The best settings to change on day one as a druid in Forever

Open the options menu on a new druid in Forever and you get the modern menu, not the one Classic had, with a hundred-odd boxes in it, and the question is which of them matter for a druid and which you can leave alone. This guide picks out the ones worth changing on a fresh druid and takes them in the order you’ll need them, from the minute you load in to your first battleground at 60, then finishes with three reference sections (graphics, controller and console variables) to come back to when you need them, not to read in one sitting.

Whilst I’ve set up druids on every client Blizzard has shipped, Forever’s menu is a retail menu with Classic’s forms bolted on, and Restokins is still levelling, so I haven’t clicked every one of these boxes in the live game yet. The guide was first written before launch from the beta client and updated for the live game on 7 November 2026. Where a claim depends on how the game behaves rather than on what the menu says, the sentence names what it rests on, whether that’s Classic, the beta or a named writer’s report.

The short version

If you only want what to change and why, these are the fourteen changes that matter most, in the order you’ll meet them, each with its reason in a line and a link to the detail further down. Pick your spec to hide what isn’t for you, or print the sheet and tick it off on your first login.

Before we start

This guide assumes a druid on Forever with the default interface, and that you’re willing to change a few keybinds, because the most important setting in here is a keybind. It doesn’t assume a spec, since Balance, Feral and Restoration all get the same first phase, and where the advice splits by spec or by what you’re doing (levelling, dungeons and raids, or PvP) the guide says so. It leaves out addons, and any macros beyond the two or three a druid can’t do without, so everything here works without them, though nothing stops you running addons alongside it.

The options live under Esc > Options, and most of your time goes in the Gameplay group, which Forever splits into Controls, Interface, Action Bars, Combat, Social, Gamepad, Ping System, Keybindings, Advanced Options and Nameplates, in that order. Graphics sit under System alongside Preset (a category new in the launch client that holds the experience preset, the character models and a few of the preset’s other switches), and Accessibility is its own group. The search box at the top of the menu is the quickest way to anything below, so if a path here doesn’t match your client, search for the setting’s name rather than hunting for it.

Most of what follows is stated plainly, because the launch client’s own interface code or Blizzard’s notes back it, and where a claim rests on anything else (Classic, retail, the beta or a named writer’s report), the sentence says which.

A few settings in here (the experience preset, the character models and Interact On Left Click among them) are taste rather than advantage, and for those the guide sets out the case each way and then gives its recommendation or leaves it to you, because the right answer depends on what you enjoy looking at rather than on what wins fights.

The hard part of this guide was done by other people. Most of the defaults below come from Gethe’s mirror of the launch client’s interface code in wow-ui-source and Ketho’s BlizzardInterfaceResources, what changed and when comes from Kaivax’s development notes and Blizzard’s own posts, and Vallun at GuildJen, Jurdi at Method, Luxrah at Warcraft Tavern, and Dmitro at Conquest Capped and Bellular (through Kami’s write-up) did the menu, form and frame rate work this guide leans on. The full list is in Sources and credit, and the recommended order to set it all in is below.

Before you take a step

Change these at level 1, before you talk to the first quest giver. This guide’s view is that a druid who changes this first phase and nothing else will be better off than one who installs a dozen addons and leaves the keybinds alone, and most of them take a minute each, whereas leaving them means fighting each one for the next sixty levels.

The preset you pick at first login

The first thing Forever asks you on your first login is to Choose Your Experience Preset, and you only see that screen once. Classic gives you the older character models (SD, standard definition), quest markers and objective areas off, separate bags, transmog off, turning on A and D, and the Classic screen layout. Enhanced gives you the newer models (HD), quest markers on, one combined bag, transmog on, strafing on A and D, and the Centralized layout. The preset only sets starting values, though, and every one of them can be changed afterwards in the options (and the models at a Barbershop too), so you can’t pick wrong in a way that sticks. In the launch client those starting values live under System > Preset, so that’s where to go if you change your mind.

