WoW Forever Best Class for Gold Farming: Why Mage Isn't No. 1 Anymore

Quick answer: The best class for gold farming in WoW Forever right now is Paladin for solo players and Hunter for players who want to farm beasts with Skinning. Mage is still the strongest AoE class, but only in a group with a tank. Blizzard nerfed solo Mage kiting on purpose: Improved Blizzard now slows by 40% instead of 65%, and Cone of Cold lasts less time, "to reduce the power of Frost Mages to AoE farm instances". Paladin AoE is capped too, because Consecration does moderate damage to only the first 4 enemies. That cap still suits the 3-4 mob pulls that work best in Forever. Your race matters almost as much: Tauren Cultivation makes bonus herbs, Dwarf Find Treasure finds extra chest loot, and Skyborne deal 5% more damage to Elementals.

Last verified: Nov 9, 2026, 08:55 UTC against Blizzard's Forever class deep dives, the Nov 2 Development Notes, the "Class Tuning Incoming - November 10" forum post and live Auction House data.

Key takeaways

• Solo Mage AoE farming was nerfed on purpose. Blizzard says the Improved Blizzard change "was made to reduce the power of Frost Mages to AoE (Area of Effect) farm instances, which was widely used by gold farmers and boosters to disrupt the economy of the game."
• Group Mage farming still works. On Nov 6, Icy Veins reported three Undead Mages leading the race to 60, and players in the EU forums point out they had a Paladin tanking their pulls.
• Paladin is the most reliable solo farmer. All Paladins learn Consecration at level 20, Lay on Hands is down to a 20-minute cooldown (was 1 hour), and the first recorded level 60 on worldfirst60.com was an Undead Paladin.
• Hunter got much stronger on Nov 2 (Aimed Shot bonus damage up about 110%, Arcane Shot base damage up about 30%, Serpent Sting's attack power coefficient raised from 3% to 5% per tick), and Blizzard is buffing pet tanking on Tuesday, Nov 10.
• Raw materials are cheap in launch week. On Nov 9, Linen Cloth was listed at about 26 copper each and Mageweave Cloth at about 8 silver (US median listing price). The money is in high-level cloth and leather, so your class has to kill fast in the 35-50 zones.
• There is no WoW Token in Forever. Every gold piece is farmed, so a class that kills without dying and with little downtime is worth more than a flashy one.

Which class is best for gold farming in WoW Forever?

Here is our ranking for gold per hour on the live game as of Nov 9. It weighs kill speed, survival, downtime and what the class can sell:

Rank	Class	Best gold method	Solo or group	Why
1	Paladin	3-4 mob humanoid pulls for cloth, greys and drops	Solo	Consecration at 20, plate, self-heals, 20-min Lay on Hands
2	Hunter	Beast grinding + Skinning, open-world mobs	Solo	Nov 2 damage buffs, pet tanking fix on Nov 10
3	Mage	Group AoE behind a tank, conjured food and water	Group	Still Blizzard's "masters of ranged area damage", but solo kiting nerfed
4	Warlock	Affliction drain-and-DoT grinding	Solo	Self-healing drains; Voidwalker fix due Nov 10
5	Shaman	Fire Nova at your totem on small packs	Solo	New reusable Fire Nova spell
6	Rogue	Pick Pocket + humanoid grinding	Solo	Extra loot per mob, slow kills on packs
7	Warrior, Druid, Priest	Gathering professions while leveling	Either	Fine, but no class edge for gold

No class makes gold by itself. Your gathering profession matters more than your class in launch week, and that hasn't changed from Classic. Pick the class you will actually play to 60, then use the sections below to pick how it farms. If you are still choosing a class for leveling speed, our WoW Forever best class to level tier list covers that side.

Is Mage still good for gold farming in WoW Forever?

In a group, yes. Solo, not like in Classic.

