Covenant Solutions

Community General Discussion
1

Clearly, Covenant abilities cannot go live as currently envisioned. Depending on your role, class, and content, there will be “best covenants” to choose. Trying to balance them would be a nightmare. This is a problem because Covenants immediately become prescribed, and not choices. What solutions are there, besides scrapping abilities completely?

  1. Disable the abilities in instanced content.

Dungeons, Raids, and PvP. This makes these abilities only for world content: questing, levelling, and doing world quests. To me, this is the “it’s not working, NUKE IT!” option. The least desirable, but the most effective.

  1. Make the abilities zone abilities, like in WoD.

When you join a covenant, you unlock both abilities instantly. For other covenants, to get their abilities in their zones, you have to reach Honored for the Signature ability and Revered for the Class ability.

As for instanced content… it depends. In theory, you could have the ability for the zone the content is in. Unfortunately, this has the potential to seriously unbalance classes in different instances. In Raids, classes that have single-target abilities will be far more powerful than classes with AoE abilities and vice versa for M+. Perhaps the raid in one zone favours Rogues, but only Warriors can get invited to M+ for the dungeon in that zone. And then if there’s a Rogue BiS in that dungeon, that could be really frustrating for players. I’d be willing to test it out, though. Maybe it wouldn’t make that much difference.

  1. Nerf abilities in different content based on its effectiveness.

Like a 30% nerf to AoE abilities in Dungeons or a similar nerf to single-target abilities in raids. Adjust the numbers so that in a raid, all abilities for one class do the same amount of single-target damage and in M+, AoE only does slightly higher damage than single-target abilities at their cleave max. Since you won’t always be at that max, and because single-target abilities can help focus down key targets, that should make both kinds of abilities useful. This solution can work with #2, as well.

  1. Allow players to pick any ability whenever they enter instanced combat.

So in world content, you get the abilities of the covenant you’ve joined, but in instanced combat, you can use ANY covenant’s ability. This balances all the choice criteria. Covenant choice would MATTER in world content, forcing players to balance a choice between playstyle and aesthetic preference. At the same time, you could still optimize your abilities for M+/PvP/Raids so that no covenant is ever a “wrong” choice. I think this is the best choice, since it allows PvP players to bring their new abilities into duels and battlegrounds from other expansions, rather than suddenly lose part of their power for this expansion.

Personally, I’d like to see solution 4 with a hint of 2.

  • The Covenant abilities of your chosen Covenant, by default, work in all zones.
  • If you get enough rep (Honored for Signature or Revered for Class Abilities) with another Covenant, you can choose one or both abilities to override your covenant abilities IN THAT ZONE ONLY. This is done and undone in any rested area in the relevant zone or with a Tome. This allows you to practice using those abilities on mobs or target dummies before using them in instanced content to see how they affect your rotation.
  • In instanced content, you can choose any Covenant’s abilities you have unlocked when you enter. To change your choice, say between fights, you need a Tome/Rested Area.
2

Probably a lot of decent compromise in there, but people will just keep saying but “muh meaningful choice”. As long as they don’t get to make it so you can’t switch how you want, it won’t work for them. And Ion seems pretty much on that side right now. So we can only wait after first patch is my guess before they unlock them when they realise they can’t balance them.

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Solution 5: Make everyone a grey blob with the same skills so no one ever feels like they made the wrong choice.

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They CAN and they WILL thankfully.
Because MANY of us support the current covenant system. Stop pretending like everyone agrees with you because bellular made a video about it.

min maxers are simply gonna get used to it, we know they are gonna whine about how it is “suffering” and are “miserable” because they cant be optimal for every single boss, dungeons, etc. They ve been whining since forever because balance is never perfect

My only compromise would be locking the rewards to be character specific so players can change covenants like talents but the rewards will only be gained by staying with the same covenant for a year.

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5

I made a choice when I chose my race, faction and mostly my class.
Why do I need covenants for that?
I am not a covenant, I’m a troll dk.


“I have traded my freedom for power before”
That’s all covenants abilities and soulbinds are for me a golden cage.
That will reduce my class design for the sake of borrowed powers.
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Hopefully they release as is, hoping it’s a sign that blizz is putting in more rp and player consequences for your actions instead of “world first mythic/#1 pvp team, etc.” game design.

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I hope they go live as is.

