WoW Forever Beta Patch Notes – October 16, 2026

WoW Forever Beta Patch Notes — Summary

The latest WoW Forever Beta build introduces substantial class and racial balancing, new talents and abilities, improved raid-wide buffs, and updates to quests, gamepad controls, and the user interface.

Highlights

• A new-player tutorial experience and improved in-game tutorials have been added.

• Several racial bonuses have been redesigned, including Tauren Endurance, Dwarf Earth Fury, Human Ruthless, and Orc Savage.

• Major talent changes affect Arcane and Frost Mages, Discipline and Shadow Priests, and Elemental Shamans.

• Several party buffs now work raid-wide, including Trueshot Aura, Moonkin Aura, Leader of the Pack, Battle Shout, and selected Shaman totems.

• Horde players are now attacked on sight in open-world Dalaran, although dungeon access remains unaffected.

• Numerous bug fixes improve combat, quests, UI, items, and gamepad support.

General Changes and Racial Abilities

• General: A new tutorial has been added. Bloom Intensity is now an adjustable slider in Advanced graphics settings. Hunters can enable automatic switching between Auto Attack and Auto Shot, including on gamepad.

• Tauren: Endurance now increases critical damage and healing by 2% instead of granting 1% hit chance. Plainsrunning grants 3% additional mounted speed, stacking with other bonuses, but requires sustained movement. Cultivation's cooldown drops to 15 minutes; War Stomp's to 90 seconds.

• Dwarf: Mace Specialization is replaced by Earth Fury, granting 2% critical damage and healing. Find Treasure can reveal additional chest loot.

• Skyborne: Wind Blessed haste rises to 3%. Skysight and Read Leyline can be cast while moving; Read Leyline's minimum duration rises to 30 seconds. Walk on Air's cooldown drops to 90 seconds. More Elemental Convergence and Leyline spawn points have been added in Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor.

• Human: Sword Specialization is replaced by Ruthless, granting 2% critical strike chance.

• Orc: Axe Specialization is replaced by Savage, granting 1% critical strike chance. Blood Fury's cooldown rises to 3 minutes. Shatter Curse now dispels Curses and Banes instead of granting immunity; its magic damage reduction drops to 5%.

• Undead: Touch of the Grave's proc behavior and visuals have been adjusted. Touch of the Dead has a 30% caster proc chance, 20% for Paladins/Rogues/Warriors, and a 25-second internal cooldown; its scaling and lower-rank penalties have been removed. Will of the Forsaken cannot be used during Scatter Shot.

• Gnome: Eureka! becomes an 8-second buff without charges and now benefits Power Word: Shield. It cannot be used while stealthed or invisible.

• Night Elf: Quickness now stacks with other movement-speed increases. Shields no longer appear in Wisp Form.

• Troll: Regeneration's health-regeneration bonus increases to 20% from 10%.

Class Changes

Wands and Hunter Auto Shot now require 0.5 seconds of standing still before firing.

Druid

• Moonkin Aura now provides raid-wide spell critical strike chance; Leader of the Pack provides raid-wide melee and ranged critical strike chance.

• Faerie Fire now generates threat in Bear forms, and duplicate Faerie Fire debuffs are prevented.

• Shred Rank 1 is available at level 20 instead of 22.

• Furor preserves previously held Cat Form Energy when shifting through Bear forms, without enabling Energy regeneration in Bear Form.

• Fixed Rejuvenation interactions, Insect Swarm stacking, Omen of Clarity triggering, talent application on login, and a Shred tooltip issue.

Hunter

• Fire traps now scale correctly with Attack Power; one Fire Trap and one Ice Trap may be active simultaneously.

• Pets now inherit the higher of melee or ranged critical strike chance and correctly benefit from Expertise.

• Pet abilities have been toned down: Crocolisk Dismember, Bat Sonic Blast, and Bird of Prey Mine! have weaker or shorter effects and longer cooldowns.

