My Changed Views on Covenants as a Casual

Community General Discussion
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Sorry in advance for the long post, but if you have the time I’d appreciate if you read it and discuss with me about it :slight_smile:

I am your standard friendly, half-casual, half-serious WoW gamer who likes the game a lot. I have a some AotCs, got to 2100 in arena, but never anything more than that. I just enjoy the game for what it is and have a good time.

I never had an issue with Covenants when I first saw them. I thought they were just going to be some cool RP choice that I would decide on and then that would be that, and I would get a couple of new abilities; cool!

This weekend I decided to do a little bit more research on it with all the discussion going around, and I started to see them a little bit differently. I then came across this video by Preach, and he completely changed my perception on this topic.

“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dfMsHvxYFY”

If you guys have not seen this video, I suggest watching it because and let me know what you think about what he says.

Personally, I’m a little bit upset about the whole Covenant choice now, and the one thing that Preach was talking about that resonated with me the most is about just trying out a cool spell just for poops and gigs.

For the last 13 years (started in BC) I have been able to respec to try something out just for the fun of it if I saw a guy of the same class using said spec/ability/build. If I didn’t like it I could easily switch back to what I was doing beforehand, and it was awesome. So much flexibility and so many cool things you could try out without feeling shackled to a certain decision.

I’m still very much looking forward to Shadowlands, but these Covenant restricted abilities are starting to leave a bad taste in my mouth, even as a casual, and I just wish they were talents. In an expansion built upon player agency, the fact that these two types of abilities (Covenant main and class abilities) are not 55 and 60 talent rows are very depressing.

That would promote more player agency, make the leveling process more rewarding, and allow us to mess around with some really awesome abilities that Blizzard has designed (some of them are SO cool).

Yet they lock them behind an RP choice and tell us we are making “meaningful decisions”. It’s truly upsetting and as someone who has played since BC, this expansion has the potential to be one of the best, in my opinion, if those abilities were talent rows. Hopefully they reconsider this because the idea that this effects the 1% is not true. Would love to hear everyone’s thoughts on this! Thanks for reading my rambly thread :smiley:

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in before “MEANINGFUL CHOICE” “META SLAVE”

Just imagine, had they not locked covenant, we won’t even be having this conversation. there would be a TINY minority that will clamor for “PLEASE LIMIT OUR CHOICE”, and everyone else would be enjoying every single announcement thats coming out.

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That’s hilarious I never thought of it like that. You’re right, we really wouldn’t see too many people complaining we have TOO much freedom to choose abilities and customize our characters, and they should lock them behind a choice that should be based on RP morals, values, side game play, and aesthetics.

I just think to myself how hyped up this expansion would be if the Covenant abilities and class specific abilities were extra talent rows. More freedom, more customization, more fun for casuals like me to try different stuff, and just more of a focus on making classes feel great again at their core.

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So do they think people just play 1 spec of one class for an entire expansion?

My main is a shaman, and there are clearly better covenant abilities based off of which role I would choose to play. I prefer DPS, but I do go through spells where I would like to heal. Im not a min/maxer at all, but i also dont knowing im willfully handicapping myself, and the game would be actively preventing me from doing something, based off of this player agency choice fallacy.

Im excited about the expansion but these things are making me a bit concerned.

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After diving into this more deeply last night, I honestly don’t know what they are thinking. Right now, Frost DK doesn’t even have an interaction with the Death Knight Night Fae ability, how does that make any sense?

So If I go Night Fae for some reason my class ability doesn’t even work if I want to play Frost for a little while? Makes no sense.

Same here. It seems that some people think having common sense and being a min/maxer are the same exact thing. I have never once simmed my character because I don’t care to, but I’m smart enough to know that a hand sprouting out of my back and Death Gripping an add in PvE isn’t very good, but yet I really like the lore and aesthetic of Maldraxxus.

So I have to give up potentially using an awesome ability designed by Blizzard because I want to hang with the Necrolords? I don’t really like that.

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They should just have a standard list of covenant abilities people can choose from. Then have the visuals of the spells changed depending on what covenant you belong to. That would give everyone choices at least.

Why do they have to make it so complicated and weird?

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I mean I’m clamoring for limits

but it’s the conduits, I think they could be cooler if they don’t stack, I hate stacking azerite traits

if I get a piece with Test of Might on it that’s a dead ring

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That’s a cool idea. It would be awesome if they put them into our talent trees, and then when we join a Covenant at level 60 the abilities change to fit the theme of the Covenant.