• The case for Classic, it looks and feels like the game you remember, with quest text you have to read and bags you have to manage, and if part of why you’re here is the 2004 experience, that’s the preset that hands it to you. The one thing it gets wrong for a druid is the turning keys, and you’ll fix those in the next section either way.
• The case for Enhanced, it saves you a dozen changes, it starts you with strafe keys, and the quest areas and single bag cut out a lot of time spent on things that aren’t the fight. Blizzard’s own advice, if you’re not sure, is to start with Enhanced.
• The recommendation, and it’s a preference rather than an advantage, is Enhanced with the models switched back to SD, because the convenience is real and nothing in it costs you anything in a fight. If you pick Classic, the only change that isn’t optional is the strafe keys.

HD or SD models

The launch client keeps the model choice under System > Preset > Character Models (it used to sit under Graphics, and changing it no longer needs a reload), and you can also change it at a Barbershop. The client’s own tooltip says the choice applies across your account, not to one character as Blizzard’s starter guide had it, and Blizzard says it changes appearance only, not abilities. At Conquest Capped, Dmitro measured no difference in frame rate between the two on the beta client. Nobody has yet reported whether it changes how readable a druid’s forms are at 40 yards, or whether other players see your choice or only you do, so this guide treats it as taste.

• The case for SD, it rests on SD giving a Tauren the old forms a generation of players learnt to read at a glance, which isn’t certain, because Blizzard’s Skyborne post says SD druid forms are still in development. If it does, then for anyone who spends their evenings working out whether the druid running at them is a Cat or a Bear, the silhouette you already know is the one you’ll read fastest.
• The case for HD, it’s the better-looking model by a distance, it’s what most of the screenshots and videos you’ll watch use, and if you’re playing a Skyborne druid, Blizzard’s Skyborne post says “Skyborne player characters (and yes SD Druid forms) are in development and arriving early 2027”, so HD is the only option a Skyborne druid has for now.
• The recommendation, SD on a Tauren, because anyone who has spent years reading those shapes shouldn’t have to relearn them in a battleground. It’s a habit, not an advantage, and if HD makes you want to log in, that’s worth more.

Strafe keys and the camera

Strafing (moving sideways whilst still facing forward) runs at full speed and walking backwards doesn’t, so a druid who turns with A and D and backs away from a Warrior is giving up speed for nothing, 2.5 yards a second if Forever keeps Classic’s backpedal speed. If you picked the Classic preset, the Preset category has a button for each preset’s turning and strafing keys, which sets the pair in one click, or you can go to Options > Keybindings > Movement Keys and bind Strafe Left and Strafe Right to A and D yourself. Either way, unbind the turn keys so you can’t fall back on them. The mechanics guide covers why at length. If you make one change from this page and skip the rest, make it this one.

The camera comes next, under Options > Gameplay > Controls in the Camera block. Set Camera Following Style to Never adjust camera, which stops the camera swinging back behind you whenever you move, so you can run one way and look another (most of what kiting is). Then drag Max Camera Distance to the far end of the slider to see more of the fight around you. The launch client’s code still starts that slider at its minimum, which makes this the biggest single change on the page, though that’s only the code’s starting value and the preset you pick may change it on a fresh character. If the slider still stops shorter than you’d like, the console variables guide has the setting behind it.

Targeting and looting

Leave Sticky Targeting on (it’s on by default, and it stops a click on the ground dropping your target), and turn Enable Interact Key on and bind Interact With Target to something you can reach. That one key loots, talks to quest givers and picks herbs without you having to aim the cursor, which for a Balance or Restoration herbalist is a lot of clicks saved over sixty levels. Interact On Left Click is a taste call, not an advantage, because the client’s tooltip says it only decides whether a left click, as well as a right click and the Interact Key, talks to a vendor or opens a herb node (it’s on by default), so this guide leaves that one to you. Auto Loot is taste too, and the recommendation is on whilst levelling, because holding Shift on the one corpse you don’t want to empty is fewer clicks than opening every other one.

