It’s Official: Say Goodbye to Your World of Warcraft Character Builds in Midnight

It has been over one year since the release of World of Warcraft‘s The War Within expansion, which started a trilogy that will soon continue in Midnight, presumably dropping between February and March 2026, and reach its climax in The Last Titan further down the line. This is a massive project for Blizzard and something the company has never done before, but it’s still a World of Warcraft expansion at its core, meaning big new additions and many changes are coming. Just yesterday, Blizzard lifted the veil on the first Midnight alpha test, and one thing is already clear: each class and specialization will never be the same.

Gameplay is being shaken to its core on various levels in World of Warcraft‘s Midnight expansion, and yesterday’s information deep dive included an article called “Developer Insight: Combat for Everyone in Midnight,” which goes through the major changes coming soon. Among them is the fact that character builds and abilities will be forever changed with Midnight, which does a massive pruning of all the various buttons that each class has access to, removing several of them and incorporating others into existing ones.

As such, no builds will stay the same, as there will be huge changes to the passive trees for both classes and specs, with the addition of new WoW Hero Talent rows and even the new Apex Talents. But the most obvious change is how each tree has fewer active skills to pick, affecting all new and existing characters.

Your World of Warcraft Favorite Classes Will Never Be The Same in Midnight

With Midnight, Blizzard is trying to make World of Warcraft more accessible for new and casual players while removing the excessive complexity of some specs and classes for all other players. Not everyone will be a fan of the changes, and inevitably, this will lead to more discussions about what’s right for the game. For now, though, the philosophy is to reduce the number of procs and keybinds necessary to play the game at an optimal level, while also making information more easily accessible at a glance via nameplates or the built-in Cooldown Manager.

An example made by Blizzard in the post is how World of Warcraft‘s Restoration Druid needs to cast Efflorescence to maintain buffs on allies, whereas Midnight is cutting the keybind for Efflorescence entirely while keeping it alive passively. Another example is how Mistweaver Monks are losing Jadefire Stomp, one of their most iconic cast abilities, but this no longer forces players to stay in it while avoiding other mechanics or losing its effects if the enemies move out of its AoE. The changes are meant to:

• Reduce or limit cognitive overload
• Make the game easily approachable for new and returning players
• Make pressing buttons more meaningful and less frustrating
• Streamline gameplay by making information easily available
• Remove the need to track auras to determine when one should cast their abilities

World of Warcraft's Class Changes in Midnight are a Double-Edged Sword

The changes are not exclusively about removing existing abilities, though, with an example being Blood Death Knight, a spec that hasn’t been doing very well in WoW‘s Mythic+ Dungeons for a while. Although Blood DKs lose Rune Tap, they are getting Abomination Limb back to pull enemies within melee range, which was removed in the recent 11.2 patch. Similarly, in response to the rework of Unholy Death Knight in patch 11.2, Blizzard is removing Festering Wounds in Midnight, making for an easier gameplay loop that is not based on maintaining debuffs on enemies.

While a comprehensive list of all the abilities being removed is not available yet, Wowhead has the Midnight alpha talent trees uploaded, and some changes are very apparent. WoW‘s Holy Paladin no longer has the Blessing of Summer talent (with all the associated seasons), for example, and Arms Warrior no longer has access to both Die by the Sword and Ignore Pain, but only one of them. Even iconic buttons like Avatar for Warriors or Fire Mages’ Phoenix Flame are gone, though, so no class is staying the same when Midnight rolls.

It's The End of an Era For World of Warcraft's Addons in Midnight

Monitoring buffs, debuffs, and actions that other players and enemies are performing is a core part of WoW‘s current gameplay. This doesn’t mean that World of Warcraft‘s builds and meta are perfect, and the gameplay for some specs can indeed be too much to handle, like with the too many buttons of Holy Priest or keeping track of Festering Wound on all enemies with Unholy DK. The solution has always been to use addons to monitor these things automatically, making playing certain classes or specs easier and more sustainable.

However, the post about combat complexity spells the end of an era for addons like WeakAuras, which players need to configure and monitor for a long time to make gameplay feel smooth. With Midnight, Blizzard is making changes to the game in a way that prevents World of Warcraft addons from reading information for players, sometimes even hidden in the UI, in order to reduce the overall complexity of the loop.

This makes sense with the current direction of World of Warcraft‘s one-button gameplay and several other accessibility improvements. Yet, this will dramatically change the experience of playing the game at all levels when combined with a reduction in buttons to press, which is very good on the surface, but hides some potential issues underneath.

Some players may not feel challenged enough, or feel that the skill level of the game has gone down too much for it to matter at high levels, where addons like WeakAuras are not something one can choose to have, but rather become mandatory. It remains to be seen where these changes will take the game, but for now, it seems that World of Warcraft‘s classes and gameplay loop will be forever changed when Midnight is released.