No…and nor do I want access to all of the covenant abilities at the same time. That seems to be a major disconnect, I want covenants to be purely cosmetic, so I can choose based on aesthetics, and then have a brand spankin’ new talent row. Or two.
If that’s what you want to do, you do you boo. I want my character to be the best it can be.
Good. That’s a choice you get to make.
Point is. If everything can clear all forms of content, then covenants are fine and people are just complaining to complain because they want to make this a numbers game.
Obviously something is ALWAYS going to be better in a specific situation.
No matter what.
I do not believe we should have the ability to be optimal in EVERY aspect of the game if they want to add new abilities like this.
Think of it this way, lets say these were all talents that can be swapped.
Next thing we’ll complain about is the Mage covenant talents are all garbage and can’t compete with the DK covenant abilities. Its not fair DK’s can always get a continuous death grip against casters. There would be an even BIGGER balancing nightmare if these things became talents imo.
Yeah. Just a knight-errant of the shadowlands. Walking the realm, and helping where needed.
My banner is my own
Its called quitting the game. 
Good luck on your future video game choice.
I can see where Blizzard was going with Covenants and Covenant abilities. The problem is that players associate all power as player power, and being given talents and abilities just for leveling up is a hard thing to break, so they think that these abilities are inherent to them instead of the other way around.
They’ve already decided what they want, and no amount of reason will work to help them see that the system is not nearly as bad as the click bait kings on Youtube at portraying.
Instead of screeching like a banshee on the forums, which is VERY unlikely to change anything at all, they could be making constructive feedback on which abilities are outliers in terms of either being really good, or really worthless.
If the covenants are THAT broken, it should be easy for someone familiar with their class to do a quick breakdown of their class’ choices, and why each covenant is either a trash pick, or overpowered for a particular spec. Even better, what you’d change about them to bring each closer to one another in utility/power.
The current general winner for dk is the nightfae covenant which is a thematic crime. Its not a new ability its a passive buff attached to death and decay that outscales everything else by miles. It has bonus points for being extra worthless in pvp, because its a avoidable ground effect. The “fun” dk abilities cannot compete with 15% strength/damage reduction in general and only a few of them can win out in super specific niches like the necrolord one being good for pvp in general, and the venthyr one working well with breath of sindragosa, in aoe only.
Ideally I want to have the necrolord fun arm for pvp, I want to be able to pick something not nightfae without wrecking my pve potential, and sometimes I’d like to experiment with breath of sindragosa to see if i actually can like it this patch. And maybe if i’m bored see if the kyrian ability is as worthless as it seems.
There is no fair choice here its “do I want to be able to play all three specs well at pve when my guild mostly does pve stuff?”, “do I want to make priests cry?”, or last but not least “do i want to look like a vampire and be generally ineffective in single target for mild to negligible aoe gain?” Playing for aesthetics, which would have been real nice let me tell you, long ago disappeared from this equation.
Well no. Many want to follow what they prefer aesthetically myself included. I’ll still change my talents to be optimal ofc and I’ll apply the covenant perk where I can.
If people picked for flavor then everyone would be using Ripple as their major essence. That essence is really fun to use, but numerically it sucks, so nobody uses it. Will be the same thing with covenants once the final numbers are crunched.
Make you a deal, let’s unlock covenant powers so I can use all of them extensively, test them out, and then I’ll get back to you with my detailed feedback on the outliers and what performs better where, sound good?
You can earn the talents
Earn the gear
earn the recipe
But you can’t earn all covenants abilities
Yes it can be fun to choose, but that choice atm is more a noob trap than anything. It’s fine that it exist but it’s really not that grandiose thing that you might think.
Power is something that appeal people and why so many people say that without power it wouldn’t be meaningful choice. It’s a bit hypocrite to ask people to not pick the best choice if there’s one as there is right now. A website doesn’t tell me what to do but it informs me. If you like being ignorant or like making your decision not based on numbers free to you. But that’s not how everyone get their fun.
I already have a sub class it’s called MM Hunter.