Frames, bars and numbers

Three small changes make your own information readable. Under Interface, set Status Text to Both, which puts your health and mana as a number and a percentage on your frame, because the default is no text at all. Under Action Bars, turn on Action Bars 2 to 5 (2 to 8 are all off by default) and turn on Show Numbers for Cooldowns, which gives every button a countdown so you know Innervate has eleven seconds left rather than “a bit”. Under Combat, turn on Target of Target, which is off by default and is the closest thing the default interface has to a threat meter.

Whilst you’re in Keybindings, unbind Action Page 1 to 6. PageBoy’s notes (not the client code) put them on Shift+1 to Shift+6 by default, where they swap your whole main bar when you meant to cast something on a Shift bind, and the first time that would have happened in Bear Form (the next phase) you’ll be glad you did.

Combat feedback

Under Combat, turn on Show Silhouette when Obscured, so you can still see yourself behind a tree or a boss, and leave Loss of Control Alerts on, because knowing whether you’re rooted, feared or stunned decides whether shifting will help. Leave Self Cast on its default of Auto and Key Press with Alt, which means a heal with an enemy targeted lands on you, and Alt plus a heal always lands on you. Leave Press and Hold Casting off. On retail it made druids loop in and out of a form whilst a form key was held, and off is the safe setting in case Forever does the same. Lastly, go to Nameplates and turn on Enemy Unit Nameplate, which the launch client’s code has off by default, so you can see the health and casts of what you’re fighting.

A first look at graphics

For the graphics, three changes help you see the fight on any computer, and the rest can wait for the graphics reference. Set Spell Density to Essential, turn Depth Effects off, and keep Projected Textures on so ground effects (traps, your own Hurricane, the fire you’re standing in) are drawn on the ground.

That’s the first phase done, and if you stopped here your druid would already move and read the fight better than the default one. Congratulations!

When forms arrive

Since Blizzard’s 3 November notes, newly trained spells (forms included) don’t land on your bars by themselves, so the day you train Bear Form, drag it onto a bar yourself. That day starts the second phase, and in the Classic order Forever is built on it’s a quest around level 10, with Cat Form following by 20. From then on your main action bar becomes several bars, your mana disappears from the screen whenever you’re in a form, and you need to know what’s on cooldown in forms you aren’t in. It’s easy once it’s set up and confusing until it is.

One bar per form

Your main bar (Action Bar 1) pages automatically when you shift. Which forms get a page of their own is server data the client code doesn’t show, and in Classic Cat Form, Bear Form and Prowl each had twelve buttons of their own, whilst Moonkin Form had none, so whether Forever gives Moonkin and Prowl a page rests on that Classic precedent. The launch client’s menu has no option to turn paging off, and you shouldn’t want one, because paging lets the same key do the same job in every form. Put your opener on 1 in Cat and your threat builder on 1 in Bear, your interrupt on the same key in both, and your hands learn one layout rather than four.

The shared bars you turned on in the first phase are what make this work, and it’s worth doing the arithmetic once. If Forever pages as Classic did, caster, Cat, Prowl and Bear each get twelve slots on the main bar, which is 48 buttons that swap under your fingers (60 if Moonkin gets a page too), and bars 2 to 5 add another 48 that never move. Anything you want in every form goes on those (Barkskin, Innervate, Rebirth, Dash, your forms themselves, a potion and a Healthstone), and only the form’s own rotation lives on the main bar, so you set the plan once rather than rearranging bars every time you shift.

Set the Prowl page up the first time you train Prowl, by going into Prowl and dragging your openers onto the bar whilst you’re stealthed, or you’ll open your first fight with a blank bar. The stance bar (the row of form icons) can be hidden in Edit Mode once your forms are bound to keys, though it’s worth keeping in PvP if you click a form to break a root. If you’ll ever play with a pad, read the Controller section before you touch Edit Mode, because switching the gamepad interface on or off resets your layout. Two bugs from the beta are worth knowing, and neither has shown up as fixed in the notes this guide checks. A macro that shifts with /cast !Cat Form (in Classic, the ! stops a second press cancelling the form) could leave the main bar stuck on the caster page, and a mid-October patch stopped some stance and stealth bars from paging at all. If either happens to you, a plain form key pressed twice is the workaround until Blizzard says otherwise.

