Sigh. The problem is, this system will be hated because it provides a severe disadvantage to everyone in any capacity who enjoys pushing content whether it be M+, raids or pvp whether in heroic or playing at 2000 cr, doesnt matter, everyone progs at some point. While it provides a mild disappointment for the casual playerbase (those who even care, which from what ive seen and heard is the vast minority, though that is anecdotal). You know that the people who play at a high level also appreciate aesthetics and transmog, we just care about not getting benched from the raid or feeling gimped in all content more. I would love to be able to choose venthyr because i like the look, but theres a 75% chance that i will be forced not to
I think if you are trying to push ALL content, then sure there is not one ability that is best at everything, so being able to freely change is your quickest path to success but thats the entire point of the system. To make you think about your character. To put more of the âclassic-esqueâ feeling of making the character your own by forcing you to choose and make sacrifices.
Think about it this way, every player will have to make that same decision, do they want an ability to be better for raiding or PVP? Do they want a âkinda useful all around ability but never the bestâ option?
And then add on the layers of the soul binds, is there more %healing in one soul bind over another (or one covenant over another)? Is it better to stack movement speed if I want to pvp or damage reduction? we still havent seen the 3rd soul binds (and they will probably change a lot).
Olive branch: Being benched because you made the âwrong choiceâ is a bad feeling. Blizzards stance on this is that they will make the choice complex enough that âbestâ is not an easy choice⌠but then they also said corruptions were balanced and then released infinite stars in such an unbelievable outlier that you gotta quesiton their ability to balance anything.
Trust me I get it, I have been playing for ~15 years in almost every aspect prog, casual, semi-casual, quasi-raid, casual-raider, pvper, lfr hero etc, the system needs to be built to support everyone. All we can do is say why we think its good/bad and voice our concerns and try to point out specific cases of things that are outliers.
Shouting down others or saying âyour opinion doesnât matter because you donât play wow like I doâ, wont work.
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The difference between this game and classic is that in classic, realistically, it didnt matter. No one knew what was best, so it was just a choice on what you thought your character should be.
Nowadays people are pushing content to the extreme limits of their ability. I believe so strongly about the covenants because it will affect the content I will be able to do. Iâm not one of the top players in the world - there will come a time when I cant heal through a dungeon. And at that point, having the right covenant may make the difference, especially if they stay the same as they are now. Its a lot different for the casual playerbase. You can still do whatever content you want in game, you can RP, you can do whatever, thats up to you. Its a very minor inconvenience to you - your character doesnt feel 100% like you invested in it - i can empathize with that. The difference here is that that is minor to you - but it is a major barrier to mine and many others progression
Thats hindsight, no one KNEW what was best sure but everyone believed they did. Every reveal, every new theorycraft or notion became âthe bestâ and if you didnt do it you were benched for prog. Sure today its much more precise but thats generally how wow goes. In vanilla it was stack int so you can heal longer⌠no no no stack spirit ⌠no wait mp5 is the best stat⌠âwhat no you donât have enough hit to raidâ, âweapon skill whats thatâ, âwhats a crit capâ. Now think about the BFA balance passes and what blizzard did, oh crap I vendored all those corruptions, wait they broke azerite traits, man I been stacking haste and now its all about crit/versatility, what that trinket from Ashvane is still BIS this tier GDI.
And that is your competitive advantage, if dungeons are your prime goal. Make the choices that suit that preference and stay on top of the theorycrafting. Its not just covenants, classes/specs may also get a massive advantages. Its all part of the meta, once you go past 15 all âcasualâ concerns of being benched/replaced for not doing x are nullified⌠if you want to push past that reroll/pick the right covenant, after 15 its pure epeen not like it rewards anything. No single covenant/spec/player should be the best at EVERYTHING in the game.
Again we are back thats a value assessment you are making to say your opinion is worth more than others because by your standards other people are not affected in meaningful ways. Best of luck with that attitude, I tried.
