“It’s not going to be sooner than that”: that is how Kris Zierhut, of Blizzard’s WoW Forever team, places the next revision of the Shaman talents, early next year. It was said out loud, in an interview published on November 6 at 6:28 am Paris time, on the YouTube channel of creator Crix. WoW Forever shamans had been waiting for an answer from Blizzard since their Discord was locked.
That timeline remains an intention. It is phrased conditionally (“I wouldn’t be surprised”), with no month and no patch number. The same evening, at 10:11 pm Paris time, a Blizzard community manager posted the written answer: an Enhancement fix planned for Tuesday, November 10.
A two-part answer: legitimate complaints, and Improved Ghost Wolf
Crix asks whether the complaints from WoW Forever shamans have reached the team. The answer, at 14:33 in the video, starts with “we’re looking hard at some of the issues there” and then splits in two: “some of their issues are legitimate and some of their issues are they’re mad that they can’t have improved Ghost Wolf”.
The first half acknowledges problems. The second sets aside the anger over 
Improved Ghost Wolf, the talent the November 2 notes moved from the 2nd to the 4th row of the tree. Zierhut immediately follows with “there’s some legitimate issues there” and names Enhancement first: “we’re looking particularly hard at enhancement”.
Zierhut’s diagnosis is about gear. Enhancement Shamans are “a little bit too much pushed towards wanting to wear spell power gear”, and “we don’t want enhancement Shamans running around in cloth robes”. The model is the Retribution Paladin: Strength, Intellect and spell power should all stay attractive, and “adjustments” are announced without a date.
Complaint by complaint: what Blizzard told WoW Forever shamans
The table sets the Discord moderators’ complaints, as relayed by Output Lag, against what Blizzard said in the interview or in writing. An answer marked “not found” means no line on that point appears in the interview or in the November 6 message.
| Specialization | Player complaint | What Blizzard answered |
|---|---|---|
| Enhancement | Intellect and spell power gear seems to beat physical gear.  Windfury Weapon would no longer be the main enchant in raids. Improved Ghost Wolf drops from the 2nd to the 4th row. | Zierhut: Enhancement is being looked at “particularly hard” and adjustments are coming. Kaivax, November 6: Strength should become their best stat again, fix planned for Tuesday, November 10. On Windfury and on the Improved Ghost Wolf row: not found, apart from Zierhut’s line about the anger over that talent. |
| Elemental |  Lava Burst removed in favor of Call of Thunder, a “two-button” rotation, mana problems. | Zierhut claims the late change: “players really don’t like Lava Burst” and wanted a strong  Chain Lightning. Zierhut judges that the result “could have used a little more cook” and is watching Elemental “very very closely”. |
| Restoration |  Riptide loses its instant heal. | Not found: this specialization is named neither in the interview segment nor in Kaivax’s message. |
A player on the US Blizzard forum put a number on the Elemental gap. With the November 2 notes applied as written, before they reached the client, the result for a five-minute full-raid fight is: Enhancement goes from 559 to 737 damage per second, Elemental from 468 to 560. Elemental falls to 76% of Enhancement, against 84% the week before. This is a player simulation, not Blizzard data.
Early 2027: an intention, not a commitment
The exact sentence, at 15:34: “I wouldn’t be surprised if early next year we revisit the Shaman talents a little bit. It’s not going to be sooner than that, right? It’s just going to be a patch.” The video’s subtitles are automatic: the quote is kept short to limit the risk of error.
| Zierhut’s phrase | What it says | What it does not say |
|---|---|---|
| “I wouldn’t be surprised” | A revision is likely | A decision already made: it is a conditional |
| “early next year” | Early 2027 | A month, a date, a patch number |
| “a little bit” | A touch-up of the talents | A rework, or what it would contain |
| “It’s not going to be sooner than that” | No talent change earlier than that | No tuning in the meantime: he announces some |
Until then, Zierhut talks about tuning “once we get raid data”, and the raids open on December 9. Zierhut says the Shaman and Druid talents are “the only ones on my radar for significant change early next year”. Another member of the team adds shortly after that “things are not permanently set in stone”.
Tuesday, November 10: the first written change
On November 6 at 10:11 pm Paris time, Kaivax, a Blizzard community manager, published a hotfix plan on the US forum. For Enhancement: “We plan to make changes so that Strength is always their strongest stat”. The post adds in bold an immediate instruction: Enhancement Shamans who are leveling up “will want to collect Strength and Attack Power gear from now on”.
For shamans, the message picks up the “legitimate” half of Zierhut’s answer, the gear half. It leaves aside the Elemental and Restoration talents. It also mentions following Tuesdays “if necessary”. The points on Hunter and Warlock pets and on Affliction Warlock are in our article on the November 10 balance changes.
The development notes of November 2, published on the European forum, carried a different line: “with the exception of bugs and serious outliers, we don’t plan on making big tuning changes between now and the opening of the raids next month”. The November 6 message puts Enhancement among problems that “need some immediate changes”.
The WoW Forever shaman Discord: reopening not confirmed
The moderators had promised the server would reopen “regardless of the outcome”. As of November 7, no reopening is confirmed in the sources consulted. On the European forum, player Leaveñ relays the closure, attributing it to a Blizzard announcement a few hours earlier that it would stop publishing changes before the raids open: that is the player’s wording, to be read alongside the line from the notes quoted above.
On the site’s calculator, as of November 7, only one Shaman build appears among the 100 up-to-date saved builds, saved by 48 members. Warlock has 26, Druid 21. This anecdote only covers readers who save a build, and only the latest generation of codes.
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