Eh, my optimism is tempered, I just said I want. What I actually expect is, due to the nature of covenants, Blizzard will be swinging the nerf bat hard if any is “too popular”
If the numbers are miraculously balanced, it might at least be easier to see which covenant is better for which content: Hunters ignoring LoS? might not be much of an issue outside of PvP unless there are a lot of pulls/fights where the hunter has to shoot behind them selves or around corners (WCM style dungeon).
But if they’re equal, then there’s not much reason not to take the utility options.
If they’re not equal, the utility options would be naturally weaker than the non-utility options, so a Hunter taking the LoS Ability for PvP would be inherently handicapped for PvE.
And that’s ignoring the fact that Venthyr or Necro’s ability might just be outright better for the other specs due to how the ability works and/or it interacts with those specs.
Really the absolute core issue for locked-in Covenants is that the only situation where they’re not majorly detrimental is when you play one spec and only do one form of content. And that’s just not realistic for how any player actually plays.
Actually I was agreeing with you and was saying not everyone that is a casual supports the system the way it is.
I’m one of those that think the various abilities should of been put on a talent bar and not another borrowed power.
Do it Blizzard
You see what the people want, so far the only arguments against this from your own players is straight up 2-3 players going “It’s not REALLY needed to have that x% stronger spell for y situation!” while the majority just wants a better system.
Remember Essences guys? How the boomers said you didn’t REALLY need your rank 3s to do good? How they would never be made account wide? @Yesuna btw
Here we are.
Just keep going and it will happen.
I’m 12/12 M actually :^)
Do it blizzard
This is account-wide essences 2.0
Massive negative to a new system that makes a majority of the players dislike or even hate it
Blizzard only has to do a minor fix to make it good and gain the community’s favor
What are you waiting for Blizzard?
Look, another post that presumes both that they speak for the “majority of players” despite the fact that:
Funny of you to assume I base myself on what I see on these forums to make this claim. This issue has been the one main problem that’s been discussed on many platforms ever since the Blizzcon reveal.
The issue even comes up in most interviews with devs as they always try to justify it, only to be swarmed by hate right after.
Now, do you have any argument(s) against making Covenant abilities as a talent row, or at least easily swappable? If not, please bring your strawmanning somewhere else, thank you.
I do actually, because I’ve already made the argument in another thread. To summarize and posit:
Having the ability to freely switch covenant abilities at any time devalues any decision-making and removes any impactful consequences.
As I’m sure you’re aware, there’s a concept in game design called the Path of Least Resistance. This states, at a high-level, that when a player is given an option between an easy path, and a harder path, the player will most often take the easier path. There are a wide, wide swath of examples too numerous to list across virtually every genre of game that exists, but I think you get the point.
This is relevant, because in the case of WoW, there will be a numerically best covenant for every type of content (PvP and PvE). By being able to freely switch covenants, you are no longer making a choice. If X covenant is best in PvP, you’re going to choose that covenant. Full stop. If Y covenant is best in PvE, you’re going to choose that covenant. Full stop. There’s no consequence to your choosing of a covenant because you can just pick the best covenant no matter what.
Not only that, but now you’ve effectively gated yourself under this design decision because now you literally can’t choose anything but that covenant or else you’re going to be ostricized from that content if you need to group/raid. Because you can freely choose, and there’s no point in choosing anything but the best, there’s no choice to be had.
Secondly, your argument can be taken to an extreme and still be just as valid.
Why can’t I change my race or class as the same character in any rest area? You’re already playing suboptimally by not picking the best race/class combination for the specific content you want to do, so why aren’t you advocating being able to freely change those options in a rest area as well without the need of an alt or a paid service? You’re locked into your race/class as-is and even in the case of a race, they all provide gameplay benefits.
I can take it one step further and it will still be just as valid, because your argument hinges on that more choice is always better. Why even limit myself to a class? My classes abilities are suboptimal compared to the total ability pool of every class, so why can’t I pick any ability at any time so I can be perfectly optimal at every level of the game?
Which would be a failure on their part. Popularity of a given ability will be based solely on how much does it improve performance. If each covenant ability isn’t fairly balanced, one or more, will be the flava of the expansion.
Which exactly is a criticism hurled at this proposed current system.
Blizzard are too sucky at balance to do this right.
I agree that more choice is not always better, though in this situation, I think having the choice to swap between the class spells is definitely more important.