The mana you can’t see

In Cat or Bear Form your player frame shows Energy or Rage and nothing else, so you can’t see whether you can afford to shift out and heal, or afford Shifting Power (Forever’s Feral talent that trades mana for Energy). Turn on Personal Resource Display under Combat, which puts a resource bar under your character, and in the launch client’s own code that display adds a mana bar whenever your main bar isn’t showing mana, which means in Cat and in Bear. That corrects what this guide used to say, when the beta code only gave a Balance druid a second mana bar and the advice was to plan for it not showing. Druid Forever Manabar and ShiftPlate still do the same job if you’d rather have the number on your player frame, and the low mana warning in the combat text from the console variables guide is still worth having.

The Personal Resource Display also shows combo points in Cat Form, which were missing from it in the early beta. In the launch client they’re a bar of their own that reads the points on your current target, and the target frame still shows them as well. The recommendation is to keep it on for every druid, not only Feral, because every spec shifts into Cat or Bear at some point (to run, to survive a Rogue or to carry a flag), and that’s when you’ll want your mana in view. In caster form it repeats what your player frame already shows, a small price for seeing your mana in every form.

The swing timer, for Feral

Forever has a built-in swing timer, under Advanced Options > Swing Timer, and it’s off by default. Turn it on for Feral. Maul in Bear Form lands on your next swing rather than straight away, and in Cat your auto attacks are a large share of your damage, so knowing where you are in the swing tells you when a shift or a Feral Charge costs you a hit. Balance and Restoration can leave it off. Whether the built-in bar shows a queued Maul, which is the one thing a Bear would want from it, isn’t something the client code or this guide’s sources settle.

Shifting out to cast

Pressing a caster spell whilst you’re in Cat or Bear drops the form and casts it, which is how a Feral or Restoration druid off-heals, and it’s controlled by the autoUnshift console variable rather than a menu option. Leave it on, which is the default. Moonkin Form in Forever can cast every spell that isn’t a heal, so a Balance druid only leaves Moonkin to heal, and with autoUnshift on, a heal pressed in Moonkin should drop you out of it if Moonkin follows the same rule as Cat and Bear.

For the few spells where you want the shift and the cast in one press, the Forever macro sites (RankedBoost and Kami among them, writing on the beta) all give the same pattern, as shown below:

/cancelform
/cast [@mouseover,help,nodead][help,nodead][@player] Innervate

In this case the first line drops whatever form you’re in, and the second casts Innervate on whoever is under your cursor, then your friendly target, then yourself. Rebirth needs a dead target, so its macro checks for one on both lines, which also means it only drops your form when there’s someone to bring back, as shown below:

/cancelform [@mouseover,help,dead][help,dead]
/cast [@mouseover,help,dead][help,dead] Rebirth

The catch with the Innervate macro is that the first line runs even when Innervate is on cooldown, so the macro will drop you out of Cat for nothing if you press it at the wrong time. Balance druids can delete the first line, because Moonkin casts Innervate without leaving.

The Cooldown Manager

The Cooldown Manager is Forever’s built-in answer to the cooldown-tracking addons that can’t read your buffs in combat any more, it supports druids, and it’s off by default. It lives under Advanced Options > Cooldown Manager, behind a box called Enable Cooldown Manager, and searching for “Cooldown” finds it too. Turn it on, then add what you can’t see on your bars from every form:

• Feral, Shifting Power, Dash, Frenzied Regeneration, Feral Charge and Barkskin, plus the Clearcasting buff, because there’s no report yet of Clearcasting lighting up the spell alert overlay the way it does on retail. Tiger’s Fury itself was removed in Blizzard’s 1 October notes, so the older guides that tell you to track it are out of date.
• Restoration, Nature’s Swiftness, Innervate, Swiftmend, Rebirth and Barkskin, the cooldowns you’ll want to know the state of the second a tank drops.
• Balance, Innervate, Barkskin and your Clearcasting and Eclipse buffs, so you know when a free or empowered cast is waiting.
• Tauren, War Stomp, as racials have been supported in the Cooldown Manager since Blizzard’s 1 October notes.

