What Blizzard Has Said
Gnome is the new Priest race, Priest is not on the Skyborne list, and most Priest details are still open.
| Claim | Source | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Skyborne can be Warrior, Hunter, Rogue, or Druid on both factions, Mage on Alliance, and Shaman on Horde. Priest is not on the list. | Meet the New Skyborne | Confirmed |
| Blizzard's race and class tables list six new combinations, including Gnome Priest, and the Deep Dive recap says more are planned. The tables' Undead Paladin is the Forsaken Paladin on Battle.net. | Create the Hero, Deep Dive recap | Confirmed |
| Priest races: Human, Dwarf, Night Elf, and Gnome (Alliance); Troll and Forsaken (Horde). Gnome is new. | Create the Hero, September 22 | Confirmed |
| Forever updates every specialization, with a focus on talents and noticeable abilities that carry meaningful trade-offs. Most Priest details are still open, and the September 24 and October 1 notes change only a few spells and talents. | Battle.net product page | Confirmed |
| The BlizzCon roundup gives no Priest spell, talent or specialization list. | BlizzCon roundup | Confirmed |
October 1 Beta Build Changes
Four Priest changes land in the October 1 beta build, per Blizzard's October 1 beta development notes. They are confirmed for the beta, not promised for launch.Source: WoW Forever Beta Development Notes, October 1, checked Oct 1, 2026. Our October 1 beta notes summary lists every class.
| Change | As of the October 1 beta build | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Devouring Plague | Can now correctly critically strike | Confirmed |
| Shadow Word: Death | No longer always benefits from Early Demise, whatever the target's health | Confirmed |
| Inner Focus (Discipline) | Its Critical Strike increase no longer applies to Periodic Effects | Confirmed |
| Shadow Weaving (Shadow) | Can no longer fail to apply | Confirmed |
Early Player Reads and Community Impressions
The Wrath-style Discipline Priest kit is a community read for now. In community analysis, Khalma is excited about a Wrath-style Discipline Priest kit with improved shields and Penance. Blizzard's Deep Dive panel recap backs up two related points: Divine Spirit becomes a baseline spell, and bonus healing grants 33% bonus damage. Full Priest talent trees and Penance itself are still open, so Khalma's read stays a player observation. The Priest tree and its evidence flags come from the community dataset, not Blizzard.
What Is Still Unknown
Still open: Priest roles, the full spell list and talents, racial spell details and the spring combinations.
- Whether Forever keeps Priest's DPS/healer roles.
- Whether it keeps Classic's Holy, Discipline, and Shadow names.
- The full Priest spell list and talents.
- Priest rotations and most tuning.
- What the racial Priest spells do in full.
- Whether the two spring race/class combinations are still planned.
- Whether either spring combination is Priest.
The September 24 and October 1 notes change only the spells and talents listed above. Output Lag reports the 2005/2006 Priest tree redesigns as a model, plus “just a bit” of group healing for healers. It makes no Priest assignment. Blizzard names the racial Priest spells but describes only fixes, and they aren't in its September 22 racial list. Warcraft Tavern reports changes without specifics.
The spring combinations come from the deleted first roadmap image, and the current roadmap graphic drops them.
How Much the Priest Talent Trees Changed From Classic
In a community read of the beta client, most Classic Priest talents changed: of Classic's 47 Priest talents, 10 read the same, 30 changed and 7 left the trees. Thirteen new talents bring the total to 53 across Discipline, Holy and Shadow Magic. The read compares every Priest talent in beta client build 1.60.1.70009 with Classic Era 1.15.9.69722.Source: WoW Forever Talents, talent changes, checked Sep 28, 2026. All of it is reported, not Blizzard-published.
| Tree | New | Changed | Unchanged | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Discipline | 7 | 10 | 1 | 18 |
| Holy | 3 | 10 | 4 | 17 |
| Shadow Magic | 3 | 10 | 5 | 18 |
Seven Classic Talents Left the Trees
Seven Classic talents left the Priest trees, but trainers teach Divine Spirit instead. The read lists , Force of Will, Improved Power Word: Fortitude, Unbreakable Will, Improved Prayer of Healing, Lightwell and Improved Vampiric Embrace as missing. Four of the seven were Discipline talents. Divine Spirit moving to trainers matches Blizzard's recap: talents that "granted key class buffs"
are "now baseline for their classes."Blizzard: World of Warcraft: Forever Deep Dive Panel Recap, checked Sep 15, 2026.