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Cool, bruh

I don’t watch Bellular. And you don’t have to to see why this will be a problem. Sure, you can ignore the min/max covenant choice. But any player that does so, or doesn’t know where to look for the flavour of the week choice, is going to hit a HUGE wall if they ever try to do advanced content like Raids or Mythics.

And if PvP skills are imbalanced, people who don’t have the right Covenant will be at a serious disadvantage.

So it doesn’t just affect the min/maxers. It affects most people. Covenant abilities are bad for instanced, competitive content.

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I ve been using a sub optimal talent called exsanguinate instead of toxic blade which is 1.5k dps increase for ST.

I am doing heroic raids, m+, 5mask, pvp and all kinds of content just fine.

If you get declined or benched due to talent choice, avoid toxic guilds like that

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The issue is that RP consequences shouldn’t affect Raiders, M+ players, or PvPers. And wanting to occasionally dabble in those forms of content shouldn’t preclude me from making the RP decisions I want to make for the rest of the time.

Also, ALL of my suggestions retain player consequence for choosing a covenant. They just divorce that choice from success in “world first mythic/#1 pvp team, etc.”

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I heard you can kill people in pvp with grey daggers too, why don’t you try that? I’m sure you will find the gameplay amazing.

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Slippery slope intensifies

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I started this back when they were announced at Blizzon. Lots of good ideas.

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It’s not a slope if it’s true, you make worst choice because mathematicly you can do content. Why not make even worse choice? If it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter all the way. Else you still care about numbers, so it’s only a matter of how bad is the difference.

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Unfortunately, this is exactly what Blizzard wants, which is why they’re not going to listen to feedback even if they asked for it.

The feedback is “No, we don’t want to have to choose one thing to be good at forever while other areas suffer, because we enjoy participating in different forms of content that require different strengths on one character. This will only create a barrier to entry in higher levels of content”

It’s literally incompatible with Blizzard’s vision for the covenant system. Blizzard wants to break the precedent WoW has had basically forever. Even the old talent trees, while less freeform, were fairly cookie cutter. You didn’t feel like you were gimping yourself in some way by choosing the default “Best” options and sticking with it forever. There wasn’t some “other” build you felt like you needed to be competitive on different fights.

These covenant abilities are an entirely different beast. If they stay the course, it’s going to be a nonstop complaint for the life of the expansion. It’s going to screw with the pug scene to such an extent that people quit over it. It’s not “fun” to be funneled into one form of content that suits the ability you chose and nothing else.

People WANTED impactful stories and potentially story choices. This is not that. Make it impactful through the story itself. Be even harsher about switching covenants if necessary – but unchain it from our characters’ power and abilities.

People WANTED permanent additions to our characters instead of more borrowed power. This is the opposite of that.

At the end of the day, I don’t mind leveling 3 alts + my main to see the story that covenants will be bringing. But being able to competitively participate in all forms of content if my skill level allows for it is a MUST, and this system is telling me I have to upkeep 4 different characters at an equal level for a little over a year straight if I want to do that (since the final patch usually comes around then).

That’s unreasonable.

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This. In an RPG it’s not the dev’s job to decide what you should be forced to choose. It’s your choice whether you want to pigeonhole yourself into a select path while others should be able to decide how they want to play the game.

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This is not an argument.
This is I like something, I don’t like what you like.

Devs are free to design the game for multiplayers, IT’S also a multiplayer game.

If you want to pigeonhole yourself you do it. That’s clearly not what I want. I want to have freedom of choice or I will just not make that choice.

Clearly also dodging the borrowed power part, this is just gonna make class design worse if gameplay rely on those covenants abilities and soulbinds.

I don’t mind making 4 of the same characters to have a dk in each covenants, casuals will be penalised not me. Gearing is gonna be a joke and no system will have infinite grinding in next expansion. It will be the easiest expansion to maintain alts.

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Freedom of “choice”=No brainer choice for X content.

Go play CoD then where you can change equipment on the fly, this is an mmoRPG and thankfully Ion understands that.

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Ion also understood what is an rpg and still made wod and BFA.

And I disagree, there is some skills to make choices on the go.
It’s lazy to make one choice and to make it work all the time without having any input.

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Exactly what happens in M+ where you are locked in a set instead of allowing the degenerate playstyle of “let me change to X set before boss and X set before mass AoE”

He also made that decision.