Blizz: Easy Covenant Fixes!

Community General Discussion
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Blizz! So far we have seen so many positive changes, that shadowland are setting up to be a great xpac. Don’t let covenant lock ruin the expansion.

Many threads on here complain about the problem of the covenant lock issue, and it needs not rehash here. There are complains that all the threads are complaints, not solutions, here i put down 3 suggestions on how we can fix the covenant system

1. Allow covenant to be swapped as easily as your spec

This is the “Covenant as a talent row” option

  • Pros: Most flavorful option. Allows all covenant additions to be used
  • Cons: Not what blizz’s vision of covenant. Balance demand will be high.

This is the most elegant solution. Allow player to change covenant as easy as they can change their spec. Adds replay-ability, solves the issue where multirole classes’s problem with covenant specific abilities.

I’m a Kyrian Holy priest, but a Venthyr Shadow priest!

2. Disable all covenant abilities, covenant class abilities in all instanced (non torghast) content.

This is the “Covenant for Aesthetics” option.

Legendary share similar effects, perhaps equipped on different slots.
In instanced contents, only allow class specific soulbind conduits, which is made accessible regardless of covenant.

This basically changes shadowland system to “Azerite traits/Artifact ability that you can pick and choose and socket into a separate talent tree, with craftable, deterministic legendaries”. combines the best of Legion and BFA system, while totally eliminating their flaws.

  • Pro: Much easier to balance. Gives blizz huge creative freedom to make covenant ability as flavorful as they wish (as it nolonger impacts content that matters). Does not invalidate balancing experience gleaned from legion and bfa. Easy to implement across the board.
  • Cons: none really. Well… i don’t get to hurl huge red magic ball at raid bosses but i don’t care.

3. Make Venthyr the Min-Maxer’s choice. Make them the best at M+, Raid, and Instanced PVP,

The Compromise option.
Make 1 faction that out performs all others by 5%ish throughout the expansion pack. Give it all the difficult to use but extremely powerful utilities.

  • RPer still free to choose whatever aesthetic they wish.
  • Players will roll alts instead to experience all 4 covenants.
  • All progression orientated player will simply have to accept the fact that they’ll have to vampire. Some will grumble, as by definition they value performance over aesthetic, they will have to accept.
  • No complaints about buffs and nerfs that forces people to do degenerate gameplay such as leveling 4 of the same class.

.

  • Pro: Does not compromises blizz’s vision of covenants. Actually works from a game play perspective. Don’t need to invest such heavy resource in balancing.
  • Cons: Cause there are no balance.

Either of these options could work as a solution. They all work, to variant degrees. The key is that something must be done. Blizz is fully aware of how wow is being played. Blizz is fully aware of the fact that gaming 2020 is not gaming 2006. Blizz is fully aware of the fact that the game is a MULTIPLAYER game. Not a single player RPG. Covenant is an experiment doomed to fail. There are still time to save it.

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No thanks, I like covenants to be a meaningful RPG choice like Ion has said for us who enjoy character building instead of obsessing over UNEEDED performance, you arent a world first raider.

We play the game the way it is meant to be played, by building our characters for the journey ahead, not building a character for each small boss or encounter. Nobody in a DnD game, something devs clearly are into would go “Oh wait, I am fighting this fire demon? I want to change all the skills I ve chosen and change my gear and this and that to be optimal”, that person is a literal joke.

You are the one obsessing over performance while you dont need to because outside of world first everyone can do mythic without FotM because mythic is designed to be beat without Fotm.

You are the definition of wannabe elitism as per previous thread, where you start telling others how to play the game and demand they follow meta or you label them as bad or burdens while in reality they are playing the game on the right level but because they are not meta slaves, you just cant accept that.

So no, pretty sure we dont need to listen to toxic elitists who think they can tell others how to play the game while they pretend to care about performance to carry their friends ;^)

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My personal preference - which gives players meaningful choices and player agency throughout the expansion.

However - I don’t think balancing would be that big of an issue.

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I’ve also seen and support the idea of giving all covenant abilities to each covenant - but re"skin" them to match the aesthetic of the respective covenant.