• Trueshot Aura is now raid-wide. Summon Hawk targeting and persistence have been corrected.

• Improved Mend Pet, Sniper Shot talent interactions, Strider Kick, and Resourcefulness have received fixes. Resourcefulness now triggers on melee/ranged ability critical strikes, not traps.

• Bow arrow visuals have been corrected.

Mage

• New spell — Frost Blast: Learned at level 24; a 1.5-second cast dealing Frost damage and applying a 40% movement slow. It benefits from Frostbolt talents.

• Arcane: Missile Barrage moves to the first row as a two-point talent and can proc from Arcane Missiles hits. Arcane Blast is redesigned as a 1.5-second cast granting stacking Spell Damage equal to 15% of Intellect per cast (up to four stacks) for a fixed 15-second window, with damage and coefficients reduced by 40%. New 16-point talent Arcane Wrath deals damage scaling with 5% of maximum Mana and has a 6-second cooldown.

• Fire: Improved Fire Blast replaces Wake of Fire and improves Fire Blast range. Critical Mass can grant up to 10% critical strike chance. Fire Power is redesigned around Fire effects on the target, up to 12% additional Fire damage. Heating Up interactions have been adjusted.

• Frost: Ice Lance's bonus against frozen targets is reduced to 200% from 300%. Cone of Cold has stronger control against its first four targets. Winter's Chill is redesigned to empower a subsequent Cone of Cold, stacking up to five times.

• Multiple fixes address Presence of Mind, Clearcasting, Missile Barrage, Ice Block, Frostbite, and Fingers of Frost.

Paladin

• Blessing of Salvation and Greater Blessing of Salvation become Salvation and Mass Salvation, no longer competing with blessings. Revoke allows Paladins to remove these effects from selected party or raid members.

• Righteous Fury's Holy-damage threat bonus rises to 90% from 60%.

• Consecration's Spell Power coefficient per tick drops to 0.042 from 0.095; Seal/Judgement of Righteousness coefficients are corrected.

• Holy: Fixes for Light's Vigil focus macros and unintended Infusion of Light damage.

• Protection: Shield Specialization restores 4% Mana instead of 6%, with the same 3-second internal cooldown. Reckoning once again stores up to four extra attacks for the next auto attack.

• Retribution: Champion of the Light now grants Spell Damage equal to 10/20/30% of Intellect, down from 20/40/60%. Sanctified Judgement Mana restoration no longer generates threat.

• Seal of Fury no longer conflicts with Power Word: Shield.

Priest

• Devouring Plague's cooldown drops to 24 seconds from 60 seconds; Shadow Word: Death's rises to 18 seconds from 12 seconds.

• Discipline: Mental Strength moves to row two and now increases Intellect by 2–10%; Improved Power Word: Shield moves to row three. Power in Light now works when the target has Holy Fire or Shadow Word: Pain. Silent Resolve's threat reduction applies to all spells. Divine Aegis tooltips and several talent interactions have been corrected.

• Shadow: Vampiric Embrace becomes unresistable and its cooldown drops to 30 seconds. Improved Fade and Shadow Infinity are removed. Improved Mind Blast moves to row two. New row-four talent Dark Inspiration grants the caster and party 3–15% Spirit for 10 seconds after Mind Blast or a fully channeled Mind Flay. Improved Mind Flay increases damage across successive ticks. Devouring Contagion spreads to two targets.

• Fixes address Renew stacking, Holy Fire rank damage, Power Word: Shield messaging, Mind Vision, Shadow Word: Death, and Devouring Contagion.

Rogue

• Poisons no longer proc incorrectly when the Rogue is attacked; Sap no longer triggers weapon procs.

• Switching specializations can no longer be exploited to preserve full Energy.

• Cold Blood is correctly consumed by critical Mutilate hits.

Shaman

• Grace of Air Totem can coexist with Windfury or Flametongue Totem, although Windfury and Flametongue remain mutually exclusive. Grace of Air, Strength of Earth, Windfury, and Flametongue totems are raid-wide.

