September 24 beta notes: class tuning, racial changes and the Cooldown Manager

2026-09-24 · ForeverDB

The September 24 beta build changes every class, adjusts several racials, adds the first Cooldown Manager test and new gamepad options, and fixes a long list of quests.

Blizzard put a new build on the WoW Forever beta on September 24, and Kaivax posted the full development notes. Below are the main changes, grouped by class and system. We’ve kept every number exactly as Blizzard wrote it.

These are beta changes. Anything here can still change before launch.

For everyone

Cheap re-specs (beta only): if you haven’t changed your talents recently, a re-spec costs 1 silver. After your first reset the next one costs much more, but the price drops back to 1 silver once an hour has passed. Blizzard says this is temporary and only for the beta.
Campfires: you can now buff other players, cast and craft while waiting for your Campfire buff, and you can get the buff while sitting, sitting in a chair, sleeping, lying down or using the kneeling emote. Crafting or casting no longer makes you stand up while you wait.
Performance: a memory leak that slowly degraded performance for some players is fixed. On Mac, a water display issue and various other display artifacts are fixed.
Mail: in-game mail could ignore surnames. That’s fixed.
Casting animations: casters now play their precast animations properly instead of sometimes standing while casting.

Druid

Rejuvenation and Tranquility can now land critical hits, and so can Wild Growth for Restoration.
Wrath’s base damage is up by about 50%.
Thorns now updates its values from the caster’s spell power. If the caster can’t be found or is too far away, it falls back to its base values.
Feral: Mangle is now called Primal Bite. Its signature debuff was removed, so Blizzard felt the old name no longer fit. Talents that mentioned Mangle now mention Primal Bite.
Feral: the Primal Fury talent goes back to its original name and icon, Blood Frenzy.
Feral: Feral Charge (Cat) can no longer be cast on allies.

Hunter

Pets: the Attack Power bonus from Furious Howl is reduced by 40%. Bat pets now properly get Sonic Blast. Tame Beast no longer works on Beasts that are a higher level than you.
Marksmanship: taking points out of Lone Wolf no longer leaves you with -4% damage while your pet is out.
Survival: Lacerating Strikes can now land critical hits, and Strider Kick now increases movement speed by 30% for 3 seconds.

Mage

Arcane Missiles now checks line of sight once, at the start of the channel, instead of for every missile. A target that moves out of sight mid-channel no longer stops the missiles.
Fire: the Wake of Fire buff now lasts 30 seconds (was 20), and the Hot Streak buff lasts 20 seconds (was 15).
Fire: Ignite no longer “double dips” on percentage damage increases.

Wake of Fire was difficult to make proper use of while leveling, due to the Mage needing to restore mana between combat. The increased duration should help smooth out the experience. Developers’ notes, posted by Kaivax (Community Manager)

Paladin

Holy Strike now scales better per rank: 25%/29%/32%/36%/39%/43%/46%/50% weapon damage (was 25%/25%/30%/30%/35%/35%/40%/40%). Blizzard says early ranks didn’t always feel like an upgrade, and this raises Holy Strike’s damage at every point while leveling.
Retribution Aura now updates its values from the caster’s spell power.
Several Consecration fixes: it no longer fails to apply its increased damage effect to some targets, its Z axis now works consistently, and it can no longer pull targets from above or below you.
Righteous Fury’s Holy threat increase is now 60% (was 90%).
Echo of Justice was triggering more often than intended. That’s fixed. The Flash of Light cast animation now plays at the end of the cast.
Holy: Holy Strike’s cooldown is now 10 seconds (was 12), and the Improved Holy Strike talent is gone. Holy Power now also increases Holy Strike’s critical strike chance by 15%. Light’s Vigil’s tooltip now makes clear that only the damage version refunds some of its Mana cost.
Retribution: Vengeance now triggers from non-periodic critical strikes and stacks to 3 (was 5). Two-Handed Weapon Specialization drops to 2/4/6% (was 3/6/9%). Sacred Arbiter now increases Holy Strike damage by 20% (was 10%). Twist of Light now also reduces the Mana cost of your Seals by 20%.

having one that reduces the cooldown of a core ability so early on in a healing talent tree made this feel like a talent that was required. So we’ve removed it and made its behavior baseline. Developers’ notes, posted by Kaivax (Community Manager)

Priest

Renew can now land critical hits.
Power Word: Shield can now always overwrite an existing Power Word: Shield on a target that doesn’t have Weakened Soul.
Gnome: Contingency Plan can now land critical hits. Confounding Flash now has a cast visual, which is more Holy than Arcane, with updated sounds to match.
Night Elf: Starshards now gets spell pushback resistance from the Twilight Focus talent.
Undead: Dark Sacrifice no longer breaks crowd control that breaks on damage, and its tooltip now shows that its Mana gain scales with Spirit.

Rogue

Sap now flags you for PvP when you use it on a PvP-flagged target.

Shaman

Lightning Bolt ranks 3 and 4 deal more damage, so each rank is always an upgrade over the one before it, even though the cast times change.
Flametongue Totem no longer has a duration and is replaced straight away when you place another totem. It can no longer be stacked by recasting it, and it no longer stacks with Flametongue Weapon or Windfury Totem.
Tranquil Air Totem, Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem no longer stack with each other, even when they come from different Shamans in the same group.
The Windfury Totem and Flametongue Totem buffs now show those names, without the “Passive” and “Effect” suffixes.
Elemental: Elemental Fury (row 3) and Elemental Alacrity (row 6) swap places. Lava Burst ranks 1 and 2 now deal about 10% more base damage than the Lightning Bolt rank you learn around the same level.
Enhancement: Rage of the Far Seer (row 7) no longer increases spell casting speed.
Restoration: Riptide can now land critical hits.

