It doesn’t matter what Covenant you choose when you’re a sub-optimal player.
You could take Decimating Bolt for optimal single-target raid damage or Impending Doom for optimal Mythic+ AoE damage, empowering one activity at the cost of the other. But the 1% DPS loss you’re going to incur by taking Impending Doom for raiding is insignificant compared to the 57% DPS loss you’re incurring by being a bad player. Most players aren’t going to have the BiS gear, enchants, gems or consumables, they’re not going to know the fights like muscle memory, they’re not going to perform their “priority rotations” with machine-like perfection and they’re not going to parse 99th percentile on almost every encounter.
Bemoaning the choice of Covenant abilities because of the potential for sub-optimal scenarios feels so hollow when the hyper-majority of players are so wildly sub-optimal in so many other ways that the (honestly rather minor) loss of efficiency of that choice pales in comparison.
You could be doing 5.7k DPS on that raid fight with Decimating Bolt
You could be doing 5.5k DPS on that raid fight with Impending Doom
But if your raid has just wiped thirteen times in a row at 60% boss HP due to utterly failing simple mechanics does the 0.2K DPS really matter?
If you’re barely +1’ing a Plaguelands Mythic-0 do you think your Decimating Bolt is the reason?
When the other warlock in your raid is doing 9.1k DPS to your 5.7k with the SUBOPTIMAL choice because he’s WAY better geared and playing better than you are, does that not paint the entire picture?
TL:DR Outside of the 0.3% or so of players - Covenant discrepancies in relative activity-power are negligible compared to PLAYER inefficiencies in either preparation, knowledge, gearing or execution.
The way I see it is that it doesn’t even matter because some covenants will be better for some raid fights than others so the whole “'i’m gonna get benched because my covenant sucks for this fight” is just stupid and anyone in some rando heroic guild or fake wana-be mythic raid guild thinks like that is just dumb and i pity them.
You’re not wrong. Technically everything awful is viable too. A +22 has been completed with every non-meta spec in the game (Aff lock, Arcane mage, Surv hunt, etc.)
People don’t like being told what should or shouldn’t matter to them though. Nobody really wants to hear “sit down kid, this isn’t important to YOU whether you think it is or not.”
I doubt your raid lead is going to care that you’re bringing a Mythic+ covenant ability to raid when you’re parsing 17th percentile. I can almost guarantee they’d rather you just not come at all. Picking the “non-meta” choice isn’t why you’re performing poorly. It’s you. If anything, the sub-optimal players should be embracing the sacrificial nature of “covenant choice” as it gives them an illusory layer of deniability for their grey parses.
So if the fight lasts 5 minutes, that’s a net difference of 60k damage. That’s insignificant? Also saying “bad players will be bad regardless” is not an argument in favor of keeping gameplay locked to covenants.
That’s not my argument. My argument is that players are painting the sacrificial nature of Covenant choice as a threat to their viability or desirability when, in truth, the 1% difference in performance is negligible compared to the other factors influencing the equation.
E.G. Some Ret complaining about being pigeon-holed into a specific covenant while he runs green gems, has objectively the wrong talent(s) selected and his secondary stat distribution has nothing to do with his stat priorities. Like, who cares dude? It’s like complaining that your vacuum doesn’t have enough suction while you’re defecating on the floor.
You aren’t wrong OP, objectively speaking.
There is a psychological need to want to be part of the group that is top. And important. And people tend to ignore the fact that they don’t utilize the percentages that say, world first raiders or REALLY high m+ or pvpers can utilize.
So it comes down to really me not caring about the other, and looking if it’s something I’ll enjoy 'cause at the end of the day, you don’t pay for my sub, you don’t play for me.
I am not obligated to consider other peoples needs, desires, wants or needs. Especially not in a freakin video game.
Performance aside. Having a mechanically useless ability, that will never see use isn’t fun. So if I pick based purely on aesthetics/rp I run the risk of having gameplay that is less fun. That’s a bad way to design a system that the whole expac is based around.
For me the frustration is that I won’t get to try out cool/different spell interactions due to the punishing grind.
I know* Necrolord is suboptimal, but it might be fun to play around with.
But so does Venthyr. AND Venthyr is actually a strong ability. So I will be Venthyr. And not try Necro until patch x.2 or x.3 when they finally let us freely swap.
Which is a painfully obvious way to time gate the experience and artificially bloat user hours.
