WoW Forever Druid: New Spells
The WoW Forever Druid is changing dramatically. The Kami Labs channel is opening a series dedicated to reworked spells and talents on this Classic+ server, and this first episode focuses on the Druid.
The series covers the new spells as well as the talent trees, spec by spec: Feral, Restoration, then Balance.
Feral Druid: Early Levels
Let’s start with the Feral Druid. This spec has many iconic spells and talents that make it powerful, even though the early levels are rough. Past level 30-40, it becomes extremely strong.
The detailed sources are in the video description: our Grimoire lists every spell for every class and spec, with what was changed or added and the old versions for comparison, drawn from data mined in English and cross-checked with wowforevertalents.com and the Forever branch of Wowhead. Our talent calculator rounds it out with the full trees. Some spells marked as changed only get a quick mention when the change is minor, for example when 
Demoralizing Roar reduces the targeted monsters’ attack power a bit further. The goal is to avoid an overly long video.
What changes for Feral early on? Not much. 
Bear Form arrives at level 10, 
Cat Form from level 20, with a somewhat slow stretch between level 1 and level 20. In dungeons run live from level 15-16 onward, with the first dungeon drops, things go pretty smoothly, especially since players are looking for tanks: shown up as a bear, you find groups easily. That role still leans mostly toward tanking, though, as detailed in our Guardian Druid build. Aside from that, you rely on 
Prowl and the stealth that comes with it.
Tiger’s Fury of the Feral Druid
Tiger’s Fury made an impression. Originally, the spell increased damage by a flat 40 for its 6-second duration. On Forever, it now increases ALL damage by 15% for 6 seconds: dots as well as direct attacks.
It’s impossible to snapshot dots on this server, since they stay dynamic. A concrete example: combining Tiger’s Fury, a trinket and 
Berserk (which grants 100% critical strike chance on energy-generating abilities like 
Shred and 
Ravage), the dot fortunately doesn’t inherit that 100% crit. It simply benefits from the 15% damage bonus for 6 seconds. Debuffs and buffs stay dynamic for every class on this server, a point still to confirm and that could change.
A 15% damage increase remains extremely powerful. The spell can be used while Prowling, and Berserk could well follow the same path. Tiger’s Fury is obtained at level 24. A new talent would round out this combo even further.
Improved Tiger’s Fury, a new talent
A new talent makes its entrance on WoW Forever: Improved Tiger’s Fury. It grants 60 energy each time you use Tiger’s Fury.
Feral also benefits from more general changes. Dots can now land critical strikes, as with every class in the game: on Forever, all dots in the game can crit. You’ll be able to use most items directly while in cat form or bear form: bandages, potions, maybe grenades. Drinking a Thistle Tea shouldn’t force you out of your form anymore. That means you can keep 
King of the Jungle‘s uptime while sipping your tea.
Berserk of the Feral Druid
Berserk stands out as Feral’s ultimate spell. This 3-minute-cooldown burst dispels fear, a bit like Will of the Forsaken, and makes you immune to fear for 15 seconds. A priest or warlock scares you? You dispel the effect and punish them. This doesn’t work on non-dispellable effects. On Forever, the only one truly affected is probably the warlock’s Death Coil. A priest’s fear or disarm could also fall into this category.
In the WotLK versions, Berserk reduced the energy cost of abilities. Here, that reduction is replaced by a 100% critical strike chance on abilities that generate a combo point during Berserk. No bonus on 
Ferocious Bite, no bonus on 
Rip, but 
Claw should benefit and crit every time. Claw is shaping up to be very powerful, and your Shred and Ravage should also crit 100% of the time during those fifteen seconds.
Feral Druid: Claw and Shred
Claw becomes the equivalent of Mangle. On Forever, Mangle would be reserved for bear form. To compensate, Claw turns into a kind of Mangle: a frontal attack that deals 110% weapon damage, more than 
Maul in bear form, plus flat damage, and that grants a combo point. It’s nearly the same as Mangle in retail: you can spam it head-on when an ambush isn’t possible on the target. In the WotLK versions, a disease slowed the target by 50% and increased bleed damage. That won’t be the case here.
Shred has been slightly weakened: it drops from 225% to 155% weapon damage. That seems reasonable since this version will offer a lot more attack power. Ravage hasn’t been touched. Opening from stealth will therefore hit extremely hard, especially in PvP.
Frenzied Regeneration and Druid Enrage
On the defensive side, 
Frenzied Regeneration changes its logic in Feral’s favor. On classic servers, the spell converted rage into a fixed amount of health. On Forever, it restores a percentage of your health for each point of rage spent: ten rage restores ten percent of your health.
At a hundred rage, you therefore recover a hundred percent of your health. The effect scales up very quickly and tracks gear progression far better than the old flat amount.
Enrage has also been reworked, as a slight buff. Previously, the spell instantly generated twenty rage and then reduced your armor. It now generates ten rage on the spot, then twenty more spread over ten seconds, for thirty rage total versus twenty before.
Bear Form has also been slightly adjusted: it grants a bit less health than before, likely because gear is now far more powerful.
Reworked Feral Druid Talents
Several Feral talents change value noticeably on Forever. 
