What Walk on Air does

Blizzard's race overview gives Walk on Air the same one-line description for both kinds of Skyborne: glide downward through the air for 10 seconds. Horde Windshapers and Alliance High Order Skyborne both have it as one of their two active racials, so anything you learn about gliding applies to either faction.

Downward is the word that shapes every route. The glide spends height and nothing in the description says it gains any, so a shortcut always begins from a ledge, a cliff or a bridge above the place you want to land.

Hand-inked illustration of Dee hanging beneath a blue glide sail, landing on a low grassy ledge after a gold arc from a taller cliff, with a partly rolled map lying in the gap.
A schematic drop, not a tested route: Walk on Air only goes down, so a shortcut starts higher than it ends.

Planning a shortcut around ten seconds

Without a published glide speed, nobody can turn ten seconds into a distance yet. Learn your own range over short drops first, where landing early costs a few seconds rather than a long run back.

For any longer descent, ask three questions before you jump. Is the landing low enough below the take-off to use the whole glide? Is it clear of enemies above your level? And if you come up short, is there a way back up?

Windshapers also have Skysight, an Elemental Blessing that raises run speed by 10%, which helps the ground part of a trip where there is nothing to glide from. High Order Skyborne get Read Ley Line instead, a regeneration tool rather than a travel one.

Hardcore characters should wait

Hardcore arrives after launch, and Blizzard describes it as a ruleset where death carries lasting consequences. Until someone publishes what happens when the ten seconds run out in mid-air, keep Walk on Air on a Hardcore character for drops you would survive anyway, never for a gap you could not survive falling into.

Still to come

Not yet settled by our sources or tested in game:

  • Walk on Air's cooldown.
  • Glide speed, horizontal distance and how much you can steer.
  • Whether fall damage applies if the 10 seconds end before you land, and whether the glide can be cancelled early.
  • Whether it can be used while mounted or in combat.

Sources

Beta notes are dated because Forever is still changing.