Blizzard released another batch of dev notes for the World of Warcraft: Forever beta: a new cooldown manager, a large package of class changes, and a temporary 1-silver talent reset cost.

Beta of World of Warcraft: Forever received another build

The main thing is the cooldown manager: a separate customizable panel that pulls key abilities from the buff bar and the action bar and shows them wherever the player prefers. The feature is off by default; you can turn it on in Settings under Gameplay Enhancement. In this build the manager is available to druid, mage, priest, warrior and warlock; Blizzard is asking the community which abilities it should track out of the box. Spell ranks are not supported yet — that will be fixed later.

Along with this, the beta temporarily lowered the price of a talent reset: a reset now costs 1 silver. After the first reset the price goes up, but an hour later it drops back to the same 1 silver — so you can experiment freely.

Druid. Wrath's base damage increased by about 50%. Rejuvenation, Tranquility and Wild Growth can finally land critical strikes. Thorns now dynamically scales with the caster's spell power. In the Feral tree, Mangle has been renamed to Primal Bite and no longer applies a same-named debuff; Primal Fury returned to its old name Blood Frenzy and got its original icon.

Mage. Arcane Missiles now checks line of sight to the target once at the start of the channel — ducking behind cover mid-cast no longer interrupts the spell. Wake of Fire duration increased to 30 seconds (was 20), Hot Streak to 20 (was 15). Ignite no longer doubles from percentage damage modifiers.

Paladin. Righteous Fury threat gain from Holy magic reduced to 60% (was 90%) — a nerf to the Protection role. Holy Shock cooldown cut to 10 seconds (was 12), and the talent Improved Holy Shock has been removed from the tree and baked into the baseline: Blizzard considers the practice of mandatory talents bad and therefore moved the effect into the base kit. Holy Power now also grants Holy Shock an extra 15% critical strike chance. In the Retribution tree, Retribution now procs only from non-periodic critical strikes, and the maximum number of stacks has been reduced to 3 (was 5).

Shaman. In the Elemental tree, tier 3 and tier 6 talents have been swapped — Elemental Alacrity is now available earlier, while Elemental Fury has moved later. Lava Burst damage for ranks 1 and 2 is up by roughly 10%, so they remain an upgrade over Lightning Bolt. In the Enhancement tree, Rage of the Far Seer no longer grants spell haste. Totem changes: Flametongue Totem no longer stacks with itself, does not combine with Flametongue Weapon or with Windfury Totem; and Tranquil Air, Windfury and Grace of Air no longer stack even from different shamans in the group.

Warrior. Slam cooldown increased to 18 seconds (was 15); this is partially offset by the talent Improved Slam, which now reduces the cooldown by 1.5/3 seconds. Bloodthirst proc chance has been doubled — 4/8/12/16/20% instead of 2/4/6/8/10% — but only from main-hand hits, including Cleave and Heroic Strike. Sunder Armor threat has been rebalanced per rank, with attack power now contributing a bonus on top.

Hunter, Priest, Rogue, Warlock. The pet's Furious Howl attack power bonus has been reduced by 40%; Sonic Blast is now usable by bats. For Priest, Renew can finally crit, and Power Word: Shield always overwrites an existing shield without applying Weakened Soul. Rogue's Sap now correctly marks the target for PvP if the victim is PvP-flagged. The Voidwalker's Sacrifice for the warlock correctly scales from 10% of outgoing healing.

Races. Gnome Eureka, for every class, now grants a 10% discount on abilities that spend mana, rage or energy. For Humans, the visuals of Will to Survive have been reworked to match Dispel Magic.

What this means for you. The cooldown manager is the most notable new tool for anyone playing a support class: cooldowns of key abilities can finally be placed wherever is most convenient. The reduced talent reset price is an invitation to try new builds right now. Among classes, the biggest changes hit Holy Paladin (threat nerf plus a couple of major buffs), Feral Druid (rename and loss of the Mangle debuff), and Elemental Shaman (earlier access to key talents).