My thought is that maybe Ion having his team try and balance 144 different “identities” (i.e. Class/Spec/Covenants) will finally be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Also, he’s going to get hilariously dunked on by the flame storm that this generates when it goes live. Should be worth some popcorn at least.
Edit - actually it’ll be 3 different sets of 144 Class/Spec/Covenant combos, because the game consists of PvP, M+, and Raiding.
They absolutely do not balance the specs so they can all complete content equally.
To me, there’s no explanation to make the people locked behind a covenant choice. Also, to me these systems that you must farm something to make your playstyle change like essences, corruptions, soul binds are SO, SO boring.
If you really want to make people have fun and try new stuff and different pieces of equipment all these choices should be free to pick anytime you want and then allow the people to freely experience, no costs involved.
How can we know which one fits better for our playstyle? We don’t even know, we’ll only see some YouTubers saying which one is better and we’ll blind follow it without even experience the thing because of price of the experience.
Honestly, it’s just stupid.
Blizzard needs to take a lesson from the Hamstar school of game design.
10>Design Content.
20>Is content fun?
30>If not GoTo 10
40>Congratulations you passed.
Right now Blizzard’s game design seems aimed at dragging out as much play time as possible requiring 4 characters to fully experience Shadowlands. That was considered a problem with legion when you needed 1 of each class to get the full story and now they are doing it again.
Equal balance WILL NEVER be achieved, some classes and builds will ALWAYS outperform others
Does that mean that class build that underperforms is trash? No, that is a player issue that they decide to call anything non meta trash when said “trash” can easily do a m15 and mythic raid because the game is balanced well enough for everyone to do important activities that give gear.
Once again how unhealthy the wannabe elitist mentality is and how they are their own enemy and problem.
This is YOUR mentality. But sure they can all equally pull there weight. Its not like some specs underperform so bad that the stigma you seem to think is just player made happens. Many specs have to use the “meta slave trihard” build because thats the only way they measure up to the bare minimum.
If this is the road we’re on, then this is then road we’re on.
Covenants feel like they should have been an implementation of “Path of the Ancients” that was proposed during Wrath’s development. Also called Dual Classing. I was looking forward to that because you would select something that compliments your character or builds on what you already have. Even people on these forums have asked for something like this for a long time.
My worry is that they will fail at fulfilling this because of the need to mute power gains based on a lasting choice. Even with soulbinds, they will be muted due to this. In the long run, it will be an aesthetic choice more than anything else. At most, you’ll get minimal power gains based on choice. Anything that outperforms will be hotfixed into oblivion.
You are defending the unhealthy mantality of wannabe elitists that push the “its trash if it doesnt perform the same as X fotm, no invite”
Like some elitist guild leader saying they would bench any arcane mage for daring to play arcane, because god forbid people have fun instead of being meta slaves D:
STIGMA being the keyword, you do realize how STIGMA works right? It isnt about logic or correctness, it is often a false belief the majority shares and discriminates based on that false belief.
So you clearly see this is a player issue
The bare minimum for a m15 and mythic are pretty low that this can easily be achieved.
If the fotm does 10k dps
the non fotm does 7k DPS
Mythic requires all dps to do 6k dps.
Minimum requirement achieved.
I must have hit my head because this is actually a pretty good idea that solves a lot of problems, but it would seem to go against your “meaningful choice” requirement since you could be in 3 different ones.
really sad to see how out of touch these guys are. this is a terrible choice and will likely be the last straw for me. sad times. 
I enjoy having choice. I already invest a ton of time in to a couple specs and now I am losing the option to play the game how I want.
It doesnt, it is a meaningful choice as for many players SPEC>>>>>CLASS
An mm hunter has a very different mentality and character that a smelly zookeeper so it would make sense they fit a different covenant.
It is a meaningful choice because you are still gonna stick with that one on your spec
so sick of reading this trash. you are so incredibly obsessed with this idea that there is this huge elitist player base denying you a path to play the game.
Nope not a player made issue. Its a blizzard made issue because there should not be 20k differences between classes. 5k at most would be acceptable however thats not what happens. I don’t support kicking someone based on there spec however if they don’t pull there weight they get benched until the bring there numbers up.
Then dont play mmorpgs, RPGS based on their design are never balanced and will never be.
And even 10k different which is small is seen as mandatory and “Everything that cant achieve that is trash” then again, player made issue.
Dont play mmorpgs if your goal is performance, they arent games designe dto be ultra balanced or ultra competitive.
How about I can play whatever I want and instead of blaming things on players ill blame it on blizzards lazy teams that could work to try and bring things more in line but instead dont.
Man, you keep repeating this like a broken record, no one will invite you to a group if you are not using all the meta requirements. No one cares if you like the spec “X”. If “Y” is meta is better you play with this and that’s it or you can do some pet battles with you preferred spec “X”.
lol
I dreaded this the moment covenants were announced.
Time to take my money elsewhere.
I’m going to pause you right there. It’s not about that, it’s about respecting player time and investment. There are a lot of people right now that are struggling even in the current patch with trying to keep up with the current systems. Being able to quickly optimize actually makes the game more accessible to them because they can not feel like they are letting their friends down.
Forcing people out of the game in the way you are describing is incredibly toxic, just like the cata dungeon changes were. “Figure it out” and Schadenfreude are not design strategies they are ways to destroy the game. This isn’t about Elitists or “Metaslaves”, an incredibly horrible and toxic term. This is about being able to play with friends, have fun, and not feel like you’re holding the group back.
Proceeds to whine that a game is designed against what he wants to do