Talents Forever

Training Grounds

Update log

  • A Training Dummy DPS board: a 1 minute run in the Ring goes on the board, checked by replaying your run on the server, with the best for each class and spec. Find it on the Ladder page.
  • Abilities land the instant you press them: stuns, sheeps, finishers, Mortal Strike and Frostbolt no longer wait up to 0.4 seconds to take effect.
  • Every press shows on the next frame: the cast bar, the cooldown sweep, the animation and the sound no longer wait for the duel's next 50 millisecond step.
  • On a phone, a tap made early in the global cooldown is kept and cast the moment it ends, so an early tap is never lost.
  • A Rogue's or a cat's press a little short of Energy waits for the next Energy tick when it comes within 0.4 seconds, instead of failing.
  • A and D now strafe, and the mouse turns you (hold the right button). Prefer the old way? Turn on Classic turning at the top of Key Bindings.
  • Your foe is targeted the moment the fight starts, so the screen stays clear. On a phone a tap out of reach no longer runs you in: move with the stick, as in the game.
  • Rogues: Rupture bleeds for every spec, the off hand carries Crippling Poison, Expose Armor takes the armor off, Distract no longer turns a foe who is fighting you, and Sprint and Blind sit on the default keys.
  • Combat is your own: Vanish and Feign Death take you out of combat while your foe stays in, Stealth, Prowl and Charge are refused in combat as in the game, Sap works again on a foe who has left combat, and health comes back out of combat.
  • Water for every class that uses Mana: you carry 20 Morning Glory Dew, and a Mage carries 20 Conjured Crystal Water and can conjure more. Sit and drink out of combat; moving, pressing a button or taking a hit stands you up. No food.
  • Buffs come back after a dispel: when a Purge or Dispel Magic takes your Blessing, Fortitude, Arcane Intellect or Mark of the Wild, its stats go with it, and your class's buffs sit on Bar 4 so you can cast them again.
  • Warlocks can summon a new demon from their bars and use Demonic Sacrifice for real, with Fel Domination, Master Summoner and Soul Shards as in the game, and Blood Pact now keeps its health.
  • Talents: 443 of the 465 talents now work as their text says, every talent spell your build gives sits on a key, and Arcane Wrath and Elemental Mastery can be cast.
  • Healing: a heal shows its whole amount, overheal included, heals over time keep the healing they were cast with, F1 or a tap on your own frame targets you, and Dampening cuts every shield too.
  • Casters can wand through a silence or a kick, a Mage or Warlock wears one armor at a time, and Mage Armor keeps half your Mana regeneration while casting.
  • Mages and Warlocks: Ice Lance on a Frozen foe always gets its Frozen damage, Arcane Blast is a buff on you, Demonology can cast Conflagrate, Fel Domination lasts 15 seconds, and the Felhunter's Devour Magic takes a buff off your foe (Purge and Dispel Magic now take off Arcane Power and other Mage and Warlock buffs too).
  • Shamans and Hunters: a totem replaces the one of its element, Grounding Totem works at 30 yards, the Frost traps share their cooldown, and Auto Shot runs on the bow's 2.4 seconds. A Hunter's Boar runs its Charge at the game's speed and strikes when it arrives, instead of jumping there.
  • A Feral's Enrage gives all 30 Rage and keeps it while it lasts, Flurry speeds three swings and fades after 15 seconds, and Intimidation sent from the pet bar starts its cooldown on your own bar too.
  • Bots play their class at every level: Easy and Normal no longer stand idle, a Protection Warrior keeps Defensive Stance, melee steps around a trap it saw go down, and bots press their talent cooldowns.
  • Moving: holding Jump keeps hopping, a light push on the phone stick walks, two fingers zoom the camera on a phone, and the camera pulls in when you look up from below.
  • Sound and look: 39 more of the game's sounds, each spec's own weapon sounds, demon voices, quiet ticks for damage and healing over time, a stun you can see at a glance, enemy nameplates in their class colors and the game's power bar colors.
  • In-fight tips are gone, for a cleaner screen.

