WoW Forever Beta Final Build — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] Hey folks, this is Kalani. The WoW Forever beta was just updated, with the last build we'll see before the beta goes down, and it's made some huge changes. Racial abilities have been significantly reworked, there are some massive clash changes, including a few buffs and a lot of nerfs,

[00:18] most party buffs have been made raid-wide and had their effects changed, and there are a bunch of user interface updates that give extra functionality, or change some visuals to match the classic vibe a bit better. And we learned quite a bit about PvP from this week's WoW Forever podcast.

[00:34] There's a lot to talk about, so let's break it all down in this week's WoW News video. Now before we jump in, be sure to hit on that like button and subscribe so you never miss another video. First up this week, there have been some huge buffs, nerfs, and straight-up reworks of many racial abilities in WoW Forever.

[00:51] To start with, all weapon-based ratios have had their weapon requirements removed. So for humans, for example, instead of getting 2% crit when you are using swords, you now just get 2% crit.

[01:04] For orcs, they now get 1% crit without needing to use exos. Blood Fury had its cooldown increased from 2 minutes to 3 minutes. And Shatter Curse no longer grants immunity to curses or banes.

[01:16] And the magic damage reduction portion was cut down to 5% from 15%. so quite a few nerfs for all creatures to bring them in line with some of the others. Dwarves will get 2% increased crit damage and healing without having to use a mace,

[01:32] and Find Treasure now also grants the chance to find additional items from most chests. So Find Treasure isn't going anywhere, but depending on how often you can find some extra shinies, that could actually be quite useful.

[01:46] Undead Touch the Grave has been nerfed into the ground by the looks of things, casters now have a 30% chance to activate the racial, and everyone else has a 20% chance to activate it, but it now comes with a 25 second internal cooldown.

[02:00] That means it can't proc more than once every 25 seconds, which significantly reduces its potency. Gnomes have an interesting change to Eureka. Instead of it only applying to the next three abilities,

[02:13] it's now just an 8 second duration, so that could be quite a bit more powerful depending on the class that you're playing, and it's just a 10% damage or healing boost and a 10% resource reduction buff for 8 seconds now.

[02:26] Tauren didn't escape the big racial rework. Endurance now increases crit damage and healing instead of providing 1% hit chance, so that's arguably quite a bit worse, and it gives them the exact same racial bonus as Dwarves.

[02:40] Planes running now also grants 3% mounted movement speed increase, but planes running will now require a minimum distance to keep it rolling, so stutter stepping will no longer be enough to keep your movement speed buff active.

[02:52] Cultivation had its cooldown dropped to 15 minutes from an hour, which seems kind of crazy, and then even War Stomp will be more available with a 90 second cooldown down from 2 minutes.

[03:04] Trolls did see a small change to regeneration that was buffed up to 20%, which is a little surprising to me because the dev team said trolls were perhaps one of the main targets of racial nerfs this week, so maybe we'll see some more in the future,

[03:18] or maybe they just decided trolls are mostly fine as they are. And then last but not least, the Skyborn have a few updates too. Wind Blast now provides 3% haste from 1% haste,

[03:30] which is a huge buff. Tripling the effect of a racial ability is kind of wild. Sky Sight and Read Leyline will now be captable while moving, and there are more elemental convergences and leylines in most zones

[03:42] to make better use of those racials. Walk on Air also had its cooldown reduced to 90 seconds from 2 minutes, so you'll get your free slowfall more often. Removing weapon-based racials makes sense when it comes to trying to balance things,

[03:56] but all of those abilities also lost any flavor that they had at the same time. It's a risky trade-off, because that's the exact kind of change that leads to homogenization,

[04:08] which is the one thing the dev team said they were trying to avoid as much as possible. I actually think it's totally fine for racial to not be balanced. Something stronger in some situations than something stronger in others

[04:20] is probably the best way to go about it. And I think adding in some of those circumstantial racial abilities and just stripping out flat stat increases would have been more interesting. But what do you think of these racial updates,

[04:33] knowing that this is probably the last beta build we'll get to test, and this may be what we end up with when the servers go live in November? Let me know what you think in the comment section below. There were also a lot of class updates in this new build,

[04:48] and perhaps the largest change overall is that most party-wide buffs will now be raid-wide buffs instead. This includes Moonkin Aura, which was also changed to be just spell critical chance, and Leader of the Pack, which was changed to be just melee and ranged critical strike chance.

