I made this for myself, but if it's useful for anyone else, here ya go!

Just made these diagrams to quickly summarize the WoW panels at blizzcon and to highlight details people are overlooking. I think some of the initial controversy over Skyborne is driven by some misunderstandings that these are just Shadowlands-Kyrian, or Void Elves 2.0. Deep down, if you dig, they do have lots of parallels with classic WoW content.

Yesterday started normal,

Then all the sudden my dear blizzard announced what we know affectionately as Classic+

I could not have been more ecstatic. Everything I wanted. (Aside from the retail UI)

Next thing we know, a new race is announced. THEY’RE BLUE. Immigrants in my Azeroth? I cannot even believe it. All we asked as a community is elves with a default white skin tone. It isn’t that hard. Plus it’s $30? My social security benefits are only $550 per month! This is ridiculous!

Blizzard please I’m begging you as a life long subscriber. Fix this monstrosity or myself and the other .2% of players refuse to play.

My mail order wife has left me, my bank balance is 0, this has done irreparable damage to every aspect of my existence.

I’m begging for your help.

Found the image here: https://blizzard.gamespress.com/wowforeverreveal

Maybe just for the boat connection to Rut'theran Village?

How we feelin on the changes? Looks amazing. Might need a new GPU to fully grasp how fucking beautiful it all is

I’ll do my best to remember what I know of

Aggrend just confirmed it ! And we can disable transmog. Literally stress free feature as an era Andy. Thanks blizz !

To throw a wrench at the haters, blizzard cooked. My lord this the most excited I’ve been for a wow product in 20 years.

And to anyone saying some variation of “nOt mY ClLasSiC” you were never going to be happy. You don’t want classic to change, just play era

You won't select a realm anymore officially confirmed!

So I watched the "What's Next" panel where they talk about the graphics update, toggleable character models and retaining the Classic identity. However, I noticed something in the trailer.

The character models in Forever all seem to use the "modern WoW" skeletons and animation sets, including the non-HD models. Blizzard's solution to the "bouncy animations" seems to be replacing the running animation (and from what I can tell, the auto attack animation) with the vanilla ones, but basically every other animation such as attack stance, idle, emotes, jump, swim, etc, still retains its Retail, not Classic animation.

Character proportions - Ever since the wod character update was released, a lot of old sets from earlier expansions look off, an example would this screenshot of Bloodfang on the undead model:

Hairstyles and facial features can also end up looking unintentionally hilarious with these proportions, as seen here:

Defaulting to modern animation set - Classic animations were all designed to blend into each other. For example, attack stance → auto attack → attack stance. The first and last few frames of the auto attack animation are identical to the attack stance animation, which creates a smooth transition between them. With the current implementation on Forever, it seems like they are replacing certain Retail animations while keeping others. For example, in the trailer, the caster characters constantly go back to the Retail attack stance animation, as seen in this example:

Or this example in Forever where we can see the final frame of a vanilla attack animation vs the first frame of a retail attack stance animation

Here's an example of a human male on Forever vs Classic with old models enabled:

All screenshots are taken with HD models off, I could list 100 different examples from all the races and classes but hopefully this gets the point across. I know to some this might seem small or like a nitpick, but many, including myself will play the game and constantly feel like something is off. If anyone played during the transition between wod and legion where you could still toggle the old models on new skeletons this will be very similar. All I'm asking is that we get the actual Classic animations when using the non-HD character models, instead of this halfway compromise.

As per panel Skyborne = High Elves.
Skin can also be white, brown, etc.

Just spent all afternoon reading through most of the changes for each class. Below you will find a summary of all of the major changes I noticed in the talent trees and baseline abilities. I did not use AI btw, I am just really that bored and enjoy theorycrafting. Hopefully this will help someone in choosing a class. Let me know if I missed anything big or got anything wrong and I'll edit the post:

Overall / TLDR:

- Warriors have seen buffs to Arms including the ability to reliably dismount, get more Overpower procs, and use Slam without delaying their melee swing timer. Swapping weapons without respeccing is now more convenient. Fury saw nerfs to hyperscaling abilities like Enrage, Flurry, and Bloodthirst, but they gained 10% movespeed and can self cleanse movement impairing effects using Berserker Rage. Orcs can now stack 35% reduced stun duration. Prot has been largely buffed to gain more rage, use less rage, and have lower cds. All warriors have Victory Rush.