That list comes from the druid’s spells rather than the live Cooldown Manager’s own list, so check each spell is there as you add it. Trinkets have been trackable since Blizzard’s 8 October notes, whilst a Healthstone and other consumables weren’t as of those notes.

The rank trap

Forever keeps spell ranks, and in Classic a spell already on your bar didn’t update when you trained a new rank, so after every visit to the trainer, drag the new rank onto the bar or you’ll spend the next two levels casting the old one. Kami flagged this one, and it catches nearly everyone at least once. The spellbook’s settings dropdown has a Show All Spell Ranks box, which starts unticked, and this guide recommends ticking it for Restoration (a lower-rank heal is cheaper) and leaving it alone for everyone else. Low ranks get less from spell power, and Blizzard’s 1 October notes added an explanation of that to the character sheet.

Your own debuffs on nameplates

Whilst you’re building your Moonfire and Rake habits, go to Nameplates, open the Enemy NPC Buffs/Debuffs dropdown and make sure Personal Debuffs is ticked, so your own Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Rake, Rip and Faerie Fire show on the plate of the mob they’re on. The client’s own text says that option shows the effects you’ve applied, and the same dropdown’s Shared CC option shows crowd control you or your allies have applied, so other players’ damage over time isn’t among the options. Whether addons can read your debuffs in combat isn’t something the client code settles, but either way the plate is where your damage over time lives now.

When you start grouping

The third phase is your first dungeon, which for a Horde druid is usually Ragefire Chasm or Wailing Caverns somewhere in the teens, and it’s when you start caring about four other people’s health bars and about who the mobs are hitting. Most of these matter more to a Restoration druid than anyone else, and most of them are still worth having in a Feral or Balance druid’s interface, because every druid ends up healing something eventually.

Raid-style party frames

Open Edit Mode (Esc > Edit Mode), click the party frames and tick Use Raid-Style Party Frames, which is off by default. That puts your party in the same frames a raid uses, and it’s what makes the raid frame options apply in the menu for a five-player group. Copy the preset layout to a new layout before you edit it, so you’ve a clean one to go back to.

Then under Interface > Raid Frames, turn on Display Class Colors and Display Power Bars (both off by default), so you can tell the tank from the casters at a glance and see who is out of mana when you’re deciding where Innervate goes. Balance and Feral can also tick Display Only Healer Power Bars, which sits under Display Power Bars and only works with it on, keeping the frames thinner whilst still showing you the healer’s mana. For Restoration, set Dispellable Debuff Indicator to Dispellable By Me, so the only debuffs that light up are the curses and poisons you can remove, and set Display Health Text to Health Lost, which tells you how big a heal the deficit needs. Vallun prefers Health Remaining there, and both are reasonable.

Mouseover and click casting

Turn on Mouseover Cast under Combat and leave its key at None, which makes any spell you press go to the frame under your cursor, so you can heal a party member without ever losing your enemy target. That works for every druid, because it puts Innervate, Rebirth, Remove Curse and an emergency Regrowth onto whoever you’re pointing at. The risk is a stray cursor over a frame redirecting a spell you meant for your target, and if that keeps happening to you, give it a modifier key. You don’t need the old @mouseover macros for any of this any more, although they work on retail and in Classic, so they should here too.

For Restoration, open Keybindings > Click Casting and bind your heals to mouse buttons with modifiers on the frames, for example Rejuvenation on a plain right click, Regrowth on Shift and right click, Healing Touch on Ctrl and right click, and Remove Curse and Abolish Poison on the middle button. Keep a plain left click for targeting, because that’s what it does everywhere else, and click casting on frames is still the fastest way to heal in a raid on any input there is.