[05:03] So you will want both buffs in your raid Tusha Aura is now also raid as are almost all totem buffs including Grace of Air Strength of Earth Wind Fury and Flame Tongue totems

[05:15] So you would technically only need one shaman in your raid to provide those buffs to absolutely everyone, which is an insane amount of utility coming from just one class. That does mean you might not want more than one in your raid, though,

[05:30] which could limit their desirability quite a bit, and then battleshots from warriors will be raid-wide as well. Having raid-wide buffs means you won't have to tinker about with group composition quite as much when you get to endgame if you're wanting to min-max things.

[05:44] But that was kind of part of that classic preparation minigame. Setting up groups so you had the right classes with the right buffs in each party of a raid was very classic feeling. So it's curious to see the dev team move away from that.

[05:58] This will make it much easier to set up raids in general though, so maybe they want to ensure jumping into raids is almost as easy as possible. Another change that will affect a lot of different classes is an update to ranged weapons.

[06:13] Wands and Hunter's auto-shot will once again require you to stand still for half a second before the shot is fired. This is actually a bug and only just now been fixed to reflect how these ranged options worked in vanilla.

[06:25] So if you're stutter-stepping your range shots in the new build and it feels a bit off, this may be why. As for individual class updates, most of this week's build seems to be focused on bug fixes and clearing up tooltips,

[06:39] but there are some big changes in here as well. Hunters will once again be able to have one fire and one frost trap active at a time, instead of just one trap of any kind, so that's definitely a nice change.

[06:51] But then several pet abilities were nerfed quite considerably, Crocolisks Dismember was cut down to a 25% healing reduction down from 50% its duration was reduced and its cooldown was increased

[07:04] so you won't be getting a free full mortal strike effect from your Crocolisks anymore that Sonic Blast cast speed reduction was cut down to 30% its duration was reduced and its cooldown was increased

[07:16] and then the disarm effect from Birds of Prey was reduced to 3 seconds and its cooldown was increased by 50% These pet abilities were incredibly strong and copied iconic spells or effects from other classes,

[07:29] and while having access to the same kinds of effects, depending on what pet you choose to play with, is very cool, having them be just as strong is probably too powerful. So these nerfs do make a lot of sense.

[07:42] Another huge change for hunters is that they have a new option to automatically swap between auto-shot and auto-attack, depending on how close your target is to you. So if you turn this option on and you go to auto-attack a mob that is far away,

[07:56] it will automatically use your ranged weapon, instead of you having to actually press shoot. When that mob gets close enough, you'll swap to auto-attack with your melee weapons. So arguably, you can take auto-shot off your boss,

[08:10] then save that keybind with this new option in play. If you'd rather just stick to the vanilla-style gameplay, turn this option off, and it's like it never existed. Now, I know I'm going to get asked about it in the comments, So no, this does not work for any casters that use wands, at least not yet.

[08:26] You will still have to manually use your shoot ability to attack with wands. Maybe that will change in the future, but that's how it works in this current beta build. Majors have a lot of changes this week, including a new spell.

[08:39] You'll learn Frost Blast at level 24. It has a short cast time, deals low damage, and slows by 40%. This spell is intended to be used instead of downranking Frostbolt to fish for procs.

[08:51] Ice Lance caught a pretty hefty nerf this week. Its bonus damage has been reduced to 200% from 300%, so that's a 25% damage reduction overall. I still don't think Fingers of Frost and Ice Lance really fits in with the classic vibe of Forever,

[09:06] but at least Frostmages won't be too shotting people quite as often. Code of Cold was buffed so it slows the first four targets hit by 10% more, and that slow will last a bit longer. Winter's Chill was redesigned to become a damage boost buff for Cone of Cold,

[09:22] so you want to build those stacks up using some of your other abilities, and then consume them for big Cone of Cold hits. Arcane Rages have some big changes too. Arcane Blast was redesigned to now give you a damage boost each time it's cast up to 4 stacks,

[09:37] but the damage buff only lasts for 15 seconds after it's first applied, instead of refreshing with each cast. So you want to build this up quickly and use the big damage boost on your hardest-hitting spells, like the new Arcane Wrath talent.

[09:51] This has a long cast time, but deals extra damage depending on your max mana. So I guess you could build up four stacks of your Arcane Blast buff, then fire off a big Arcane Wrath before the buff expires.