  • Choose your pet before the duel: a Warlock brings the Imp, Voidwalker, Succubus or Felhunter, a Hunter one of seven beasts (Boar, Cat, Wolf, Scorpid, Raptor, Bear or Spider). Right-click a pet button (long press on a phone) to turn its autocast on or off.
  • A second arena joins the rotation: the Hollow Drain, a flooded Halloween vault with pillars and waterfalls. About one duel in three is fought there, and the Ring the rest.
  • Stealth and stance bars: in Stealth a Rogue's keys 1 to 6 are a bar of their own, and a Warrior gets one for Defensive Stance and one for Berserker Stance, as in the game.
  • Diminishing returns work as in the game: the same kind of stun, fear, root, sheep or silence within 15 seconds of the last one lasts half as long, then a quarter, then the target is immune, and the timers and the Combat Log show the real time.
  • Dampening: after the first minute of a duel, all healing and shields are cut by 10% more every 10 seconds, the same for both players, so a healer can no longer outlast the clock. It shows as a Dampening aura on both players. Never on the Training Dummy.
  • Hiding never wins on time: a player who spent more than half of the last minute, or of the whole duel, in Stealth, Prowl or Shadowmeld can no longer win when the clock runs out.
  • About 50 class fixes: Divine Shield and Divine Protection work inside Blind and Freezing Trap, and Bloodthirst deals its damage on any spec that takes it.
  • 221 more spells use the game's own effects, 312 in all.
  • The ladder shows each player's race, with a new page on how each race does in its class, and a countdown to WoW Forever's launch sits on the home screen and after every duel.
  • Practice and the Training Dummy start up to 3 seconds sooner on a phone, and practice bots play smarter: Rogues Vanish when losing, Mages put Ice Barrier back up, Shamans drop Grounding Totem.
  • Phones: Jump now sits on the right with your other buttons, so your left thumb moves you and your right thumb jumps.
  • Fixes: mouse buttons 4 and 5 bind and cast, Shred works from behind, Survival's shots use attack power, the sound setting is remembered, the "A pillar is in the way" tip is gone, Water Shield shows its globes, and each demon's health in the pet window matches the duel, your fighter no longer turns white for a moment after you leave a fight, the Voidwalker keeps its bracers on its wrists, and nameplates glide aside instead of jumping.

  • Greyed talents now work for Paladin, Hunter, Rogue, Priest, Shaman, Mage, Warlock and Druid, each by its tooltip. A talent that still does nothing in a duel says why.
  • Strikes the game normalises (Mortal Strike, Multi-Shot, Backstab, Stormstrike and 12 more) use its normalised weapon speed: Multi-Shot on Marksmanship hits for 368 to 425.
  • Beast Mastery and Marksmanship Hunters: Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite and Counterattack deal their damage.
  • Connection: a reconnect that hangs is tried again after 2 seconds instead of waiting up to 20.
  • Practice and the Training Dummy reach the fight about 4 seconds sooner.
  • Chain Lightning shows its real arc, Holy Light its sparkle, and the Frostbolt and Frost Shock hit is softer.

  • Spells now use the game's own effects: Lava Burst, Lightning Bolt, Frostbolt, Fireball, Shadow Bolt, Arcane Missiles, Cone of Cold and about 80 more.
  • Phones: the DPS meter and the queue are small pills you tap for more, the frames are slimmer, and the pet buttons sit at the edge.
  • The Training Dummy's nameplate no longer jitters at some distances.
  • Gore Drinker works, and so do the Arms talents that were greyed out. A talent that still does nothing in a duel says why.
  • Multi-Shot deals its damage again; Mocking Blow, Distract and Mend Pet from a bar work; Hunters swing their two-hander.
  • Animations: Ghost Wolf has its cast pose, a polymorphed sheep walks, Slam swings, Ice Block holds you frozen.
  • Connection: the countdown evens both players out before the fight starts.

