But Blizzard WON’T fix it. We were bringing this up throughout the entirety of beta and they did nothing.
Blizzard can’t even balance classes or talents at a basic level. The notion that Blizzard is even capable of balancing 4 covenants for 36 specs is laughable. They simply don’t have the capability to do something like that.
I’m sorry, I’m very passionate about this and the covenant system actually has severe repercussions for my playstyle and I become very frustrated.
I’m always down to answer questions.
Nope! A lot of people think that, but that’s not actually the case. If my group is going to take 80 damage, I want to make sure I can heal 81 damage. After that, I want everything I have to go towards damage.
For example, highest throughput stats for rsham are Crit vers, but in dungeons I want haste vers, because my lava bursts always Crit, so Crit doesn’t give me any damage benefit but haste does.
One scenario that I ran into today was that my tank and I were building our routes for necrotic wake. We are planning on pushing hard first week. One of the more heated points of discussion was how we were going to deal with pack with the named add before the bridge. On high keys that is normally skipped, but our comp might not allow for that skip. Something I could do is play Kyrian instead of necro for this dungeon because it does significantly more damage but a lot less healing, and we could maybe burst it down before it overwhelmed us. But unfortunately I can’t make that choice because I’m locked in.
I don’t agree with this. A single ability that will be gone next expansion is not the same as an entire class, an entire playstyle.
For me, in my keys, a significant dps loss means unviable
Yes, I remember this. I wasn’t a fan of Blizz’s treatment of monks throughout the beta and posted about it myself.
I can’t say what will or won’t happen. The only thing I can speak on is what I think should happen. Where the choices are: Fix the abilities that suck, or make them swappable, I’m going to say they should be fixed. I would much rather put my energy towards a good solution than a bandaid fix that just lets us ignore their failure.
hahaha
I disagree with you. A 2% increase can allow for some of those mistakes to be made. If I have 2% and make a mistake I might be fine. If I don’t have the extra % and make a mistake I’m screwed.
And yes, a lot of these covenants are a significant choice. Necro does lots more healing than Kyrian. Kyrian does at least 40-50% more damage total than necro
This is correct, you want to have prio damage, but you do not want to have to spec into it. You also may not need prio dmg in certain dungeons, etc. Etc. There’s are far too many situations, and taking a single target ability to encompass the entirety of m+ so that you can use it on bosses and the occasional prio add is not good. Fire mage was amazing because its prio dmg was so good, but it also spread all its dmg to aoe it didn’t lose a ton of aoe dmg
Speaking for myself, I enjoyed the choice I had to make when selecting my covenant. I first chose Night Fae, later changing it to Kyrian. Of course wowhead has everything broke down as to what’s the best covenant for each class if some people are looking to min/max their class.
Yes In fact that opinion doesn’t matter because you openly admit that none of these systems impact you in anyways so I don’t exactly see why you’d have a horse in this race
That remake was highlighting they don’t part take in a mode of the game that systems like this get heavily influenced upon
These conversations frequently go to ad hominem, and it honestly wasn’t much of an attack, I appreciate that we can be respectful.
The only thing that I can say to this, and everything above, is that I understand your frustration.
They’re not on the absolute same level, that’s true. But it also doesn’t take the same amount of work to level and gear a new class as it does to swap Covenants, so I think they’re fairly analogous.
My question would then become: What are you pushing for?
I enjoy pushing keys (I didn’t even get to +15 like I’d wanted to in BFA, mind) to push my own play, as a Brewmaster. If I had a regular group, it would be whatever that group composition is, to see how high we can go. If that group was me with a healer and 3 feral druids, it would still be fun to see how high we could push. Or me and four holy priests, to take it to a very ridiculous level.
In SL, that same idea applies, but with the layer of Covenant on it. The game stops rewarding you with power at 10 (15?), so the only incentive past that is whatever you create for yourself. If my group can only get to 18, the fun part would be figuring out how to tighten our play to get to 19, not lamenting our Covenant choices.
