Wrath, Lightning Bolt and Holy Strike hit harder

The new beta build of WoW Forever retunes all nine classes. Wowhead found the changes in the files of the build on 24 September, and Blizzard confirmed most of them that night in its development notes. Wrath, Lightning Bolt and Holy Strike get the biggest buffs.

Below is the short version per class. What only Wowhead saw in the files, and Blizzard did not mention, says so. Everything else in the build, from the 1 silver respec to the Cooldown Manager, is in the post about the new build.

Druid

• Wrath deals about 50% more base damage at every rank. Rank 1 goes from 10 to 12 damage to 15 to 18, the highest rank from 62 to 69 to 92 to 102.
• Feral: Mangle is renamed Primal Bite, because its debuff is gone. The runes and talents that named Mangle now name Primal Bite. The talent Primal Fury gets its old name and icon back: Blood Frenzy.
• Rejuvenation, Tranquility and Wild Growth can now land critical hits. Thorns scales with spell power, and Feral Charge (Cat) can no longer be cast on allies.

Hunter

• Survival: Strider Kick now also raises movement speed by 30% for 3 seconds. Lacerating Strikes can land critical hits.
• Pets: the Attack Power bonus of Furious Howl drops by 40%. Tame Beast no longer works on beasts above the Hunter’s level, and Bats get Sonic Blast.
• Marksmanship: talenting out of Lone Wolf no longer leaves a 4% damage penalty while the pet is out.

Mage

• Fire: Hot Streak lasts 20 seconds (was 15) and Wake of Fire 30 seconds (was 20). Wake of Fire was hard to use while levelling, because a Mage stops to drink between fights, Blizzard writes.
• Ignite no longer counts percentage damage bonuses twice. Arcane Missiles checks line of sight once, at the start of the channel.

Paladin

The Paladin gets the most changes.

• Holy Strike hits harder at every rank: 25, 29, 32, 36, 39, 43, 46 and 50% of weapon damage (was 25, 25, 30, 30, 35, 35, 40 and 40%). Early ranks did not always feel like an upgrade, according to Blizzard.
• Holy: the cooldown of Holy Strike drops to 10 seconds (was 12). The talent Improved Holy Strike is gone, because its effect is now baseline. Holy Power also adds 15% critical strike chance to Holy Strike.
• Retribution loses some burst. Vengeance only triggers from non-periodic critical strikes and stacks to 3 (was 5). Two-Handed Weapon Specialization gives 2, 4 and 6% (was 3, 6 and 9%). In return Sacred Arbiter raises Holy Strike damage by 20% (was 10%), and Twist of Light also makes Seals 20% cheaper.
• Righteous Fury raises Holy threat by 60% (was 90%). Wowhead also sees Crusade move out of the talent tree; Blizzard does not mention it.

Priest

• Renew can now land critical hits. Power Word: Shield can always overwrite an existing shield on a target without Weakened Soul.
• Racial spells: the Undead spell Dark Sacrifice no longer breaks crowd control and scales with Spirit. The Gnome spell Contingency Plan can crit, Confounding Flash gets a Holy visual, and Starshards (Night Elf) now resists pushback with Twilight Focus.

Rogue

• Sap now flags the Rogue for PvP when the target is flagged. Wowhead also sees a changed value in Improved Expose Armor that the tooltip does not show; what it does is not known.

Shaman

• Lightning Bolt ranks 3 and 4 deal more damage, so every rank is an upgrade despite the changed cast times. The highest ranks lose one or two points, according to Wowhead.
• Lava Burst ranks 1 and 2 deal about 10% more base damage than the Lightning Bolt of the same level.
• Elemental: Elemental Fury and Elemental Alacrity swap places, from row 3 to row 6 and back. Blizzard wants Elemental to reach an important talent earlier.
• Enhancement: Rage of the Far Seer no longer raises spell casting speed.
• Totems: Flametongue Totem has no duration any more and no longer stacks with Flametongue Weapon or Windfury Totem. Tranquil Air, Windfury and Grace of Air Totem do not stack, even from different Shamans.
• Restoration: Riptide can now land critical hits.

Warlock

• The Voidwalker’s Sacrifice scales with 10% of spell healing. The tooltip of Life Tap now shows the right numbers.
• According to Wowhead, Health Funnel can no longer crit, and a Firestone disappears after 15 minutes logged out.

Warrior

• Arms: Slam gets an 18 second cooldown (was 15). Improved Slam cuts that by 1.5 or 3 seconds and no longer delays the melee swing. Bloodthrill triggers more often, 4 to 20% (was 2 to 10%), but only from main hand attacks.
• Protection: Bastion and Focused Rage swap rows: Bastion now sits in row 5 and Focused Rage in row 6.
• Sunder Armor generates the correct threat on every rank, with a little more from Attack Power.

All of this applies to the beta. Whether the values stay the same for the launch on 4 November, Blizzard does not say.