// GAMESPOT — GAMING
WoW: Forever Is Giving Players A Big Damage Boost For Launch
World of Warcraft: Forever is changing in some major ways for launch, with Blizzard revealing classes across the board will deal more damage as it pursues design solutions that better fit in with Forever's combat.
In a lengthy developer note attached to Forever's launch patch notes, Blizzard outlined its philosophy for its latest version of WoW. It said during the game's nearly month-long beta that it was trying to keep player power in check. That meant every time it gave a class new tools and abilities, it had to tone down others to compensate. Blizzard now thinks that was the wrong approach.
"Those reductions left some iconic abilities feeling lackluster, and closed the door to other potentially exciting design options," Blizzard said. "So over the last two weeks, we've raised damage on classes across the game, and have increased the health of higher-level creatures to compensate."
In addition to classes simply doing more damage, classes themselves are changing in major ways. Elemental Shamans, for example, have had Lava Burst, a key part of their class during the beta, removed entirely. It's an example of what Blizzard said was the developer hastily "turning to Burning Crusade or Wrath-era solutions" rather than creating new ideas for how classes should play in Forever compared to previous versions of WoW.
"Our aim in class design is not perfect numerical equality, but rather for every class to feel valuable to groups they join, with powerful, unforgettable moments brought on by mastering them," Blizzard said. "In Forever this is accomplished by doubling down on the strengths and differences that make each class unique, rather than overly unifying them."
Alongside Shaman, a number of other classes have received significant changes going into launch, particularly Paladin and Rogue, with much of their talent trees almost completely reworked. Every class has received some balance changes.
Though the patch notes are largely dedicated to class changes, there are some other adjustments coming for launch as well. There are a number of tweaks to the game's controller support and bug fixes for various quests. Blizzard stated it additionally increased enemy respawn rates in the world for launch, particularly in lower-level zones. Its goal isn't to completely remove contention for spawns but to make it so players aren't hitting hard bottlenecks.
"Once the initial launch surge of low-level characters has settled down, we will adjust the lower-level zones down to more typical rates," Blizzard said.
You can find the full WoW: Forever launch patch notes below. WoW: Forever launches November 4. Ahead of launch, read up on the best WoW: Forever addons to install so you're ready on day one. In other news, Blizzard revealed its plans for how often players should expect Forever updates, as well how it's looking to avoid dead servers in the future.