At the Deep Dive panel at BlizzCon 2026, Blizzard rebuilt the stat system: Hit and Critical Strike are now unified for melee, ranged and spells, a new Expertise stat was added, and Resilience has been removed entirely.

At the Deep Dive panel at BlizzCon 2026, Blizzard rebuilt the stat system in World of Warcraft: Forever: Hit and Critical Strike for melee, ranged and spells have been merged into a single stat for each damage type, a new Expertise stat has been added, and Resilience has been removed entirely. This is the first direct statement about PvP stats since the announcement, and it immediately changes how gear will be assembled across all sixty levels.

What's changed in the stat system:

• Hit has become a single stat for melee, ranged and spells. Previously, each damage type needed its own rating. The same was done with Critical Strike.
• Expertise is a new stat. It lowers the target's chance to dodge or parry your attack; by design it's a tank stat and effectively replaces Weapon Skill.
• Weapon Skill remains, but gear now grants noticeably less of it. As the developers explained at the Deep Dive panel, in Classic it was "too easy to obtain and too powerful."
• There is no Resilience at all in Forever. This is the first direct statement about PvP stats since the announcement. The panel did not clarify exactly how PvP gear will differ from PvE gear.

Chris Zierhut gave an example at the panel: "a warrior who wants his Taunts to land." In vanilla, Taunt could miss a boss due to lacking a separate Spell Hit rating — a stat that served no other purpose for a tank.

Alongside that, healing gear has been reworked. Any item with a healing bonus now also grants a spell damage bonus — one third of the healing value. The panel gave an example: Hide of the Wild — +42 healing and +14 spell damage. Caster weapons start granting spell damage and healing bonuses at level 10, rather than mid-leveling as in vanilla.

According to the developers at the Deep Dive panel, in pure healing gear a player "goes out to do quests and can't kill anyone."

In practice

• One set of gear now works for both dungeons and the open world — no need to carry a second set for a couple of bonuses or swap gear at the dungeon entrance.
• Tanks find it easier to stack stats — instead of three Hit ratings there's one, plus Expertise as the main tank stat.
• Healers no longer have to choose between a dungeon-useful and an outdoor-useless set: healing items also work for damage.
• For PvP there's still no specifics: Resilience is gone, and the panel didn't say how PvP gear will differ from PvE gear. With the beta starting on September 17, 2026, this remains an open question.