[10:03] Having more options is always fun, and I'm sure players will figure out some interesting ways to use these new talents. Paladins have some interesting changes this week. their blessing of salvation is no longer a blessing which means you can have it alongside an actual throughput or buff blessing This is a pretty big indirect buff to tank threat

[10:22] because there's no choice there anymore. Everyone will have salve if they aren't a tank, reducing the threat they're going to be generating. They'll also get a new spell called Revoke, which lets them strip the salve buff from anyone they want,

[10:35] just in case you give to someone who shouldn't have it, like a tank. There are a few fixes for Judgment and Seal of Righteousness, which may end up reducing the overall damage that they do. Consecration's increased damage from spell power was reduced from a 0.095 coefficient down to 0.042,

[10:54] so you get less than half the extra damage based on your spell power. Righteous Fury's Holy Damage Threat Generation was buffed back up to 90%, though, so even though you're going to be dealing a bit less damage, you should hopefully still be able to keep aggro while tanking.

[11:08] Reckoning was restored to its classic functionality, so you get a charge every time it procs, and you can spend all charges at once on your next melee swing, so you can have up to four charges, and technically you could save up four extra attacks

[11:21] and just deal a bunch of damage all at once. And then for the Retribution tree, the Champion of the Light talent was nerfed yet again, down to 30% of your intellect, so quite a few nerfs for Paladins in their damage potential this week.

[11:35] Priests have also seen quite a few changes, devouring plague cooldowns reduced to 24 seconds from 1 minute so less than half the cooldown it used to have shadow word death cooldown was increased to 18 seconds

[11:47] up from 12 so you win some you lose some but then for shadow specifically there's a new talent called dark inspiration that causes your mind blast and fully channeled mind flay to increase your and your party spirit

[12:00] by up to 15% for 10 seconds so shadow priests are once again taking up their mantle of mana battery in WoW Forever. Vampiric Embrace had its cooldown cut in half down to just 30 seconds, and Vampiric

[12:12] Embrace can no longer be resisted, which is kind of huge, so Shadow Priests will be increasing everyone's mana regen and offering some healing through Vampiric Embrace every 30 seconds,

[12:24] which should make them a decent pickup for endgame dungeons and raid content. Charmands have quite a few updates this week. Grace of Air Totem is no longer exclusive with Windfury Totem and Flamethrone Totem, Chain Lightning's mana cost was reduced by about 35%,

[12:39] so you can spam that a bit more before going Oom. Firenova's spell power coefficient was reduced by a decent chunk, its base damage was significantly reduced, and its mana cost was reduced as well.

[12:52] So you'll see a lot less damage coming out of Firenova, I guess. Elemental have a lot of changes to their talents. There are quite a few new talents thrown into the mix, and things have shifted around quite a lot. Larva Burst has moved to the fifth row as a 21 point talent

[13:05] and Elemental Mastery has returned as the new 31 point talent but while the names should be familiar its effects are quite different it now reduces the cast time of Lightning Bolt and Larva Burst by half a second

[13:17] and removes the cooldown of Chain Lightning for 15 seconds on a 3 minute cooldown so you'll be able to spam Chain Lightning if you want to or just cast it or the spells a bit faster those Fire Nova nerfs are definitely going to hurt your potential AoE

[13:31] when the game launches, though. For the Warlocks, the Destructive Reach talent now only affects Destruction spells, and there's a new talent called Grim Reach that increases the range of Affliction spells, so if you want to give your fear a bit of extra reach,

[13:45] that's something you can do once again. The Shadow Mastery talent was also doubled in effectiveness, so you can get up to a 10% damage boost for your Shadow spells. Now, Warlocks have another interesting change this week, but it wasn't included in the official notes.

[13:59] While, hence, data mining revealed that Portal of Summoning had its mana cost increased to 100% of base mana, its cooldown was increased from 2 minutes to 1 hour, and the soul shard cost was increased from 1 to 5.

[14:12] We weren't 100% sure that warlocks would even get Portal of Summoning, but it seems like they will, so Dead Tomb are making changes to it. You will need to be level 60, and it looks like you don't learn it from a trainer, so you'll have to go a bit out of your way to pick up this special summoning spell.

[14:27] With it being a one-hour cooldown, you're definitely going to need to make sure everyone is ready for a summon before you set it up. Now, Warlocks will still have their single-target summon spell that costs one Soul Shard,

[14:39] so you can still summon as many people as you want as often as you want while your closet is on cooldown, it's just going to be more cumbersome and cost you a lot more Soul Shards. But for any situation where you're summoning fewer than five targets, you'll still want to use the single-summon spell anyway.

