I see a lot of people rightfully worried about these abilities locked and a group of people that are either apathic about that aspect to are saying blizz is in the right with this decision. Any player who isn’t worried about these abilities either:
Doesn’t do content where this will effect them. (Mainly world quests LFR, and other queable content) I don’t think these discussions ever effect these players because they will always just pick whatever they think is the most fun. However, I still think even these players would find it more fun to try a new covenant ability from time to time.
Isn’t fully thinking about the implecations of these abilities being locked. WoW has so many different areas of content and these abilities are not JUST a numbers game. Some of these will be better in M+, PvP, Raiding, and frankly be more fun in world content like world quests. It will be better for everyone if you can just switch the abilities easily. It will trap people in content because they WILL preform worse if they don’t make the choice that is best for the situation.
Take the warrior spear that roots people. What if that is great for pvp because it gives them a root to prevent people from running? Great i like that one. Oh but in raiding the excecute is a massive dps increase 5% at launch but as secondary stats increase only boost the difference? Oh well blizz nerfs that one, now all those players that picked that need to grind a new covenant? This is a ticking time bomb that will lead to people unsubbing. They just need to make the abilities easily accessible and the cosmetics and those aspects difficult to swap.
Another example is the DH ability that lets you teleport to the target regardless of Line of Sight. Tell me and any PvP player that this ability wouldn’t be insanely useful? But this provides a very minor DPS increase in organized raids. Sure in LFr it won’t matter, but unless you make DHs other choices do the same amount of damage as this ability, the difference will be noticeable.
This isn’t an elitist idea. The balance WILL be impossible. Personally I don’t want these abilities to all deal the same amount of damage. I WANT to pick the strongest one for the content I’m playing. And most of all, I WANT to pick the covenant that seems the coolest to me without having to worry about how my class COULD be played if I picked a different one.
Likely it won’t. But as a mythic player, lets take a fight in BFA that was made easier by playing certain classes. Zul. I have to ask. If all the warriors in your group suddenly had an additional mass root that also generates rage to boost single target damage on Zul. What is the dps difference there? The ability itself isn’t doing any damage because the little shadowlings are immune. But the warriors are doing more excecutes, rampages etc. Why would you not invite the player doing 15 more excecutes in the fight? Would 15 more excecutes only do 5% more damage? I doubt it.
If you’re a casual mythic raider it won’t matter indeed. I just like when people posting on their alt try to make a point like that. I’d have to trust you not to lie to me! But if we got to annecdotal evidences, I already know a lot of pvpers that are bothered by it, most people that I raid mythic are they just don’t see the point of making abilities like that if we go back to class design being meaningfull like before we had borrowed systems.
Don’t most people have a “primary” activity they tend to do more than anything else? Just choose for that and accept that you’ll be plenty functional, if not perfectly optimal, for other stuff.
I mean has there ever been a point in the game where any given character can be optimal for everything at all times without some level of contortion?
That is a single boss. Every ability will have it’s own situational advantages. It’s not different from classes. Should we make it possible to change our class at will as well? No, it’s designed to be a meaningful choice.
This isn’t an alt. I play both Retail and Classic. I use my Classic main on the forums because I like the name.
Pretty sure only a very small minority of people perform at high levels in all types of content.
Also, if there’s only one “strong” ability for everything and you can always have that one then there’s no choice to be made here, might as well bake it into the classes.
Indeed, if the ability is so OP that you literally cannot choose anything else, why does the choice even exist? Just dispense with the tree and bake it in.
Some people like to play multiple activities and be good at them.
But yes this kind of situation already happens with racials.
I already feel bad in pvp to not play orc. 50% of the top pvp ladder is human and orcs.
Don’t really need to add another layer.
This is an MMORPG. Your choices should be meaningful, your character should be unique, you should not be able to change your character at every moment for whatever reason. Go play a different type of game if you want that…
I’m not in favor nor really against locking people into covenants, but…
…Can we stop talking like some abilities will apply to many situations more than others in a meaningful way, or that we’ll bugger out between pulls to make a quick switch?
Here I’ll go on the last character I played in BFA for you. But I gave a situational example up above with the Zul fight. Personally I’m not that worried about the ACTUAL damage these abilities do but their echoing implications. If there were for example a mechanic that needed to be soaked. A rogue can do it with cloak of shadows, lets say. Or if a DH can do it, and then he will blink back to the boss and he can soak one every 30 seconds without losing dps.
I’m not worried about the numerical impact of the individual abilities, but the impact of them on a fight to fight basis will be noticeable. Personally, as a player that feels really bad being locked into a situation where one choice is locking me out of fullfilling a role in my raid. I like being the orb carrier, gem holder, debuff dropper etc etc.
Every meaningful choices we had was just paywalled.
Like I would say I agree with you at some point.
But this is just gonna be a paywalled option.
You can pay to change servers, races, factions. You can pay to respec azerith, or spec before. You will probably be able to pay to switch covenants if they make it “meaningfull choice”.
Actually we can change our class at will already. The talents have different movement, damage reduction, and aoe vs single target abilties. So this arguement doesn’t make sense to me.
Yes? It’s called having multiple gear sets/talent builds. Of course at the moment you’ve got to toss corruptions and essences in too but yeah, it’s pretty easy to have multiple specs/builds within a spec good to go.
My mage has fully functional/optimized aoe and single target loadouts for all three specs.
As things currently are in Shadowlands if I choose a covenant based off of an ability that synergizes well with frost but not fire/arcane or fire but not frost/arcane or arcane–you get the point–it locks you into a given spec.
That is bad. Especially for folks that want to play all of the specs like they have for like 10 years now and change around based on the situation. This is significantly more of a problem for tanks/healers that also DPS or people that want to PVP.
It is all around a bad system that will cause problems as is.
In an mmorpg of your design you wouldn’t be able to change talents either. WoW has ALWAYS had a mechanism to change things. In vanilla/classic you could change talents at any time. Most leveling guides encourage it even.
Okay, now be the change you want to see in the world - no more talent swapping, and DEFINITELY no more spec swapping. Class swapping is absolutely out of the question.
They should add a shrine in Oribos that functions like the Zandalari Loa shrine–you can just pick which Covenant ability you want from there whenever you want/once per day/once per week. That way every person who thinks they need optimal abilities while failing to parse 60% of max dps on a target dummy can have whatever BiS ability they feel like at all times, while keeping the rp alive for the folks who want it as it is.
Well if that’s the sticking point, it probably won’t have much bearing on me. The overhead of juggling gear for specs became too much with BfA so I’ve reverted to the vanilla-like practice of character == spec. Already had alts rolled from the pre-dual-spec era so switching back wasn’t that much of an imposition.