Or you could by starting to cook something simple and learn your way around ingredients. Learn what’s good an what’s not. Learn that you don’t like that much spice and in that quantity and you want to substitute it with something else. That you may want use heavy cream instead of water, or brown sugar vs white. Or Basil herb vs Parsley.
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If you’re new to it, first you have to make the recipe - then tweak it next time
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Actually, being able to freely swap between does take away the “meaningful” choice.
Because then there’s nothing meaningful behind anybody the covenants. Your choice matters not and is meaningless.
Oh it doesn’t matter what i go to school for. I can just freely swap between all careers that require a bachelors degree since I got one.
This is very well said.
Given that, there’s nothing wrong with guides doing the math and telling you the best outcome from a numbers point. But if you just do what someone tells you, you can’t complain about “meaningful choices” in the first place since you didn’t make any choice of your own.
Take frost DKs for example. BoS is the highest damage build. But if you’re not good at managing resources, BoS will fall short of the Obliterate build.
Just because a min maxer found a specific build produced the highest DPS does not mean you will be able to as well.
Just like picking the #1 DPS spec for Mythic CN raids will not automatically make you #1 on those damage meters
Swapping covenants isn’t the answer.
We should have belonged to all 4 covenants from the beginning, and spent renown to unlock features, abilities, and rewards in the order we saw fit.
THERE’S your meaningful choice. And without the restrictions of cutting people off from 75% of the covenant content, like the current system does.
It was repeatedly suggested during alpha/beta, but the dev team is super stubborn.
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But you also don’t jump into rocket science w/o first knowing 2nd grade math.
The problem is that people don’t even try other abilities. A lot do not. Almost daily I encounter people asking each other about covenants. Like, kyrian paladin asking Venth about theirs and saying they never tried it. Rogues asking me about Venth.
My case is interesting because I went with Venth simply because I liked their aesthetics and I did like the haste buff it provided, though it was clunky and took 2 GCD’s. Month later, it got changed, Icy Veins updaed their page and suddenly everyone is switching to it, while original BIS is still just as good.
I’d be ok if they let us have spec specific covenants. Example my shaman is venthyr resto. I’d love to try necrolord elemental for offspec but it’s just not feasible to grind out 40 more renown just to try it.
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You have this entirely backwards. For the “elite”, who can parse 99% of their potential, this 1% would mean less. For the person only parsing 75% of their potential, getting the max out of gear and other static increases helps them cover for their flaws in playing. Compounding playing flaws with weak choices in static power only emphasizes their issues.
Additionally, the differences from top to bottom are more significant than your hyperbolic “1%”.
If, as you describe, they keep giving us choices and players keep slavishly following BIS lists, then stop trying to change player behavior and develop for the predictable, meaning balance the choices better.
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While I don’t disagree with you, people would still have an “optimal” build and people would follow that still. Meaningful choice disappears there too.
Between covenants, legendaries, specs, talents, soulbinds, conduits…we have a lot of ways we could customize our play. But everyone just wants to copy what’s put in a guide
Then maybe Blizzard should put more than a token effort into balancing their game. Nothing will ever be perfectly balanced, but you get a 30% increase just by changing covenants, it shows that Blizzard’s developers aren’t even trying.
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Kinda of getting sick of these content creators going through my thread history to make videos out of months old posts I’ve made
I wish they’d form their own opinions
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Once you hit 40 in one, it only takes a couple days to grind out another 40 from another covenant. And swapping back to Venth you keep your original 40. At this point, everyone could be max renown in all covenants within 2 weeks of hitting 40 on their first covenant
They dont really listen to player feedback.
The alpha and beta where filled with bullet point essays basically on things, i even saw some MLA formatted ones and they still didnt take a ounce of anyones feedback.
no wonder why nobody is happy.
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the topic is… just “look at me”.
the only words, are claiming things are forced on the player.
…which simply isn’t true.
the only reason people feel “forced” into doing things a particular way, is because the hivemind tells them that’s how they’re meant to play.
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Which spec/covenant combo falls 30% behind its counterpart?
And while I agree that balance could be better, I’m sure that’s a nightmare in itself.
Even if all classes/specs/covenants were homogeneous and within 1-2% of each other, a ranking system will still exist, and with that, a sheep mentality
There truly is. No winning.
Unless you’re a Cutting Edge player or Glad or whatever, or SERIOUSLY attempting to be. These choices don’t matter, and it really does come down to play what you want
Edit: wrong word lol
That’s simply not true. I spent the first month of the expansion as Necrolord, then flipped to Kyrian after Christmas because it’s just way better for my spec.
Because it IS just way better. There’s no comparison. The other covenants are even worse.
I’m sure they’ll mention this at your funeral.
…but let’s face it, most people don’t play at a level where covenant choice matters.
The only reason it matters, is because they need to invent more stuff to complain about.
Maybe there’s “too much” choice.
I don’t recall this much drama when people needed to choose between Aldor/Scryer.
That’s because Aldor/Scryer was irrelevant.
Scryer shoulder enchant gave me +10 dodge, +15 defense, whereas Aldor shoulder enchant gave me +15 dodge, +10 defense.
It was completely meaningless. There’s no comparison between Aldor/Scryer and the massive power differences between covenants.
You can call it a hivemind all you want. I will always want to be part of the hivemind that figures things out with math and science over the ones that are just feel good about something but struggle and bring down their group from obtaining mutual shared goals.
I think its a perfectly human and rpg thing to want to be the very best that you can be. If I am part of the hivemind of success then count me in.
Now if that success is best rated with one covenant, even if I hate that covenant, everything it stands for and hate myself for playing it in order to succeed then ill play that covenant to succeed.
I do not have all the time to play sub optimally in the worse covenant of a spec all the time and mess up my progression. I do not want to force myself or my team to raid an extra 3-6 weeks because I chose to be suboptimal. I do not live my life to be suboptimal. I do not play my games to be suboptimal.
So ill bum rush the patch, get the achievements that I care about, and leave. Unsub until the next patch rolls around. I am not attached to my covenant so everytime I join the game I hate everything in my screen that I have feel obligated to run away from my covenant halls and everything it looks like.
The game lost its sense of attachment to me, the warlock player. In legion the warlock class hall made me feel special and wanted in the world as a warlock because it did not kiss or curse me on what content I liked to play (raiding / mythic plus / pvp). I wanted more if that for BFA and Shadowlands.
Instead the devs abandoned them and I feel like they detached me from what attached me to Azeroth.
Now they want to sell me covenants that are sub classes that greatly impact performance for every class and I do not feel attached to them at all because all the choices directly impact my performance.
So its not a choice anymore for me its a numbers game and if its a numbers game then I will look at that because I do not have all my days to play this game forever. I want to kill monsters and things and enjoy my time killing them at a reasonable pace.
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Preach is really on the way to solidify his position as a direct critic of the wow dev team.
Which means if any changes becomes unfun he will be accounted for. Be it true or not. Dunno why insisting on the subject, he won’t win anything but headache.
Blizzard had a vision, they went for it and here we are.
Yes never in the history of the game it was soo punishing to “respec”. Everybody knows that. Devs still want it to be this way for some reason though.
Nothing against you personally. As we all fall into this boat, this these lines are so contradictory it makes me giggle.
Do you know why Lamborghini doesn’t advertise on TV?
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