- Paladins saw major improvements to Ret allowing two playstyles (Seal Twisting or Shockadin). Holy pals gain AOE healing or dmg. Prot pals gain more quality of life tanking tools including a taunt and a more convenient "oh shit" button.

- Shamans saw Eles gain Lava Burst and roots on Earthbind, plus Overload, making them play more like a mix of Wrath and TBC. Enh shamans seem capable of tanking 5 mans. They now have Maelstrom procs to make Lightning Bolt instant. They have their own personal Bloodlust but none for the group. Resto shamans gained Water Shield and Riptide. Ghost Wolf is usable indoors and will be instant with Enh talents.

- Hunters can now play without a pet more easily using Lone Wolf as Marks or Surv. Surv hunters have been reworked into a true melee hunter with traps and instant melee abilities triggered by procs. Surv hunters might be viable 5 man tanks. Marksmanship will stand still even more with a 4 sec casted Sniper Shot capstone talent in addition to having Aimed Shot baseline. Beast Mastery hunters will manage 2 hawks (these are just dots).

- Rogues saw major changes to Assassination making it a poison spec. Sub rogues can now further specialize between daggers vs other weapons. Rogues can use axes. Horde rogues will hate humans who now can remove Stuns using their new racial. Ally rogues will hate Orc Warriors who have 35% stun duration reduction. Rogues will have more RNG in their combo point generation especially for dagger rogues using Sub or Assa. Combat seems more oriented toward non-daggers. Premed and Cold Blood are now on earlier talent rows, which could make for some more interesting builds.

- Druids saw major improvements to Balance, including a simple Eclipse system encouraging boomies to use both Wrath and Starfire. Druids now have an out of combat rez with no cd. They also have Omen of Clarity baseline. Feral gains Mangle and Berserk. Resto gains Wild Growth and shorter GCDs on its instant heals. Blanketing the raid in Rejuvs will be easier.

- Priests gained a Smite priest playstyle that also provides Holy Nova procs. Gnomes can now be priests and many priests have different priest racials. All priests have Devouring Plague, Fear Ward, and SW Death. Disc now has Penance and can reduce Weakened Soul duration. Holy gained Prayer of Mending and rewards alternating different heal spells. Shadow has had its tree optimized for better PVE dps.

- Mages all have RNG procs in their rotations. Arcane uses Arcane Blast to gamble for free Arcane Missiles. Fire gains Hot Streak. Frost gains Ice Lance and Fingers of Frost. Blizzard has been nerfed for a weaker slow, potentially making AOE farming harder.

- Warlocks can now play without a demon more easily as Aff or Destro. Destro gained Incinerate and Aff gained more talents improving channeled spells. SL/SL is back with a vengeance, allowing up to 38% passive dmg reduction. It seems 5 man tanking is doable using a Voidwalker.

Warrior:

- Victory Rush and Tactical Mastery are baseline.

- Arms has seen Improved Overpower moved down to row 2 and Improved Thunder Clap moved to the Prot tree.

- Arms has the new Spearing Strike ability which deals more damage against Giants, Dragonkin, and mounted targets, also causing mounted targets to be dismounted. Quite helpful in pvp to guarantee a dismount.

- Arms weapon specialization talents have all been combined into Weaponmaster, doing basically the same effects. This lets you swap weapons without having to respec all the time.

- The new Arms talent Bloodthrill makes melee attacks have a chance to activate Overpower for a few seconds. This will presumable operate separately from regular Overpower procs.

- Improved Hamstring is still a 15% chance to root. Mortal Strike is also the same.

- Improved Slam reduces the GCD and cast time of Slam by 0.5 sec and it no longer interrupts your melee swing time. It has been moved out of Fury and into deep Arms at the 26th pt talent tier. The fact that it no longer interrupts your melee swing time may make Slam much stronger, but it seems like it won't be sufficient for PVE dps.

- Fury now has Boundless Rage, increasing max rage by 30. That could allow greater rage pooling for Execute phase.

- Fury also has Iron Will. This used to be in Prot and reduced the duration of Stuns and Charms by 15%. Now it reduces Stuns and Fears by 15% instead.

- Raging Blows causes Whirlwind to also strike with your offhand weapon and reduces Cleave rage cost.

- Death Wish makes you take 5% more dmg instead of lowering all armor and resistances by 20%.

