Every Race and Class Combination in WoW Forever

Forever adds six new race/class combinations to the Classic roster and one entirely new race. Most coverage of this is a grid with checkmarks in it, which tells you what's possible and nothing about what's worth playing.

So here's the grid, and then the part that actually decides your character: which of these combos are genuinely strong, which are flavour picks, and which single unanswered question hangs over most of them.

Start with the structural change, because it's the one that catches people out at character creation:

The Skyborne are a single new race that exists on both factions — with different names, different lore, different racial abilities, and different class options on each side. Picking Alliance or Horde Skyborne isn't a cosmetic choice. You're choosing between two meaningfully different characters.

The Six New Combinations

Three per faction, neatly balanced. Plus the Skyborne, who bring five class options to each side.

And two races got nothing. Night Elf and Tauren have exactly the same class lists they had in Classic. If you were hoping for a Night Elf Paladin or a Tauren Priest, it isn't happening at launch.

The Complete Grid

Alliance

Horde

* = new in Forever

Note the Skyborne class lists carefully. Four classes overlap — Druid, Hunter, Rogue, Warrior — and then they diverge: Alliance Skyborne get Mage, Horde Skyborne get Shaman. There is no Skyborne Mage on Horde and no Skyborne Shaman on Alliance.

The Skyborne, in Detail

Two halves of one race, and they are not interchangeable.

Windshapers — Horde

Descendants of the first shen'dorei high elves who received the wind spirits' gift of elemental skysight. They live within Skywall and were called to Azeroth to find their missing elemental mentors and restore the wind spirits.

Classes: Druid · Hunter · Rogue · Shaman · Warrior

Racials:

High-Order Skyborne — Alliance

Descendants of the Highborne scholars of Eldre'Thalas. After the wind spirits vanished from Zephras Isle, they were called back to Azeroth to recover lost arcane knowledge so the shen'dorei can survive on their own.

Classes: Druid · Hunter · Mage · Rogue · Warrior

Racials:

Which Half Is Better?

They share two passives and the glide. The difference is one active, and it's a bigger difference than it looks.

Skysight (+10% run speed) is the strongest levelling racial in the game, and it isn't close.

Here's why. Levelling 1–60 in Forever takes most players somewhere between 100 and 180 hours. Your first mount costs 100 gold for the riding skill and doesn't arrive for a long stretch of that. A meaningful share of those hours is spent running — between quest objectives, back to corpses, across zones that Forever deliberately made large.

A flat 10% off all of it, from level 1, is dozens of hours of walking removed over a character's life. No other racial in this game competes with that for raw time saved.

Read Ley Line (+100% Health and Mana regen) is the other kind of strong. It cuts downtime rather than travel time — less sitting after fights, fewer drinks consumed, longer pull chains before a break. For a Mage or a Druid levelling solo, that compounds too, and unlike run speed it stays relevant at 60 in a way that mounted travel eventually erases.

Our read: Skysight for the climb, Read Ley Line for sustained solo play and for anyone who hates downtime more than walking. If you're picking a Skyborne purely to get to 60 as fast as possible, Horde is the better side of the race.

Walk on Air Is More Useful Than It Sounds

A 10-second downward glide reads like a novelty. In practice it's a traversal tool in a game full of vertical terrain and lethal drops.

Concrete example: the path down to Hall of Thanes runs along ledges beside lava, and falling is fatal. The Alliance route into Ruins of Lordaeron involves a long overland trip with terrain shortcuts you'd otherwise walk around. Glide turns "find the path down" into "step off the edge," repeatedly, for a hundred hours.

It's also a free fall-damage cancel, which at low level is the difference between a shortcut and a corpse run.

Where Elemental Insight Actually Pays Off

+5% damage to Elementals sounds like the kind of racial you never notice. In the early dungeon bracket, you'll notice it.

• Ragefire Chasm — Dark Iron Summoners summon Fiery Assistants, and the whole dungeon is a volcanic cult den

• Hall of Thanes — Magmatus is a fire elemental, and his fight comes with a Summoner producing more of them

It's a situational racial that happens to line up with a disproportionate amount of 13–20 content. Later on it narrows to specific encounters, which is the normal fate of a damage-type racial.

Which New Combos Are Actually Good?

Here's where we're going to be straight with you rather than publishing a confident tier list.

Blizzard has stated that some existing racial traits were updated to better fit the expanded class options — and has not said which traits changed or how.

