It’s only a noob trap if blizzard drops the ball hard on balancing them. If the variance between worse covenant and best covenant for a specific scenario (Lets just say single target dps) is less than 5% or even 10%, that’s a drop in the bucket compared to ilvl disparity and skill disparity between players.
They can’t balance them.
The spells have different momentum and cd and some are pure pvp.
And some just don’t work at all.
If they’re balanced then the spell that is easier to use most often on a short cd will be the best.
Because the big cd can’t do the same amount of dmg else you can optimize that window and it will destroy the short cd.
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That just…won’t happen. That’s FAR too big an ask of Blizzard right now. The way these abilities function mechanically just makes balancing them within 10% basically impossible.
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I think I understand but don’t really agree, I mean, it just sounds like just because you caught whiff that there are spells and abilities in the game, you should have them?
You don’t demand paladin powers on a Druid.
this thread and you tubers and stuff are kind of random wanting of things.
The point or intention here is for us to discover abilities and modifiers based on the culture we align with - those are this expansion’s rules.
It seems odd to just one day up and decide the culture’s powers should be separated from their people and from the feature’s intended implementations.
Just because you identify there are spells and abilities in the game doesn’t give the right to even suggest they should be available to everyone anytime.
Not exactly being honest by throwing it in a vacuum.
Mythic Raiding is a whole’nother beast. You follow the delta of least resistance, but those 30 Survival Hunters are better than the 8400 BM Hunters.
This is what I want it to be as well. But, e.g. with my Balance Druid main, I really wanted to pick Night Fae but Convoke the Spirits is lackluster and Soulshape is an active dps loss. So on one hand, I love the Night Fae theme for my druid, but on the other, I have to settle for a lackluster covenant ability.
So I have to consider Necrolord or Venthyr instead. This is the flavor/effectiveness trade-off I’m talking about. Ultimately, it’s my own individual choice, but it comes with dissatisfaction.
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No one is asking for access to all that. All the bonus fun things should be locked. The parts of covenants that you should be able to swap are the covenant class abilities.
That at the bare minimum is what people are asking for. If they want to keep everything partially locked to covenants the easiest fix is letting you work for all the covenants, befriend all the soulbinds and tie the utility and class ability to your currently equipped soulbind.
It’s that freaking simple. They could also give you some kind of bonus to renown, even something small like 10-15% when using a soulbind as part of your declared covenant. Hell this fits more with the story in Shadowlands of being the Maw Walker and how you level and befriend all 4 freaking covenants.
The only choice you both made is if you care about player power or not.
Literally noone is asking for this. Not a single person has asked for this. Asking for the ability to swap between the DRUID night fae ability and the DRUID venthyr ability is a COMPLETELY different ballpark than just saying “I want LoH on druid, give now.”
For starters, LoH will be around in 6 years, the covenants won’t be around in 3.
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I’m pretty sure they create noob traps on purpose at this point.
Slice n Dice has been a DPS loss for Rogues for the entirety of BFA over not picking any talent.
Azerite traits that are so far apart you have 1000’s of DPS variance per trait between top and bottom traits.
Covenants will follow the same patterns, with abilities that are just duds and soulbinds that offer so little they might as well not exist other than to trick the uninformed into picking them.
Not really, the rules in place for this expansion are that we get rewards such as transmog, mounts and powers, so demanding a way to have all the powers regardless of your alignment is like demanding paladin powers in your Druid. The powers are appropriately linked to cultures so wanting them or wanting to be able to swap to them anytime is weird
Meanwhile paladins can cast a shadow spell with a covenant. xd
Covenants themselves are homogenization issues.
Blizzard really hasn’t been able to balance since Nov 2004 and that was a better dev team then we have now.
You missed the point.
If we’re going to take out covenant abilities from our “major choice.” Why are we keeping rewards and stories gated then? Do you honestly believe people wont start complaining about that next if we gave you what you wanted?
I know i’d be upset.
At that point the choice isn’t meaningful anymore. And it would be silly to pick a covenant simply for transmog and story.
I think a better solution would be to let us pick two covenants to be apart of. And let us switch between the two. I think that is a more reasonable answer than being able to swap between all of them all the time.
Its actually not simple at all.
Balancing would be worse and take a LOT more time if these all became talents for every class. lol
A simple reference will be when gushing wounds became buyable. It had to be nerfed to the ground because people would be way too strong if they were given full access to it.
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I mean, I guess we like meaningful choice now. Why stop at covenants? Howabout you only get to replace each slot of gear once per tier, it doesn’t make sense for Johnny Awesome to be changing pants in the face of the big bad boss, right?
The covenant allows for that on any class. But to say nvm and use a night fae power without being aligned to night fae seems wrong and empty
Even if they nerf it i think will still be the pick for the mobility nightfae gives dks alongside with the fact that it is the ONLY choice that gives aoe and single target value. Kyrian is pure single target and not great at that, Venthyr is aoe, necrolord is utility+aoe, and nightfae is %str. Even if they nerfed it the design wins in a “covenants are a pain to swap” world.
Dks were given four buttons that aim to do completely different goals, you can’t balance that without breaking those abilities, but if they are locked in they can’t not be balanced or the covenant system fails in its purpose. The best move is to make covenants accessible and let different covenants shine in different cases. This is much better then being pushed into a world where every covenant ability is gutted except the worst one for balancing reasons. This isn’t even a dk unique issue with covenants either
You earn all those powers when leveling. There’s already no lore explaining why you lose them. It’s just arbitrary. You zone out of the leveling zone, you lose them.
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Assuming they don’t back out on keeping these soft locked, I can tell you with relative confidence that which one is “best” is going to fluctuate throughout the expansion, AND the covenant contribution will probably not be allowed to be such an enormous slice of your total throughput that it won’t still come down to player skill/gear.
Congrats, you chose whatever some youtuber told you to pick for maximum deeps, only to get nerfed before the first raid tier.
Pick what you think is fun, or what is aesthetically pleasing. Then get as good as you possibly can at that combination of race/class/spec/covenant. You’ll do just fine.
Why!? The covenants aren’t enemies! They’re allies working toward a common cause, it’s WEIRDER to -not- be able to use their abilities. They ALL want you to kill the Jailer, why would one of the covenants deny you the ability to SAVE them because you didn’t learn their secret handshake? Your reasoning doesn’t make sense, dude.
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