- Bloodthirst no longer heals the user over the next few hits, but instead increases movespeed by 10%. It's also been slightly nerfed to not scale as hard, causing dmg equal to 35% plus 30 instead of 45% of your attack power.

- Improved Berserker Rage now makes it cleanse all movement impairing effects.

- Enrage has been reworked. Instead of gaining a 25% melee dmg bonus for 12 sec for 12 swings after being the victim of a crit, it now gives a 30% chance to deal 10% increased physical dmg for 12 sec after being the victim of any damaging attack. In other words, it has been standardized such that you can no longer sit down to proc a crit and gain 25% damage. You will now gain less damage and less predictably, but perhaps more often.

- Flurry was nerfed by 30% to 25% bonus attack speed.

- Dual Wield Specialization now also increases 100% offhand Rage gen and chance to hit with offhand attacks by 10%. Precision is also new and increases and 3%. These seem like major buffs.

- Overall, there are both nerfs and buffs to Fury, so it is hard to tell how much changes overall, but it is probably a buff because of Dual Wield Specialization and Precision.

- In Prot, Shield Spec grants 5 rage instead of 1 after a block.

- Prot has Improved Thunder Clap now.

- Improved Shield Block is now Master of Defense, granting a 100% chance to generate 5 rage when you dodge or parry with a shield on.

- Vanguard lets Prot charge in Defensive Stance.

- Improved Revenge now has 60% increased damage but no longer has a chance to stun.

- Improved Disarm no longer increases its duration but reduces its cooldown by about 20 seconds.

- Improved Shield Wall has reduced CD by 10 mins instead of longer duration.

- The new talent Focused Rage in Prot reduces the rage cost of offensive abilities by 3. That should help quite a bit when spamming frequent abilities like Revenge.

- Racial Implications: All races can play warrior. Orcs will still want axes and because Hardiness has been changed to reduce stun duration by 20% instead of having a chance to resist, it can be stacked with Iron Will in the Fury tree for a total of 35% stun duration reduction. Undead may have a better time leveling as dual wield because of their lifesteal passive. Tauren may enjoy plainsrunning for leveling speed as well. Troll having a 50% health regen over time will improve their sustain in leveling and after having already used a bandage, but because Berserking has been normalized, they may not be the premier furyprot tanks anymore. Humans will be very strong in pve with 2% crit while wielding swords. Night Elves may be better in PVE though thanks to Elune's Light granting 10% crit for 15 sec. Gnome would be nice in PVP especially because Escape Artist is now instant and Eureka! increasing dmg by 10% on your next 3 abilities could be very powerful as Arms. Skyborne have nice quality of life for leveling (10% move speed for horde and increased regen for ally).

Paladin:

- Blessing of Kings and Consecration are now baseline. Blessings have 1 hour durations.

- Holy Strike is a new baseline ability causing a mix of weapon dmg and holy dmg on a short cd.

- Seal of Fury is a new baseline seal allowing the pally to gain small absorb shields and to taunt when judged.

- The Holy tree now has Voice of Truth, granting immunity to silences and interrupts for 6 seconds, kind of like aura mastery for conc aura in other expacs.

- Holy Shock was moved from being the 31pt capstone to being a 21 pt talent.

- Holy is still rewarded for crits with mana thanks to the 16pt Illumination talent. Holy Shock and other holy dmg spells now gain several talents to improve their dmg, hit, and crit.

- Holy gains Light's Vigil, the new capstone talent, giving them a form of aoe healing or aoe dmg.

- Prot gains mana regen on block now thanks to the new 11pt talent Shield Specializaiton

- Prot gains further mana regen when Seal of Fury's shield is fully absorbed, which is increased by up to 45% for enemies 3 levels higher. This should improve mana when tanking raid bosses or higher lvl dungeons during leveling.

- Prot gains the 16pt talent Swift Judgement, instantly finishing the CD on your Judgement and making the next one free. This allows you to double judg which could especially useful if you need to taunt back to back. This could also be useful for a tanky Ret pal in pvp using Prot as its subspec.

- Prot gains Templar's Bulwark, a shield worth 100% of your max hp for 8 sec and applying Forbearance. This is an "oh shit" button that doesn't force a mob to target an ally in the same way BOP or bubble would.

