The shorter Auto-Shot stop is a bug, says Blizzard

The much shorter stop before an Auto-Shot is not a design change. It is a bug. Blizzard said so on the forums: the half-second cast that precedes a Hunter’s auto-shot or the use of a wand is not working properly in the WoW Forever beta, and a fix is coming in an upcoming build.

Due to a bug, these auto-shots are currently incurring a much shorter cast time, which in practice means that Hunters and wand users don’t need to stop to shoot for as long as intended.

That is Blizzard on the forums. The intended behaviour is the half second that Classic has.

What players had measured

The shorter stop turned up on the beta on 21 September, where players filmed the same ability in Forever and in Classic Era side by side. The swing timer showed the difference, and the assumption was that Blizzard had loosened the rule to make kiting easier.

It looked deliberate because it fits the rest of Forever, where plenty of small frictions have been smoothed. It was not.

What this means for kiting

A Hunter who plans a build around moving and shooting should not lean on what the beta does right now. Once the half second is back, the window to move between shots closes again, and kiting goes back to the timing Classic players know.

Blizzard says the fix lands in an upcoming beta build, hopefully next week. Which build, and whether the half second returns exactly as it is in Classic, Blizzard does not say.