Can some one help me out, the more I read about covenants, the more significant the choice seems to become (and the more I worry about SL overall).
Initially we were told covenants were a thematic thing, aristocratic venthyr, military maldraxis, nature ardenweald or honourbound kyrian.
Then we learned that power is tied to them from class/covenant abilities (which is a front loaded choice) but the power spike is offset by the soul bind system and the conduit system.
Now we are learning that there is an end game activity/mini game specifically tied to each covenant and that significant parts of the story will be tied to covenant choice i.e development effort has been diluted 4 different ways?
I am wondering how significant will each of these variables be?
One general abillity
One spec specific ability
3 soulbinds which are mini talent trees
Mogs, mounts, possibly titles and other rewards.
Covenant zone, their campaign story and specific covenant mini event.
You need to weigh all those including the theme of each to decide which one to join.
For example I am going necrolords and just waiting for the conduit datamine for spriests before I confirm it, and also going for the bonesmith soulbind for that sweet 20% crit every minute soulbind uwu
Not true, the latest round of news specifically highlights the content you are locked out of from choosing covenants, various mini-games and story elements will not be available to you.
Anyone who is NOT a top tier mythic raider will probably set and forget the various systems they are bringing in. To me it looks like 5 different azerite-like systems that people will hate… i just hope I am wrong.
It’s a very significant choice with the potential to be massively detrimental for the entire game.
We know this community. There are likely going to be many people that will only invite folks (even for content that it doesn’t matter in) if they’re using their meta covenant.
We’ve already seen it a little with folks claiming that you are “literally trolling” if you’re anything but Venthyr and want to push mythic +.
It’s a really bad system with the potential to be truly abysmal.
You will get an ability that everybody in your covenant gets and you’ll get a class ability. You’ll also get unique activities only available to your covenant.
Typically this would be a cyclical choice though, like you start with one and are locked into that one, exhaust the content of one then have the choice of cycling to the next one… like the argent Tourney or the oracle/wolvar quests, the firelands dailies… pretty much any content blizzard have done to date.
To me it looks like blizzard are once again designing in a vacuum or specifically designing the game around Ions play habbits with everything else an afterthought.
I would argue that the system itself isn’t bad, it’s just the current iteration of it that seems like it would cause problems. In truth I think the beta will tell us more about it, whether it’s harmful or fine in its current form.
Really, if a system is “required” to be used in a specific way due to general community consensus, is that really a problem with the system, or with the community’s perception of it?
See that’s exactly my point though. Everyone who wants to do well in things like Raids and M+, or in some cases just wants to do that content at all, will feel pressured to go with one specific covenant that benefits their class and spec the best, and it’s because the community consensus has basically dictated it.
If the community’s perception of the way it should be used is the way it actually will be used, and using it in that way has the potential of excluding players from activities or requiring them to put in the effort to respec and all that, that still to me puts the blame on the community’s accepted way of utilizing the system rather than the system itself being bad, as others might claim.
I agree that they need to re-evaluate certain choices with the system overall, such as how soulbind path swapping is handled, and how much effort will need to go into swapping covenants around all the time for those that end up needing to. But I believe the system as it is right now would still only be part of the overall problem.
EDIT: I’m not saying this to downplay the problems with the system itself though. If the system itself and the community consensus go half and half in terms of blame, the system itself is the half that should take priority over community consensus in my opinion, since the community consensus of the system is formed, well, around the system in the first place.