Blizzard has confirmed that the shortened hidden cast time on Hunter auto-shots and wand attacks in the World of Warcraft: Forever beta is a bug, and said it will be fixed in an upcoming beta build. Wowhead reported the statement on September 23.
Players had found the behaviour soon after the beta went live. In Classic WoW, auto-shot and wanding each carry a brief hidden cast time that forces the player to stand still before the attack fires, which is what makes kiting difficult. Wowhead reported on September 21 that in Forever the same cast time had been cut far enough that the attacks were close to instant, leaving Hunters and wand users planted for only a fraction of a second.
Wowhead wrote that the change made kiting much easier and was likely to cause shake-ups, particularly in PvP combat, because Hunters could keep moving and still deal ranged damage. A Reddit user posting as Aggravating_Doctor20 published two videos comparing auto-shot and wanding in Forever against Classic.
Blizzard’s statement
Blizzard said the intended behaviour is a 0.5-second cast time ahead of each shot, and that the beta is not applying it correctly:
We’ve been tracking an issue in the WoW Forever Beta where the 0.5-second cast time that precedes a Hunter’s auto-shot or the use of a wand is not functioning properly. Due to a bug, these auto-shots are currently incurring a much shorter cast time, which in practice means that Hunters and wand users don’t need to stop to shoot for as long as intended. This is something that we will fix in an upcoming Beta build, hopefully next week.
Blizzard gave no build number for the fix, saying only that it was expected in an upcoming beta build and that it hoped to land it the following week.
