What Levelling a Healer Costs in Forever
A healing character pays for the same slots twice: once for the spec that keeps a party alive, once for the spec that clears quests alone. This is where that money actually goes, what the bags cost, and in what order the large purchases should be made on the way to 40.
A healing character buys gear twice
A healer levelling alone is 2 characters sharing one bag. The build that keeps a party standing is not the build that kills a boar, and the gear follows the same split: spirit and intellect on one side, stamina and melee stats on the other. Quest rewards hand out one item per turn-in, and the choice at the counter is usually between those 2 sides, so every bracket that gives you a healing piece takes a solo piece away. The expense is not one large bill. It is a steady stream of second-best choices paid for in coin.
Weapons are the part most people underestimate. A healing weapon is bought or crafted far more often than it drops, and the stat it needs is the one every caster in the bracket is bidding on, which is why weapons that carry spell power sit above their item level in the listings. The off-spec weapon is a second purchase on the same character in the same week. Both land on top of early weapon spending that every class meets before 20, and neither of them waits politely for the other.
Our reading: do not keep both sets current in every bracket. Pick the brackets where the healing set earns something, which are the ones where you are actually joining groups, and let the solo gear run a tier behind. A healer who pays to stay current on both sides arrives at 40 with good gear and an empty purse, and that is the wrong trade when the next milestone is riding.
Where the second set lives
Two sets means the spare one travels in your bags until a bank is nearby, and a bank trip is time you were not planning to spend. So part of the cost of an off-spec is simply bag and bank slots, bought with the same coin as everything else. A gatherer who gives 2 slots to spare armour brings home fewer stacks per trip, and that loss never appears on a receipt. It appears as a thinner evening.
There is a cheaper habit than buying more space: decide what the spare set is actually for. Full off-spec armour in every slot is rare below 40. A weapon, a trinket and 1 or 2 pieces carrying the stat you lack usually close the gap well enough to quest in. Everything else goes to a counter, where what a vendor pays per item is small but certain. The bag problem is mostly a sorting problem, and most healers carry more than they need.
Dual spec is the part we cannot price
We do not know whether Forever lets a character keep a second saved talent configuration. We have not seen it confirmed anywhere we would trust, and we are not going to describe a feature we cannot point at in the client. What is on record is the other half of it: changing a build is a charge, and resetting Legacy talent points is kept apart from the class trainer's till. Until somebody shows a dual-spec option, plan as though every switch between healing and solo play is paid for.
That unknown changes the order of this list rather than its contents. If a saved second build exists, off-spec gear becomes worth buying earlier, because it gets used in the same evening it was bought. If it does not, most healers will settle on one build, keep it, and spend only on the half of the game they actually play. We will write the answer in when there is one instead of guessing at it now.
The order of large purchases before 40
The run to 40 has an order, and it is not the order the bags suggest. Riding is the one purchase that pays back every hour afterwards, so the cost of riding training sits at the top and everything else queues behind it. Bag space comes second, because it raises what every later trip brings home. Off-spec gear comes third, because it buys comfort rather than income, and a healing set bought too early is outgrown before the brackets where it would have mattered.
A healer does have one income the solo specs do not: groups form around you without being asked. Gold from dungeon runs arrives with less waiting when the invite is never in doubt, and the same holds for anything sold to a party that needs a body in a slot. Against that sits the restock, because a caster's bill for water and food is paid every session and does not pause while you save.
Set the whole thing against where gold leaves the economy and the list reads plainly: riding, bags, reagents, then gear. A healer who keeps that order reaches 40 behind on item level and ahead on coin, and only one of those 2 is hard to fix afterwards.
Questions
Does Forever have dual spec?
We have not seen it confirmed, so we treat it as unknown. The safe assumption while levelling is that a build change is paid for at a trainer each time, which means swapping between a healing build and a solo build every evening is a running cost rather than a free toggle. If a saved second configuration turns up in the client, the case for buying off-spec gear early gets much stronger, and we will say so here.
Is a full off-spec set worth buying before 40?
Usually not. Below 40 the gap between a healing kit and a questing kit is mostly weapon, trinket and 1 or 2 large slots, and quest rewards cover more of the rest than people expect. Buying every slot twice turns a levelling character into a shopper, and the coin spent there is coin not sitting toward riding training. Fill the gaps that stop you questing and leave the rest.
Should bags come before riding training?
No, with one exception. Riding pays back on every trip for the rest of the character's life, so it goes first in almost every plan. The exception is a healer who gathers seriously: if bags are so tight that half of each route is left on the ground, buying space first can fund the riding purchase sooner. That is a judgement about your own routes, not a rule.
Does healing earn gold faster than a damage spec?
It earns differently. A healer gets into groups without waiting and shares in whatever a run produces, but kills things slowly alone, which costs time on gathering loops and quest turn-ins. We have no reliable figures for either side on Forever and we are not going to publish gold-per-hour numbers we cannot stand behind. Treat the group access as the advantage and the solo pace as the price of it.
Sources
- Blizzard's official World of Warcraft site, where Forever announcements and patch notes are published — World of Warcraft official site.
- The English WoW forums, where beta testers report what the test client is currently doing — Blizzard WoW forums.