Spider Swarm is banned from the Forever Open

The Forever Open bans Spider Swarm and other items that summon a pet. Tips, who organises the dueling tournament on the beta, updated the rules on 6 October. Trinkets that summon a pet, such as the Dog Whistle, remain allowed.

The tournament runs on 17 and 18 October, for level 30 Horde characters, with 100,000 dollars in prizes. Spider Swarm summons spiders that protect their owner for 10 minutes, with 5 charges and a cooldown of 30 minutes. A clip from the stream of Sodapoppin shows the item at work.

What is banned

Every pet item that cannot be equipped is banned, and so are five other items:

Item	What it does
Spider Swarm	Summons spiders that protect you for 10 minutes
Compact Harvest Reaper Kit	Summons a Compact Harvest Reaper that fights for 10 minutes
Student Fodder	Trail mix that heals, restores some resource and speeds you up
Flash Bomb	Makes Beasts within 5 yards run away for 10 seconds
Truthseeker’s Bow	Bow of item level 45, without a level requirement
Green Whelp Armor	5% chance to put a melee attacker to sleep for 10 seconds
Goblin Sapper Charge	450 to 750 Fire damage to all enemies nearby

Truthseeker’s Bow is the reward for 25 library books and can be worn at level 30. The Student Fodder comes from the quest chain of the Cozy Sleeping Bag. Transmog must also be turned off during the tournament.

Clarifications

The update also settles three questions about the start of a duel:

• The opener. Stealth classes always get the first offensive action uncontested. That can be an ability such as Cheap Shot or Blood Fury, or a trinket. The opponent stands still until then: no turning around, and Hunters place no traps. Abilities such as Intimidate may be activated in advance, as long as they do not disrupt the opener.
• Buffs. Players may buff themselves with items and consumables before a duel, but only with buffs of their own class.
• Healing in advance. Heal over time spells before a duel are banned. Power Word: Shield before a duel is allowed.

The prize money

The champion receives 50,000 dollars. The other 50,000 is split over the nine classes, 5,555 dollars each, for the best player of every class. For the class of the champion, that share goes to the second best player of that class. Ties split the money evenly.

The organisers can still change the list. The update ends with this line:

WoW: Forever is still an unsolved game; item/consumable bans may be modified at any time.

The full rules are in a public document.