World of Warcraft has a long-standing tradition of datamining and min-maxing. So it should come as no surprise that, despite only just being shown at Blizzcon, World of Warcraft: Forever now already has online talent calculators available, assembled from a delightful tapestry of streams and ravenous info-gatherers.
There’s the old reliable that is WoWHead, but I want to shout out Reddit user Baldwinbuilds for their version, which not only collects all of the currently-known info about the Classic revamp’s talents, but also has a handy button that tells you exactly how they were changed. It’s a tremendous bit of work.
I’ve had a skim through, and assembled a list of some of the wildest additions—now, keep in mind, WoW Forever’s not coming until November, so all of these are likely to change between now and its debut. But it still gives you an idea of the sorts of design philosophies that Blizzard’s gearing up to apply:
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- Arms warriors get a new ability called Searing Strike, which does an 80% extra damage against Giants, Dragonkin, and mounted targets—knocking them off their steed to boot.
- Retribution paladins have an interesting talent called Holy Twist. This debuffs an enemy whenever you replace your current seal on them with an echo, which then re-triggers it on your next melee attack. Basically, you’ll be cycling through your seals.
- Survival hunters seem to be dual wielders now with Predator’s Edge, which increases your offhand damage by 10% per point, along with a bunch of new abilities that make your Mongoose Bite more effective.
- Combat rogues borrow some tricks from retail’s outlaw with Relentless Blades, which reduces their cooldowns whenever they use a finisher. This is a pretty big change, given it changes the flow of combat rogues completely.
- Shamans get Totemic Projection, a huge quality of life buff, letting them take their totems with them on the move—as well as Call of the Elements, which lets you drop a full set of totems in one cast.
Other than that, it’s a lot of popular snags from retail. Mages, for instance, get talents like Hot Streak, Arcane Blast, and Ice Lance, destruction warlocks get immolation, restoration shamans get Water Shield and druid healers get Wild Growth, and so on. Honestly, while it’s early days, I’m surprised Blizzard hasn’t gotten weirder.
But the Blizzcon demos only went up to level 38, and these are by no means finished. Searing Strike, in particular, feels like a stand-out to me, given how weirdly niche it is. And given how Blizzard’s already bragged about Forever’s unique, hyper-specific gear items, I’m looking forward to seeing how the studio experiments.
