World of Warcraft: Forever has officially nerfed its best race ahead of launch, leading to a massive shake-up. The game was announced at BlizzCon earlier this year and almost immediately went live with a beta from September 17 to October 21, now ending a stress test in the next few days, with the final version of the MMO coming out on November 4. The timeline has been quite narrow for World of Warcraft: Forever, and Blizzard has already changed multiple aspects of each race and class.
This is probably quite relevant for all players, and although races only make up a small percentage of overall damage and benefits when playing a given class, they can matter when making alts in World of Warcraft: Forever. Alts benefit a lot from the game’s Legacy System, which helps them get talent points earlier than they would, which can then make builds perform better before a certain level threshold. The game is also getting more balance passes in its early weeks, according to Blizzard, so a lot is likely to change based on feedback.
World of Warcraft: Forever’s Best Race is Officially Its Worst After Nerfs
World of Warcraft: Forever‘s Undead Paladin has become the poster child of the game because it’s the first time ever this combo is playable, but the Undead’s racial passive Touch of the Grave has been nerfed significantly in the final beta patch. Originally, Touch of the Grave had a low proc chance on any hit, excluding damage over time, and it would drain 5% HP from the target and restore it as healing to the user. Now, the passive has a fixed 20% proc chance for melee attacks and a 30% chance for spells, keeping the same effect as before, but it now has a cooldown of 25 seconds. Before, there seemed not to be a significant cooldown, which meant that sometimes Undead would perform better than other classes, leading to DPS parses in the beta where Undead would be at the top. However, the recent nerf is huge because a 25-second cooldown is too long to make Touch of the Grave impactful, either as damage or healing.
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Though Undead have Cannibalize as an active ability to help with Health and Mana in between Dungeon pulls or when leveling up, Will of the Forsaken is nerfed in WoW: Forever, and Underwater Breathing is a decent but mostly negligible passive. Touch of the Grave was the main allure for Undead, but now it’s subpar at best. Not only did Blizzard nerf Undead, but most other races got buffs, making picking Undead as one’s playable race even less desirable. Humans have incredible crit chance across the board, extra Spirit, and more. Dwarves and Tauren got extra crit damage and healing, as well as buffs to Find Treasure and War Stomp, respectively. Trolls got more health regen, Orcs got a generalized crit chance increase (and a nerf to Blood Fury), and Skyborne elves in WoW: Forever now have 3% increased Haste instead of 1%. On top of all that, Gnomes, one of the best races in the game, got a significant buff that puts them above most other races by a huge margin.
As such, Undead have suddenly gone from one of the best and most flavorful races in the game to one of the worst, and that’s history repeating itself because Undead are one of the weakest races in World of Warcraft retail, too. Many fans are hoping that Blizzard reconsiders the nerf to Touch of the Grave on launch, but it’s possible that this won’t happen on November 4.
Though WoW: Forever has a new Druid form, brand-new items with game-changing effects (including a sword that theoretically allows Mages to go melee), and several good changes to specs and races, the Undead aptly remain “forsaken.” Whether this will change remains to be seen.
- Released
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November 4, 2026
- Multiplayer
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Online Multiplayer, Online Co-Op
- Number of Players
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Single-player
- PC Release Date
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November 4, 2026