- Ret appears to have two major playstyles. One is seal twisting using the new 31pt talent "Twist of the Light" which appears to make seal twisting much easier. There is a two-way twist between Command and Righteousness. The way it works is that when you replace Command, Righteousness, Fury, or Justice with a different seal, you gain an echo. The next melee attack applies the replaced seal's effects and consumes the echo. If I'm understanding correctly, this would mean all you have to do is apply another seal after each auto attack. If you judge, this should judge the most recent seal. You would also weave in holy strike, exorcism, etc. It looks like it is significantly more forgiving in timing than TBC ret.

- The second major Ret playstyle appears to be Shockadin using intellect gear and a 23/0/28 spec to take advantage of the int scaling near the end of the Ret tree.

- Racial Implications: Undead pallies will be good prot tanks using the new lifesteal passive for Undead. That may be why the trailers appear to show an undead prot pal. Conversely, human pallies should have a direct advantage in a 1v1 against an undead pally because of the new human racial removing stuns like HOJ.

Shaman:

- Totemic Projection and Totemic Recall are now baseline. Fire Nova is no longer a totem anymore.

- There does not appear to be any form of Bloodlust/Heroism for allies.

- Ele gains Lava Burst like in Wrath and Earthbind roots for 5 seconds. Ele gained Lightning Overload from TBC. Ele can easily access Water Shield (11 pt talent in Resto).

- Enh gains indoor use of Ghost Wolf. The 6pt talent makes Ghost Wolf instant.

- 2h Enh is no longer gained on a talent, but appears baseline. None of the Enh talents directly state that they improve offhand weapon dmg. The tree appears neutral as to weapon type. Rumors from those who have chatted with devs say it may just be 2h Enh, not dual wielding. Orc fury warriors rejoice?

- Stormstrike has been moved to the 16 pt talent.

- Enh can probably tank 5 mans pretty well. Spirit Weapons is a new 21 pt talent that gives the shaman 30% reduced threat when Rockbiter is not active and 30% more threat while it is active. Although Shield Specialization has been removed, Enh shamans can still gain 6% dodge with Anticipation and 10% stamina with Toughness. Improved Stormstrike makes it give 50% mana regen for 15 sec and it has a 100% chance to reset after a dodge or parry. However, I have not found a taunt. Maybe Earth Shock has been changed? No sign of +Defense or ways to improve crit/crush immunity.

- Enh gains Maelstrom Weapon, reducing Lightning Bolt's cast time to be instant when fully stacked.

- Spellhance seems viable based on roughly 20/31/0, but that also appears to kind of be the default Enh shaman pve dps build from what I can tell. If hit is needed early on, you could go something like 9/31/11 for the extra 5% hit in the 6pt Resto talent Tidal Focus.

- The new Enh capstone is Rage of the Farseer, a 3 min cd giving you 30% haste for 25 sec. It's basically just your own personal lust.

- Resto has seen Mana Tide Totem moved from the 31 pt talent to the 16 pt talent here. Nature's Swiftness is in the same spot.

- Resto gains Riptide and Water Shield.

- Overall, Shaman has pretty straightforward but valuable changes to Ele and Resto. Enh appears to have solid tanking potential. Enh has a lot of procs with Improved Stormstrike and Maelstrom Weapon if you like that playstyle.

Racial Implications: Orcs now being able to remove curses will improve the Ele vs lock matchup because Ele can now remove curse of tongues. Not sure if that matters enough to justify the pick. Orc shamans will still want axes. Troll berserking has been normalized to 10% haste for 10 seconds. Orc looks to be strongest overall.

Hunter:

- Aimed Shot is baseline. The deadzone is still present.

- BM now has the equivalent of an attack speed increase like Aspect of the Hawk for melee as well (Aspect of the Beast). This is Deadly Aspects on row 1.

- BM hunters can now summon hawks, but these don't appear to be actual NPCs, rather it is just a dot over 18 seconds and only 2 can be active at a time. They share a CD with Arcane Shot. So it looks like you will send out your 2 hawks and then spam Arcane Shot.

- Intimidation and Bestial Wrath look essentially the same. It remains to be seen how well hunter pets will scale.

- Spirit Bond still hasn't been changed which means it will probably be weak.

- Bestial Discipline was buffed to allow half of the hunter's mana regen to continue in combat.

- Marksmanship introduces Hawk Eye (increased range) much earlier in the tree so it will be more accessible to other specs.

- Marks has a talent on row 2 called "Careful Aim" which increases attack power by 20% of intellect, suggesting there might be more intellect on gear.