• Chain Lightning's Mana cost is reduced by approximately 35%. Fire Nova receives lower base damage, a reduced Spell Power coefficient (0.143 instead of 0.214), and a significantly lower Mana cost.

• Elemental: Elemental Mastery returns as the 31-point talent, temporarily accelerating Lightning Bolt and Lava Burst and removing Chain Lightning's cooldown for 15 seconds (3-minute cooldown). Lava Burst moves to row five. Call of Thunder is removed; several talents are rearranged or gain new effects.

• Enhancement: Stormstrike costs 8% base Mana and its debuff is no longer incorrectly consumed by missed attacks or other players.

• Restoration: Mana Tide Totem gains a level-38 rank. Water Shield can now trigger from any critical spell cast. Tidal Focus and Totemic Focus swap positions; Restorative Totems is fixed.

• Fixes include Grounding Totem, Totemic Recall training cost, and Windfury Weapon combat text.

Warlock

• Affliction: Malediction is replaced by Grim Reach, granting 10/20% Affliction spell range. Shadow Mastery now increases Shadow damage by up to 10%, previously 5%.

• Destruction: Destructive Reach now increases Destruction spell range by 10/20%.

• Fixed Soul Link targeting, an unintended free Incubus summon, and duplicate Curse of Recklessness effects.

Warrior

• Battle Shout is now raid-wide; Slam is no longer affected by spell pushback.

• Fixed Overpower activation against much lower-level enemies, Sword Specialization procs from shield abilities, Lingering Rage blocking post-combat health regeneration, and Improved Berserker Rage failing to remove movement impairments.

Quests and World

• Dalaran: Horde characters are attacked on sight in the open world, even after completing the Dalaran Sewer Key questline. Access to the City of Dalaran dungeon is unaffected.

• Ashenvale: More Bloodtooth Guards are available for Raene's Cleansing.

• Darkshore: Fixes to How Big a Threat?, For Love Eternal, and Body and Heart.

• Mulgore: Sparring Match no longer incorrectly flags players for PvP.

• Stormwind: The Attack! is no longer an escort quest and can be shared while active.

• Teldrassil: Lord Melenas no longer evades at low health during Twisted Hatred.

• Wetlands: Spawn rates have been improved for Dragonmaw Orcs, Gnolls, and Incendicite Ore.

• Zephras Isle: Fixed progression involving Halaan's Gift in The Anchors of Zephras.

• Several quest items no longer drop multiple times when they should not.

Items, Legacy System, and PvP

• Mystic Mushroom and the Insight enchant now correctly increase Spirit.

• Scrolls now trigger a global cooldown; many crafted items have lower vendor prices.

• Draught of Predatory Senses is now a Combat Potion with a shorter duration.

• Morbent's Bane no longer triggers effects on nearby players.

• Legacy Bartering no longer discounts training or repairs. Master Chef and Luremaster receive a visual position adjustment; The Quick and the Dead now affects more Priest spells.

• Battleground Marks of Honor stack to 30, up from 20.

Gamepad and User Interface

• Gamepad support gains a swing timer on the central reticle, voice-transcription bindings, improved ground-targeted item placement, and more reliable fishing bobber targeting.

• Fixes improve gamepad quest rewards and turn-ins, action bars, cast bars, class flyouts, press-and-hold casting, trading, guild/community dialogs, chat channels, and transmogrification.

• Unit Frames and the minimap header have updated appearances.

• Different ranks of the same spell now appear as one entry in the Cooldown Manager.

• The Auction House shows required equipment level and properly displays stats on randomly suffixed items.

• Scrolling Combat Text gains more detailed settings. Searching options for “Threat” now finds Aggro Display.

• Vertical nameplate visibility has been adjusted to reduce clutter without affecting the current target.

• Level-up stat and talent-point messages return. Group Finder eligibility, profession-panel visuals, and /who subzone searches have been improved.

• Players cannot accept a refresh-world prompt during combat.