Finally switched from 'flavour' preference to combat power covenant

This decision has gnawed at me since a week or so after hitting 60. I joined Night Fae as a resto shaman main, and loved the intro play and everything about it for quite awhile.

However, after trying over and over to make their combat ability work with me rather than against me (Fae Transfusion can be a liability in M+ for resto,) I’ve finally given in to one of the much better ones.

I lost 2 Rune Stag mounts from quests, that’s fine…also lost a stag I paid 5k anima for, but still have the 5k anima moth mount, so it may just be a bug. Either way, feels scammed man…

Chain Harvest is 10x easier to use and Door of Shadows is also pretty fun; only reason I didn’t go Necrolord is because I still want to have some fun abilities.

Why am I making this thread? Just to let Blizzard know that their nonexistent balancing has made me need to choose between two things that shouldn’t be mutually exclusive. Also that it makes me sad, but whatever.

I’m gonna miss the Night Fae area and the easy Marasmus(sp?) and flower-stomping quests, but hey, I’m probably done with WoW after my 2 months are up anyway…so better to at least try things out.

Anyways, just feeling a mix of dreariness and relief; hard to say which is more present.

Closing my diary now.

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I dont want to ruin your day but you should have gone necrolord

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Addressed that. I’m not ignorant, just not a 100% min/maxer. Venthyr way better than Night Fae, and not horribly worse than Necrolord.

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Don’t even have on my action bar, if it was instant cast then maybe but it is useless Cov ability.

I understand how you feel…

For me it’s become almost a weird justice thing, I’d feel like I was joining the side of the oppressors now if I went combat power focused, just because it’s so unbalanced. Probably a strange outlook I know but I think it’s more the world right now, so unfair.

My preferred choice isn’t even the worst off, I really feel for the other two and any Balance player that really adores em’.

It is indeed a bug!

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I’m a necrolord warrior. I have nothing but regret. Rather than regrind all that jazz I voted with my wallet.

These systems were designed this way as a means to extend our play time. There’s no other credible reason for how poorly some of these decisions feel in-game.

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Is there literally anything the forums wont claim is to increase the mythical time played metric?

You know Blizz makes the same from you each month whether you play 1 minute per month or every waking hour of the month, right?

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Are you familiar with KPIs? Hint: Time played metrics are an example of one.

It would be easier to deny that Blizzard uses this metric if it weren’t for the fact that they’re not even trying to hide how much time they are trying to get us to spend doing pointless activities (fill the bar quests, travel times, etc)

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They want “retention” and “engagement.” It’s about making sure you’re never “done” with the game is one way to pad that out.

Because it’s never just dollars - it’s also tomorrow’s dollars. And next week’s. Projections! Growth! The spreadsheet nerds all need as many datapoints as they can muster to Nostrasdomus these things out. If they can keep you playing, they can keep you paying, and that’s the real name of the game. They don’t just want your money now, they want it forever. And that means while you play their game, they game their game to keep you playing.

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It’s an ability you need to explore ways of using it. In typical M+ or PvP scenarios, it’s not something I’d try fitting in too much. I plan to try a lot with it.

If I wasn’t planning to stop playing when my 2 months end, I’d have probably stuck with Night Fae for the long haul. If I’m gonna be in a covenant an entire expansion, it’ll be one with a theme I like.

In Legion, the shaman area was chosen for me, but I chose a shaman 16 years or so ago…so it made perfect sense.

Dagnabbit.

I think poor design decisions are par for the course. My main issue, is that they don’t seem keen on addressing them mid-expansion.

Problems that will never be fixed are not worth agonizing about. This thread kinda contradicts the statement, but I also plan to stop playing, so it’s 50/50.

Investors care, far as I know. More time played = higher dedication to the game = higher chance of buying micro-transactions.

Seems logical to me.

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Heh, you posted on my thread. You know how I feel now.

Was my quote about it.

