what we all know:
1 they will not be balanced
2 it will be hard to change
3 it hurts your off spec
let us choose the ability we want, per spec, and let us choose the covenant we want based on theme.
it wont be balanced, there will be must picks, and we all no that balance will come out of nowhere 1 week-3 months into the first raid teir. so we get a craps shoot on what to pick when we start the expac, and that already feels bad.
player: oh hey this seems good for how i like to play, and may be the best
blizz: nerf, start back at the beginning
player: ok this works, but at least i love the theme, and im almost back to where i was.
blizz: nerf, lol try again.
The fact that you can change at all means that you can adjust to incoming balance changes. You just can’t reasonably expect to change between AOE dungeon runs and a largely ST raid. I think that is a good thing as not being reasonably able to change means that you have to choose the best option across multiple scenarios based on how you play and what you value. It’d be too easy and stupidly tedious if you could just change everything anytime you go back to a rested area.
Players are going to try to bring the absolute best ability they can regardless of if it is a 10% difference or a .10% difference and there will always be a best dps choice for specific scenarios. But if you only have one choice for all scenarios it actually means you won’t be punished as much for picking the less optimal ST dps option because you at least have the edge in survive-ability or mobility or aoe. The consequences of the decision are more complex so it doesn’t all come down to which ability is .5% more dps.
That’s why it’s called an “off” spec. More hardcore players will have multiple characters to work around this the same way they roll multiple classes now to work around potential balance changes or loot RNG. We don’t want their experience to be awful but unfortunately you can’t cater to that group too much without turning the game into a real slog of rebuilding refactoring and resimulating for everyone.
The real challenge for Bliz is going to be making the abilities varied and interesting enough to avoid obvious winner and loser abilities. Being able to switch or not won’t matter at all if there’s only one ability worth taking in all situations.
The problem comes when they inevitable nerf things and now the one you picked doesn’t fit the reason you picked it for anymore. Unless they plan on giving everyone a free change every patch you basically just have to hope the one you picked somehow lasts all of Shadowlands relatively unscathed.
I believe you do basically get that though. It may not be free but it sounds like infrequent switching isn’t going to be overly difficult, there just might be some work if you switch away from a covenant and then want to switch back. That’s the RP in RPG for you though.
So you aren’t going to be screwed by the inevitable balance changes, or at least no more screwed than any class/spec is now anyway.
I don’t know that anyone is arguing for these choices to be 1000% permanent. We just don’t want the ability or expectation for people to be switching as easily as talents or specs. It should not be a regular occurrence.
That’s the problem. What happens when 9.0 Venthyr are good for whatever you care about, 9.1 it’s Kyrian, and 9.2 it’s Venthyr again? Why should it be a pain to switch again because the balancing happened to make the original better instead of a third faction?
people keep talking about covenant abilities like they are the end all be all of covenants, when in reality our soulbonds are likely going to have a MUCH bigger impact on us than the abilities will.
and with those it looks like we are going to have 3 different soulbonds, each with different “talent trees”, and the ability to swap between them much like with talents.
so you can build 3 different trees for 3 different applications and swap between em, on top of swapping out your talents. I think thats gonna have a much bigger impact on how we play than which flavor of covenant cooldown we have.
If you care enough to switch covenants per patch then I don’t think it is too much to ask that you spend some time over the patch preparing for the eventuality that you might switch back.
Now obviously this is a question of degrees. If the consequences are a 3-4 hour grind then I would say it’s no big deal. If the consequences are 6-weeks of time gated BS then I’d say Bliz took a massively wrong direction.
From what we’ve heard about it, it sounds like they’re learning closer towards the second in my opinion. My impression is that they don’t want us changing them at all so they see anything that allows us to change as a gift.
I think what would be a good balance is to implement a scaling cost like they used to have for talent respecs.
For example, they could have Torghast bosses/mobs/chests/etc have a chance to drop a Thingy™. The first time you change covenants, it costs one Thingy™. Every time after that it doubles how many Thingys™ it takes but it also decreases by one level every week after the first change. That way, if you don’t change that much it won’t be too onerous but if you’re constantly switching around trying to min/max everything all the time it’ll get prohibitively expensive rather quickly.
Hey I’m a healer in M+ but a balance in raid. If i have to i would play balance in keys, even though it gimps my group because theres 5 of us already. Looking like the resto one is not going to be good AT ALL for balance. Why am I being punished by whats probably going to be about a 10% damage decrease for choosing the wrong trait? What if i really like the venthyr but never get to touch them because its a 10% dps loss for me? This is not a problem for casuals, but for those of us who push content, 10% damage or healing is going to be massive for us. I like to pick aesthetics too, but the damage penalty for me is not the same as it is for you, because higher damage will always win out. This season i made a timer by 0.2 seconds. If i had been a suboptimal covenant I wouldnt have timed it.