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based on what they have said, this is what we are looking at.
and this is all i see from the no switch crowd. it wont effect them. so they dont care. the hard core crowd wants to be able to pick an aesthetic as well, we just will not be able too do so with the current system.
it feels like it. ion apologizes, then they do the exact same thing. over and over.
this is why i want the abilities to be swapable. you can pick the covenant you want and RP to your hearts content all expac.
and that is the kicker, not even able to play a spec you want, in the covenant you want, doing the content you want to do. it really is degenerate.
and this is what we are seeing more and more of. this is why i keep beating this drum, to get this changed. we are in alpha now, in tthe blink of an eye it will be live.
we hear this all the time. it never happens quickly, and it rarely feels good to anyone when it happens, and generally something else gets buffed to overwhelming Stier so its back to square one.
this is the whole point of the thread. pick wrong at the beginning, reroll. oh, that got nerfed, reroll. ouch no that got crazy buffed reroll.
its all so true.
blizz has ALWAYS been wrong about this. always.
anywho. a ton of good feedback here and i hope blizz takes notice.
to the people who âwant the covenants to act differentâ that is a roleplay choice you can make for yourself, as you will obviously not be pushing content as seriously as others. the first statement i heard from a METHOD player was âgreat, now i have to maintain 2-3 of each spec of each class i playâ
dear blizz, please, please make the abilities swapable.
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I agree.
They are, there is just a penalty for swapping back so you cant chop and change to suit the content you are doing.
Thats a pretty lame attitude right there for a world first. I respect the discipline and commitment way more than any natural talent (its why Michael Jordan will go down as the GOAT).
You wanna be the best, then put in the most effort.
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Why? I am not a one dimensional player, I like PVE AND PVP, plus I also tend to do both on any one particular day. There are specs that are miles ahead of one for each of these. Am I supposed to do 2x 3-4 hour grinds PER DAY?!?!?
Itâs a dumb idea to lock and people just need to stop with the mental gymnastics.
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You are asking people to choose what content they want to participate in. what happens if someone wants to participate in all the content the game has to offer? and be decently good at it? and not suffer from a critical lack of utility or -30% DPS?
Because thats the difference covenant ability makes.
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What evidence to the contrary?
Blizzards fantastic track record of balancing new powers?
Shall we go through them?
Azerite power. If you donât have the right ones done classes are gimped pretty hard. 3x streaking stars and am acane pulsar ring any bells?
3x glimmer and lights decree of I was better off with last seasons gear on.
Almost every class has an example of this.
Ok maybe they learnt from it. Oh wait they did essences next.
Essences have huge disparities. The difference between a good player with blood of the enemy and no blood of the enemy. Or a fire mage combusting with no lucid dreams.
Well surely they learnt from thatâŚ
Oh wait corruption is the worst one of all.
Echoing void (that was the aoe pulse one right) week 1-2 ring any bells? Twilight dev and infinite stars still do this day?
This is their track record.
0 for 3.
Hardly fills me with confidence.
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His choices for his character. You can still choose for your character to pick one and stick with it.
Thatâs what baffles me. People who want to pick one covenant and align themselves with them can. They could (and imo should) get extra cosmetic rewards for doing do. You could get a mog piece every months you stick with the same one for example.
My choice to not do that wouldnât effect you at all. Stop yelling me how I want to play my character is wrong because itâs not how you want to play your character.
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If it comes down to a tradoff of actual critical utility or 30% dps I will absolutely change my opinion on this topic. That means in multiple situations and not one niche pull or encounter.
Maybe I am being overly optimistic but I think imba corruptions should have burned them enough to avoid that level of absurdity again.
If Iâm wrong then at least theyâve stated that they will backpedal and allow easy switching if they canât balance the choices.
In reality, the covenants pre soulbinds will have a ~10% disparity between them. Soulbinds may either help these a little or increase the gap. Blizzard has never and will never be able to balance this sort of thing, especially considering they are cross spec. For example the night fae druid ability gives resto 16 rejuvs. Thatâs insane for raids. It gives feral 16 rakes or shreds. Thatâs pretty meh in all situations. How are they going to balance these two? Are they going to buff it or nerf it? We donât know cause itâs op for resto but garbage for feral. How are they going balance to within 1% across all specs and all covenants? Itâs just not feasible, and they could spend every second of every day of the expansion trying to get it right and still not do it. Itâs just too hard.
The second part of this is that covenants are not going to be the only system implemented this expansion. When they come out with something new and makes venthyr busted for guardian, but itâs still trash tier for the other 3 specs, do they buff or nerf to align with the new system?
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Everybody saying âletting us switch wonât affect you because you donât have to switchâ is incorrect. Wonât affect us in the same way, sure, but it will have an effect.
Letting players change covenants, easily, whenever theyâd like, dilutes the value, impact, and meaning of choosing one in the first place. We want the RPG in MMORPG to actually mean something again and choice and consequence is one of the most important foundational pillars of any RPG.
