What changed since Classic

Talent trees

• Talent trees keep the Classic structure: the same number of rows, one-point milestones at 11, 21 and 31 points, plus a new one at 16This matters more than it sounds. A familiar structure means Classic spec knowledge mostly carries over, rather than being thrown out.SourceVERIFIED
• Some talents are unchanged from patch 1.12, some are adjusted or improved, and class buffs like Divine Spirit, Blessing of Kings and Improved Mark of the Wild are now baselineBuffs moving to baseline frees up the points that used to be spent buying them back, which is where a spec gets room to change.SourceVERIFIED
• Complete talent trees for all nine classes have been datamined from the BlizzCon demo buildDescribed by the people who mined them as mostly accurate, with rank scaling possibly wrong. We are not building recommendations on a demo build — the trees are re-read from the beta client, which opens 17 September.Datamined from the BlizzCon demo client by third-party data sites — not announced by BlizzardPROVISIONAL

Classes reworked

• Paladin: Holy Strike at level 6 (an instant Holy weapon strike on a 12-second cooldown); Seals are no longer consumed by Judgment; Seal of Fury gives Protection a tank Seal whose Judgment taunts; Consecration is baseline at 20; each of Holy, Protection and Retribution gets named new talentsIn Blizzard's own words, Paladins still lack an interrupt. But three distinct specs are now described in prose, which is why our Paladin recommendation names a spec rather than stopping at the class.SourceVERIFIED
• Itemisation changes are aimed at helping hybrid specs, with Retribution Paladin and Enhancement Shaman named directlyThese two were the classic examples of specs you played in spite of the numbers. If anything shifts a Forever spec ranking away from Classic wisdom, it is this.SourceVERIFIED

Racials

• Every existing race's racials are changed in the demo build — Orc Axe Specialisation becomes 1% crit, Dwarf gains Big Game Hunter, Tauren gets Plainsrunning, Gnome gets Eureka!, among others. Blizzard itself confirms only the shape (two active and two passive abilities per race) and a few examples: Dwarf Stoneform removes bleeds, poisons and diseases and Mace Specialisation adds crit; Undead keep Will of the Forsaken and CannibalizeTwenty years of "orc for the stun resistance" reasoning is on notice. Until the beta client confirms the new racials, every race pick on this site is a Classic-era default.Datamined from the BlizzCon demo client by third-party data sites — not announced by BlizzardPROVISIONAL
• Skyborne racials (datamined): Walk on Air, a 10-second glide · Wind Blessed, 1% haste · Elemental Insight, +5% damage against Elementals · Alliance-aligned add Read Ley Line, +100% health and mana regeneration · Horde-aligned add Skysight, +10% run speedFrom the BlizzCon demo build, not announced by Blizzard. Modest: nothing here decides a class on its own. Re-checked against the beta client before we rate it.Datamined from the BlizzCon demo client by third-party data sites — not announced by BlizzardPROVISIONAL

New race and class combinations

• Six new race and class combinations are confirmed: Gnome Priest, Human Hunter, Dwarf Shaman, Orc Mage, Troll Warlock and Undead (Forsaken) Paladin, with more plannedSourceVERIFIED
• Horde-aligned Skyborne can be shaman; Alliance-aligned can be mage. Both can be warrior, hunter, rogue or druid, with race-specific druid formsSourceVERIFIED

Not confirmed yet

• The final talent trees — every talent, its tier and its cost — and which specs that were unviable in Classic actually become competitiveThe shape is announced and a demo-build version is datamined; the beta client is what we rate from. Our spec ratings start from Classic behaviour, adjusted for what Blizzard has said, and stay provisional until then.AWAITING VERIFICATION