Mine too but given the Azerite debacle, the writing is on the wall that certain abilities will be integral to certain specs to the point of “fixing” them as Empyrean Power did for paladins.
I don’t want to choose between aesthetics/thematics or fixing my spec.
Why are numbers even tied to covenants? Why can’t they just be cosmetic choices? People are acting like covenants can only exist if they have these unbalanced options attached to them.
I’d rather see Blizzard be able to free up time from trying to balance covenants and put that work anywhere else.
I agree that Covenants aren’t all about damage, but Blizzard knows that that’s what a lot of players strive for, so why not have the abilities we get from Covenants be their own separate easy to switch thing and let Covenants be all about story and aesthetics?
I knew all the good things we were getting would have a “BUT…” added to them.
Sadly that does seem to be how Blizzard does things. There’s always a catch.
It’s going to be fun seeing all the try-hards cry about this.
Because they want the choice to matter to everyone.
I won’t complain if people can swap willy nilly, don’t get me wrong, I’d still be sticking to my choice of covenant unless they go completely sideways and turn into corruption 2.0, but the intent is that your choice of covenant matters.
However, acting like your choice of covenant will matter so much that you’re being barred from groups/raids or is the difference in being at the top of the charts or being at the bottom is simply hyperbolic. Your class will provide the near full brunt of your viability, not the two borrowed abilities that will likely be on a longer cool down anyway.
Now, if we have systems like azerite traits/artifact traits/heart of azeroth that differ greatly between covenants, that MAY pose a problem. …But no one’s fretting about this possibility, they’re fretting over TWO abilities on the assumption they’ll be game changers. How valid can anyone’s critique really be?
Personally I think that Ion just isn’t a good director. Legion and BfA were disappointing in some way, although Legion brought it back in the end, and Shadowlands seems like it’s going to be disappointing after the launch hype subsides.
Yeah! that is awesome ill pre-buy soon for sure now!
why are people saying blizzard is listening to feedback on this when they arent
The choice would matter for a lot more people if it wasn’t tied to player power. Instead of just picking the option that gives you the most damage we would think “which aesthetic do I like the most” or “which story do I want to go with”
It’s impossible for them to have an equal weight for everybody.
Two abilities + soulbinds.
That’s a bet I’d take, being the recipient of such a silence, which was upheld, and I didn’t go after other players like Ralphie did.
I still believe that making these judgment calls on aspects of the expansion a couple of weeks into Alpha is shady, at best. There is so much we have not seen that may (and almost certainly will) impact on how any class or spec behaves that to say that Covenants are bad or wrong as they are working now is pointless.
We all know that change happens during development. And from what I have seen, the developers are very aware of how careful they need to be after the serious issues from BfA. We are seeing a very small slice of the expansion now - how about we wait until we know more of the final product before assuming the ship is sinking.
Sounds like the choice matters a lot if people are concerned with the power they’ll get.
Power is a motivating factor in a decision, as well as cosmetics and story interests. Blizzard has decided they’ll go through with this and not let wild speculation dictate their direction.
Ok fine, you don’t want me to off spec tank for M+ queues. Ok message received.
Kind of the basis of any decision that it is personal. Granted, some people will go to their favorite youtuber or follow the number crunchers to find the covenant that most benefits their play style if optimization is their number one priority, but that’s still a choice. They could also say no to optimization and chase the aesthetics. Unless balance is really screwed up (it won’t be) they won’t be crippled for it. 12 classes, they’re all used in raids.
I think we’ll be fine.
And so I speak up, to voice my concerns. To encourage them to make sure that the focus is on keeping them balanced.
Otherwise we could very easily run into them realizing one patch in that a Covenant is broken for Melee, a Covenant is gimped for Casters, and a Covenant is useless for Tanks.
They need to know we have these concerns, and that they better really be on the ball to avoid this happening.
Current datamined stuff isn’t giving me much confidence. Yes, I know its just datamined, but its stuff they’ve coded, so it means they’ve at least considered these things as options.
Have you seen how poorly they balanced stuff in this expansion? Azerite traits, essences, and corruptions are all over the place.
Yeah, after they spend most of the expansion fiddling around with totally-not-azerite 2.0 before moving on to the next expansion.
Yeah Ion said that’s not something they want to have happen.
It’ll be interesting to see what Limit and Method end up doing for the world 1st race.