WoW Forever: rogues get Shank, shamans lose Lava Burst

Rogues in WoW Forever get a new ability called Shank, learned at level 24. It costs 5 energy, has a 10-second cooldown and strikes with your off-hand weapon for 50% weapon damage while generating 15 energy, and it cannot miss. Rank 2 arrives at level 44 and generates 25 energy. Several new talents build on it: Boot Knife can add 2 combo points, Flash of Steel adds energy and cuts the cooldown, and Venom now raises poison damage by 30% for 6 seconds after a Shank. Subtlety also gets Death Mark, a finisher that stores part of your damage on the target for 6 seconds and then releases it.

Shamans lose Lava Burst altogether. In its place Elemental gets Call of Thunder, which adds 5% critical strike chance to Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning. The top rank of Lightning Bolt now deals 80% more base damage, Chain Lightning now takes 2.5 seconds to cast and hits harder, and Lightning Overload now has a 10, 20 or 30% chance to copy a spell, up from 3, 7 or 10%. For Restoration, Riptide costs about 40% less mana but its cooldown doubles to 12 seconds and it no longer heals up front, only over time.

Paladins lose Salvation, Mass Salvation and Revoke. Righteous Fury can now be trained at level 10 instead of 16, the level at which other tanks get their tanking stance, and it now adds 33% to all threat plus 90% to threat from Holy damage. To make up for the missing Salvation, the threat bonus of Bear Form rises from 50% to 115% and Defensive Stance from 30% to 80%.

Other classes see sharp changes as well. Mages lose Frost Blast, Shadow Word: Death now costs a Priest 30% of maximum health if it fails to kill the target, up from 10%, and Warlock pets now gain 2 health per point of their master's stamina instead of 7.5. Lacerate becomes a Feral talent instead of a spell every Druid learns, and hunters get the buffs described in our report on the hunter buffs.

Blizzard calls these numbers a starting point and plans a large tuning pass once players are levelling past 30. The wider changes to class damage and training costs are in our overview of the launch notes. For Europe, WoW Forever opens at midnight on 5 November in Central Europe.