Based on the most recent Interview with Ion he stated that covenants are ‘part of your identity
Specifically he said that ‘it shouldn’t be something you can change week to week or go x covenant for this boss and then change for m+, they are part of your identity’
He also mentioned that it will be about advantages and disadvantages, you ll have to weight the ability with soulbinds and legendaries some of which are covenant specific legendaries.
That means that thankfully YOU WONT BE OPTIMAL FOR ALL TYPES OF CONTENT, you are gonna have to choose advantages which will result in DISADVANTAGES.
In addition he mentioned that changing would be possible, but rejoining a covenant you left is gonna be way harder, because ‘you are breaking an oath’.
So expect a heavy grind and punishment for leaving a covenant and then trying to rejoin next week for the raid.
Also they said that they learned their lesson that putting simply higher costs like with azerite armor respecting doesn’t stop hardcore players from paying huge sums of gold to do that even if it reaches painful levels which clearly suggests if you want to rejoin a covenant you left it won’t be as simply as a higher gold cost, I can’t wait to see how they ll punish people who tell themselves they should have the best build for all situations and never have disadvantages : )
Source: 5h 23m is when he starts talking about it
Celebration thread for us who support the current covenant system and want meaningful choices
70 Likes
Bait post. Can’t wait til everyone shows up. 
22 Likes
It means we’ll need multiple of the same class, then there will be backlash and they’ll cave halfway into the xpac, just like literally every single other time.
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Except right now there are arguably BAD choices depending on your spec.
Kyrian is pretty much lackluster for most Paladin specs.
When you have 4 choices and one of them is a straight up bad choice, then it effectively becomes a non-choice.
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Hey if you are willing to spend 10x the effort and deal with the consequences of going against the designed system feel free, ima enjoy being a necrolord boy cuz that mail hunter armor is so uwu
And I am sure i ll find uses for the aoe ability in the vast majority of content.
What actually is interesting is that they learned their lesson with azerite respeccing and know people are gonna pay ridiculous amounts of gold to respec them, which makes me wonder what kind of system are they gonna introduce to stop players from repeatedly changing.
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It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve steamed ahead on bad design and ignored the good feedback on it.
We get to watch it blow up in their faces as they scramble to fix it and get it somewhat right in the last half of the expansion.
Again.
55 Likes
You are truly enjoying your ability to post videos, aren’t you?
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Then they have learned nothing from BFA
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You are only judging by covenant abilities when in reality those will only be a small part of the entire package that arguably will have less of an impact than the rest of it.
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Memes are all I have left.
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And yet the Soulbinds also have an impact on the Covenant Ability. That’s already visible if you look at some of the Necrolord Soulbinds.
So if the core Covenant ability is bad, then the Soulbinds may be in a bad spot as well.
I’m not big into progression, but if I’m told that my choices are 80%, 100%, 98% and 97% …
why would any sane person ever take the 80%? It becomes a non-choice.
14 Likes
I hope blizzard sticks to their guns the whole expansion and doesn’t relent on these covenant decisions. Screw the min/max crowd. They get what they deserve for tearing down the game and expecting the devs to adhere to their logic instead of making the game an RPG.
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Calling it right now, BiS soulbind and BiS legendary will never been in the same covenant.
So we’re ditching Corruption and Azerite and picking up a new convoluted system.
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Hey at least that system isnt based on RNG drops and more RNG so I am happy.
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If all covenant abilities suck except for one, then there is no choice. As much as I love the idea of it, I don’t think blizzard can pull this off.
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I can’t wait until a couple months into Shadowlands when everyone’s settled into a covenant and Blizzard decides they have to rebalance everything.
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If it was a matter of +5 in one area, -5 in another area, that’d still be relatively well balanced. But right now … its looking like its going to heavily be weighed by “your spec will dictate your choices of covenants”
And that’s bad design.
THAT is the other fear.
And I’m NOT a FOTM type of player.
That’s the other fear. That each patch will make it into a “+12% Kyrian, -14% Necrolord” and hten another patch will be “-17% Kyrian, +22% Necrolord.”
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Imagine if all those different covenant abilities were just new class abilities instead of more rental crap…
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look at it like this. 1 ability is way better than all the others. Is is absurdely good for this situation. The next trash pack in 5 seconds though it is suddenly the worst choice possible.
That is what the devs are aiming for. There will be no best for certain content. They all bring their advantages and disadvantages. The content you are running isn’t designed to be static in that way.
Just because one is better for a certain boss fight doesn’t mean it is better for all of the fights.
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Hey the same can be said about classes.
And FotMers are the lowest of the low and we should let them suffer as they deserve no pity and no dev should ever care about FotMers opinions.
3 Likes