In Classic, a Frost Mage could pull a whole room, slow it with Blizzard, freeze it with Frost Nova and kill it without being hit. That was the standard way gold farmers and dungeon boosters made money. Blizzard changed three things in Forever, and its Mage and Shaman class deep dive says why:

• Improved Blizzard: "Now maxes out at a 40% Slow instead of 65%. This change was made to reduce the power of Frost Mages to AoE (Area of Effect) farm instances, which was widely used by gold farmers and boosters to disrupt the economy of the game."
• Cone of Cold: "Duration decreased. This is part of a general fix to reduce the ability of gold farmers and experience boosters to kite large numbers of creatures while generating large amounts of gold and experience via repetitive low-risk gameplay mechanics."
• Permafrost: now adds 11/22/33% to Chill durations instead of a flat 1/2/3 seconds. Blizzard says this "prevents it from excessively increasing the duration of Improved Blizzard."

A fourth change still hits farming Mages. The Nov 2 Development Notes removed the low-rank proc penalty from most talents, but kept it for Blizzard the spell: casting a rank learned more than 12 levels ago has a lower chance to trigger Arcane Concentration, Frostbite and Fingers of Frost. Spamming rank 1 Blizzard to fish for those procs works much less well.

Players feel it. In a Nov 7 EU forum thread titled "Mage aoe is absolute crap", one Mage said that out of about 20 pulls of small 3-4 mob packs, none worked, because some mobs were never slowed, while "every area has paladins, warriors and shamans aoe farming". Other replies pushed back: the first players to 60 were Mages AoE farming together, but with a Paladin tanking the mobs, so they didn't need the slow.

That is the practical answer:

• Group Mage farming works. A Paladin or Warrior holds the pack, two or three Mages blow it up. On Nov 6, Icy Veins reported three Undead Mages, Vitochie Gofast, Burning Speed and Jokerd Prime, leading the race to 60, with Undead Paladin Cloud Bells close behind.
• Solo Mage farming works on small packs. Community guides recommend packs of about 3-7 melee mobs with Frost Nova, Flamestrike, Cone of Cold and Arcane Explosion, not big kited pulls.
• Mages still save gold. You conjure your own food and water, which every other class buys or cooks. Over a long farming session that adds up.

Build help: the Frost Mage build in our WoW Forever talent calculator shows the leveling talents from 10 to 60.

Why is Paladin the best solo gold farmer?

Paladin doesn't have the highest damage. It has the least downtime and almost never dies, and when gold farming that matters more.

What Blizzard changed, from the Paladin class deep dive:

• Consecration is baseline. Every Paladin learns it at level 20. It used to be a Holy talent.
• But it is capped. Consecration "now deals moderate damage to the first 4 enemies to enter it, and very low damage to all other enemies." Blizzard says this lets a Paladin reliably hold threat on only 4 targets at a time, at parity with a Warrior's Thunderclap.
• Lay on Hands: cooldown "reduced to 20 minutes from 1 hour."
• Holy Conduit (new talent) cuts the mana cost of Consecration, Holy Wrath and Exorcism by up to 40%.

The 4-target cap sounds like a nerf for farming, and it is, compared to Classic Mage pulls. But 3-4 mobs is exactly the pull size that works in Forever, because Blizzard took the big-pull tools away from everyone. Paladin does that pull size in plate, with heals, and with a 20-minute "don't die" button. The class is also the tank that makes group Mage farming work.

It also does well in the race. The fan site worldfirst60.com lists Cloud Bells, an Undead Paladin, as the first recorded level 60 (tracked from stream frames, not by Blizzard). A census of 100,000 characters posted on r/classicwow on Nov 6 found "Paladins everywhere", so expect company in the best humanoid camps.

Best Paladin gold method: grind humanoid camps 3-4 mobs at a time for cloth, grey items and green drops, with a gathering profession. See the Retribution build for talents.

Is Hunter good for gold farming in WoW Forever?

Yes, and it got better this week. Hunter is the best class for beast grinding plus Skinning: you kill beasts quickly at range, your pet tanks, and every kill gives a skin.

Blizzard's Nov 2 Development Notes raised Hunter damage across the board. Aimed Shot's bonus damage rose by about 110% on all ranks, Arcane Shot's base damage rose by about 30% and its attack power coefficient went from 0.1 to 0.15, and Serpent Sting's attack power coefficient per tick went from 3% to 5%, with base damage up about 20%. All traps now share one 30-second cooldown.