That single sentence hangs over five of the six new combinations. Whether Orc Mage is a top-tier pick or a flavour pick depends entirely on whether Blood Fury does anything for spell power in Forever. Whether Undead Paladin is a PvP monster depends on what Will of the Forsaken looks like now. Nobody outside the beta can answer those yet, and a guide that ranks these combos confidently is guessing.

What we can do is tell you exactly which question decides each one, so you know what to look for at character creation.

The two safest picks of the six, on current information, are Gnome Priest and Dwarf Shaman — both pair a class with racials that already work for it, with no dependency on an unannounced change.

The two with the highest ceiling are Orc Mage and Undead Paladin, and both are bets on racial details nobody has confirmed.

Check the racial tooltips at character creation before you commit a hundred hours. That takes thirty seconds and it's the only reliable source right now.

The Bigger Change: Alliance Has Shamans

Dwarf Shaman is listed as one of six new combos, and it's quietly the most consequential thing on the list.

In Classic, Shaman was Horde-only. Forever gives the class to Dwarves, which means Alliance now has access to totems, Windfury, and — most importantly — Restoration Shaman.

That matters because Resto Shaman is one of the strongest healing specs in Forever. The class gained Riptide and Water Shield, which together fix the two problems Classic Shaman healing had: no instant-cast heal and no mana sustain. An Alliance raid can now field that healer.

For an Alliance player planning a main: Dwarf Shaman is worth serious consideration if you intend to heal. You'd be rolling into a role where your faction previously had no access to a top-tier option. See our class tier list for how the healing specs compare.

For a Horde player: you've lost an exclusivity, not a capability. Orc and Troll Shamans are unchanged, and Horde now has the only Skyborne Shaman.

Planning Around Legacy Points

One practical note if you care about account progression: Legacy Challenges award a point for reaching level 25, 45, and 60 on each of the nine classes — 27 points in total.

Those are class-based, not race-based. Levelling a Dwarf Shaman and an Orc Shaman gives you the Shaman points once. So if you're picking a new combo partly for account progress, pick a class you haven't levelled rather than a new race for a class you already have.

Full breakdown in our Legacy Points guide.

FAQ

What is the new race in WoW Forever? The Skyborne. They exist on both factions under different names: Windshapers on Horde and High-Order Skyborne on Alliance. Each side has its own lore, its own active racial, and its own class list.

Can Skyborne be Mages or Shamans? Alliance Skyborne can be Mages. Horde Skyborne can be Shamans. Not the other way round. Both sides share Druid, Hunter, Rogue and Warrior.

What are the six new race/class combinations? Human Hunter, Dwarf Shaman and Gnome Priest for Alliance; Orc Mage, Troll Warlock and Undead Paladin for Horde.

Which races got nothing new? Night Elf and Tauren. Their class lists are unchanged from Classic.

Can Alliance play Shaman in Forever? Yes — Dwarf Shaman, plus Horde keeps the Skyborne Shaman option. This is the first time the class has been available to Alliance without Draenei.

Which Skyborne faction is better for levelling? Horde. Skysight's +10% run speed applied across a 100–180 hour climb saves more real time than any other racial in the game. Alliance's Read Ley Line is the better pick if you'd rather cut downtime than travel time.

Is Undead Paladin good? Potentially excellent and currently unverifiable. It depends on what Will of the Forsaken looks like after Blizzard's racial adjustments, which haven't been detailed. Check the tooltip at character creation.

Have the old racials changed? Blizzard has said some existing racial traits were updated to fit the expanded class options, without specifying which. Treat any Classic racial you remember as needing verification before you plan around it.

What does Walk on Air do? Glides you downward for 10 seconds. It cancels fall damage and turns vertical terrain into a shortcut — genuinely useful across a long levelling climb.

The Short Version

Six new combos: Human Hunter, Dwarf Shaman, Gnome Priest, Orc Mage, Troll Warlock, Undead Paladin. Night Elf and Tauren got nothing.

The Skyborne are one race split across both factions with different racials and different classes. Horde Skyborne get +10% run speed, which is the best levelling racial in the game. Alliance Skyborne get a Mage option and a regeneration cooldown.

Of the six new combos, Gnome Priest and Dwarf Shaman are the safest picks because their racials already suit the class. Orc Mage and Undead Paladin have the highest ceiling and both depend on racial changes Blizzard hasn't detailed — read the tooltips before you commit.

And Dwarf Shaman is bigger news than its place on the list suggests, because it hands Alliance a top-tier healing spec they previously had no access to.