If I wanted to I could have turned myself into one of if not the best burst AoE classes in the game by going nightfae however I chose to go venthyr for my hunter
Survival hunters don’t exactly have a lot going for them; could have upped my game play a lot by turning myself into a nuclear bomb
However if I chose to do that I couldn’t PvP because people are just going to walk out of my death ring - I don’t even know how effective it would be in PvP because you don’t get long to experiment with it and you don’t know if you can form synergies with other variables
This was already pushed for via the ‘pull the ripcord’ movement and Blizzard said no. It’s not happening.
You do not, I repeat, you do not need to worry about covenant choice unless you are min-maxing and pushing hardcore mythic content or top end rated PvP. You can pick the one you want and do just fine, because the vast majority of your player power is going to come from your standard kit. It is not going to come from your covenant abilities.
Take for example, Hunters, Night Fae is apparently ‘the best’ for all specs (at least for raiding and M+), but it has one major flaw. It’s only good if the tank keeps the enemies in the area where you cast it. If he moves the enemies out of that area, it’s wasted. Does that mean your DPS is going to nosedive if the tank does that? No, it isn’t. You’ll still clear the pack, you’ll still kill the boss even without it.
Which begs the question, if you can clear the pack or kill the boss without it, why is it so demanding for you to have that specific ability? The answer is that you don’t need it. Not unless you’re staring at numbers and want to squeeze out every tiny bit of power you can. Which is min-max meta territory, which again, you won’t need to worry about unless you’re really pushing that top end content.
This is an interesting take. Because yes. My desire for blizz is to focus solely on content and not systems on top of systems. If they are going to do the systems, my preference is they make one of them so obvious for the class I want to play, that I dont have to fudge around with the systems that much. I pick whats best and move on with what I enjoy. The content. The dungeons etc.
I appreciate the frustration people feel, especially those locked into a cov they dont like or enjoy aesthetically.
But if they exist, I want as little system choice as possible considering I think no systems would be the best option. Literally base classes, no borrowed power, but 2 raids per tier would be doable…but they have to spend all their time on systems instead.
If it happens at all, which I doubt, it will happen at the end of the expansion. Not before. Hell, they might not even make that change until the pre-expansion patch for the expansion that follows Shadowlands.
The entire point of the covenant system is for you to make a significant choice. Blizzard isn’t going to cheapen that by pulling the ripcord. If they were going to do that. They’d have made that change before the expansion went live.
I for one love that I have to pick my covenant to be good at either raiding or mythic or pvp. I mean. I hardly know what I am going to focus on day to day so its great that I had to stress over picking it. We’ve reached the pinnacle of player options here and its totally balanced.
Whats going to be the nightmare, and i think the tipping point of this xpac is going to be the balancing that definitely will happen after they have actual player data. People are going to flip if they need to choose a new covenant.
I mean it was incredibly stupid to do the skills and soul binds in the manner they did with your covenant choice. No one asked for it, no one said it was a good idea, yet it still happened.
It was never getting pulled before the xpac. Blizzard was always going to give it a go and try to make it work “their way”.
Go re-watch the interview, the ripcord is there as a safety net for if they release covenants and can’t get them balanced and everyone is complaining and their way just isn’t working, as to not ruin the entire xpac. This is why it won’t be a prepatch thing for 10.0, that defeats the purpose of why they designed their safety net “ripcord” in the first place.
Anyways…the game is out, covenants aren’t balanced, the complaining is starting…
They will take a pass or two at balancing them via nerfs and buffs, which will piss people off even more, because God help you if your covenant gets nerfed lmao.
Then, when they realize tuning is just making the problem worse, they will pull it. If we get to 9.3 and it isn’t pulled it’s never happening. At that point all your subs are gone anyways and focus is on the next xpac. This will be a 9.1 or 9.2 fix. My money is on 9.2 because blizzard is slow and stubborn.
You haven’t played this expansion enough if that is your take away. This isn’t about spreadsheets and min/max. There are some covenants that absurdly low… so much so they are actually a DPS loss. Is that min/max to you? Losing damage for using your special in some settings?
On the other side there are some specs that are one shotting players in PvP or doing 40k-50k+ in Torgast on boss mobs.
so you’re happy other players are having a bad time so you can have less choice?
I’m having a great time. If they nerf my covenant ability into the ground and buff everyone else’s, I’m still having a great time. It’s just not that much of a difference. I just don’t get the consternation.
You’re so busy staring at numbers to try to squeeze every bit of power out of your character, that you’re willing to degrade your own experience in order to do so. That’s quite literally what min-maxing is.
If there are specific issues with abilities not being competitive, or being overpowered, then highlight those and let Blizzard know, but demanding free swap isn’t the answer and it’s not something you’re going to get.
over powered covenants will be nerfed under performing covenants will be buffed. you are absolutely foolish to believe your choice is going to be the static “best” option. choose what you want
People have been, but nobody wants to hear it. I’ll give you some very specific examples of large imbalances in the making:
Kyrian does good AoE while also providing souls for vengeance which allows for increased defensive utility. It also synergizes with the Raz leggo which further improves it through CD reduction via soul cleave. This is not a simple numbers game: It’s a fundamental change in how you approach the game.
Night Fae, on the other hand, does good damage and single target healing HOWEVER the charge often puts your back to mobs, increasing the chance you arbitrarily get 1-shot in higher keys simply because you didn’t properly predict how pathing would work. This is not something that skill can address, it is a basic disadvantage on top of the lack of synergy which Kyrian enjoys.
For havoc the situation is bad as well: Venthyr and Night Fae are competitive for single target throughput however Kyrian is much better for AoE and it’s not close. Furthermore the Vial Kyrian provides is extremely good for any kind of progression content whereas Venthyr’s port is not.
These are NOT min-max issues. They are fundamental gameplay issues. You can’t arbitrarily “nerf” or “buff” them to fix them; you need to rework them.
The best possible solution is to give all 4 abilities to all 4 covenants and let a player choose the ability they wish to use, just like swapping essences or talents.
This change will not cause ANY harm to a player like Samtaya, but will dramatically improve the enjoyment of players like OP and myself.
My soul garden is way cooler than their stupid tea parties, anyway.
This is what I was hoping for – or something very like it. We have plenty of covenant flavor, and then they could have made the choice permanent with no swapping as originally intended.
I have my garden. I have my abilities in Ardenweald dungeons. I have my covenant soulbinds. I have the fox-form ability. The class abilities, I think, would have been better as an option–a gift you choose from your covenant out of four possibilities. But I’m not a dev. I’m just a player. I’m working with the system we’ve got, and I’m fine with it.