I’m curious on how your perspective differs.
Hunters have two covenants that are viable for all content.
Thats 2/4
I dont think there’s a single spec or talent tree in the game where all possible options are equally good for all things.
At some point, you have to make the choice whether to minmax or to let go and have fun
Kyrian hunters are the only one that comes to mind to check all boxes on all specs
Night fae fares just fine
For pvp you want kyrian I’d say
karyn is going to see to that
So sick of this argument.
Nobody is talking about the covenants needing to be “equally good for all things”.
The problem is that some of them are just downright USELESS. In ALL things.
Stop using the 0.1% as a escape goat for a bad system.The Covenants aren’t fine, they are heavily not balanced as expected and Blizzard even nerfed them before launch. To give you an idea of how bad it really is.
Players are being punished for doing something that should be as simple as swapping talents, for no reason and Blizzard is taking advantage of it because they want to keep player stats higher so it gives them another thing to time-gate.
Cause Shadowlands doesn’t have enough of that already. 
So fun! /s
That’s why I joined the cult on my hunter. Plus I liked the armor and the aesthetics of Bastion. Night Fae was great as well for a bit.
As high as I can go. If I time a +21 I want to try for a +22. Push myself to my limits.
I love doing this. It’s my favorite part of the game. The thing is with high keys is everything is on the wire. If we’re on a tyrannical boss we have every defensive mapped out, in a rotation so that say big aoe comes out, I’ll have my mage block the first one so I only have to heal 4, then the next wave my rogue cloaks, then my DH blurs. And so on. The problem is is that if we’re really struggling with a boss, getting it to 10% but running out of CDs and wiping, I normally would have the option to switch to a DPS covenant to try and push the boss over the hump. With covenants locked in, I don’t have that option to explore, to see if we shook things up a little if we could beat it. Maybe we could’ve quad stacked necrolord for a 50% shield on everyone before a really hard boss? Idk, being locked in just takes away the choice, takes away the fun of experimenting.
You. Are. Wrong.
How that hasn’t been evidenced to you yet is seriously beyond me. The disparity in damage between covenants now is not small.
That is barely an issue. With 70% of hunters… and likely more soon, it’s an obvious choice what to take… especially since it’s the best for both pvp and pve.
Because reality says they won’t be fixed or balanced so removed the ridiculous block that prevents us from freely choosing what fits us best.
I’m not putting words in your mouth. You’re saying you’re enjoying them to me… players like yourself love rubbing that in. Clearly that’s what you’re doing now. Congrats… you enjoy them. You enjoy them so much that you’re fine with it limiting other players in how they play.
Each of us plays the game differently. It’s great that it’s not affecting you. Honestly, for many it doesn’t, but for many it does and it’s seriously killing the enjoyment this expansion could have… and for what? What are we gaining right now by them be difficult to switch?
No it’s not. That is such a ridiculously narrow view of the problem. If the difference of winning an arena match literally comes down to what covenant you pick, that has NOTHING to do with some spreadsheet. That isn’t some min/max argument. I don’t get done with a match and look at the DPS meters.
And you are equally foolish if you think much change will happen to balance them. Players like you were saying that before beta hit. Then they said the same thing before patch hit. Then they said the same thing before the expansion launched. Now you’re telling me its going to happen… at some point?
Yes, there will likely be buffs and nerfs that will likely be in the same vein of corruptions which were NEVER balanced.
Care to get specific
They aren’t meant to be swapped like talents so stop comparing them to them.
The covenants are fine, they’re heavily balanced and at best there’s a 1-3% difference in PvP in them to give you an idea of how it really is.
Players aren’t punished in any way for playing the game like blizzard intended it from the start of development. Also crying about a 1-3% dmg difference? What better definition is there for the 0.1%
BTW, The content that you’re crying about being time gated isn’t in any way tied to player power. All the content coming is optional and isn’t necessary to your power