New spell ranks don't jump onto your bars in WoW Forever, and casters are arguing about the scaling behind it

Every Classic player knows the ritual: visit the trainer, learn Fireball rank 4, then open the spellbook and drag it onto the bar over rank 3. WoW Forever kept that ritual, and testers would like it gone.

Your bar keeps the old rank

When you train a higher rank, the ability on your action bar stays at the old rank until you replace it yourself. Forget once and you spend the next hour casting a weaker spell.

What makes it stand out is that pet bars already update on their own. One Warlock noticed the difference when teaching their imp a new Firebolt rank: the pet bar swapped it in without asking. Your own bar does not.

So the request on the forums is small and specific: a UI option that, when you train a higher rank, puts the highest rank on the bar. As the player who asked put it, it would save having to macro every ability, and macros are harder to carry between characters.

The workarounds

Until something changes, testers use two tricks:

• Cast by name. A macro such as /cast Fireball without a rank always uses the highest rank you know. Many players add /startattack to the same macro. The cost is that you rebuild your bars out of macros.
• Watch for a reminder addon. In Classic there were tiny addons that warned when you used a lower rank than you had. Expect the same for Forever, though Forever’s addon limits rule out some older tools.

One reply claims a highest-rank option already exists somewhere in the interface. Nobody in the thread confirmed where, and we could not find it either. If it is there, it is well hidden.

The bigger argument: what a rank is even worth

The bar annoyance sits on top of a much louder debate. Forever changed how caster spells scale, so gear and spell power matter more and the rank itself matters less. A thread titled Why the Spell Scaling is bad, with 88 replies and over 900 views, makes the case against:

• the old ritual was the point. Getting the new rank of Fireball or Shadow Bolt was a power spike, and players say that spike is gone;
• some testers report the opposite of an upgrade: a higher rank that costs much more mana without hitting noticeably harder, so they keep casting the cheaper one;
• the hybrid tax got heavier. Players say a Protection or Retribution Paladin can no longer provide useful emergency healing, and Enhancement Shaman off-healing is weak, because healing now leans on stats those specs do not carry.

The counter-argument, as the thread itself reports it, is that the change lets casters feel their gear upgrades between raid tiers rather than waiting for the next trainer visit. Blizzard has not commented in the thread. That is a real problem in Classic, where a caster’s gear can feel irrelevant for ten levels at a time.

Downranking is still a thing

Healers asked early whether Forever would still need downranking, the habit of casting a cheap small heal instead of the big one. From the beta so far, yes. A Dwarf Shaman reported rank 1 of a heal costing 25 mana and rank 2 costing 40 for not quite double the healing, and mana regeneration out of combat feels strong enough that drinking is rare at low level.

So the skill is intact: the cheapest heal that saves the target is still the right heal.

Where this goes

Blizzard has not replied to any of these threads, and the level 20 cap makes the scaling hard to judge. Most of the complaints are about how it feels at low level, which is exactly where the new scaling gives the least. The next full beta update is due September 24, and a rank or scaling change would show up there.

Until then, check your bars after every trainer visit. Our class guides list the ranks worth keeping at level 20, and the talent calculator has the builds.