Some covenants are Mandatory for certain content such as pvp or pve while the other covenants are downright useless crap for the same said content . Are covenants that difficult to balance ? eg MM hunter pvp covenant of choice is kyrian to shine while if you choose venthyr you might as well have no covenant at all similar to druid to night fae for convoke for damage , the rest of the covenant are just useless . Wowhead and icy veins specifically state DO NOT pick certain covenant for PVP/PVE , why is this ? Convenant should be choice that cannot be wrong to pick else what is the point of it if everyone is funneled into a false pretense of free will choosing when one covenant particularly stand out from the other .
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Good questions. I’d like to know myself. Is it wrong to choose Bastion for a MM Hunter?
This is the main reason I couldn’t love SL as much. Them tying player power to covenants is a horrible choice in my opinion. They couldn’t even balance classes and specs before covenants were introduced, how much more now. They shouldv’e made choosing a covenant something cosmetic/aesthetic, and affecting the campaign questline only.
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Yes. They are mathematically impossible to balance. The best they could do was nerf them into oblivion (which is what they did).
There are too many moving parts. It’s basically the same problem they had with Corruptions. They initially hid the Corruption imbalance behind RNG, but it wasn’t enough.
That’s the impetus behind pull the ripcord.
Of the 4 groups, I felt the least sympathy for the Kyrians, and felt estranged amongst the Night Fae, although I love their Queen, how could I not?
The Necro-Lords, a strong cult of warriors, I respect. But I am not a warrior, I am a hunter.
The Venthyr are a grim and unlovely people, and the small number still loyal to the founding ideals of the Shadowlands are weak and doomed, so their rebel leader and Prince has said to me. He says I am facing death and worse, were I to help him.
He also says, were I to help him, we would face it together. I like his style.
So, we will be less weak together, and face whatever comes, with style.
A good choice, for and from the heart of a glass-cannon MM Hunter.
True, if the goal is to 100% balance them all.
But currently, venthyr and necrolords are waaaaaay behind nf and kyrian. I think this is obvious. They are behind in pretty much all aspects: ST, AOE, PVP. Despite testing and feedback, they did nothing.
I don’t think that excuse is good enough to justify the current state of how covenants affect player power.
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I have to agree about the ridiculous imbalance between the covenants. Obviously perfect balance isn’t possible, because there are simply too many variables and players will always find those little niches that make something outperform expectations. What we got, however, could be nothing other than just unfinished content. The difference isn’t a few percentage points - it’s a massive canyon.
For example, I play a BM Hunter. All the YouTube videos based around Beta builds specifically stated that Night Fae was grossly outperforming other covenants for Hunters. It was so bad, several of them insisted there was no way it would go live without reworks.
Fast forward to release day. I hit 60 about 8 hours after launch and chose Venthyr as my covenant. I assumed covenants would have been balanced a little better before launch and Venthyr simply suits me better as an aesthetic and storyline. After a week of using a terrible covenant ability and watching NF Hunters blow up the charts, I sucked it up and switched. I left my gothic brothers behind and joined the faeries. Talk about a buzzkill.
The difference?
Venthyr gives us Flayed Shot. A minor single target DoT that has a low chance to allow us to use a single Kill Shot regardless of our target’s health. The problem is that it doesn’t proc much, Kill Shot isn’t particularly powerful, it requires casting and costs a global cooldown. It increased my single target DPS by about 3%.
Night Fae gives us Wild Spirits. A large AoE ability that procs damage on every enemy within the area EVERY TIME me or my pet does damage. Since BM is more about a lot of small hits, it’s a LOT of procs. In a Mythic+ dungeon with a pack of 5 or 6 mobs, I can hit 18k dps with Wild Spirits. On single target, where Flayed Shot was supposed to shine, it increases my DPS by about 12%. That’s 4 times the damage of the covenant ability specifically designed for single target DPS.
As for the class wide abilities, those are unbalanced as well.
Venthyr gives Door of Shadows. A 1 minute cooldown teleport with a 1.5 second cast time. It’s cool enough, but let’s compare.
Night Fae gives Soulshape. A 90 second cooldown instant cast blink with a changeable shapeshift form and run speed boost. You can also blink multiple times while Soulshape is active.
Someone at Blizzard legit compared those two abilities and said looks about right. boggle
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200% this. Melee in pvp with blinking travel form is insane. There’s been so much talk about how class abilities should feel unique and sometimes abilities have been taken away from a class so another class can be the only one with that ability… and then they straight-up gave a signature MAGE ABILITY to an entire covenant and combined it with a temporary travel form as well…as if that wasn’t enough.
Venthyr get a cast-time teleport that broadcasts where you’re teleporting to. If that ability had been made for Night Fae I don’t even dare imagine how much more powerful they would have made it but I’m sure it would have been instant cast, at the very least.
That didn’t even occur to me, but you’re absolutely right. It shows a little red circle where you’re teleporting to, which makes it almost useless in PvP. Whereas, Soulshape can be modified. You can choose to blink in the direction you’re running OR the direction you’re facing. Enemies have a 50/50 shot at guessing which you chose.
I chose Venthyr because of aesthetic, lore, and overall feel. Turns out they are the bottom of the barrel for BM. At least SV and MM get their mastery to scale off of the Venthyr’s ability, but BM? They get nothing. I agree. Make all covenants equal across all specs for each class. Period.
Yeah i choose venthyr for the aesthetic but turns out it is the worse in every content be it pvp and pve , both covenant ability and class ability have seen so little use I kinda feel bad choosing it even though I like the covenant theme , it somehow feels like a terrible choice has been made .
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Aye no one is expecting 100% balanced for all 4 covenants unless blizz really goes crazy with the nerf hammer (which no one wants) it is more closing the gap between the best covenant and “the rest”. And yes there is a massive gap. For sure I thought something would happen when blizz made the class adjustments when the raid dropped, uh got nerfed, mm got nerfed, havoc buffed etc… but for covenants-not a word.
So at this point idk, maybe before the next big patch we will see some adjustments to covenants but I wouldn’t hold my breath. And clearly the covenant is not just confined to the Hunter class, other class have clear winners and losers as well. You would hope, you would think blizz would do something but we will see.
For pvp not really .
I’ve been doing BGs on one of the other 2 hunters I have going right now with Night Fae and I only run mm . Haven’t got the toon I’m running to try out bastion into SL yet.
Nerfed them until they became metas for some classes/specs and content.