Thick Hide has been reworked: the armor bonus now also benefits from the multipliers specific to the forms it applies to. It’s hard to say whether the net gain beats the old version, but the balance leans toward a buff.
Sharpened Claws goes up to six percent critical strike chance, versus four percent before, and gear-based crit now weighs far more than it did in the Classic era.
Feral Instinct changes role significantly. It grants thirty percent extra damage on 
Swipe-type abilities, a real plus in bear form, and reduces your chance of being detected, the equivalent of three extra levels of stealth.
Savage Fury goes from twenty to ten percent, a clear nerf. In exchange, it now unlocks Maul, which should be powerful in bear form. Tighter tanking gives better multi-target aggro, and the spell also has value in PvP: bear form blocks the target’s stealth while it deals a percentage of weapon damage, a first for the class.
Nature’s Majesty has been added for Feral: four percent extra critical strike chance. Its prerequisite is a talent that also boosts damage over time, which makes it useful for Feral dots that can now crit.
On the resource side, 
Predatory Strikes has been overhauled. The talent grants a hundred percent chance to generate ten rage when shifting into Dire Bear Form or Cat Form, and restores a hundred percent of the energy you had when you last left cat form, plus ten energy per second spent outside those two forms, up to a hundred bonus energy. So you can leave cat form to heal up, then come back at full energy.
Predatory Instincts grants twenty percent extra melee critical damage, a huge gain. Natural Reaction increases dodge, already around four percent passively at this level, which would bring the total to roughly nine percent, and each dodge grants five rage. A real asset in both dungeons and raids.
Note: the talent tree shown in the video is only there to read the available talents, it’s not an optimized build. Detailed specs will come in future videos, around level sixty.
Omen of Clarity and Cat Form
One small note: 
Omen of Clarity wasn’t listed on the external reference site. We added it ourselves to our Grimoire, and the spell has been heavily buffed on Forever. It’s no longer a point-based talent: you get it directly as a passive ability.
It doesn’t show up as a spell you cast, only as a passive in your spellbook, and it triggers to grant you a free spell. The effect works on damage-over-time ticks as well as healing ticks. It procs very often, with no internal cooldown, so several procs in a row are possible. Extremely powerful.
About cat form: you no longer get it directly from an NPC. If you can’t find it right away, that’s normal. It now comes through a quest, with a small quest chain to complete at Moonglade with your druid trainer.
Restoration Druid: Spells and Talents
The restoration druid is shaping up to be very solid on WoW Forever. 
Wild Growth makes its return, as on Classic Vanilla, and brings the gameplay closer to a Wrath of the Lich King-style druid: spreading periodic heals around becomes very effective, especially for raid healing.
Swiftmend is also back, with a cooldown announced at just 15 seconds. It remains to be confirmed whether the spell applies to every type of periodic heal: the description mentions an amount equivalent to the effect’s total duration, without specifying that it consumes the HoT in question, whereas that generally required a glyph on WotLK.
At max rank, 
Healing Touch benefits from 100% spell power. The rank system is back for every class. Cutting its cast time by casting a lower rank could therefore be worthwhile, provided it saves mana. The spell might still cost the maximum mana regardless, around 840 based on the numbers observed.
Another very interesting talent: 
Gift of the Earthmother reduces the global cooldown by 0.5 second for 
Rejuvenation, Swiftmend, Healing Touch and Wild Growth. A caster’s global cooldown is 1.5 seconds by default: it therefore drops to 1 second, on par with melee classes. A difference you really feel while healing.
Another spell heavily buffed: 
Reflection now grants 50% of your normal mana regeneration while casting, versus 15% before. Just below it in the tree, 
Living Spirit increases spirit by 15%, and on WoW Forever, spirit seems to have been revalued.
Balance Druid: Spells and Talents
The balance druid doesn’t get a huge amount of new content, but that doesn’t mean the spec will be disappointing. 
Starfire now benefits from 100% spell power, and since the game offers a lot of spell power on gear, damage could quickly become substantial. This spell power scaling actually affects the whole class, as we saw with the druid’s Thorns scaling with spell power.
Same logic for 
Insect Swarm, which scales at 94.8% spell power. Significant damage for this dot, which can now also crit, like 
Moonfire.
Among the new talents is 
Eclipse: your 
Wrath casts reduce the cast time of your next two Starfires by 0.5 second, stacking up to four charges, for a duration of 15 seconds.
Nature’s Reach is also interesting: it grants 4% hit chance with spells and attacks, handy for saving on hit rating from gear and picking up more offensive stats instead.
Nature’s Grace has been changed, though it’s unclear whether this was really intentional. Previously, a critical strike reduced the next spell’s cast time by 0.5 second, which was quite strong. Now, the talent increases spell haste by 10% and global cooldown reduction by 10%, for 3 seconds.
These changes for Balance remain modest for now.
Still, in solo PvP, the balance druid can potentially get an instant heal via 
Nature’s Swiftness, which makes it a hard class to bring down thanks to kiting and dots. If those dots scale well, that could also become interesting. A solid PvP class, with a mix of support, damage and a potentially interesting burst.
Conclusion and Next WoW Forever Class
Some information might be missing: feel free to add to it in the comments. This data is obviously not final, the WoW Forever beta is still subject to change, and follow-up videos will come if needed. Let us know in the comments which class you’d like to see covered next.
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