WoW Forever: character panel explains each stat on the beta

The character panel on the WoW Forever beta explains each stat in detail, according to a report published on 21 September. Players can hover over a stat to see what it is, what it does and how it helps their character. The report calls these descriptions one of the biggest changes to the panel, especially for new players, and says versions of WoW before Cataclysm often described stats only vaguely.

According to the report, the descriptions also answer questions players often ask, such as what a critical strike is and whether damage-over-time effects can critically strike; the report does not give the answer to the second. Once a character has any hit chance, the report says, the tooltip also shows how much hit is needed against targets of different levels.

Some of the stats the panel explains work differently from Classic. In its recap of the WoW Forever deep dive panel at BlizzCon, published on 13 September, Blizzard said Forever keeps the familiar stats from Classic but reworks several of them. Spell, melee and ranged hit chance are combined, and so are spell, melee and ranged critical strike chance.

For tanks, the report says, the panel explains stat goals that are especially important to them, such as Critical Strike Immunity and Crushing Blow Immunity. As the names say, these are the points at which enemies can no longer land critical strikes, or crushing blows, an especially heavy kind of hit, on the tank. Players more often call them the Defense cap and the avoidance cap. The report stresses that Defense still helps a tank after its so-called cap is reached.

The descriptions are known from this one report only, and Blizzard has not confirmed them: as of 24 September we found no Blizzard post about them. Blizzard's list of known beta issues, dated 18 September, does mention the panel: the character sheet did not yet show a character's level, class or titles, and the chances it showed for glancing blows, hits that do reduced damage, were not accurate, both marked as work in progress. On 24 September Blizzard said an updated list would follow a new beta build. The beta runs until 21 October, and Blizzard has not said whether the panel will look the same when WoW Forever launches at 23:00 UK time on 4 November, which is midnight on 5 November in Central Europe.