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?
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.