Threat without a meter

Forever has no threat meter in the default interface, so the cues you get are the ones you set up. Target of Target, from the first phase, tells a Bear whether the boss is on them and tells a healer who to heal. The nameplate Aggro Display options (search “Threat” in the menu) colour or flash a mob’s plate when its target changes, and this guide recommends all of them on in Bear, and the health bar colour on for Balance and Cat so you know the moment you’ve pulled something off the tank. It’s a cue rather than a number, and a Bear tanking anything serious will still want a threat addon. In Bear, also tick Do Not Flash Screen at Low Health, because a tank’s health spends a lot of time low and the red flash stops meaning anything.

The damage meter, focus and timing

Forever also has a built-in damage meter under Advanced Options > Damage Meter, off by default, with an Auto Reset Damage Meter box under it that clears it every time you enter a new instance, which is worth turning on so it starts fresh for each dungeon. Restoration druids can read healing done from it too, and it’s more useful as a mirror than a scoreboard, because it tells you whether your Moonfire uptime was what you thought it was, not whether you were a good teammate.

Bind Focus Target in Keybindings, which makes a second mob or player your focus so you can Hibernate or Roots it with a @focus macro without changing target. The Focus Cast Key under Combat defaults to Alt in the client code, which is the same key as Self Cast, so if you use it, move one of them to a different modifier.

Lastly, the spell queue window (how early the game lets you press the next spell before the current one finishes) and the separate graphics profile for raids and battlegrounds are both worth a look once you’re grouping, the first in the console variables guide’s spell queue section and the second in the graphics reference below.

At 60 for PvP

The last phase is the one this site is about, and it’s mostly nameplates, because in a battleground the plate over someone’s head is where you read their class, their cast and whether they’ve a trinket up. Most of it would help earlier as well, and if you’re doing world PvP whilst levelling, set it then.

Nameplates for players

Under Nameplates, turn on Nameplate Class Color for enemy players, which is off by default and colours every enemy plate by class, so the healer and the Rogue stand out of a crowd. Set Style to Large or Cast Focus, which gives you bigger cast bars, and turn on every Cast Bar Information option, including Highlight Important Casts and Flash When Targeted By Enemy. Bash and Feral Charge are your interrupts, and the cast bar is how you know when to use them, and in Balance it’s how you know when to Roots or Hibernate instead. Turn on the enemy player buffs and debuffs options too, so trinkets, crowd control and defensives show on the plate. Turn on Stack Nameplates for enemy units, so plates in a crowd don’t pile on top of each other and you can click the one you meant, though the launch code only shows that box when its own variable exists, and that variable isn’t in the client’s published list (see the console variables guide), so the box may not show on live at all.

Crowd control and focus

Stopping auto attack when you switch targets has no box in the launch menu, so it’s a console setting, stopAutoAttackOnTargetChange, and the console variables guide has the command. This guide recommends it on for PvP whatever your spec, so tabbing away from someone you’ve put to sleep doesn’t wake them up with your next swing, and Feral players doing PvE should leave it off, because it costs you swings after every target swap. Your focus key from the third phase earns its keep here, with Roots and Hibernate on @focus so you can control a second target without losing the first, and Loss of Control Alerts stays on. Under Interface, also turn on Replace Player Frame Portraits, which swaps portraits for class icons so your target frame tells you the class at a glance.

In Cat Form, the tracking menu on the minimap gave druids Track Humanoids in Classic, which shows players nearby, and it’s worth turning on for world PvP if Forever kept it. It replaces herb tracking whilst it’s on.

Seeing them first

For world PvP, set View Distance as high as your computer holds without the frame rate dipping, 7 or 8 if you can, because spotting a group coming over a hill a few seconds earlier is often the whole fight. What it costs is in the graphics reference. No source yet says whether view distance also changes how far away players and their nameplates are drawn, or only the terrain. The nameplate distance itself is a console setting, and it’s in the console variables guide.

