Powershifting and Seal Twisting in WoW: Forever - What Changed?

The “Jank” Playstyles Min-Maxers Love

For those who don’t know, the Classic World of Warcraft community is obsessed with min-maxing their characters. So much so, that multiple emergent playstyles have been discovered over the years:

• Druid Powershifting - Quickly shifting out of, and back into, Cat form or Bear form to gain an instant boost of Energy or Rage. Some Druids would also opt to use a the level 40 Wolfshead Helm (When shapeshifting into Cat form the Druid gains 20 energy, when shapeshifting into Bear form the Druid gains 5 rage) during end-game Raids instead of using end-game gear!
• Paladin Seal Twisting - When you replace an active seal (like Seal of Command) with a new one (like Seal of Blood or Seal of Righteousness), the original seal lingers for about 0.4 seconds. If your auto-attack triggers within that 0.4 second window, the hit will apply the effect of both Seals.
• Shaman Totem Twisting - Similar to Seal Twisting, Enhance Shamans could drop Windfury Totem, leaving a 10-second weapon buff on party members, and then immediately replace it with another totem like Grace of Air. They then switch back to Windfury right before the 10-second buff expires.

With WoW: Forever giving Blizzard a chance to reset and build a new version of the Classic experience, many have been wondering if these “jank” playstyles built off of unintended ability interactions would live on?

Will They Live On In Forever?

In the latest WoW: Forever podcast episode (these podcasts have been amazing, great job Blizz!), the Forever dev team dove into class changes and their philosophy around how they want to redesign classes.

A huge buzzword consistently popped up, and that was “accessibility”. Simply put, the devs want everything a class offers to be accessible to all players with all information about a class and every playstyle in the game itself. They do not want players to have to go outside of the game and find a guide or YouTube video on how to Powershift, for example. They don’t want Druids wearing level 40 gear in end game content. They don’t want you to need a third party swing timer add-on to track the precise moment you need to Seal Twist.

With that being said, you may think that means the end of these beloved (or hated?) playstyles - but that is not the case!

Both Powershifting and Seal Twisting are returning to the game - they’ve just been redesigned to better fit Forever.

Powershifting In WoW Forever

If you look at the Druid’s Talent Tree, a new Shifting Power talent has been added to the 15 point row. Shifting Power allows the Druid to instantly convert 55% of base Mana into 40 Energy while in Cat form. Shifting Power's cost is also reduced by effects that reduce the cost of Shapeshifting.

This gives veteran Powershifting enjoyers and new players alike a tool to “Powershift”, while making it clear and accessible on what it is and how you can use it. It is an ability purposefully designed to be a part of the game, instead of being something some nerd randomly stumbled upon at 3AM in 2004.

It also gives us a better class fantasy experience, with Blizzard specifically calling out how silly it is for a Druid to shift into human form and suddenly gain more energy or rage… That just made no logic sense.

Seal Twisting In WoW Forever

Similar to Druids, the Paladin’s Talent Tree has been updated with a new Retribution 31 point capstone talent called Twist of Light, which gives you an Echo when you replace your current Seal with a new Seal, and the Echo applies the effect of your old Seal on your next auto-attack along with the effect of your new Seal.

Again, this is so much more accessible than original Seal Twisting was. For starters, you can actually read how it works in a talent tooltip. It also no longer requires you to have to install and constantly stare at a swing timer addon and makes twisting much more approachable for new players, and a bit simpler and more smooth for veteran players while still keeping the spirit of twisting alive.

RIP Totem Twisting

Unfortunately, not every emergent playstyle will be carrying over to Forever. Totem Twisting is officially dead, as having the effects of two different Air Totems was never intended.

Instead, Windfury Totem now provides a permanent group-wide buff as long as the Totem is up and your group members are standing near it. This might make you think “won’t we just need to bring more Shamans to the raid now?”, since in order to gain the benefits of Grace of Air you’d need another Shaman currently, and Blizzard acknowledged that issue and said they may consider making some of these buffs raid-wide instead of group-wide, so Shaman stacking may not be necessary.

I do think this is a solid removal - gaining the buffs of a non-existent, physical Totem just doesn’t make sense fantasy wise, and making Shamans and raids choose what Air Totem to run and how to plan around that is more interesting in my opinion. Not to mention enhancement Shamans can now focus more on their DPS rotation than having to worry about watching their WeakAura that tells them that it’s time to cast a new Totem!

Overall Design Philosophy Is Promising

To close out this post, I just want to say that I think the overall design philosophy is extremely promising to me. I’m almost more excited about them focusing on Class fantasy than I am with the actual changes made - that is super important to me.

But I think these decisions shine a light on how Blizzard will approach Forever. They want it to be a more accessible version of Classic WoW. They want knew players to hop in and have everything they need right in front of them. They want to polish things up and simplify things a bit if needed. But the biggest point is they very much so want to keep the spirit of Classic WoW at the forefront of their decisions.

I can’t wait to see what comes next, peace!