WoW Forever Class Changes: What Blizzard Changed for All 9 Classes

Blizzard's design brief for classes in Forever has 3 lines: keep classes simple with surprising depth, keep them distinct with unique strengths and weaknesses, and no homogenization. Its goal is that all 27 talent trees earn a dungeon or raid spot without any of them being mandatory.

Blizzard has written up 1 class in full, the Paladin, as the example of that brief. The other 8 classes get the 4 game-wide changes above and their new race options. Blizzard says more class and race details are coming in videos and articles, and this page is updated the day each 1 lands.

Every class also shares the Legacy System: its 65 challenges earn up to 65 account-wide points, and each character can spend up to 16 of them at launch.

Every class keeps 3 talent trees with 7 rows, the same shape as Classic. The 1-point talents that anchored a build at 11, 21 and 31 points are still there, and Blizzard added a 4th at 16 points in every tree. Many talents are unchanged from patch 1.12, many are improved, and new ones fill the space.

The space comes from the buff talents. Divine Spirit, Blessing of Kings, Improved Mark of the Wild and Improved Battle Shout are gone as talents. Their bonuses are baseline for the class, so a Priest, a Paladin, a Druid or a Warrior no longer spends points to be allowed into a raid.

Blizzard also moved away from talents that add a small percentage. The stated aim is talents you notice, with real tradeoffs depending on how you build. For a Paladin that means Light's Vigil, Swift Judgment and Twist of Light. For the other 8 classes the names are still to come. How the trees read and how to plan a build is on the talent calculator guide.

Hit chance is 1 stat for melee, ranged and spells. Crit is merged the same way. Blizzard names the winners: Retribution Paladins and Enhancement Shamans, whose swings and spells used to want 2 different caps, plus Warriors landing taunts, Rogues landing poisons and Hunters landing traps.

Weapon skill stays in the game. Items give less of it, so a weapon-skill piece is no longer the automatic best choice. Healing power now includes 1/3 of bonus spell damage, so a healing set quests and solos without a 2nd set of gear. Every class that heals or deals damage with mana gets mana back from Spirit in combat, so Spirit is worth having on gear again. Caster weapons grant spell damage or healing, and new stats reduce an enemy's chance to parry or dodge.

Combat pace is Classic pace. Killing an ordinary creature alone takes 10 to 15 seconds. Dungeons are tactical: Polymorph, Banish, Fear and Root matter, and a tank holds threat on 3 or 4 targets at once, so nobody pulls the whole room. There is no level scaling.

Blizzard's 1st full class post went to the Paladin, which had the biggest hole in Classic: it had no taunt. Every Paladin now gets 4 changes.

At level 6 comes Holy Strike, an instant weapon strike that deals Holy damage on a cooldown of 12 seconds. Casting Judgment leaves the seal in place. For tanks there is Seal of Fury, a new seal that puts small absorb shields on the Paladin and makes Judgment taunt at 10 yards. From level 20 Consecration is baseline, with heavy damage to the 1st 4 enemies that enter it.

All 3 trees received named talents. Holy gets Light's Vigil, which heals the party through 1 ally and resets Holy Shock, now on a cooldown of 10 seconds. Protection gets Improved Seal of Fury for mana when it absorbs, Swift Judgment to recover a missed taunt once a minute, and Templar's Bulwark, an absorb shield based on maximum health. Retribution gets Vindication, Sacred Arbiter, Champion of the Light, Instrument of the Law, and Twist of Light for seal twisting with no addon.

2 gaps stay by design: a Paladin still has no interrupt and still cannot slow a target the way some classes can. Each spec's complete list, the 3 races that can be Paladin and a leveling plan are in the Paladin guide.

6 new race and class pairs come with a normal subscription, and Blizzard says more are planned. The Skyborne race adds a 7th row to the table behind the $29.99 Heroic Pack: a Skyborne picks Horde or Alliance at creation and the class list follows the faction.

Class	New race options in Forever
Warrior	Skyborne, both factions
Paladin	Undead
Hunter	Human, Skyborne
Rogue	Skyborne, both factions
Priest	Gnome
Shaman	Dwarf, Horde Skyborne
Mage	Orc, Alliance Skyborne
Warlock	Troll
Druid	Skyborne with new forms, both factions

Undead Paladins get their own story start at Bandarion Keep in Tirisfal and their own epic mount quest at 60. Dwarf Shaman is the 1st Alliance Shaman without a special race. Both have a page: Undead Paladin and Dwarf Shaman.

Every race now has 2 active and 2 passive racials, tuned to a similar amount of offensive power while each race keeps its signature utility. Blizzard has detailed 2 sets so far because of the new combos.

Race	Racial	What it does
Dwarf	Stoneform	Removes bleed, poison and disease and reduces physical damage taken by 10% for 8 seconds, on a 3-minute cooldown
Dwarf	Find Treasure	Stays active alongside any other tracking
Dwarf	Mace Specialization	1% crit with all spells and abilities while any mace is equipped
Dwarf	Big Game Hunter	5% more damage to beasts
Undead	Will of the Forsaken	Removes charm, fear and sleep. It no longer grants immunity
Undead	Cannibalize	Restores health and mana, 7% of each every 2 seconds for 10 seconds
Undead	Touch of the Grave	Attacks and spells have a 5% chance to drain health from the target
Undead	Underwater Breathing	Unchanged, and breath lasts 300% longer than normal

Blizzard has not published the sets for the other races yet. Do not copy Classic racial numbers onto Forever: the budget changed for every race.

Most of this list shows up at level 60. The Paladin taunt, the merged hit cap and the baseline raid buffs are dungeon and raid tools. Raiding starts on 9 December 2026 with Barrow Deeps for 10 players, Hyjal Summit for 20 and Onyxia's Lair for 40.

1 to 60 is about 150 hours of play. The XP curve is unchanged from Classic, dungeon mob XP is reduced and the 1st run of each dungeon's quests pays more, so the route is quest-led.

Forever has no WoW Token and no paid boost, and Blizzard has announced no dungeon finder. A carry is the only way to skip the 150 hours. The route by level bracket is on power leveling; the raid tier is on raids.

Most of the changes on this page start to count on the last day of these calendars.

A re-roll for Forever usually comes down to 2 options: the class you mained years ago, or a race and class combo that did not exist then. While Blizzard's other class posts are still to come, 2 services help.

Coaching is $29 an hour. Your Pro goes through the 4 gold talents and the merged hit cap for your spec, plus the Seal of Fury rotation if you tank on a Paladin. The Pro is also plain about every part of your class Blizzard has kept quiet on.

The Undead Paladin and Dwarf Shaman in the leveling builder are the 2 leveling orders with the class fixed in advance, on the same 1 to 60 route.

Cancel any order before its 1st session for a full refund. A pre-order, once placed, cannot rise in price.