That is what sub class really means . This meaningful choice is just a back door way to spec lock us after saying they were going to focus on classes over spec this expansion .
Anyone that multi specs is screwed . Anyone that has enjoyed doing multiple forms of content on a single toon is screwed.
Don’t even start with make alts to do different content.
I should not have to make multiple hunters to do different forms of content. I should only have to do it to see it from both the alliance and horde perspectives.
Any other toons a person makes should be because they are rolling another class.
Me too it feels like an extension of the past game play mechanics but on a grander and more defining - per character and class and spec - scale
I do think it is a bit jarring, at least for the history of WoW, to have these kinds of abilities tied to class and faction agnostic covenants, however, it’s at least an interesting take to me. But I don’t mind working within the confines of the game itself, though I would be happy to create those confines myself - eg self-imposed RP restrictions (like Fair never using Healthstones as one example), and thus opening up the covenants for all to join. I largely compete with myself, my own performance, and know that ultimately I’m going to be responsible for some of my greatest gains or losses in the game simply by being conscious and aware of my gameplay.
Unfortunately thats going to go down to tuning where inevitably some classes will outright have winners. Right now I understand rogues are necrolord all the time in every case for every spec because its just better. There will be classes that are great just because they dont’ have to deal with covenant issues becuase they only have one dominant covenant and have no need to switch, similar to how azerite traits worked out where some classes needed specific ones to function and some had universally terrible traits that competed with the generic location based traits…
Their intention, if not their marketing, makes it painfully clear that they’re meant to be close to sub classes. Something that defines you in a more fine grained way than talents do, so if you’re standing next to another hunter, you are not necessarily ABLE to be the same. You both made choices that diverged, and gave you different strengths and weaknesses.
I’ve never been more hyped for a system than I am for Covenants finally giving us meaningful choice, and a way to differentiate ourselves from literally every other single that you encounter.
2 day wait to swap between the new talent row is a garbage change.
It’s long enough that you can’t PvP in the morning and PvE in the evening, or raid on Tuesday with your guild and arena with your friends on Wednesday.
It’s just long enough to be a pain but they are probably hoping it’s short enough to placate some folks. Meanwhile it’s whipping the white knights intro a frenzied defense of them “listening” to feedback.
It depends on the content. I can post sixteen different logs of clearing the same heroic on the same druid using all four specs and all four covenants to prove the point that most of the content is designed with any combinations in mind.
https://twitter.com/Wowhead/status/1301328794763046914
Two days is only the start.
Again, this is a balancing issue.
Fight the good fight to get the ability nerfed like warriors spear got nerfed.
Then you wont feel pressured to go Night Fae.
We have enough choice with talents/conduits/legendaries/soulbinds to make tons of different builds. You can experiment to your hearts content.
Because we both know even if these were talents you’ll look up your best “AoE” build. Your best “Single target” build. And your best “PVP” talents and call it a day.
Everything is a fair choice.
Its your choice that you get to chose. And heck, you can even change it if you don’t end up liking it or decide you want to switch to something else!
All the scenarios you listed again, sounds like a balancing issue.
If you can’t pick one covenant, and be useful in all content (maybe not optimal, but useful) then its a balancing issue.
And by balancing issue, I mean they shouldn’t be such a huge difference that you believe your healers wont be able to heal you and will just cry instead.
As far as aesthetics. That’s again, a choice you have to make. Sorry.
Its basically you pick which ability you like, and which rewards come with that ability.
OF course i’d LOVE to be able to get the Kyrian mount, the Night fae Farm, the Venthyr door of shadows, and the Necrolord Skeleton mage ability. Doesn’t mean I think that should be the case in all situations.
There is not a single covenant that I like EVERYTHING from them over every other covenant. Doesn’t mean I think I should have access to all of that.
What will really happen.
Hunter A does 15% more dps
Hunter B: guess I’m switching.
How many people playing specs that are just not good in this game realisticly in any content that matters? Not much.
There’s 8400 Bm hunters that killed Mythic Nzoth, but only 30 Survival hunter.