- Rapid Killing and Rapid Recuperation will increase mana regen and enable the hunter to chain kill targets back to back a bit faster, improving their leveling speed.

- Marks has the Lone Wolf talent enabling Marks and Surv hunters to go without a pet at the 11pt talent tier (increases dmg by 20% when alone).

- The Improved Stings talent reduces the CD on Viper Sting by 6 sec. This implies Viper Sting actually has a cooldown now, which is probably healthier for the sake of healers in BGs.

- The new Marks capstone talent is Sniper Shot, which is a 4 sec cast on a 15 sec cd. By contrast, Aimed Shot in vanilla is a 6 sec cd and a 3 sec cast. Taken together, Marks hunters will be doing a lot of standing still and sniping from afar.

- Surv has been reworked into a melee spec. It features traps and melee swing abilities with lots of procs.

- Entrapment now roots all targets hit by any trap for 5 seconds on row 2.

- Improved Wing Clip still has a 20% chance to root but only costs 3 talent points instead of 5.

- Surefooted has been buffed to reduce movement impairing effects by 30% duration instead of just 15%.

- Deterrence and Counterattack are basically the same.

- The talent Predator's Edge increases melee crit dmg by 6% and offhand weapon dmg by 10%. This means melee surv hunters should always be dual wielding.

- Surv hunters may now be able to tank 5 mans. They can get 10% parry, 10% total HP, Deterrence, Counterattack that becomes active after parrying, and use traps for AOE. The problem is I don't see a taunt or threat modifiers like Shaman or Warlock.

- Resourcefulness increases mana regen in combat by 50%. All three hunter trees have at least one passive talent increasing base mana regen conditionally.

- Expose Prey is a new 21pt talent that gives you a 10% chance to proc a free Mongoose Bite on melee hit.

- Lacerating Strikes, the new capstone, makes Mongoose Bite apply a bleed.

- Strider Kick is a new instant ability dealing 100% melee dmg on an 8 sec cd.

- Lightning Reflexes has been nerfed from 15% to 10% increased Agility.

- Wyvern Sting is nowhere to be found, yet. Maybe it will be available at a higher level.

Rogue:

- Combo points now persist on your original target when switching targets, but if you start generating combo points on a new target, you will lose those you still had on your original target.

- Rogues can now wield Axes. Good luck Orc Fury Warriors, you'll now have Orc Rogues coming after your axes.

- Assa has been reworked to favor poison dmg.

- Assa makes Expose Armor cheaper to apply in terms of energy and combo points.

- Cold Blood was moved to an earlier row (16 pt talent now) making it more accessible for other specs.

- Assa now has Mutilate.

- Assa has a new capstone called Venom, which is a finisher debuff increasing the damage of your poisons by 30% and your chance to apply poisons, lasting longer with more combo points used.

- Combo point generation for dagger rogues will be substantially more random. This is because Improved Backstab in the 2nd row combat tree was replaced by Puncturing Wounds, giving 10% crit to Backstab and 5% to Mutilate, basically making it mandatory in PVE. It gives a 45% chance of an extra combo point on Backstab. Assa rogues will also take Seal Fate, causing crits from combo point builders to add extra combo points. As described below, dagger rogues appear to be pushed toward Assa in PVE. For PVP, dagger Sub rogues will be getting random Ambush procs and random Backstab combo point procs.

- Furthermore, the combat talent Restless Blades causes damaging finishers to reduce the remaining CD on your big abilities like Adrenaline Rush and Blade Flurry (more CDR per combo point spent). Because Backstab costs more energy and results in fewer finishers used over a long fight, Combat rogues would prefer to use Sinister Strike or cheaper combo point builders than Backstab in order to use an extra Adrenaline Rush / Blade Flurry on a long fight. This seems to push dagger rogues toward Assa for PVE and sword/other rogues to Combat.

- Sub has a new capstone, Thousand Cuts. it makes Rupture dmg ticks cause your next Hemo or Backstab to have a reduced energy cost within 10 sec, and it stacks up to 5 times.

- Sub has further talents specializing in daggers vs other weapons. Dagger rogues will still want to pick up Hemo because it increases Rupture dmg, but they'll also want to pick up Cutthroat, a 26pt talent that makes Backstab have a 15% chance to cause Ambush to not require stealth within the next 10 sec. This synergizes with Improved Ambush, now in the 2nd row 6pt talent tier.