Choosing a covenant still involves a bit of gain toward a character’s power through the soulbinds feature, which are unique to each covenant, and the covenant signature spell.
This is false, basing my argument on raiding as this is the content I know the best, the majority of raiders are doing Normal and Heroic mode, those modes do not require to pick a best option to succeed. Those players can choose whatever they find most fun or visually appealing or whatever, without being ostricized as you say.
This would only happen in Mythic raiding, where it is expected to pick what’s best, and that is fine since this is precisely what this difficulty is designed for: maximising your character’s strength by any means so you can succeed.
Changing the race/class in rested areas argument falls apart simply because that goes beyond the fundamentals of what an MMORPG is, and that is a hard-limit that will never be crossed.
And then for your last point, the existence of specializations alone goes against the question Why even limit myself to a class?. You can limit yourself to a class as your specializations can make you competitive, or even optimal, in any situation.
This is my last post for the night, and I’m tired, so I’m just going to be very terse compared to what I was going to originally post:
“Changing the race/class in rested areas argument falls apart simply because that goes beyond the fundamentals of what an MMORPG is, and that is a hard-limit that will never be crossed.”
It does? Why? How is it any different, because it isn’t. Race/Class is no more fundamental than the abilities you get. You’re drawing an arbitrary line in the sand to not have to deal with the argument itself.
" And then for your last point, the existence of specializations alone goes against the question Why even limit myself to a class? . You can limit yourself to a class as your specializations can make you competitive, or even optimal, in any situation."
That makes no sense. Certain classes are optimal for certain content. It doesn’t matter how good you are at the class, you can’t brute force “optimal” out of an inherently suboptimal choice.
It is different
Races and classes are a core fundamental of what makes an MMO an MMO. Abilities individually are not really fundamental. Is Frost bolt fundamental to the game? No, but the concept of what is an Ability in itself is fundamental, as this is what the player uses to interact with the game in general.
Exactly, some classes are optimal for certain content, others aren’t. That’s fine. My point is that the different specs of a class can make it competitive anywhere. This is why you can see a Disc priest, one of the worst M+ spec, making it above 5k io score, despite being a non-optimal class for the content.
Though I feel like this is getting away from the point of this thread. So moving back to it…
Blizzard has an issue with making Covenant easily swappable, and I think the explanation Ion gave in his interview with Sloot made sense, essentially describing the Covenants as a big package of various things you get.
What I would like to see, and many other players do, as like I said earlier this has been extensively discussed for 7 months now, is them taking one part of the Covenants packages, aka the class abilities, and put them into a talent row or something similar.
The choice of covenant remains a big one even without the class ability being tied to it, as the package provided by covenants would still be quite big:
That is already a ton of stuff for one decision that will impact essentially everything your character can touch, be it its power, its appearance or the story it experiences.
Now, a lot of players expressed their concerns of not having access to all 4 new class abilities they will experience during the leveling. As a priest, I can already see a bunch of situations that I would make different choices based on what content and situations I’ll face.
This is all from the perspective of a Discipline Priest:
Take the Kyrian priest spell, Boon of the Ascended, which would be an extremely strong 3 min CD for raiding environments, but would fall short in M+. But then if you look at the Necrolord priest spell, Unholy Nova, it looks like a very strong option for M+ as it fills some weakness Discipline has in this content.
But it’s also not as straight forward as this, sometimes I could actually need Unholy Nova in raids if there is a boss that would benefit from a lot of instant multi-dotting (which is what Unholy nova does if you didn’t check), or sometimes I could also need Mindgames, the Venthyr priest ability, in either raids or M+ instead of the Kyrian/Necrolord spell if there would be enemies that casts healing spells, which Mindgames would reverse into damage.
Just portraying this in my mind makes it clear that the system, if it stays as Blizzard wants to, has a massive flaw. Being stuck with one class spell without the option to swap will inevitably feel awful sometimes, and feel amazing in other situations where the chosen spell shines.
So then they can do this one simple fix of making the class abilities swappable at will, be it via a new talent row or whatever, and then all those situations that would feel awful would simply never happen in the first place.
This is why I don’t really understand the side with the idea that untying the Class abilities away from Covenants is a bad thing. There is a lot of unique things you will get from picking a covenant even without the class abilities, and there can be even more than what I’ve mentioned above for all we know, so saying that doing this would make the decision not matter is simply not true.