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There’s a more important fix that needs to be added before that , one that removes all instant lobby fans turning wow into something else than a rpg .

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The 1st option is WAY better than the 3rd imo.

It gives players the ability to think and strategize for each piece of content they do (increasing agency and meaningful choice).

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I’m on the fence. I want the choice to be meaningful, but Blizzard has proved time and time again they suck at balancing. If anything it’s only gotten worse since Legion.

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Pretty much, these people have 0 interest in the RPG elements of WoW, they dont care about building their characters and choosing covenants, talents and builds, all they care is to choose their loadout and jump into the game and “win”

That is of course the natural consequence of WoW becoming popular but that doesnt mean the devs need to pander to these people, and thankfully they dont and instead they are moving to a more RPG heavy direction : )

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9

Or talents and essences.

I like the idea of the covenant system - but the current restrictions makes it not only feel more punishing than enjoyable, it also makes it feel like we have no choice. At the end of the day a lot of players are just going to pick what sims the best.

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The three big “Ruiners”

Covenant restrictions (reduce choices and agency)

Torghast currency - just another grind that belongs in free to play games.

Conduits being consumables - another grind on top of more stuff to eat up bag space.

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11

Actually, option 3 is designed explicitly as a compromise to satisfy the folks quoted below.

They can still have their “meaningful choice”, and min-maxer will still be able to min-max. It cuts out all the sim middleman as well. Want performance? go venthyr. no simming involved.

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Anyone who obsesses too much over skill in WoW to the point of whining about others not being meta slaves is a low skilled individual that knows they would get destroyed in actually high skillcap games so instead moves to low skillcap games like WoW to feel special.

WoW has never been a really hard game, it is a casual game, when someone tries to act tough and obsess over performance in a casual game they are laughable.

It is like your mom saying how skilled she is for playing a facebook game efficiently.
Hint: She rly isnt

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13

I like playing Ralph bingo. Every box has the word “elitist” in it.

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But then you cut out a huge portion of players that enjoy being powerful and pushing challenging content - but that also enjoy aesthetics.

If their aesthetic choice doesn’t line up with the min/max covenant then the whole system becomes sour.

That’s why option 1 makes the most sense for the majority of players - even those of us that role play.

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You are totally correct. That’s why it’s a compromise. I don’t like it anymore than you do, but at least the game mechanically will be fun and complete. People will swap to non SL tmog sets and be content, and roll alts to unlock their favorite SL covenant tmog and such. Not ideal, but offend least amount of people in the most non offensive way.

Some people want to play whatever troll build they want and don’t like it when other people point it out. You can’t help them.

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Toxic elitists: “Wtf why are you not playing Venthyr even though we see a ton of non venthyr classes and spec do content just fine including mythic raiding, wtf is wrong with you for daring to challenge the meta slavery of us wannabe elitists, you are trolling!”

And that is how you prove you are a person not worth being listened to, but I am sure you are so fragile you also brag about being good at facebook games xD

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You gotta come up with something new man. Any mention of performance optimization automatically triggers the “TOXIC ELITIST”. you got some sort of self righteous superiority complex or what.

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I think it’s disingenuous to boil covenants down to their signature abilities.

Between the soul binds, the conduits, and the legendaries, the choice of covenant is going to be as complex as the choice of class. “Is Venthyr or Kyrian better” is going to be the same level of question as “Is Mage or Warlock better”. It’ll depend on the fight, the affix, the player, etc.

The system as planned kind of thumbs the nose at the FOTM players who swap characters every season to whatever they saw in the MDI/World First Race, but it’s not going to be that big a deal to the average player. Most people out there aren’t swapping characters when one sims 2% better, and they won’t for covenants.

There are many balance knobs that can be tuned to keep things in check numbers wise, and unique utility can be balanced by encounter design and consumables.

I don’t think we should scrap a Third of the expansion systems because a few people on the forums have commitment issues.

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19

While there are many players in this bucket - I think there are an even greater number of players that play at challenging levels of play across roles and raids, M+, arena that also get punished hard by the system.

It isn’t just about FOTM.

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it’s probably too late to change things about covenants now