4 covenants, 4 characters

Community General Discussion
82

The “identity” is a buzzword. I wouldn’t take that at face value.

To be fair, that happened long ago before Covenants a thing.

Why is this such a bad thing for lower skilled players to accept the advice of higher skilled players that is optional? :man_shrugging:

You and Ralph, are the only ones i see that are against this. I may be missing more, but it just seems weird to be oddly against all of it.

Simply looking at the guides or advice and following it isn’t bad. Heck, i would argue you don’t have to follow it 100%, you can follow it halfway or so, or even understand from it and use it in your own builds and such.

I do agree that following it to a point where you become the kind that yells other people for not following it is bad, and so is forcing it on other people, even if they don’t want/need it.

I don’t personally care about being the best in best cause i’m not raiding or anything. But a little bit of reading and looking up on guides and listening to advice of others goes a long way.

Failure isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you can learn from it. If the build you copied from the website doesn’t work for you, then you know it doesn’t work for you and you can go and try something else.

I enjoy multiple classes. And some people like that. And some people do like seeing numbers on a screen, myself included, even from just playing the game casually.

And look, i appericate the gesture of wanting it to be an “identity” thing, but…

A. Identity wise, i function no more or less then a rogue on my level and even taking skill out of the equation, i’m just a rogue. I’m hardly unique from Stabzilla down the street.
B. This is an MMORPG. Where having the bigger numbers is the key to more easily win RPG’s (as well skill and thought), and where group play is heavily emphasized.
C. Yea, RPG’s are a journey, but i still need to output bigger numbers in order to survive against encounters and such.

And RPG’s are a number game, regardless how you look at it.

I mean, if i don’t have frost damage and fire resistance, you think i’m going to do good at all against a fire elemental that makes my physical attacks hit like wet noodles?

And sure, Retail doesn’t have any of that, but it still retains that to a degree. You can be crappy geared from the start and still do fine, at least in world content. But if you want to survive longer, kill quicker and get into harder content, you need to have bigger numbers.

Then don’t look at them.

Can i ask why you want people or want to see people to just play 1 or 2 toons? I mean, do you not think they do not enjoy playing multiple classes or trying to min-max or do Fotm stuff? :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

It just gets boring for me to stick with just 1 or 2 classes if i’m on it for a long time.

I feel it’s much better to let players do whatever they want to.

  • If they want to follow a guide, that’s their choice.
  • If they want to create their own build, that’s their choice.
  • If they want to look at numbers, that’s their choice.
  • If they want to play the game (by whatever you mean), that’s their choice.
  • if they want to make 4 characters for each covenant, that’s their choice.

Keyword here being choice.

1 Like
83

Leveling 4 DHS for shadowlands.

The fact that covenants and restrictive and punitive are why I’m leveling 4 of 3 classes.

Not bored - I’d really rather not have to.

Bingo. Covenants reduce the player agency possible.

84

You’re gonna have to define what’s player agency here (By what you mean by it) and how Covenants removes it?

I neither disagree or agree with you, i’m just curious on what do you mean.

85

Being able to choose whatever you want whenever you want with no restrictions.

They did that in BfA to a degree, you either farm multiple sets on armour, or pay out the nose for constant changes to your traits, if you could not get the time to farm multiple gear, especially early on in each patch, and could not afford to pay to change (I had one character upwards of $20K per AZ piece to change), than you were limited in what you could do.

Covenants just take it a step further, you have 4 to choose from, you farm rep or whatever with them to level up and be stronger, than you decide you want to change? No thanks, not only do you lose out on the abilities you have, but you start the next one at zero and have to grind again.

The choices are simple, choose the type of content you are wanting to play, i.e. M+, raids, PVP, solo, and than find the covenant abilities that best fit your main content type and hope it works casually in all other content.

1 Like
86

This might be a serious thing for world first guilds and early Mythic raiders, but most people are more concerned about having an inferior ability for PvE and PvP, and being judged for the choice they made.

Plenty of people don’t want to play the ‘vanilla’ choice for their class and don’t want to be punished for it, which is completely reasonable for how much freedom Blizz said we would have in the beginning.

87

Again, something i have no problem with if they went that route.

A Good way to keep the whole “Choices matter” without locking the choice imo.

88

What if though right now your choice was to keep your current essences or start the HoA grind again to set 4 new ones? Sure you are not locked into the 4 you currently have now, but to get back to having 4 again is still a grind.

It might be the same in SL, here are your abilities, if you want to grind back up early it will take time, maybe later in the game it will be faster to change, we don’t know yet.

But what we do know is that it is you cannot simply respec your abilities, you still have to grind in some fashion to get it all back, and your first choice is always going to be “Is it worth it?”. Depends on the grind, if it is the same grind we had for our HoA from the start, than no the re-grind will not be worth it.

89

If they do, that is on them. If you aren’t serious about parsing and you aren’t doing 15+ Mythics and Mythic raiding then there is no reason those players should be considering rolling for minute advantages.

Lets face it, if dps from covenants was such a big concern we wouldn’t see any Vulpera in WoW, because they are just about the worst parsing race for 90% of the classes (and never the best).

Play what you want and what you enjoy and play as well as you can.

90

What are you trying to convey here from this what if scenario, comparing covenents to BFA’s essences? :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Except this is an MMO where grinds are the norm. Heck, RPG’s have grinds as bit of a norm as well.

I’m not up on the camp where the covenants need to be locked to create a sense of “Player choice” cause not everybody, including myself who choose (not for power, but for a myriad of reasons, like cosmetics, toys and so on), would like that to be unable to pick for two years.