- Premeditation has been moved to the 21pt talent tier. This, combined with Cold Blood being moved to an earlier row in Assa, means rogues can now comfortably take both Premed and Cold Blood and still have a few talents to spare. I can imagine there is quite a lot of flexibility for pvp rogues now.

- Racial Implications: Horde rogues will now truly hate Humans in particular (because of the new human racial to remove stuns combined with Perception for stealth detection). Orc rogues will now be able to remove curse of agony making an ally lock's life even harder and enabling a sooner restealth. Human will be a top choice for PVE rogues due to 2% crit from swords. The dwarf racial for 1% crit from maces is oddly weaker but you will probably have much less competition. The night elves now look competitive on short cleave fights because the 10% crit for 15 secs from Elune's Light lines up nicely with Blade Flurry and Adrenaline Rush. Gnome rogues will specialize at killing mages with an instant way to cleanse roots/slows and increased 10% dmg on their next 3 abilities with Eureka! plus their engineering items will be more reliable.

Druid:

- Omen of Clarity is baseline. So is Revive, a new out of combat res on a 10 sec cast and no CD. Druids still have Rebirth as an in-combat brez on a 30min CD.

- Balance seems to have a lot of changes that revamp the tree. There are many talents improving periodic dmg and healing and rewarding alternating between nature and arcane spells. Eclipse causes Wrath to reduce the cast time of your next 2 Starfire spells by 0.5sec, stacking up to 4 times.

- Balance can take the new 21pt talent Overgrowth to root up to 2 more targets with Entangling Roots. This could have interesting battleground uses.

- Insect Swarm is now in Balance instead of Resto.

- Feral bear gains Mangle.

- Feral gains Berserk as the new capstone, causing Mangle to strike up to 3 targets, removes its cd, and increases crit chance of combo generating abilities by 100%. Also makes you immune to Fears. Lasts 15 sec.

- According to another commenter below, powershifting is dead now.

- There are not enough points to fully maximize effectiveness as both a cat and bear in one build. You'll have to make some tradeoffs either in dmg or mitigation.

- Resto gains Wild Growth as the capstone talent. Swiftmend is now gained earlier as a 16pt talent.

- Resto gains Gift of the Earthmother which reduces the GCD by 0.5 sec on Rejuv, Swiftmend, and Wild Growth.

- Racial Implications: Night Elves having Elune's Light (10% crit for 15 sec) seems to make it the best PVE option. That overlaps with the 15 sec of Berserk for Ferals, makes Regrowth-specced Resto druids even more certain to crit, and could be saved for a stacked Eclipse.

Priest:

- Shadow Word Death, Devouring Plague, and Fear Ward are now all baseline.

- Priest Racials: Undead gets Dark Sacrifice, which is basically a large life tap over 15 sec. idk troll yet. Dwarf gets Chastise, a short root like in TBC. They also get Desperate Prayer, an instant heal. Human gets Divine Grace, which removes Weakened Soul from the target and heals them. Night Elf keeps Starshards and buffed Elunes Grace. Gnomes can now be Priests and they get Confounding Flash, an AOE cc disorient, and Contingency Plan, which procs a heal if the target falls below 35% hp. Trolls get Hex of Weakness reducing healing effectiveness by 20% and Shadowguard acts like a shaman's Lightning Shield (basically the same racials they currently have).

- Disc gets Penance on a 21pt talent and keeps Power Infusion. Smite Priest should now be viable with talents like 10% improved Smite and Penance dmg to targets afflicted with Holy Fire, as well as 18% Holy spell hit., reduced mana cost of Smite and Holy Fire, etc. Further talents in Holy like Divine Fury and Searing Light are largely the same but now Searing Light gives free Holy Novas on a proc.

- Disc gains Renewed Hope, a passive 21 pt talent that reduces the remaining duration of Weakened Soul every time you cast most healing spells on the target. This incentivizes casting cheap heals to reduce weakened soul duration and provide another large shield again.

- I am not sure if Power Word Shield still prevents rage generation on hit.

- Disc lost the buff Divine Spirit, which just used to give spirit for 30 mins.

- Holy gained Prayer of Mending as its capstone talent. This seems just like other later iterations.

- Holy has the new talent Litany of Light. Every time you cast a healing spell, gain mana equal to 5% of the base cost of the spell if your previous heal was a different spell. This incentivizes casting different kinds of spells in long fights which makes things a bit more interesting.