In battlegrounds, keep Spell Density at Essential and check in your first few matches that enemy casts and ground effects still read, because Essential hides other players’ minor effects and nobody has yet confirmed which side of that line an enemy Frost Nova falls on. If the graphics profile for raids and battlegrounds is on, keep its view distance at 5 or more rather than the 3 some guides suggest, because a battleground isn’t a raid and you want to see who’s coming.

Graphics and performance

This is the first of the reference sections, and it’s split in two, the settings that help you see the fight and the settings that cost you frames, because they aren’t the same list. The graphics live under Esc > Options > System > Graphics, with a Graphics Quality slider that only sets a starting point, and every setting under it can be changed on its own. The launch client splits it into a Base tab and a Raid and Battleground tab, and if a name below doesn’t match your client, search for the setting.

A strong computer, below, means something around an RTX 3060 or RX 6700 or better, and a weak one is a GTX 1050 Ti, most laptops, or an older Mac.

Settings for seeing the fight

One thing you might read elsewhere is that volumeFog 0 in the console turns off the fog. On 24 September Blizzard removed “a setting that could disable fog in an unintended manner” without naming it, and whether volumeFog 0 still removes the fog on live isn’t known, so don’t plan your world PvP around it.

Settings that cost frames

If your frame rate is the problem, these are the settings that move it, ranked by what Dmitro, Kami and Bellular measured on the beta client. Render scale is the biggest single lever there is, because it’s the number of pixels the game draws, and both Kami and Dmitro found that dropping from 1440p to 1080p came close to doubling the frame rate. Kami’s own tests had Secondary Lighting giving back 26 frames from High to Good, and Compute Effects giving back 51 from Ultra to High. So on a computer that’s struggling, two settings most people never touch are worth more than every shadow and water setting put together.

Ray Traced Shadows, which older guides still list as a 30 frame cost, was removed from Forever on 1 October and Blizzard says it will come back in a later update. The launch client’s graphics code does still build a Ray Traced Shadows dropdown on a computer that doesn’t support Secondary Lighting (Macs aside), so some players may still see it.

Display and frame pacing

• Display Mode, windowed fullscreen for fast alt-tabbing, and try true fullscreen if you stutter when you turn the camera.
• Vertical Sync, off, particularly with a G-Sync or FreeSync screen, because it adds input lag, and only on if you see tearing.
• Max Foreground FPS, your monitor’s refresh rate or just under it, because steady pacing feels better than a number that jumps, and Max Background FPS at 8 to 30 so the game isn’t working your graphics card whilst you’re tabbed out.
• Low Latency Mode, NVIDIA Reflex with Boost if your card supports it, which takes a little input lag off every key you press.
• Target FPS, off on most computers, because it lowers quality on the fly and the picture stops being consistent.
• Graphics API, DirectX 12, and DirectX 11 only if you crash. Macs use Metal.

The raid and battleground profile

The Raid and Battleground tab under Graphics is a second set of graphics settings that only applies inside raids and battlegrounds, as on retail, with an Enable Raid and Battleground Settings box and its own Raid Graphics Quality slider. Turn it on and set it lower than your everyday settings, with shadows low, SSAO off, Compute Effects on Good, Particle Density on Good, Spell Density on Essential and Projected Textures on. Overgear suggests a view distance of 3 for it, which is fine in a 40-player raid but too short for a battleground. This guide recommends 5 or more there, because you want to see who’s coming.

Controller

Forever ships with a native gamepad interface, which the menu still labels Alpha even though Blizzard’s 3 November notes moved it to a functional beta, and it’s good enough that Passion ran a dungeon with it at BlizzCon and wrote it up for Warcraft Tavern. Blizzard’s live known issues list a few gamepad bugs, none of them about targeting or the action bar. Turn it on under Esc > Options > Gameplay > Gamepad (Alpha) by ticking Enable Gamepad UI (Alpha), and your keyboard and mouse keep working alongside it. Xbox Wire recommends an Xbox controller for the right button prompts.

Do this before you build your Edit Mode layout, because switching the gamepad interface on or off resets your active layout to the default, which is a known issue Blizzard listed on 1 October.