One problem showed up at launch: pets weren't tough enough. In its "Class Tuning Incoming - November 10" post, Blizzard Community Manager Kaivax wrote: "We've seen that Hunter pets and Warlock Voidwalkers are not as durable as tanks as we would like them to be. Our intent is for their effectiveness to be relatively the same as in Classic Era." Those hotfixes are planned for Tuesday, November 10, so Hunter pets should hold mobs better from Tuesday. Our WoW Forever class changes for Nov 10 has the details, and best Hunter pet for leveling covers which pet to tame.

Best Hunter gold method: Skinning plus beast camps in your level range. Medium and Heavy Leather are listed at about 4 to 7 times the price of Light Leather this week (prices below). Our Skinning leveling guide in the WoW Forever professions calculator shows the 1-300 route, trainer costs and live reagent prices.

What about Warlock, Shaman, Rogue and the rest?

Warlock. Affliction is built to sustain. Blizzard's Rogue and Warlock deep dive says Affliction can "sustain their own health via powerful health draining effects", and the new Improved Drains talent raises the health drained by Drain Life and Drain Soul by up to 20% (the Nov 2 notes removed its Wrack bonus). The weak point is the Voidwalker. The Nov 2 notes cut pet health to 2 Health per point of the Warlock's Stamina (was 7.5), and Blizzard is fixing Voidwalker durability on Nov 10 along with Hunter pets. A first step already landed: the Nov 6 hotfix list gave Voidwalkers about 40 more base health at all levels. Until the Nov 10 changes, play Warlock as a drain-tank, not a pet-tank.

Shaman. Fire Nova Totem is gone. In Forever, Fire Nova is a spell that erupts at your current Fire Totem, so you can trigger it again without placing a new totem each time. Add Chain Lightning, which Blizzard's Nov 2 notes made hit harder (primary target about 145% of a same-rank Lightning Bolt, at a 2.5-second cast), and Shaman handles small packs well. That matches the forum report of Shamans AoE farming in every zone.

Rogue. Rogues are the only class with Pick Pocket, so every humanoid can give two loot rolls. In Classic that also meant lockboxes that only Rogues could open, but nobody has measured what Pick Pocket pays in Forever yet. Rogues kill one mob at a time, so they make less from cloth than Paladins.

Warrior, Druid, Priest. None has a gold edge of its own. Warriors farm well behind a healer or in a group with Mages; Druids and Priests are steady solo levelers. Put your effort into professions: our best professions for WoW Forever ranks the gold combos.

Which race is best for gold farming?

Forever redid most racials before launch, and these six help a gold farmer most. Sources are Blizzard's beta Development Notes (Oct 15 through Nov 2) and its Create the Hero race page:

Race	Racial	What it does for gold
Tauren	Cultivation	Spawns a bonus herb node next to a herb you find, which you can gather without Herbalism (Icy Veins). Cooldown cut to 15 minutes (was 60)
Dwarf	Find Treasure	"Now also grants a chance to find additional items in most chests"
Skyborne (both factions)	Elemental Insight	+5% damage to Elementals, useful for the elemental essence farms in this series
Orc	Command	+5% Warlock and Hunter pet damage, re-added on Oct 26
Undead	Touch of the Grave	Damage proc: 30% chance for casters, 20% for Paladins, Rogues and Warriors, 15-second internal cooldown
Troll	Regeneration	Health regeneration raised to 20% (was 10%) for less downtime between pulls

Blizzard's notes add one Tauren limit: "The level required is equal to the Herb's level required to pick it divided by 5", and herbs that need more than 300 Herbalism can be cultivated at player level 60. A low-level Tauren can't cultivate high-end herbs yet.

Our picks: Tauren Hunter or Tauren Shaman for Horde gatherers, Dwarf Paladin or Dwarf Hunter for Alliance, and Undead Mage or Undead Warlock if you plan to farm in a group. Full racial breakdown: best race for each class in WoW Forever.

How much does farmed loot sell for right now?

