Thing is, they made mythic+ dungeons more of a pain to build around ever since they nerfed drums and gave each dungeon some covenant interactions.
People may think I’m a Venthyr warrior because I’m a dps looking to time a Sanguine Depths, and many times people would invite me, be disappointed that I’m not Venthyr Warrior dps, and kick me for not having that covenant choice.
It’s hard enough to be invited as a nonlust melee dps, but now everyone has to worry if others have the correct covenant for particular dungeons. It’s exhausting
the mog is pretty nice, and throwing that necro hammer at em gives another ranged attack for decent damage, but yeah it’s nothing like what i hear from about others crying about divine toll.
I wouldn’t call it toxic - more useless and irrelevant.
“Play what you want if you are not in the top” isn’t exactly ground breaking or new advice in this community. And it’s not like people don’t know they can do this even without it being said.
That said, this doesn’t necessarily show what is meta so much as what people are playing. I know a lot of people who just don’t like the Necro aesthetic and this page shows it’s not a favorite. Lot of Kyrian pallys - I wonder why? Oh yeah, they fit the theme.
Sure, so let’s look at the dude who did slightly less who had nearly as much PI uptime as top parser from NF. Not quite as much, but still a 2000 DPS loss. And obviously, not all of that 2000 is purely attributed to soul rot, and obviously some of that can be attributed to player skill. But, there’s more to a covenant than just a skill, and having 90% uptime on a massive mastery buff from grove invigoration probably played a massive role as well. How are you going to honestly argue that covenants are balanced?
I didn’t really care for the theme of any of the covenants, but I’m still glad it ended up being kryian with divine toll and not venthyr or necros. I’d have seriously considered shelving this toon.
I don’t mind there being a “best” choice. But the discrepancy between best and worst, or even best and the other three in some cases, is way too large. That undermines the very concept of a meaningful choice that we were promised. There is simply put no choice at all if your “choice” is to do 2k dps less or be 20% squishier/less effective.
The average player is even more gimped by bad choices they have made on the advice of those who gave them bad advice on the forum and elsewhere. A mediocre player will struggle. The idea that they should randomly pick covenants, talents, etc, because it won’t matter and won’t affect their ability to progress is nonsense.
A mediocre player will progress more slowly because of the inoptimal choices they make. They will have trouble getting into groups that aren’t full of screw ups. And groups full of screw ups are less likely to succeed.
I’m not arguing they are balanced, I’m arguing that is it is important to know the actual math and why the numbers are different, not just empirical data where you ignore multiple other factors.
Night fae out dpsing venthyir by 2000 dps, or almost 40% on a few top parses, and linking the difference to the covenant itself, means there should be some math that matches the 2000 dps difference right? It’s a math based game after all. If I took their parse, and then retroactively adjusted all the damage associated from the night fae souls binds and ability to the venythir soul binds and abilities it should match the different right? 2000 dps? That is what seems to be what you are presenting so I’m interested in the details of why.
That is the part that matters in this discussion. That is how you separate the other variables from the covenants.
I typically sim soulbinds / covenant choices to get that data for a specific character.
For example in my case, switching from NF to any other covenant is around a 500-600 or so DPS loss. Which ends up being ~8-10% which may not look like a lot in terms of a %, however that difference would also drop my DPS to bottom tier compared to all other DPS classes as well.
So it’s not just looking at what the difference is for your spec, but also what that difference means when compared to other classes/specs in your composition. Unless you play extremely casual (like LFR only) - taking those sub-optimal picks will drop you to the bottom and bring your raid spot (for example) into question.
I also played the non-meta venthyr for awhile, and while I liked it - you could definitely feel the difference and it doesn’t feel good.
How is this different from any other meta-driven vomit? If it wasn’t Covenants, then you’d find something else to whine about because that’s how you ‘progressive’ players function.
Path of least resistance. It’s such a sad state that people are so dependent on sims and guides to tell the what to do instead of them figuring it out.
Then please, do all the math and figure out the exact difference in DPS. I’m not willing to do all the work to figure it out, personally. I’m kind of curious, myself.
Covenants were promised as, and delivered as, “flavor”. Instead we got incredibly disparate abilities where choosing a covenant can literally make or break your character for all content.
Because encouraging players to knowingly pick something that handicaps them in a game they paid for, where it will have a negative impact to their groups / opportunities is harmful.
The main reason I found that specific post toxic - is because the poster says that because a player may not be pushing for CE / high rating etc. their choices do not matter which simply isn’t the case, and it is deceiving.
If a player knows it’s a bad choice in terms of actual output, but knows it won’t impact how they choose to play the game - then obviously it’s totally their choice and no harm done. However, Blizzard introduced this expansion with the notion that the covenants would be balanced - and it just isn’t so suggesting there isn’t a difference unless your doing hardcore content just isn’t true.