So we’re moving one of the better talents for Elemental Shaman functionality, earlier in the tree, to allow them to feel like they’re hitting important progression moments (something Elemental has lacked in the early levels). Developers’ notes, posted by Kaivax (Community Manager)

Blizzard acknowledges that the swap lowers Enhancement Shaman’s critical strike damage with spells, and says it will use the freed-up room to add more to Enhancement in the future.

Warlock

Life Tap’s tooltip now shows the right amount of Life converted and only says that it scales with Spirit.
Voidwalker Sacrifice now correctly scales with 10% of your spell healing.

Warrior

Sunder Armor’s threat values are corrected on all ranks, with a small increase to the threat it gets from Attack Power.
Protection: Bastion (row 5) and Focused Rage (row 6) swap places, so you get Focused Rage sooner.
Arms: Bloodthrill’s chance to trigger is now 4/8/12/16/20% (was 2/4/6/8/10%). It only triggers from main-hand melee attacks, including Cleave and Heroic Strike.
Arms: Slam’s cooldown is now 18 seconds (was 15), and Improved Slam reduces it by 1.5/3 seconds.

We wanted to give players Focused Rage sooner to smooth out progression, as opposed to more damage from Bastion. This should smooth out some of the feeling while leveling as Protection before obtaining Shield Slam. Developers’ notes, posted by Kaivax (Community Manager)

Racial abilities

Gnome: Eureka is now a 10% discount on Mana, Rage or Energy abilities for every class.
Human: Will to Survive now uses a visual that matches Dispel Magic instead of Will of the Forsaken.
Tauren: Cultivation now has a player level requirement for each herb, equal to the level needed to pick that herb divided by 5. Herbs that need more than 300 Herbalism can be Cultivated at level 60.
Undead: Touch of the Grave no longer breaks crowd control, and no longer triggers from spells and abilities without a damage component. According to the developers, Shadow Word: Pain triggers it on cast but not on its periodic damage, and Distract and Pickpocketing no longer trigger it.

Cooldown Manager

The Cooldown Manager takes key information from your buff bar or action bar and shows it in a place you can fully customise. It is off by default. Turn it on in Options, under the Gameplay Enhancement settings.

Druid, Mage, Priest, Warrior and Warlock can test it now. More classes will follow in later updates.
It doesn’t support spell ranks yet. Blizzard says this will be fixed in a future beta update.
The feedback Blizzard wants most right now: which spells you wish were tracked by default.

Gamepad support

Class flyouts on the action bar: shapeshift forms for Druids, pet control and pet spells for Hunters and Warlocks, auras for Paladins and stances for Warriors.
For Hunters and Warlocks, the pet bar no longer replaces the bottom gamepad action bar.
New options in the Gamepad (Alpha) settings: Use Compact Action Bar (shows only the active action bar), Fixed Party Targeting (in a non-raid party, each d-pad button is assigned to a specific party member), and three settings that swap the sides of the targeting modifiers and their actions.
Edit mode layouts now apply while the gamepad UI is on. Map and Quest Log bindings are updated, POI pins get a new hover behaviour, and support for the Compact Raid Frame Manager and Role Poll frames is updated.

Items

Some guns and bows weren’t using ammunition correctly. That’s fixed.
A number of quest rewards now have the correct item level, and a small number of early caster rewards were adjusted.
Wizard Oils are back to their Classic Era values: Minor Wizard Oil gives 8 spell power, Lesser Wizard Oil 16 and Wizard Oil 24. Brilliant Wizard Oil is unchanged.
Wands no longer get extra damage from your spell damage.

Quests and the world

Several dungeon quests could be shared, which handed the receiving player a quest item. That’s fixed.
Faster respawns in lots of places, including murloc camps around Crystal Lake, Shinyfinder Narf and Nimsy in Elwynn Forest, the Snow Leopard Prowler in Dun Morogh, the escort NPC for “Lost in the Shadows” in Durotar, the Water Pitchers for “A Humble Task” in Mulgore and the Pyrewood Village worgen in Silverpine Forest. Mother Fang now respawns a bit more slowly and doesn’t always drop a green item.
Jasperlode Mine and Fargodeep Mine in Elwynn Forest were a little more deadly than intended for solo players, so Blizzard is taking their candles away.
Teldrassil: the objective count for “Bounty: Gnarlpine Furbolg” is now 15 (was 20).
Dalaran: faction adjustments, and spawns are now present just outside the city entrance.
Khonsu’s arrival has been removed from this beta phase. Blizzard says it will return to Azeroth in the future.
Undercity: the Skyborne quest “Exploring the Horde” now completes the objective to talk with Lady Sylvanas Windrunner.
Zephras Isle: the High Order Skyborne quest “Catching Wind” was redesigned, with spawn changes at the Overlook Standing Stones in Shen’dar Highlands. The Nightclaw Cavern druids now give credit for “Wounds of Betrayal” when healed, and “A Firm Response” no longer fails to give credit.

Interface

The nameplate selection display is updated.
Personal Resource Display textures are updated.

The notes also list new known issues for this build, many of them about spells and effects that can’t be tracked yet. They’re collected in the known issues post.