October 15 beta build: HoTs can crit now, totems no longer stack

Blizzard pushed a new build to the WoW Forever beta on October 15. The notes are long and mostly visual fixes, quests and respawn timers. Here's what matters for raiding and progress.

The broadest change is on the healing side. Rejuvenation, Tranquility, Wild Growth, Renew and Riptide couldn't crit until now; that was a bug and it's fixed. Survival hunters' Lacerating Strikes and the gnome priest's Contingency Plan are on the same list. Priests can now always overwrite an existing Power Word: Shield as long as the target doesn't have Weakened Soul.

Shaman group buffs got tighter. Tranquil Air, Windfury and Grace of Air totems no longer work together in the same group, even from different shamans. Flametongue Totem no longer stacks with Flametongue Weapon or Windfury Totem, and it can't be stacked by recasting it either. Putting two shamans in one group to get all three air totems is off the table.

Druid Wrath base damage went up about 50%. Thorns, like the paladin's Retribution Aura, now updates with the caster's spell power. In Feral, Mangle is now called Primal Bite, since its signature debuff was already gone.

For paladins, Holy Strike is a bit stronger at every rank. In the Holy tree its cooldown is down to 10 seconds and the talent that did that has been removed. Retribution's Vengeance now caps at 3 stacks instead of 5, and Two-Handed Weapon Specialization drops from 3/6/9% to 2/4/6%. In return, Sacred Arbiter raises Holy Strike damage by 20% instead of 10%. Righteous Fury's Holy threat bonus is down from 90% to 60%, which matters for paladin tanks.

On the warrior side, Sunder Armor's threat values were corrected. Arms' Bloodthrill procs twice as often but only from main-hand attacks. Slam's cooldown goes from 15 to 18 seconds, and Improved Slam takes back 1.5 or 3 seconds. Fire mage Ignite no longer double-dips on percentage damage modifiers, which could be a real DPS loss for fire mages. Hunter pets' Furious Howl is 40% weaker.

Two item notes. Wands no longer gain anything from the user's spell damage. Minor, Lesser and regular Wizard Oil are back to Classic Era values (8, 16 and 24 spell power); Brilliant Wizard Oil is unchanged.

The UI also gets a Cooldown Manager. It's off by default, can be turned on under Gameplay Enhancement, and lets you move buffs and cooldowns wherever you like. For now it's testable only on druid, mage, priest, warrior and warlock.

The known issues list says forming or changing a party can move players to a different world instance. Blizzard says it's working on it. That one could be annoying when setting up raids; we expect it fixed by launch.

These are beta changes and can still change before the November 4 launch. We're updating the totem rules in our raid planner to match.

Source: Blizzard, "WoW Forever Beta Development Notes – Updated October 15", official forums (October 15, 2026) — https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/wow-forever-beta-development-notes-%E2%80%93-updated-october-15/2360696