Just to put the argument that covenants being locked will balance the game to rest - here’s some math.
There are 36 specs in game.
Each spec has 4 covenants that need to be balanced
Each covenant has 4 other abilities that are generic that need to be balanced
Each covenant has 3 soulbind trees that each need to be balanced
Each spec has ~5 legendaries that need to be balanced to each individual covenant.
Each of these needs to be viable in the 3 forms of endgame - pvp, M+ and raid
36x4x4x3x5x3 = 25,920
There are 25,920 things that Blizzard now needs to balance, because if you can’t swap covenants and become massively underpowered because of it, the uproar would be tumultous.
If they were unlocked, they could let an ability/soulbind flounder a bit as they get the tuning right so that at least one of the abilities is viable for each spec, then once overall tuning is done, go back and take a look at the underpowered ones. Instead, they all need to be viable on day 1 so that a huge portion of the game isn’t feeling really bad about their choice. This is taking a ton of valuable time away from developers when they could be working on classes or encounters. Asking for covenants to be locked is objectively asking for class design, encounter design and story to be worse.
To be clear - I do not want covenants to be unlocked. I think that choice is a good one, and should be very difficult to change. Just the abilities and soulbinds need to be unlocked.
uhh, legit question, if say, a covenant ability is outperforming some other by a massive amount, shouldn’t they just bring down THAT ability/spell?
do they really need to balance the other 25,919 spells available because of one ability?
I am legit curious because I am not a game dev
Blizzard doesn’t balance individual things. They balance entire packages.
Just like they don’t care that we all have dumpster fire talents, they’re not going to be all that concerned if a legendary or soulbind isn’t performing well so long as each spec/covenant is doing alright.
Say monk has a really good covenant ability that works way better than the rest, but monk is underperforming compared to the rest of the classes… do they nerf the overperforming ability, and therefore nerf the entire class even further into the dirt?
Not so - because they are a locked in choice, you have to make sure that every soulbind is balanced and at least one legendary works for every covenant for every spec.
You can have a really good ability but if the legendaries and soulbinds are still dumpster, the spec is going to underperform. Therefore they have to balance them because you can’t change away from it.
Not to mention even assuming they didn’t balance soulbinds, and only one legendary you’d still be at:
36 specs
4 covenants
4 generic abilities
3 forms of content
1 legendary for each cov. (4)
You aren’t locked to a soulblind. You can only change around your conduits once a week but you can freely swap between the 3 soulbinds you have.
Legendaries are also going to be tailored towards either generic abilities or our class specific abilities. If a certain setup isn’t performing they’re not likely to touch legendaries anyway to try to fix it. They’ll just change the covenant stuff around.
You’re making this out to be a much bigger issue than it actually is.
You are locking yourself into 3 soulbinds by locking yourself into a covenant yes. They can’t leave them untouched if the covenant ability sucks but they’re awesome. You can’t go anywhere. But you’re right, since you have 3 they would probably be touched last - doesn’t mean they don’t need to balance them though.
About legendaries, they will absolutely need to balance them. If they buff an underperforming cov ability and now a legendary that was decent is ridiculously overpowered, they’re going to need to nerf it. But since the legendaries are shared across covenants you’re also nerfing this legendary for everyone else too.
I am not making it out to be a bigger issue than it is lol.
That’s not exactly how it works but you do have a point.
I called it months ago: covenant abilities are nothing but glorified talent points that you’re forced to keep “permanently”.
They’re talent points that are shared across all the specs - proven over and over to be a bad idea - that each have 3 additional talent trees inside them, and then legendaries attached to them that are shared across all the specs too.
Based on how Blizzard has acted in the past though, I’m saying they wont bother balancing the soulbinds provided the package as a whole is working fine.
It’s why we all have dumpster fire talents that haven’t been buffed in 2 years. Blizzard doesn’t care about the individual stuff you’re saying they’re suddenly going to have to worry about.
It’s not going to be “This covenant ability is underperforming, let’s buff it”. It’s going to more be “Night Fae for Retribution isn’t good, let’s buff something specific to that setup”.
Blizzard doesn’t care if a few abilities in the package suck. They never have. They’re not going to suddenly start now.
Yes they will say this, then when a certain legendary becomes busted they’ll have to nerf it. This nerfs it across the board. Now Venthyr is underperforming because they were propped up by the legendary that they had to nerf because of Night Fae. Now Venthyr needs to be buffed. They buff venthyr and something else becomes busted, so they have to nerf it across the board. And on, and on.
In Blizzard’s eyes that wont make a certain legendary busted, it’ll just make the certain setup too powerful which will be nerfed somewhere else.
Again, Blizzard doesn’t look at it in terms of individual things being over or underpowered. That’s why I said you’re making it out to be bigger than it is.
They can’t use their old tricks when people are locked into things that takes weeks to change. The community would go ballistic if they did.
You gotta remember we’re locked into choices now, which has never been done in the history of the game. Every part of the locked in choice has to be balanced. Even if they’re looking at the overall package of the covenant, they still have to take into account how any change will affect all 3 specs, how the legendaries now work with all specs and covenants now, etc.
But I digress. even if they are balancing in packages and just randomly nerf hammering the entire package instead of fine tuning, that’s just yet another argument for why lumping them all together is a horrific idea.
The only thing that’s actually locked like that are covenants and changing the conduits in your loadouts.
Once you get a legendary or pick a soulbind you aren’t locked into that choice for any amount of time. You can change your mind 5 seconds later.
I don’t disagree that covenants have a lot of bad things about them, but not because of balance concerns. I don’t expect balance to be any worse than traditional Blizzard balancing(which is already mediocre to begin with).
You will need to farm mats to craft the legendary, and then farm to upgrade that legendary. Using a legendary is a time commitment, the full extent of which we haven’t yet fully grasped.