Nothing explains why the other six went, or whether any return. One Holy talent was renamed rather than cut. Healing Focus is now , with three ranks instead of two, and it resists pushback on any spell, not just heals. That is why the September 24 notes can give pushback resistance from it.
New Priest Talents by Tree
Discipline: Shields, Crits and Penance
Discipline gets seven new talents, including Penance, shields from critical heals and more critical strike chance for heals on targets with Weakened Soul. Penance, a single-rank 21-point talent, hits an enemy for 81 Holy damage or heals an ally for 184, then again every second for 2 seconds. Divine Aegis turns critical heals into a shield worth up to 15% of the heal. Renewed Hope adds up to 10% critical strike chance to heals on targets with Weakened Soul and trims up to 5 seconds off it.
Soul Warding cuts Power Word: Shield's cooldown by 4 seconds and its Mana cost by 15%. The damage side gets Power in Light, up to 10% more Smite and damage on targets with your Holy Fire or, per the October 15 notes, Shadow Word: Pain, and Holy Precision, up to 18% Holy spell hit. Twin Disciplines adds up to 5% to instant spells; October 15 adds , Mind Flay, and Penance.Source: October 15 beta notes, post 6, Priest > Discipline. Power Infusion remains the 31-point capstone. The Discipline spec guide has every rank.
Holy: Mana and Group Healing
Holy's new talents return Mana and heal more than one target. Binding Heal heals a friendly target and you for 235 to 286, with low threat. Litany of Light returns Mana worth up to 10% of a heal's base cost whenever the heal differs from your previous one. Prayer of Mending, the 31-point capstone, heals the next time its target takes damage and then jumps up to five times.
Two older Holy talents changed. Spirit of Redemption lasts 15 seconds, up from Classic's 10, and Holy Nova's numbers are slightly lower. See the Holy spec guide.
Shadow Magic: A New Shadowform
The reworked Shadowform, still the 31-point capstone, trades some Shadow damage for cheaper Shadow spells with bigger critical strikes. It now gives 10% Shadow damage instead of Classic's 15%, but also halves the Mana cost of Shadow spells and adds 100% to their critical strike damage bonus. It blocks healing spells instead of all Holy spells.
In the pre-October 15 client read, Improved Mind Flay adds up to 20% damage and 10 yards of range, and its slow drops from 35% at rank 1 to 20% at rank 2. Devouring Contagion halves Devouring Plague's Mana cost and spreads it within 10 yards when the target dies. adds up to 30% critical strike chance to on targets at or below 20% health. The October 1 build fixed Shadow Word: Death getting that bonus whatever the target's health.
Blizzard's October 15 notes rework Improved Mind Flay: each Mind Flay damage instance deals 10/20% more than the previous one, and Devouring Contagion now spreads to 2 targets.Source: October 15 beta notes, post 6, Priest > Shadow.
Leveling a Priest in the Beta
Healing gear still adds damage while you quest. Our Priest Shadow talent order gives a Shadow talent order built on reported tooltip data and points to faction-zone advice, not a tested 1-60 quest-by-quest itinerary.Source: Priest leveling guide, "Talent order by level and point total" and "Race and route choices"; checked Oct 8, 2026. The one leveling-relevant stat change is general: bonus healing "now also includes one third as much bonus damage,"
the Deep Dive recap says.Blizzard: World of Warcraft: Forever Deep Dive Panel Recap, checked Sep 15, 2026.
Blizzard opened the beta at level 20 and said the cap would rise to 30.Source: The World of Warcraft: Forever Beta Now Live, checked Sep 28, 2026. Blizzard raised it to 30 with the October 1 update.Confirmed, a first-party sourceSource: Blizzard forums: Beta Update Maintenance - October 1, checked Oct 1, 2026. Thirty levels can't pay for a 31-point capstone, so , and the new are untested tooltip reads for now.
What Blizzard Has Actually Confirmed
The tables above summarize Blizzard's September 24 and October 1 Priest notes; the community talent comparison elsewhere on this page is a reported read of one older beta build. Those notes cover , , four racial Priest spells, , , and , all listed in the tables above.