Shapeshifting keeps more of your kit

In WoW: Forever, most of what used to force you out of Cat or Bear form is gone. You can drink almost any potion, including Rage potions and Thistletea, without canceling your shift. Most doors and objects open while you are shifted, and racial abilities such as Shadowmeld and War Stomp work in form too.

Nature's Grasp is baseline at level 10 and Omen of Clarity at level 20, and Wrath no longer eats the Clearcasting proc Omen of Clarity grants. Revive, an out-of-combat resurrection, arrives at level 12, and Lacerate joins the Feral toolkit at level 42. The 1 October build also made every shapeshift form immune to Disarm once you are already in it, and Faerie Fire no longer resets your swing timer.

Weapon procs fire in every form now. The damage math behind that lives on the weapons article.

A night elf druid mid-shift from elf to cat form beside Moonglade's lake at night, weapon glow unbroken on the claws, Dee watching with a lantern.
The form changes. The weapon's glow does not.

Feral trades Tiger's Fury for Shifting Power

Tiger's Fury and King of the Jungle are both removed from the Feral tree. In their place sits a new row-4 talent, Shifting Power, connected to Shredding Attacks: Cat Form only, a 16 second cooldown, and it instantly converts 55 percent of your base mana into 40 energy. Effects that cut shapeshift costs cut this one too. Improved Shifting Power, the row-5 follow-up, reduces that cooldown by 4 or 8 seconds. Players have nicknamed the pair "powershifting," after the old Classic trick it brings back in a controlled form.

Mangle was renamed Primal Bite once its old debuff was stripped out, and the ability's threat generation was roughly doubled in the 1 October build. The 8 October build raised Bear Form and Dire Bear Form critical-strike bonus Rage to 100 percent, up from 75 percent, and Swipe finally scales the way it should, gaining 3 percent of your attack power. The tooltip has not caught up to that number yet.

Balance and Restoration also moved

Wrath got a cheaper Mana cost and lower damage in the deep dive, then its base damage rose roughly 50 percent in the 24 September build, a swing worth checking before you lock in a rotation. Eclipse is a new row-5 talent: casting Wrath cuts the cast time of your next two Starfire casts, stacking up to 4 charges.

Restoration gets two reworked cooldowns. Swiftmend moves up from row 7 to a 16-point gold medal talent in row 4 and no longer consumes the Rejuvenation or Regrowth it heals from. Wild Growth is a new 31-point capstone that drops a heal-over-time on a target's whole party, decaying every second for 7 seconds on a 6 second cooldown. The beta's level 30 cap has not let anyone bank 31 points in one tree yet, so treat Wild Growth as announced, not confirmed in play.

How do you change druid talents in WoW: Forever?

Change your talents, including Legacy talents, at a class trainer in a major city. There is no in-field respec. Dual Specialization unlocks at level 40, letting you keep two builds without a trainer visit every time you switch roles.

The deep dive never printed a gold cost. The 24 September beta build did: a talent reset costs 1 silver if you have not reset recently, then a steeper price that falls back to 1 silver after an hour. Blizzard marked that price as temporary for the beta, so do not bank on it at launch.

Wowdee will track which Feral, Balance, or Restoration build you are running next to your actual level, and update it the moment a talent moves again instead of freezing September's numbers after October changed them.

Still to come

Not yet settled by our sources or tested in game:

  • Which deep-dive talent rows, including Eclipse, Swiftmend, and Wild Growth, hold up once testers can actually spend points past the level-30 beta cap.
  • The launch price of a talent reset and of Dual Specialization once the beta's temporary 1 silver price goes away.
  • Whether Shifting Power's 55 percent mana cost or energy return changes again; it is still an active complaint thread on the official forums.

Sources

Beta notes are dated because Forever is still changing.