i think you may be misinterpreting what people are saying though i do only speak for myself. at least for me, it’s not that i view them as another talent row that should be easily switchable. i’m all for having a meaningful choice. heck, i would even consider a permanent choice fine to an extent. my issue comes from the fact that blizz has never been able to balance wow to a point where such a meaningful choice has power attached to it. we can use corruptions, essences, azerite traits, many expansions of spec balancing, trinkets (especially mop era trinkets), and more that show blizz just isn’t capable.
that means there will be people who will be screwed over when a nerf happens or ignored if a bad ability isn’t buffed. and those who see another covenant get buffed will want to change but lose tons of effort just because of one change that doesn’t even affect the entire covenant system. even going back to legion, blizzard said they wouldn’t buff or nerf any artifact and then they did it anyways because their balance was that bad.
i’m concerned about an overly restrictive system (like there was in early legion) that blizzard can’t possibly balance because they’ve never successfully done so in their 14 (i think?) years of trying. even if blizz got rid of the offensive abilities that get added and just made us choose the utility spells, i’d still be a little hesitant.
i understand this point of view but blizz is going to have to balance class abilities, utility spells, soulbinds, and conduits. you saw just this expac how adding one power based system on another just inflated the issues on balance. i get that they probably want to try to but when blizzard designs a system where a person can just get 4 or 5 pieces with a passive proc on it and top damage without doing anything skill wise to warrant their dps, that isn’t balanced. blizzard can not even hope to balance the system as it is now.