Disclaimer : To all of those that arent interested in character performance please disregard this post and enjoy the awesome back mogs and armor as the rest of this post wont pertain to you.
So here we go again…
We get more best in slot rental abilities for another expansion. Instead of being able to collect them all like essences and being able to change between them before we set out to conquer content we will be instead stuck them.
Was your covenant nerfed? Too bad you made that choice and now will have to spend a lengthy amount of time/resources to unravel that mess.
Did you want to take a break from raiding and do some PVP? Too bad that BiS class ability is a different covenant.
How about M+? Yup AOE one is in different covenant.
How about you having to switch roles for your raid/M+/PVP group only to find out that your resto traits are with the vampire lords? Time to reroll again making your toon worthless in the interim.
Or maybe youre an Undead Deathknight and your best ability is with the fairies in forest land? How can you withstand such thematic butchering? Or maybe youre a druid trying to be the best druid you can be but you have to hang out in coffins in Draculas castle to earn his abilities. Like what the heck man?
Balancing them for all content would be impossible so it only makes sense that these abilities just need to be turned off when doing competitive content and only used as RP flavor and world immersion fun.
Honestly this is the kind of stuff that worries me. I hope that they just make the buffs similar but not catering to specific niches. I would hate to not be able to pick the covenant I prefer the style of because another is BiS balls to the wall OP.
There are certainly ways to make fun mechanics without breaking the game. Symbiosis was a really fun mechanic that gave not the greatest buffs but they were really fun to play with. Stuff like that would possibly stem the leet min maxxers because you would be picking what you think is the most fun to have and not what is mandatory for raiding/pvp/M+/fashionscape
I kinda agree at first, but then I think of Classic… and realize that 3/4ths of the talent points and a full 2/3rd of the specs were pure crap for doing anything competative in… and it was almost part of its charm.
Even today, there’s races that are so clearly and objectively better for certain classes and specs, but it seems to be the one thing we’re willing to overlook in the quest of perfect optimization… otherwise, all Shadow Priests would be Trolls.
As long as the balance just isn’t egregiously bad (like one single talent increasing your DPS by 10% over another), I think Covenants will get a pass.
The abilities they have previewed so far are going to have a profound impact on combat maybe even more so than essences. This would go as far as to change the rotation cycles of the player. A racial ability would never do that and today all racials are very close DPS wise.
Its not speculation, did you see how freaking strong the mage abilities were? Its not possible for them to balance them for all specs in all situations. Heck its not even possible for them to get it close.
We do have some idea, though. We know that this is another Azerite-esque way of adding temporary abilities that get taken away next expac. Maybe one or two will become baseline, but most will disappear for good or require a talent so you’re forced to choose between two abilities when you were able to have both previously.
It’s just an awful way of doing character progression. I don’t understand why Blizzard does it.
I think it is better to express concerns now, that they may take into consideration, than wait for the abilities to already be made and are in a state that a simple numbers pass will never fix.
From what we know the difference isn’t going to be big. To be honest If you were so bothered with 1-2% more dps or hps you’d have been playing high mountain tauren or kul tiran as a guardian druid but you don’t so stop trolling people.
Same argument applies for classes, specs, professions, and races. We’ve never had perfect balance for any of those things and sometimes it has actually caused significant problems.
We still have them because it’s fun and that’s what an RPG is supposed to be. They should do their best for balance but perfection isn’t possible and fear of imbalance shouldn’t be an excuse not to try new things.
i think it is valid concerns but yea we haven’t seen everything yet I don’t think. Is the beta out yet by the way?
I signed up for beta key but i haven’t checked my spam folder yet.
something I think would be cool is if you could level all covenants and swap between them without losing progress. Kind of like swaping from oracles to frenzyheart except you don’t have to reset your rep bar.
Don’t we level through and get a taste of each covenant before having to pick one? Wouldn’t that give us some idea of what a covenant’s ‘edge’ would be? I can’t imagine we would have no feel for what each covenant delivers by the time we have to choose.
The problem is that Blizzard’s track record on balance is comically bad.
Just look at the state of raids & dungeons right now. Brewmasters outnumber all other tanks combined in Mythic. Holy Paladins & Disc Priests are totally dominant in higher Mythic bosses, with most Azshara kills being 2 Disc + 1 HPal or 2 HPal + 1 Disc. Resto Druids are overwhelming in Mythic+. Tank balance in Mythic+ is godawful. DPS in M+ is Rogue/Rogue/Rogue or Rogue/Rogue/Windwalker or some variant thereof.
People are concerned because Blizzard has repeatedly given us REASON to be concerned because the current dev team is TERRIBLE at game balance. They’ve virtually ignored class balance this entire expansion.