I’m not up on the camp where it needs to be as easy as swapping talents out just like it is on Retail. And i think this neat little middle ground should work out nicely for both worlds imo, it tests commitment. And of coarse i think their should be moments like these where you have to ask yourself “are you sure?” when swapping over.

91

Yes except what other MMO’s have a major part of the story and power locked behind anything? And yes, it is locked. If you choose covenant A you cannot access any other covenants abilities until you drop the ones you have and grind the new one.

As for the essences, imagine being locked into 4 of your choosing and not being able to change unless you drop your HoA and start again, HoA and essences are a major part of this game in the same way that covenants are.

If they locked HoA to a set choice with no way to change it without grinding again, it would be exactly the same as covenants are now, you miss out on certain powers (and story mode) without having to A) Grind again and B) Lose out on some current powers.

92

I’m not an MMO person, so your gonna have to ask this to somebody who plays a bunch of MMO’s.

WoW is the only MMO i ever played, in terms of reaching the endgame and all that. In terms of playing casually, i played a few others like Tera, Guild Wars 2, and such.

Okay i apologized for the shody phasing, when i said “locked” i’m talking about “once you picked it, you are stuck it with it until the expansion is over and you can’t ever switch.”.

My definitions of locked for this topic is different from yours, so prehaps i’l just say perma-locked instead to mean what i said above.

It would be on the same level as Vanilla/Classic Talents. Mildly annoying to take the time t(or amount of time to get gold) to get it to reset, but it’s not the end of the world.

And to some extent, Legion Artifacts when swapping over to another spec, or Vanilla/Classic Weapon Skills. I say to some extent cause it doesn’t reset your abilities if you swap over every-time. So the annoyance is just cut in half there.

Can i ask you something? What exactly are you really wanting the covenants to do? Just allow you switch like Retail Talents? :man_shrugging:

93

Mostly I’m really bored with this patch. I already had 3 ele shamans because I really like the gameplay vs other classes I’ve tried.

The bonus is that I will have 4 tries at the covenant system. :sunglasses:

94

May as well be, I got one of my own characters to 20K for one AZ reset, some people early on were sitting around 200K. It does drop in price, but that is ridiculous forcing us either to wait for the price drop, buy tokens or grind for more gold just to change it up when we want to change spec early on.

I never thought about what I want from covenants, but what I don’t want to see happen, but it already is, are players grinding 4 of each class just so they can have one in each covenant.

The only thing that should be locked behind a covenant are the abilities, and even than this needs to be relaxed down the track to allow us to change in someway, of course with penalties, but simply keeping 75% of one of the main focus points of the game effectively locked is not good. If you don’t change to see the alternate stories and new powers, transmog, mounts and pets yourself, than you may be losing out on a good chunk of the game.

There must be something we are missing, because how can a game company justify a monthly sub cost, but than not allow players without penalties see all the game? Different story of this game was free to play, they could lock anything behind whatever they want and force you to pay to see it all.

Like WoW allowing you to see things up to level 20, than asking for a sub. Or another MMO (I forget which one) allowing you to play X class and specs for free, but locking more than half of them behind a sub. Or those copy paste Chinese games, or any mobile game that effectively forces you to pay or forever be a middle ranked player, effectively free with consequences.

95

That’s a lot of text…

96

I’m still not seeing how this should impact your or my enjoyment from 1 person choosing to make 4 of each class for 4 of each covenants.

Heck, i have 4 rogues and i don’t do FoTM stuff. So to you, i shouldn’t assign each rogue to a covenant if i wanted too? :man_shrugging:

If Shadowlands does truly have that if your “Betraying” a covenent, then i’l give “Betraying” a college try.

But i don’t think the Cosmetics and pets would be going away if i do switch, i don’t think anybody would like that.

:face_with_raised_eyebrow:… You do realize in order to see all the game it has to offer, you do need more then 1 or even 2 toons? Wasn’t this been a thing since the game first released?

97

To see the alliance and horde side of things of course, to see things like each class such as the Legion order halls, sure. But to limit each individual character to either not see the non class related story lines for their faction without consequences, do you think that is fair?

So you need to level one of each faction for the main story, fine. Than you need to level one of each class for the entire story, sure. But now you need to either level 4 of each, or change with consequences to see the entire game, not fine.

They remove the HoA, cloak and AZ grinds, but instead put this in place, it’s just another way to try and keep players subscribed because there are no gear grinds or gimmicks.

98

Doesn’t Classic and TBC has factions where you have to pick and choose sort of?

With Classic, theirs Synidate and Ravenholdet, and Booty Bay and Bloodsail, or something.

With TBC, theirs the Scryers and Aldor. Heck, if your a Blood elf or Draenei, you can be instant friendly with those reps respectively.

You can also just not level up more toons if you don’t want to level up toons. It is your choice to do.

99

None of those choices gave you any real advantage, they gave your slightly different gear or enchants, nothing that you could not find the equivalent of outside of rep rewards.

Covenants offer your actual abilities that change how you can play your character, what your rotation is, how well you perform in AOE vs. ST, M+ vs. PVP, group content vs. solo content.

100

Enchants and different gear aren’t real advantages to you back in TBC and Vanilla? :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

101

Nothing like having an entirely different set of abilities would, and even at the time, the differences for some classes and specs was so minimal it literally made no difference which one you chose.

The differences coming up look minimal on paper, but so did BfA when they said “An iLVL upgrade is an upgrade” and tried to tell us we could customise our classes, which was never the case, the DPS and survivability differences was a lot more than it looked on paper.

Looking now at corruption and everything BfA has brought in, the right corruption effects and minimal negative corruption, the right rank THREE essences (that’s right, ranks 1 and 2 are nowhere near as good) is the difference between 20 tanks clearing through mythic Nya vs. a normal raid group struggling.