Essentially, Xbox Wire and Passion describe the pad as eight action slots per set (the D-pad and the face buttons), with the left trigger, the right trigger or both giving you three more sets, which is four sets of eight, 28 buttons you choose spells for and four that are fixed. You can choose which spell sits in which slot, but you can’t remap the buttons themselves, because Blizzard made the gamepad bindings static on 1 October. Twenty-eight buttons is fewer than a druid uses, so plan the layers.

• Forms, Blizzard added a druid shapeshift flyout to the gamepad bar on 24 September, which puts every form behind one button, and the launch client’s code puts it on the pad’s left class button for druids. Use it, and also put your two or three most-used forms on slots of their own (Cat and Bear for Feral, Moonkin for Balance, Travel and Bear for Restoration), because a flyout is two presses and a root-break wants one.
• Layers, put your shifts and your core rotation on the unmodified D-pad and the first trigger layer, and your out-of-combat buffs (Mark of the Wild, Thorns) and food on a layer you don’t touch in a fight.
• Healing, by Passion’s account, hold the left bumper and the D-pad moves through your party and raid frames, and left bumper with A targets yourself, which is the one healers forget under pressure. For Restoration in five-player groups, leave Fixed Party Targeting on (it’s on by default in the launch client), which gives each D-pad direction a party member of its own. Hover Mode under Raid Targeting Options is the one the sources disagree on. The launch client’s own tooltip, unchanged from the beta, says it sends your heal to the indicated player without changing your current target, whilst Passion’s guide describes the opposite, so this guide goes with the client and recommends it on for any druid who heals whilst keeping an enemy targeted.
• Enemies, by the same account, hold the right bumper and aim with the right stick, and tap it to lock a target. In PvP, lock your targets by hand, because soft targeting will happily change your mind for you.
• Hurricane, in September you couldn’t place ground-targeted spells with the pad, and Blizzard’s 16 October fix mentions ground-targeted items only. Their 3 November notes say you confirm a placed item by pressing its button again, “consistent with ground-targeted AoE spells”, which suggests Hurricane works the same way, though the notes don’t name it.

Feral players will like the swing timer Blizzard added to the centre reticle in the 16 October notes, which is on by default in the launch client. That said, a Restoration druid in a 40-player raid is still better off on a keyboard and mouse with click casting, because moving through 40 frames with a D-pad is slow however good you are at it, and Passion’s controller guide at Warcraft Tavern says much the same about juggling 20 to 40 people.

Console variables

Console variables (settings with no box in the menu, changed by typing a command) got a guide of their own, because there are a lot of them, they matter more in Forever than they did in Classic, and several of the ones the older guides list have been renamed or removed. The druid console variables guide has every one worth considering, with what it does, its default, the recommended setting and how to put it back. The four to look at first are the spell queue window, the camera distance beyond the slider, how far away nameplates show, and autoUnshift, which you met in the second phase.

Most of the settings that matter for a druid are the same handful for every spec, and they’re the ones you can change before you take a step. Setting them won’t make anyone a better player overnight, but it gives you a screen that tells you what’s happening, instead of an interface you have to fight. If you set the first phase today, come back for the second when Bear Form turns up, and leave the reference sections until something bothers you, then I wish you every success in the first fortnight.

Restokins is still levelling, and the stream starts at 60, so if you want to see any of it on the live client, you’ll find me there most weekdays from midday AEST. The build it all hangs off is in the Restokin build, and the skills these settings are meant to support are in the mechanics guide.

Contributing to this guide

If you’ve found anything here that works differently on the live client, or you can show me a setting that’s in the wrong place, named wrongly or doesn’t do what I say, I want to hear it, and I’ll credit you by name when I correct the guide. A screenshot of the menu settles most of these in a second, so the easiest way is to open an issue on the Restokins GitHub with one attached, or, once the stream starts at 60, tell me there. Every claim this guide still rests on a precedent for is on the open questions page, as a question anyone can settle in game.