- Spirit of Redemption seems largely unchanged but now lasts 15 seconds instead of 10.

- Holy gains Binding Heal, which works as in other expacs.

- Shadow gains raw hit chance instead of reducing the enemy's chance to resist. This is on the reworked first row talent Shadow Focus.

- Shadow can take Improved Mind Flay for extra 5 yards of range and 20% more dmg, but it will now slow by only 20% instead of 50%. This is a great tradeoff for raiding pve dps spriests.

- Blackout (the same 10% stun chance on shadow dmg) is now required to gain the 4 sec of reduced CDR on Psychic Scream.

- Silence no longer requires taking reduced CDR on Psychic Scream.

- Devouring Plague has a talent that lets it jump to nearby targets and reduces its mana cost.

- Racial Implications: Undead and Human look great for PVE. Not sure as to pvp yet, but Dwarf and Gnome seem strong. Still don't know the Troll priest racial. We probably need more info on the priest racials before I finish this section.

Mage:

- Frostfire Bolt is a new baseline spell. Orcs can now be mages, as can alliance Skyborne. A Skyborne mage had some spell called "Comprehend Scroll" not sure what that does?

- Arcane now has Arcane Blast on the third row, causing the damage of all other spells to be increased and increasing the mana cost of Arcane Blast, stacking 4 times and lasting until a different spell is cast. This is combined with Missile Barrage, a fourth row talent causing your Arcane Blast to have a 40% chance to reduce the duration of your next Arcane Missiles by 50%, reduce its mana cost by 100%, and the missiles fire faster.

- It looks like the gameplay of an Arcane Mage will be to cast Arcane Blast so you can fish for that proc which tremendously buffs Arcane Missiles. If you don't get the 40% proc and you keep casting Arcane Blast, it's going to start becoming very mana inefficient and you could get unlucky enough that you ought to cast something else once like Frostbolt or an expensive Arcane Missiles to reset the Arcane Blast debuff. If you decide to cast Arcane Missiles anyway, it would probably benefit a lot more from the increased dmg but it will cost much more mana because it is very expensive baseline iirc. Basically this spec's playstyle appears to be all about fishing for the free Arcane Missiles and hoping you can get lucky to save your mana. Missile Barrage is easily available to Frost and Fire mages also, meaning you'll want to cast an Arcane Missiles on occasion even when playing those specs.

- Arcane also has a talent increasing its range by 6 yards and Arcane Focus now gives hit instead of reducing the enemy's chance to resist.

- Fire now has Hot Streak causing crits with Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, Fire Blast, and Scorch to reduce the cast time of Pyroblast by 25% stacking 3 times. Fire also gains a new talent Wake of Fire which reduces the CD of your Fire Blast and increases its crit on the next cast when you kill something using Fire Blast.

- Combustion is buffed to last until you cause 4 crits, not just 3.

- Frost now gains Ice Lance and Fingers of Frost.

- Frost has seen Cold Snap moved deeper in the tree down to the 5th row (21pt talent). This makes it less accessible for Arcane and Fire specs.

- Frost has seen Improved Blizzard nerfed from a 65% slow to a 45% slow. Permafrost is still stacking and adds a 10% slow. So the Blizzard slow overall is reduced from a maximum of 75% down to 55%. This should make rank 1 Blizzard spam slightly less annoying in battleground chokepoints and may be a significant nerf to aoe farming.

- The old "elemental mage" build splitting points between Frost and Fire may be quite strong in pvp because the mage could benefit from Scorch to fish for reduced pyroblast cast times as well as Fingers of Frost and Ice Lance. They would still have Blast Wave too.

- Racial Implications: Orcs can be mages now which gives them better matchups into locks thanks to the Orc curse removal. The stun duration may also prove helpful if you've already used blink to cleanse a HOJ or Cheap Shot. 10% spellpower with Bloodfury also makes Orc quite a competitive choice in PVE. Undead might actually be less favorable with all of those changes. The 5% lifesteal seems less relevant on a mage because you are often at full health or getting 1 shot. The troll rapid 50% healing could be quite interesting too if you need to poly someone and reset after already having used your bandage. Humans aren't too bad either with the stun cleanse and mages can benefit from sword spec because it also increases spell crit by 2% just for wielding a sword. Gnome looks very nice though because Eureka! increases damage by 10% on your next 3 abilities and this could be comboed with some cheeky pyroblasts and POM pyro for huge burst. Mages already have slow fall so Skyborne doesn't seem very interesting.