I think what would be a good balance is to implement a scaling cost like they used to have for talent respecs.
This was horrible in BFA and it would be horrible in SL. I don’t understand why it matters to casuals that we’re able to pick our covenant ability like a talent but stay with the aesthetic covenant. It is a HUGE deal for us to be locked into something extremely sub optimal. People are literally talking about leveling 2 or 3 of the same class just to have access to the different abilities.
So you aren’t going to be screwed by the inevitable balance changes, or at least no more screwed than any class/spec is now anyway
This had me roaring laughing. Its supposed to take weeks to switch. You want to have your dps nerfed by 10% out of the blue and then have it take 3 weeks to change it? You’re clearly a casual, its understandable why you dont get it. You have never struggled to time a hard key or get a tough mythic boss down. You have never been told you’re not allowed to raid because your damage is too low
Exactly. The people against being able to swap won’t be impacted by it. They can make their rp or story or aesthetic choice and play the game how they would anyway. The only people it impacts it impacts negatively.
I just don’t see the benefit of blizzard making this headache for themselves.
Come back in 9.1 6 months after release when we get the long apology from Ion about not listening to the playerbase and not wanting to repeat the mistake of the past all while repeating IDENTICAL mistakes. That is where they promise to change the system and make it fun for the players with decisions they should have done in Alpha.
Preach and Belluar make critical videos about that system and how bad it is even though all they are doing right now in fanboing it and playing down any of the legitimate complaints.
That’s not a fair statement. Virtually everyone wants to do their best and will generally do anything they reasonably can to improve their performance. The problems start when you introduce things that people can reasonably do but
break immersion (hey I was a venthyr 10 minutes ago, and now I’m not, but I will be again tomorrow for raid) or
is overly tedious (welp, time to change my soulbinds and covenant abilities again for the 45th time today)
So that’s one aspect.
The other issue I have with swapping covenants is that there is a difference between a specialization decision and an identity decision. In my view covenants work best as an identity decision like race or class. You aren’t gimped by choosing a covenant because you will be working to be the best Venthy Mage or Kyrian DK that you can. Technically you could still pull that off by making covenants cosmetic only or minor impacts but that feels like such a lame direction.
Here you go. Going to make a separate post as well
I’ve thought an interesting idea would be to have reputation for each of the covenants, and once you reach exalted with each one you can get a buff called twin souled, allowing you to use their covenant abilities while maintaining the primary one you’ve chosen for the cosmetics. They could retain the multi week grind to change the covenant you want for the cosmetic stuff, but once you’ve reached exalted with another one you are free to change between covenant abilities. Have a lesser threshold for changing on alts - maybe revered. The way I see this playing out is for the first few weeks or month of the expansion - or a new alt - you are locked into playing the covenant ability for your chosen covenant, but as your character progresses in reputation with the other factions you gradually become attuned to all their abilities and can choose which to use. I think that this will maintain the meaningful choice but also allow players who play multiple specs or need a different covenant for m+/raiding to not become extremely frustrated. I know as a druid who is looking forward to playing all 4 specs I am extremely nervous because it’s looking like I’m going to have the best one for one or two specs and then severely underperform on the other two. I do not want to be a good balance druid for raid and then be neutered when I go to heal keys…
Also saying swapping covenants is overly tedious is ridiculous. you literally click a button and then click three soulbinds. The problem with your second issue is that say you’re a frost mage, but fire is doing better damage, so you want to try fire. Do you have to spend 3 weeks grinding to play fire? A class is a decision that is completely separate from a button that you could have available but are locked into
I am much more casual now than I used to be, and no I was never benched. This really isn’t about me or you though so I’d prefer to put the ruler away and focus on the game, which will hopefully be a lot more fun in the next xpac.
The thing here that the issue may lie more in the sudden and heavy-handed hotfixes than the abilities themselves. Regardless of how the covenants work out you are still in a bad position if that happens to your class or spec.
And I also mentioned that it was a matter of degrees. I have not seen any information on how long it would take to switch covenants other than in general it wouldn’t be too difficult to switch once but then may be harder to go back to a covenant you left. I don’t think that translates to 3-weeks. It should be a case where you can get an all but free switch for the first one or two times, which should cover the case of the raging overblown hotfix that gets you benched by tyrannical raid leaders.