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Imo a new Talent row is long overdue. I personally DON’T want the cov abilities to be as flexible as talents, but I don’t want to feel like my class is just undesirable without a specific ability. Some specs struggle with different types of content for group find purposes. This isn’t a community perception, it’s just some classes don’t have the tools, dps, or defensives to keep up. I think there will absolutely be a RIGHT choice.

I don’t think people will screen players before they enter groups for covenants (like a show us you Venthyr teleport before we start the M+ key, if its that stand out it would just be expected of you to have it). But, I do think that you may see players get bullied for their choice once the group notices you have an inferior choice or one that directly can effect the groups success (like not being about to teleport past a difficult M+ pack or as a tank being able to kite mobs better with night fae form sprint).

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I was pretty much just visualizing it as looking similar to the pvp talents. They are there, you pick the few you want and whichever covenant you belong to, you get the spell aesthetic of.

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oh, you picked the owl boy?

lmao, pot up and get lost, dork

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Agreed. I also think wanting to have that right choice and being some elite Mythic pusher are not the same thing. I’m a casual, but I want to experiment to find what I think is the best for my character. They are telling me I can’t do that :frowning:

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Sorry, I don’t agree.

If you’ve played since TBC then you’ll remember how difficult it was to switch individual talents and specs. Things that have a much larger moment-to-moment gameplay impact than a player’s choice of covenant. Every talent point mattered then where now, you can simply swap everything up to suit the arena comp, boss, or even trash pull.

When they describe the decision-making involved as meaningful, they don’t mean that the two abilities you get will make you feel immersed in this covenant’s theme. They mean it’s meaningful in that you’re resigning yourself to particular strengths and weakness in the long-term (heaven forbid in an RPG).

Suggesting that players will be forced to maintain one character with each covenant as a result is truly a ‘problem’ for the top one percent of one percent alone and even in their case I don’t buy it. We can’t swap our classes on the fly. Is blizzard forcing you to maintain one of each class to participate in mythic raids? Do you need to be ready to swap from an outlaw rogue to a resto druid at your raid leader’s request? Gimme a break.

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your 2nd and 3rd paragraphs seem to ignore his post, and the reasoning people have for not liking these restrictions

you’ve just assumed we’re all thinking about the potential need for 4alt meta

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You know that during the leveling experience you will literally be able to trial every single Covenant before you commit, right? You can try every Covenant ability for “poops and gigs”. It’s like making a class trial in world of warcraft. You get a taste of the class but obviously, and I’m saying this basically as a fact, WoW would be worse as a game if you could flip a switch and change your class at the drop of a hat.

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Additionally, if some abilities are far and away more powerful having the ability to swap freely NOW solves the potential problem of your cov. being nerfed and feeling like you have to switch.

I want the covenants to be fully cosmetic and I do raids & M+ as my main sources of content I do. I like when they come up with thematic and cool new abilities (I loved researching all the class artifacts to see what their passives do and how they work together). But having the transmog and everything being tied to the power side feels… just bad. Additionally, we don’t know if your “renown” progress gets reset fully or is milestone based. It’s going to be easy to swap but hard to swap back right? But we also know Pathfinder is going to be based on Renown. So, does swapping my cov. also delay my ability to fly? (I know the achieve will be acc. wide but I’m talking about achieve progress)

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As a casual - this is one of my most favorite features of our characters in WoW.

I don’t know why people think it’s only the “top 5%” of Cutting Edge raiders that want this.

Casuals like myself enjoy testing, meme’ing, and playing around with different builds.

I feel the same. And the number of “try-hards” it impacts is much higher than just 1%.

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Classes get nerfed all the time but we don’t expected Blizzard to give free class transfers. Sometimes a nerf happens and that’s just life.

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I think that you’re being pedantic by picking out this sentence. I think you’re fooling yourself if trialing the ability while leveling is anywhere near the same as trialing it in a dungeon or lfr queue. I don’t think anyone wants to swap EVERYTHING freely. I think most people are very attached to their main actually.

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Ion said that they’re looking to make it so you can switch covenants about every 2 weeks. So if you think your covenant just got nerfed and isn’t meta anymore, you can switch. You just can’t do it for every raid boss or trash pack.

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