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If only someone had warned Blizzard months ago that tying player power into an interesting story decision ruins the choice. Oh well.

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/facepalm

I knew I forgot something during testing!

Sorry OP, it’s all my fault.

Blizzard be like:

https://youtu.be/R8vlNbk0Yww?t=16

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Thank you for doing your part to ensure that a covenant balance pass will arrive next week. (Joking aside, Blizzard should be working on one, but even class/spec balance is moving slowly right now.)

What specifically did you not like about Fae Transfusion? I thought it was fun, even though I decided to have a different character go NF out of my first 4.

With all the threads about how healers need to DPS sometimes in M+, I’d be surprised if you couldn’t find a 2 second window to cast the first part of Fae Transfusion – or are mobs just not grouped up enough/get kited out of it? Or if you are landing the damage part, how could a free heal possibly be a liability?

The one thing I would definitely like to see changed about it is that if you don’t manually release the healing within the time window, it should automatically go off at the end. Allowing it to be completely lost if you get CC’d at the wrong time is too punitive.

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Some of the downsides can be handled by memorizing fights and mob abilities, but I’ll list them anyway.

  • Needing to stop a channel due to damaging floor effects. With any other cast, you just need to cast again; with a channel you’re out for 2 minutes.
  • It splits damage with everything. I reported a bug where it splits damage with evading enemies and simply does half damage to the primary target, and have left feedback requesting it to not affect critters. No dice.
  • The burst heal at the end is so insanely small, you need to memorize when you can use it. I tried my best to do this, but the healing from using it properly is still further behind chain harvest. At one point I joked to myself “If the healing on this random druid passing by my is over 7k I’ll stay nightfae.” I waited to trigger it as he passed by me, and…although he passed by me in a doorway, I wasn’t close enough and no heal occurred.
  • The Conduit reduces the cooldown to what the baseline should be, whereas Chain Harvest’s conduit increases its crit chance, which in turn reduces the cooldown (since it reduces by 5 sec per crit.) It felt almost as if Fae Transfusion was being picked on by the balance team. (Yeah I know, that sounds dumb.)
  • The channeling itself doesn’t heal anyone, so you need to do it pre-emptively, but all you’re doing is setting up for a perfectly planned stacking.

So yeah, I can see it being ok for Prideful, but…it also only heals 4 people? Why?

It’s just the least convenient ability in the game far as I’m concerned.

The biggest plus, was using it on a solo boss, or on a mob that aggros while I’m trying to mine…easy single target damage; all it’s good for, really.

I could probably go on, but am typing this inbetween Torghast pulls so will end there.

Getting the channel off is easy, but is not something you cast in the heat of the moment. if positioning changes after your channel, then your AoE heal will likely be wasted. As you said, the 20 second window seems too short as well, which is why you’re required to plan it out much more compared to any other ability.

Edit: the auto-release would be nice, but I think there are a lot of better things to do with it.

  1. Increase the area by a LOT so that we don’t NEED to hold it for 20 seconds.
  2. Reduce CD to 1.5 min baseline and make Conduit allow it to be channeled while moving/jumping.
  3. Take critters and immune enemies off the damage table.
  4. Increase healing number to 5 players. I don’t know why it shouldn’t heal a full 5man group.

But this won’t happen, so whatever.

The truth, that blizzard for some reason is refuses to admit, is that when you do high end content - you want to play a good class/spec/covenant.

It just directly destroys any fun if your favorite spec is suddenly a trash tier and there are no balancing at all.

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I feel you deeply, Warlock main here originally went Venthyr but switched to Necrolords, still isn’t best pick Night Fae but atleast Decimating Bolt while still ridiculously underperforming, it’s better then Venthyrs…

I refuse to be a Warlock as Night Fae Or Kyrian.

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Well, also, some abilities just don’t feel good to certain people. If someone likes Kyrian but hates how the ability works in their rotation, they may choose a different covenant. It’s not 100% about min/max play.

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