We pulled Auction House data from AH Ledger on Nov 9. AH Ledger collects addon scans from players (it is not Blizzard data). Each price is the middle value of the US market medians for one item (8 markets, 7 for Mageweave), and these are listing prices, not completed sales. Scan times vary: the newest is from 08:48 UTC Nov 9, but the latest US RP Horde scan is from Nov 8 and the latest US RP-PvP Alliance scan is from Nov 6:

Material	Median listing price per item (US)	Typically farmed by
Mageweave Cloth	~8.0 silver	Humanoid pulls, levels ~35-50
Heavy Leather	~3.0 silver	Skinning beasts, ~30-40
Tin Ore	~2.3 silver	Mining
Silk Cloth	~2.2 silver	Humanoids, ~20-35
Medium Leather	~1.6 silver	Skinning
Bruiseweed	~1.3 silver	Herbalism or Tauren Cultivation
Wool Cloth	~1.2 silver	Humanoids, ~10-25
Light Leather	~42 copper	Skinning, low level
Linen Cloth	~26 copper	Humanoids, low level

The pattern is clear: low-level materials are flooded because everyone is leveling at once (over 100,000 Linen Cloth listed across US markets), and prices climb steeply by tier. A stack of 20 Mageweave is about 1.6 gold. A stack of Linen is about 5 silver. So:

• Your class needs to farm the 35-50 zones fast. That is where Paladin and Hunter pull ahead of slower solo classes.
• Vendor greys and sell raw materials rather than crafting with them in launch week.
• Check prices on your own ruleset before you farm. The spread between markets can be big: Silk Cloth was listed at about 2 silver on US Normal and PvP, but about 3.4 silver on US RP Horde, where far fewer players sell it.

For trends over time, see our WoW Forever gold price tracker and the launch-week Auction House prices.

How much gold do you need, and when?

The class question matters because Forever's early gold walls come fast. Blizzard's Nov 2 notes put class training from 1 to 60 at 206-207 gold for every class. Apprentice Riding at level 40 is 100 gold in the beta client, Journeyman Riding at 60 is 1,000 gold, and Dual Specialization also unlocks at 40. On Nov 9, a new thread in the Forever forum asked whether anyone was actually saving enough for both the mount and dual spec at 40. That is the squeeze a good farming class solves.

Quests at level 60 also no longer turn experience into bonus gold, which JokerdTV says a Blizzard developer called "an intentional change". Normal quest gold rewards are still in place, but less of the 1,000g at 60 will come from questing, so more of it has to come from farming. Full budget: WoW Forever mount cost and dual spec and respec cost. For every method, not just class picks, see the WoW Forever gold farming guide.

If you would rather skip the farm, timesaver.gg sells WoW Forever gold for US and EU rulesets. Buying gold is against Blizzard's terms, and Blizzard has banned gold buyers as well as sellers. Read is buying gold allowed in WoW Forever before you decide.

FAQ

What is the best class for gold farming in WoW Forever? Paladin for solo farming and Hunter for beast and Skinning farms. Mage is still the strongest AoE class, but Blizzard nerfed its solo kiting, so it works best in a group behind a tank.

Did Blizzard nerf Mage AoE farming in WoW Forever? Yes, on purpose. Improved Blizzard now slows by 40% instead of 65%, and Cone of Cold lasts less time. Blizzard says the changes were made because gold farmers and boosters used Frost Mage AoE "to disrupt the economy of the game".

Can Paladins AoE farm in WoW Forever? Yes, in small pulls. Every Paladin learns Consecration at level 20, but it deals moderate damage to only the first 4 enemies and very low damage to the rest. Pulls of 3-4 mobs are the sweet spot.

What is the best race for gold farming in WoW Forever? Tauren for herbs (Cultivation makes a bonus herb node every 15 minutes, no Herbalism needed), Dwarf for chests (Find Treasure finds extra items), and Skyborne for elemental farms (+5% damage to Elementals).

Are Hunter pets getting buffed in WoW Forever? Yes. Blizzard plans hotfixes on Tuesday, November 10 to make Hunter pets and Warlock Voidwalkers tank about as well as in Classic Era. No final numbers have been posted yet.

Is there a WoW Token in WoW Forever? No. Forever launched without a WoW Token, so all gold in the economy is farmed by players.

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