I want siding with the Venthyr to mean something, I want to make a choice and have consequences for that. You guys want to min/max and not have any meaningful, real effects (in the RPG sense - 10% more damage is whatâs âmeaningful and realâ to you) based on your choices, and thatâs fine. All Iâd say is if youâre that worried about not being able to output maximal percentages and want choices to be neutered for that, why not ask Blizzard to just remove classes? Let us pick from every ability and build our character freeform. Something will always be better, it will always let someone else heal more or hit harder. If one ability is the reason you canât progress or do certain content, what about the fact that your class isnât the best healer, toughest tank, or strongest DPS?
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The problem with this line of thinking is that you are asking that anyone who pushes content, does multiple forms of content, or plays a different spec every once in a while be severely handicapped so that you can avoid a minor inconvenience.
What the covenants should be is that you choose your base covenant and recieved the cosmetic benefits of being with them. You get the transmog, you get a buff while in their zone, you get maybe a mount, and all the other cosmetics. You are a venthyr and hold with their ideals and therefore they accept you as one of their own.
But you should also be able to commune with the other covenants after a rep grind or something and be able to use their active ability while maintaining your venthyr roots. Would that work for you?
And this class/covenant argument confuses me. Classes =/= covenants⌠if I choose to play a druid instead of a paladin, I donât lose my ability to aoe⌠I get a different aoe button⌠Covenants are just talents with a different name. How would it feel to lock in your talents at the beginning of the expansion and never change them?
This isnât vanilla anymore, the game has changed and evolved
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Still in this circle? Arenât you guys getting chaffed yet?
Very. Unfortunately while it is a minor inconvenience for you, these abilities will basically make or break the expansion for me and mine lol so kind of an important issue
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The class thing was just an exaggeration for effect on my part. It was supposed to be over the top just to make it easier for me to get across my thought process, I didnât mean it as like a 1:1 comparison or anything.
Also just to be clear I wasnât arguing FOR Blizzard tying power to choices, just that choices should have consequences. Ideally those âconsequencesâ would be story based - like siding with Saurfang (not that that one is a great example of doing it right because it ultimately didnât matter, but itâs a good first step) or staying a loyalist, but being an MMO cosmetics work too. Giving people a way to get all the covenant abilities is more than fine with me as long as they arenât the only âconsequenceâ (I donât think Iâve said that word this much in the last decade combined) of picking one. Like if you unlock the mogs after being in it for so long and can only use them as long as youâre still in it. Or, in a perfect world, the story branches and your experience as a Night Fae is fundamentally different from mine as a Venthyr in more ways than being told to collect 10 pelts from different animals.
What Iâm trying to say is itâs not about the abilities, itâs about making a choice that isnât easily reversible, gives me agency in the world and makes the whole experience more âmineâ and less generic.
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They are a major expansion feature, some close attention is warranted. I donât RP, but my opinion does get me lumped with those people quite a bit. Iâm paying very close attention to development (obviously), and Iâm eager to see how they deliver on their design goals. I completely understand the anxiety of not knowing.
But, you guys have to assume that the soulbinds + legendaries wonât offer balanced builds for any of this to matter. Neither of these features are in the alpha yet. You also have to assume that being in different covenants (and the available soul binds) wonât change your optimal talent setup.
The opportunity to have a âbest buildâ for a kyrian balance Druid and a different best build for a nightfae druid is the holy grail. Them being 2-3% + or minus depending on if the fight is AoE or not, but one playing a stellar drift/WoE/shooting starts build and one playing treants/flare/new moon makes this whole exercise worthwhile.
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I think that youâre leaning too hard on Blizzard to be able to correctly balance all this stuff⌠theyâre not going to be able to balance the covenants between specs, itâs just not possible. If you have to nerf one because itâs so good for one spec but itâs already garbage for another, what are you gonna do? That feels awfulâŚ
soulbinds may make it a bit better youâre right, but I forgot about legendaries. Thatâs just going to make the gap bigger. What if one makes it so that your rejuv also applies the regrowth hot? That would make night fae even MORE busted for resto. But still trash for feral.
I agree, I would think itâs awesome to have consequences, even hefty ones for choosing a covenant as long as they are not tied to player power. Pick venthyr and you get the mog but itâs a 3 week grind to change to Kyrian and you lose all your venthyr stuff if you change? Sounds awesome to me
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