Launch week’s hotfixes for druids in Forever

If you’ve been levelling a druid since Forever went live on 5 November (AEST), three hotfix posts have gone out whilst you played, and the druid lines in them are easy to miss among the quest fixes and respawn timers. This field note picks out the launch week changes that matter to a druid in PvP and says what each one means for you, and the short answer is that you don’t need to change anything, apart from turning the Cooldown Manager on if you haven’t and giving Bloom another evening if you dropped it.

Whilst I’ve played druids for years across both factions, Restokins isn’t 60 yet, so I haven’t tested any of this on the live client, and the one number below that comes only from the game client says so wherever it appears. Everything else comes from Kaivax’s hotfix posts on the official forums, which I found through ForeverChanges, with Wowhead’s live tooltips for the spells.

Update, 8 Nov 2026 This note now sticks to what changed, why it matters and what people are saying. An earlier version carried a pick I hadn’t yet written myself, so I’ve taken it out until I have. The status labels came off the same day, so the numbers read only from the game client now say so in the sentence. Later that day the note was reworded to read more plainly, and nothing in it changed. Later still, I carried the flag in Warsong Gulch myself, and Plainsrunning did nothing whilst I held it, which the Plainsrunning test covers.

What changed

Every druid line is in the 5 and 6 November hotfixes, with a plan for 10 November to follow, and the figure below shows which parts of a druid they reach. The changes themselves are the following:

• Bloom now heals, as the 6 November hotfix says that Bloom (the Restoration talent that heals when your Rejuvenation or Regrowth runs out) “will now correctly heal the target”. Blizzard doesn’t say what it did before, and the talent’s numbers didn’t change.
• Shadowmeld can’t open, because the same hotfix fixed a bug that let a Night Elf druid in Shadowmeld use Ravage and Pounce. Both need Prowl (Cat Form’s stealth) again, as their live tooltips say.
• Plainsrunning stops at the flag, since the 5 November hotfix stops the Tauren racial stacking in a battleground’s preparation phase and cancels its stacks whilst you carry a flag.
• The Cooldown Manager reads true, so Forever’s built-in cooldown tracker shows the real duration of crowd control spells, even when diminishing returns (DR, where each repeat of a control effect lasts less time) or a reduction like the Orc’s stun reduction has shortened them.
• Bear Form’s tooltip is corrected, and Blizzard says the Health bonus always worked and only the number shown was wrong. ForeverChanges reads the new tooltip from the client as 560 Health where it used to say 180, but Wowhead’s live tooltip still shows 180, so the 560 rests on the client data alone.
• Ravage’s tooltip is corrected, and Blizzard says its damage didn’t change. Wowhead’s live tooltip gives the top rank as 435% weapon damage plus 98, and ForeverChanges says the old tooltip read plus 343.
• Swiftmend’s tooltip is corrected, so it no longer mentions consuming the HoT (heal over time).
• Tankier pets are coming, as Blizzard plans to make Hunter pets and Warlock Voidwalkers more durable on 10 November, with no numbers yet, on top of the 6 November hotfix that gave Voidwalkers about 40 more base health at every level.

Why it matters for a druid

For Restoration, Bloom finally working matters most to anyone who took it at launch, but it doesn’t change the reason the Restokin build leaves it out, which is that it still only pays when a HoT runs its full duration (and half when it’s dispelled), and in a battleground that’s the exception. Likewise, the Swiftmend tooltip now matches what the build guide already says, that it heals for the HoT’s full duration and leaves the HoT ticking, so nothing changes there.

For Feral, only Ravage’s tooltip changed, not its damage. The top rank’s flat bonus is 98 rather than the 343 the old tooltip showed, so every Ravage lands 245 less than the tooltip promised whilst the 435% weapon part stays where it was, and since Blizzard says the damage didn’t change, the smaller number is most likely the Ravage you’ve been landing all week (that’s read from the tooltips, though, not measured in game). By the same token, if ForeverChanges’ reading of the client is right, a Bear Form that adds 560 Health is 380 more than its old tooltip told you, which is reassuring if you’ve been choosing between Bear and Travel on a flag run.

In battlegrounds, Plainsrunning now gives a Tauren flag carrier nothing, and nobody leaves the gate stacked. It builds 2% every five seconds up to 60%, so the full bonus takes 30 stacks and two and a half minutes of running, which is why stacking it before the gates opened gave such a head start. The Warsong Gulch, Darkspear Islands, Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley guides already carry the change. Against the Alliance, a Night Elf druid can no longer open on you with Pounce or Ravage from Shadowmeld, only from Prowl, which is the same opener every other druid has and the one you already watch for.

The Cooldown Manager fix is the quiet one, and it’s the one that helps most often. If you track crowd control there, as the settings guide suggests for War Stomp, the duration it shows is now the one you really landed, shortened by DR or an Orc’s stun reduction, rather than the full duration on the tooltip. Lastly, read the 10 November pet change before you act on it, because a Feral druid who bursts down a Hunter’s pet or a Voidwalker will find them harder to kill once it lands, and Blizzard hasn’t said by how much.

What people are saying

Very little so far beyond write-ups that repeat the notes, and when this was written no Reddit thread or forum reply had turned up on Bloom, the tooltips or the Cooldown Manager. What there is comes down to the following:

• On Plainsrunning, Kipp Stryxs at MMOHuts called it the change in the 5 November hotfixes most likely to affect live play, and SteelTron at GamerFuzion called it the one real balance change, expecting flag runners to see a very different gate rush. Before launch, tinygoblin on the Blizzard forums had argued that a carrier moving at mount speed changes battlegrounds, which is the case the hotfix answers.
• On Shadowmeld, Steven Mills at Output Lag read the bug as giving Night Elf druids a stealth opener no other race had, noting that “Both openers normally need the Druid’s own Prowl.”
• On pets, Pertruder argued on the Blizzard forums on 5 November that a Warlock can’t play PvP without strong pets, whilst Blizzard’s 6 November post on the 10 November changes frames the change around pets tanking, not PvP.

If you’re playing a druid through launch week, I hope it’s going well. The next read comes after the 10 November hotfixes, and once Restokins hits 60 you’ll find me live on weekdays from midday AEST.