handled through a class trainer in a major city. Dual Specialization is planned for level 40.
Blizzard says it will continue reviewing the Priest and Warrior changes through beta testing across dungeons, PvP, and the open world.