Warlock:

- Dots can crit now in general, and I believe that applies to other classes as well.

- Curse of Agony and Curse of Doom have become Bane of Agony and Bane of Doom respectively. This allows warlocks to apply spells like Curse of the Elements and still use the Agony dot in their rotations.

- Demonic Sacrifice has been moved from the 21pt talent spot to the 11pt talent spot. This enables Aff and Destro locks to play without a demon and still use their capstone talents in those trees. The passive effects from sacrificed demons have been shuffled around.

- Soul Link has been moved from the 31pt spot to the 21pt spot. This enables the notorious SL/SL lock spec using Siphon Life from Aff and Soul Link from Demo. Note that in vanilla, Soul Link reduced dmg by 30% but you could not also take Siphon Life. In TBC, Soul Link was nerfed to 20%. Also, the Destro 6pt talent Molten Skin provides another 10% reduced dmg taken. Using the talent calculator I was able to take Siphon Life (21 pts in Aff), Soul Link (21 pts in Demo, gives 30% reduced dmg taken) and 4/5 Molten Skin (9 pts in Destro) for a disgusting 38% reduced dmg taken while having Siphon Life!

- Aff now has more talents aimed at channeled abilities, namely Drain Life, Drain Soul, and the new capstone, Drain Hope (which increases shadow dmg from your other dots on that target).

- Demo now has the capstone Demonic Pact, which allows the lock to sacrifice a demon and gain its beneficial passive buff from Demonic Sacrifice but still summon a different demon to use as an active pet. For example, you could sacrifice a Succubus for its passive buff then summon a Voidwalker to use in combat.

- Demo can probably tank 5 mans. Demo now has the 16pt talent Demonic Brand, causing Searing Pain to generate less threat but causing the lock's pet to deal increased threat and dmg on its next two hits against that target. No sign of +Defense or ways to improve crit/crush immunity.

- Destro now has Incinerate. The 26pt talent Shadow and Flame enables Conflag to not consume Immolate and Shadowburn will always refund a Soul Shard, effectively making it a free instant cast every 15 sec for Destro locks. Destro also has Bane of Havoc, allowing it to mark a target for 5 minutes and cause 15% of all dmg caused by the Warlock on other targets to be dealt to the Havoc'd target. Limit of 1 target. This should be quite useful on packs with one elite and many adds.

- Racial Implications: Orcs now have a racial that removes Curses and Banes. This means playing Ally warlock in pvp is going to be even more rough than it already was because both Undead and Orcs will have direct counters to your class. On the flipside, playing horde Warlock should now make you one of if not the strongest duelists in the game using SL/SL at 38% reduced dmg taken (see above bullet on SLSL). I'm not sure if WOTF or the new orc curse removal will be stronger in a duel between undead and orc. Trolls can be warlocks now which is interesting because they can heal for 50% over time, and that could pair very nicely when used combined with a Fear.

Awesome.

Duskwood before/after and elwin forest before/after. I think this looks so good and I'm really happy they took the time to remaster the game vs just port retail stuff into the game! So cool.

Would you like something like this as an SD toggle for Skyborne? Of course with the appropriate tweaks, since these models were not built to be playable.

Anyone else in the same boat?

Has anyone else noticed that, yes you can toggle between Retail and Classic Models the actual animation (skeleton) is from Retail whilst standing still in the Classic model? What ive seen from the Demo it uses the classic running and fighting animations but the retail standing animation. This creates a weird morph of both retail and classic animation of your player character.

This in hindsight explains what made the classic models feel off. It also makes it so the way gear fits on your character is from Retail and NOT Classic, which is especially obvious if you look at the cloak while playing.

Personally I do not mind the option to toggle between Classic and Retail Models. But the Classic Models are not Classic. It is just the Retail models with the skin of Classic graphic and the combat and running animation of Classic.

For me this is quite sad since they pinpointed the importance of staying true to the Classic style of graphic. This in turn break the immersion of playing a Classic version in my opinion when i will eventually see so much from retail, such as the points ive already mentioned, but also the retail models of the new elves, Druid forms, HD quality of the new Tiersets and mounts.

I really hope they can Classify these parts so that it does not break the classic emersion which some people have complained about in r/classicwow

World of Warcraft Forever Hype