  • Shadow Priest tuned down in duels: Shadow damage 15% lower, Shadowform takes 5% off physical damage instead of 15%, Power Word: Shield absorbs half as much, Blackout procs half as often.
  • Every class checked against WoW Forever's tooltips, about 75 fixes: Mind Flay slows 50%, Blackout rolls once per Shadow spell, Recklessness, Death Wish, Holy Shield, Aspect of the Monkey, Cold Blood, Lightning Overload, Cone of Cold, Entangling Roots and more.
  • Fingers of Frost: both charges now count as Frozen for Shatter.
  • Feral: Shifting Power works, turning 55% of your base mana into 40 Energy in Cat Form on an 8 sec cooldown.
  • Warlock: your mana bar no longer runs dry on its own after a minute of casting, and Life Tap gives its full 424 mana.
  • The 30 Oct talent hotfix: rebuilt Paladin and Druid trees, Arcane Blast, Swiftmend, Revenge, Light's Vigil.
  • Smoother opponents: far fewer corrections at normal ping.
  • Fewer freezes: a dead connection comes back in about 3 seconds, and a slow opponent no longer slows you down.
  • Friend duels survive a dropped connection for 20 seconds.
  • Switching tabs no longer freezes your opponent's screen.
  • Desktop: even frame pacing on high refresh screens, and a Smooth or Quality choice under Graphics in Key Bindings (K).
  • Slower computers now lower their graphics on their own when they struggle.
  • Phones reach the first fight faster.
  • Holding both mouse buttons to run works again after a long turn.
  • Proc tracker above your cast bar: Maelstrom Weapon, Heating Up, Shatter windows, Overpower and more. Turn it off in Key Bindings.
  • The training dummy never dies.
  • Key bindings are saved per character, and the HUD can be moved (Edit layout in Key Bindings).
  • Piercing Howl, Improved Berserker Rage and Strider Kick fixed, and the sound button is easier to find.
  • Polymorphed pets turn into a sheep, and the Felhunter is its real size.
  • On phones the chat button is gone; chat is Enter on a keyboard.

How a duel works

You play your class at level 60 in its Tier 1 set and Molten Core weapons against a Training bot: one of the class you pick, or any of the nine with Any, your own class too. Your buttons, costs, cooldowns and numbers are the ones from the beta's files at level 60. Health and armour come from the class at 60 and that gear. Each kind of stun, fear or root lasts half as long the second time it lands on you and a quarter the third, then it cannot land at all until 15 seconds after the last one wears off, as in Classic, and the pillars block line of sight.

Move with W and S, strafe with A and D, turn with the mouse (hold the right button) or Q and E, and jump with Space. Prefer A and D to turn? Turn on Classic turning in Key Bindings. Press Tab for your target. Your bars are on 1 to 6, Shift with 1 to 6 and R, T, F, G, Shift+R and Shift+T, your stances or forms on Z, X, C and V, First Aid on Shift+F and your PvP trinket on the key left of 1. P opens your spellbook, K your key bindings and ? the full list in the duel. On a phone, the left thumb moves and the buttons are under your right thumb.

A bot comes in four strengths. Easy is slow to react, fights with 70% of its health, hits and heals at 60% of the game's numbers or less, never stuns or holds you, and its duels last two minutes and it cannot win on time. Normal hits as hard as the game does but takes a second or so to react and seldom kicks. Hard reacts in under a third of a second and kicks most casts. Champion reacts in a fifth of a second or less and kicks every cast it can.

The Ranked Arena puts you in a queue with other players. As soon as anyone else is queueing, both of you get the invite and have 20 seconds to enter, and a win or a loss moves both ratings. Ranked is real players only. While you wait you can play a bot or hit the dummy with no rating, and the invite comes up in the middle of that fight. Leaving a ranked duel once it has started counts as a loss. Every ranked result is checked before it counts.

The Training Grounds is here until WoW Forever launches on 4 November at 3 pm Pacific, and it closes then.

Fan-made and unofficial. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Blizzard Entertainment. Game sounds, icons and art belong to Blizzard Entertainment, used here in a free fan project. Rights holders: [email protected]