WoW Forever class changes compared: all nine classes side by side, the themes Blizzard repeats, and why there is still no tier list

The table takes one row per class and four questions per row: where Blizzard published it, which baseline changes it leads with, which specialisation talents it names as new milestones, and which limits it says the class keeps. Talent names in the fourth column are the ones the articles place at the 11-, 16-, 21- or 31-point milestones, or describe as new; they are not a complete list, and where a milestone is not named, the cell says so.

The Deep Dive named three talents made baseline — Divine Spirit, Blessing of Kings, Improved Mark of the Wild — and each class article extends the list. A 'buff tax' is a talent taken only because the group needs its effect; Blizzard's answer is to give the effect to everyone and free the points. The same treatment reaches quality-of-life talents that every player of a class took anyway.

The list is long enough that it changes how points are spent. A Classic Fury Warrior who had to buy Improved Battle Shout, or a Restoration Druid who had to buy Improved Mark of the Wild, now spends those points elsewhere — usually on the new milestone talents in the table above.

Several changes exist, by Blizzard's own explanation, to make points in a second tree worth spending. The clearest is Frostfire Bolt: 'The intent of this spell is to make builds that include both Frost and Fire talents have a spell that benefits from them both, opening many new Mage talent builds.' Blizzard's worked example — Ignite plus Ice Shards for '200% damage on critical strikes and then … another 40% of that as Ignite damage, for a total of 280%' — is the only build arithmetic in any of the articles.

The Shaman trees are rearranged with the same goal. Elemental Devastation moved to row 2 'as a reason to entice Enhancement Shaman into spending points on Elemental talents', and Mindfulness and Natural Grace sit early in Restoration 'to make it more accessible for Elemental Shaman'. Warlocks get the same treatment in Destruction: Destructive Reach 'now benefits every Warlock specialization and is in easy reach of them all in the first row', and Ruin moved up to be 'more accessible for Demonology and hybrid builds'. Inside single trees, Blizzard widens the build space too: Survival Hunters gain melee options and Lone Wolf rewards having no pet at all; Combat and Subtlety Rogues are meant to support 'both Sinister Strike and Backstab' playstyles; and Demonic Pact lets Warlocks 'for the first time … benefit from Demonic Sacrifice and Master Demonologist at the same time'.

The 16-point milestone is part of this. A character that spends 16 points in a second tree now reaches a one-point talent there, which makes shapes like 31/16/4 natural in a way Classic's 11/21/31 tiers did not. Blizzard does not recommend any specific split.

The Paladin's 'Seals are no longer consumed by casting Judgment, reducing the busy work of recasting them' turned out to be the first of many. Across the nine classes, upkeep that used to be repeated every few minutes is either extended, automated or allowed to coexist with other effects. Blizzard's Shaman summary puts it as helping 'reduce repeated setup while keeping placement, timing, and elemental utility central to the class'.

This matters most to the classes that had the most to maintain. A Classic Shaman reapplied weapon imbues every 5 minutes and recast buff totems every 2; in Forever imbues last 60 minutes, buff totems 5, and one cast of Call of the Elements drops all four. The other entries are smaller but add up.

Some changes are not about the class at all but about the economy. Cone of Cold's duration is cut as 'part of a general fix to reduce the ability of gold farmers and experience boosters to kite large numbers of creatures'. Improved Blizzard's slow now 'maxes out at a 40% Slow instead of 65%' because Frost AoE farming 'was widely used by gold farmers and boosters to disrupt the economy of the game'. And free-effect talents trigger less often from low-rank spells: 'We have applied this same type of reduction to multiple talents across many classes … Players should expect any similar talents that trigger a free effect to have the same penalty applied to low rank spells.' Arcane Concentration, Impact and Elemental Focus are named.

A second recurring change makes shared debuffs personal. Ignite 'now provides a unique debuff per Mage caster'; Improved Scorch and Winter's Chill benefit only the casting Mage; Shadow Weaving 'now benefits only the casting Priest'; Improved Shadow Bolt 'now only applies to your own Shadow damage'; Improved Kidney Shot's bonus 'now applies only to your own attacks and Poisons'. In Classic, one player's talent could raise a whole raid's damage, which pushed groups to stack a class. Blizzard does not state that motive outright except for Ignite ('solves some problems with threat and damage attribution'), so treat the wider reading as interpretation.

Before 30 September no 16-point talent had been named for any class. The four class articles name one for most specialisations, and they are a mixed set: some are new spells (Insect Swarm, Binding Heal, Spearing Strike, Summon Hawk), some are familiar Classic talents moved earlier in the tree (Ice Block, Stormstrike, Mana Tide Totem, Swiftmend, Conflagrate, Premeditation, Cold Blood), and Feral Druids get two on the same row — 'two gold medal talents on this row, this one that is Cat-oriented, and Primal Bite that is Bear-oriented'.

Moving a Classic capstone to 16 points is a pattern worth noticing. Stormstrike was Enhancement's 31-point talent; Mana Tide Totem was Restoration's; Premeditation was Subtlety's; Conflagrate sat on row 7. Each now arrives earlier, which puts it within reach of hybrid builds and of characters still levelling. The Paladin is the exception: its Deep Dive section names talents without saying which tier they occupy.

The Deep Dive's philosophy line — 'give each specialization new tools while preserving meaningful gaps in the class toolkit' — is repeated in substance at the end of every class article, where Blizzard lists what the class still cannot do. Hunters 'cannot Stun or Interrupt'; Druids 'cannot snare targets, cannot Silence or Interrupt'; Shaman 'lack an effective crowd control'; Mages 'die easily if caught in melee combat'; Warlocks 'are still physically weak themselves'; Priests have 'few ways to escape enemies'; Warriors 'lack the tools to easily recover from taking too much damage'.

This is the design statement that matters most for anyone choosing a class. Forever is not trying to give every class every tool. Groups are expected to cover each other — Druids, in Blizzard's words, 'will need to rely on others to provide the complete toolkit needed for raids and dungeons'. A class that looks weaker on paper may be the one that brings the missing tool.

Each class has its own page under the classes hub, written from the same Blizzard article and organised around that class's changes rather than a shared template. Use them for the full lists of abilities, talents moved, talents removed, and every quoted figure.

The articles are long, but they stop short of the things players most often search for. None contains a rotation or priority list. None gives damage, healing or threat values for most abilities — Blizzard writes 'increased significantly' or 'by a percentage' far more often than it writes a number. None prints a complete tree with every row and point cost, and Marksmanship, Fire and the three Paladin trees have no named 16-point talent. None compares classes to each other in output.

Blizzard also flags the material as provisional. Every class article says abilities and talents 'may continue to evolve throughout the beta test and are subject to additional changes'; the Warrior section admits Rage bugs that 'may take a couple weeks to track down'; three Feral changes are marked as 'not in the beta yet'. Treat any detail that is not in these articles — a beta tooltip, a datamined value, a streamer's number — as unconfirmed.

Nine published reworks might look like enough to rank classes. They are not. A tier list ranks output in a defined context, and Forever still has neither: Blizzard has published almost no numbers, no encounter tuning for the dungeons or the two launch raids, and a design that keeps 'meaningful gaps' on purpose so that classes are not interchangeable. The beta is the obvious place to measure, but beta builds change weekly by Blizzard's own account, and beta logs are not a Blizzard statement.

This site will not publish a tier list until the game is live and there is data it can cite. What you can do now is choose by role and by what a class brings: the table at the top, the 'gaps that stay' above, and the class pages answer that honestly. The talents page covers the shared tree rules; the race-class combinations page covers who can play what.