Obviously, the whole ‘No Covenant Swap’ concept has been controversial, with a lot of us arguing back and forth as to whether they should or should not be easily swappable, but this thread isn’t to discuss that.
It’s that we’ve discovered that the alternatives that have been suggested - being able to swap just the abilities or covenant abilities being their own talent row - are now impossible.
The reason is that soulbinds include modifications for your covenant-specific ability. Not just stuff like ‘shorter cooldown’ either, but stuff like the Night Fae using their soulbind to gain stealth after their sprint ends.
To understand the importance of this, imagine being able to swap your class without swapping the talent trees associated with that class. Not only would many of the abilities no longer fit thematically, some just plain wouldn’t make sense. That is what being able to swap covenant abilities without swapping covenants would be like.
Similarly, each covenant having their own version of the covenant abilities wouldn’t work, as again, you have multiple talent trees based on each covenant ability, complete with conduits that you have to farm.
The only question that should still remain is how hard should it be to swap and how often can you do it.
TL:DR: Not only are there covenant abilities, but there are talent trees associated with those covenant abilities, so simply swapping or reskinning those covenant abilities is not an option.
Which makes me even happier since people will be forced to play the game without changing builds for every single boss and will actually need to get good instead of stacking fotm/meta classes to roflstomp encounters
So just copy paste the soulbind tree onto each covenant.
For example, a Kyrian can have 4 trees to choose at a given time from for Pelagos:
Pelagos’ tree
Bonesmith Heirmir’s tree
Theotar the Mad Duke’s tree
Lady Moonberry’s tree.
Problem solved. Also, the Game Director has stated they have a backup plan to uncouple power from covenant choice. So whatever you think doesn’t actually matter, because the people actually making the game already have a solution.
So the solution is to have twelve talent trees for each covenant, each of which has conduits that need to be farmed (Do you want those covenant specific or should every conduit just be able to be farmed by everyone - hello loot bloat?).
Remember, Ion’s backup plan isn’t to decouple power from covenant choice, but to make covenants freely swappable. I’m not saying that covenant swapping isn’t possible, but that the other ‘compromises’ aren’t.
They’re reworking Conduits btw. If having too many trees is a problem they could easily just completely remove the traits that interact with the utility abilities.
You focus on your BiS then work on others for fun. Content.
You’re flat-out wrong there. He even used a specific example way back talking about a Kyrian using Necrolord Abilities. Also, in the most recent interview he restated they’d allow the power choice to be swappable. Not Covenants. That breaks the entire point of the expansion and they know that.
Because that sounds like an utter mess and a ridiculously complicated system.
They’re reworking the ‘destructible conduits’ bit, not the part where they need to be farmed.
Not what I’m saying. Not only do we have covenant-specific abilities and soulbinds but we have covenant-specific conduits too. Should we keep those too in your hypothetical example (and give rise to the exact same problem you’re trying to prevent by making abilities swappable) or quadruple the number of conduits that can drop?
I could be mistaken, but that’s what most of the forum has been talking about as the backup plan after the Preach/Ion interview.
[quote=“Kalzhun-thrall, post:9, topic:593136”]
Because it’s ridiculous. It is actually worse than freely swappable covenants (which I don’t like for different reasons) because the complexity is off the charts and either keep the problem and you get mountains of loot bloat.
This is gonna hurt, but think about this: when you switch to a Covenant’s ability, your available soulbinds change to the soulbinds from that Covenant.
So it’s impossible because you don’t like it? Sounds like you don’t like it but you know it’s very possible, and you realize it’s the obvious solution that the vast majority of the player base will like.
It is impossible without changing a number of other things, which is what has me and Kalzhun on our back and forth. It’s as simple as saying: let’s give Ret Paladins the ability to have our spender be Lava Burst.
That’s the main takeaway. He doesn’t want it to happen, so he’s coming up with a needlessly convoluted “solution” and arguing against that solution being viable.
He’s saying the covenant abilities and their soulbinds go hand in hand. It’s not as simple as just let’s make abilities interchangeable regardless of cov
If you ve also been in the forums even for a tiny bit you ll have seen the amount of tryhards “force” to play something they dont enjoy because it performs better
It just takes a lot more skill with a balanced comp instead of stacking whatever is more optimal