[14:55] The huge cooldown is probably an effort to try and tackle summoning bots, which were quite rampant in other versions of Classic WoW. That's all for the Clash changes in this new build, but there are a bunch of other useful updates too,

[15:08] like the Auction House now having a column for Equippable Level, making it much easier to see if you can actually use a piece of gear that you might be wanting to buy. You can also sort by level as well which makes it easier to find some potential upgrades The Auction House now also properly displays stats on gear for items with suffixes on the search menu so you no longer have to click on the item to see what stats you going to get So both of those are nice quality of life updates for the base

[15:34] Auction House UI. The player and target unit frames were also updated in this build to have their own look, rather than the retail frames with the bronze forever colours. So here's the new unit frames, side by side with the older ones from previous WoW Forever

[15:49] build. If we add in the retail frames and the classic frames, you can see we've moved much closer to how the classic frames used to look. The main difference between the two is the color. Personally, I didn't mind the retail look in WoW Forever, but I know a lot of folks really want to

[16:04] recapture that classic feel as much as possible, so that's probably why the dev team made the swap. The new unit frames look good as well. I don't think it really matters all that much to me, and you can customize things to your heart's content with add-ons anyway. But if you were

[16:18] looking at your screen after this new build thinking something had changed but you couldn't quite put your finger on it, it may be the unit frames. There are also quite a few smaller changes, like the level up messages now including your stat increases and talent point gains,

[16:34] instead of just saying you leveled up, which is a nice RPG flavour kind of thing, the in-game tutorials are updated so new players shouldn't get totally lost the first time they log in, and even though it wasn't mentioned anywhere in the update notes,

[16:48] this build also fixed the combined bags option, so you can once again sort your bags, which was really annoying me in the previous beta build, so I'm very happy that's fixed. And as a round out this video,

[17:00] we learned quite a lot from this week's WoW Forever podcast, which was all about PvP. The highlights include an honour rebalance for all battlegrounds, so Alterac Valley isn't the only battleground worth running, and you should always be jumping into battlegrounds

[17:13] battlegrounds when they have an event weekend. Certain battlegrounds will see a few changes to their terrain exploits, though some of them may stick around. The graveyard jumps in Warthong may remain available as a skill expression option, but exploiting and getting

[17:27] out of bounds to hide the flag will definitely be reined in. The dev team also said they'd keep an eye on things, and if anything gets too extreme, or is leading to degenerate gameplay, they'll step in and make some changes.

[17:39] They also mentioned that there would be no protection added in for lower players out in the world on the PvP ruleset. Ganking is just part of the game if you opt in to go PvP,

[17:51] and they said quite a few times to make sure you know what you're signing up for when you're choosing your ruleset. If getting ganked and not being able to reach a dungeon or raid or progress through your quest at your own pace is going to bother you,

[18:03] don't roll on the PvP ruleset. Something else that should definitely affect that choice is that the dev team said they do not plan on introducing server or ruleset transfers at this time, so it will launch with no transfers available whatsoever.

[18:19] That may change later on down the line, but from the way the devs were talking about it, I kind of doubt it. Server transfer occurred to a lot of issues and faction imbalances, so they don't want to offer that option in WoW Forever.

[18:31] That means if you start on PvP and you get real tired of all the PvP out in the world and you just want to move over to the PvE server for a more chill experience, the only option you're going to have is re-rolling.

[18:45] So have a long hard think about what rule set you want to start on because you won't be able to change it without restarting your character. We also have confirmation that we will not see an RP PvP server at launch.

[18:58] Because if that's something you were hoping for, you're going to have to choose between the RP side or the PvP side. Apparently, the RP community is quite small, and the dev team doesn't want to spread it up any further.

[19:11] So I wonder if they just worry there aren't enough players to keep an RP and an RP PvP mega server healthy enough to warrant the server space. I also don't expect the dev team to introduce new ruleset right on down the line if they aren't implementing server transfers.

[19:27] Asking everyone to re-roll to a new ruleset would probably make that population even smaller, which is the main reason they aren't starting with it in the first place. So disappointing news if you were hoping for an RP PVP server.

[19:40] But that's all the updates we have, so that's it for this video. What do you think about racial abilities getting nerfed or becoming more homogenized? And are there any classes you feel still need a lot of work before the game launches on November 4th?

[19:54] Leave all your thoughts in the comment section below. A big thank you to all of our supporters over on Patreon, and to all of our members here on YouTube. You can see their names on screen. If you're interested in supporting the challenge, you'll find links in the description, or click the join button just below the video.

[20:07] If you enjoyed the video, or found it useful in any way, make sure to subscribe and ring that notification bell so you're always kept up to date. Thanks for watching, folks. Good luck and have fun, and as always, I will see you next time.

[20:26] Thank you.