Mythic raiders are going to get this cool feature gutted because of their primal need to min max everything and force their play style on others.
edit: now I actually see how harmful this covenant playstyle is to player choice, please don’t do this Blizzard.
Some people want to actually bring their A-game to even basic things like Heroic.
Purposely gimping yourself when your group is trying to push any sort of content is dumb.
It’s like saying that gems and enchants don’t matter unless your pushing world first.
Every little boost helps.
Yup, the vocal minority always likes to ruin things for others.
I agree with this guy here. I feel like this is a poor design choice by the blizzard team and all this “decision making” and “the need to make choices” is getting old really quick. What if I want covenant A and it’s required by a guild that I have covenant C? We should be able to get exalted with all Covenants and then be able to freely swap between them when needed to prevent this crappy behavior. This is also huge spit in the face to the players when we choose one of the covenants then it later gets nerfed or changed and we’ll all have to swap to another one. This isn’t fun game play for me at all. They should only offer cosmetic rewards and or some sort of content that isn’t spells/mechanics. The only abilities I should have as a warrior are the ones from my talent tree and spell book i received leveling. Please rethink this system before launching it or at least reconsider doing stuff like this in future expansions.
Not the point, even if you choose power, the moment they buff or nerf something then it’s going to be a problem for the “power” players to swap covenants.
The devs have stated that swapping covenants won’t be an easy task.
Oh… my god no.
Please don’t do this. PLEASE NO.
I don’t need to mythic raid to have common sense. If your raid team thinks that players must have these certain abilities or otherwise you don’t get to raid then that raid team is wrong and you should find another or make your own.
Clearly, you really don’t understand the game. You’ve never mythic raided, never set foot in heroic by the look of it, and you’re speaking like you know the environment. You don’t. Don’t talk about stuff you don’t understand. Mythic raiders aren’t being forced by anyone. They want to play at the highest level and want to be the best. Blizzard forces their hand when they develop bad systems like this.
I’m sure no one at blizzard will read this but please consider either making these like small racials, or allow us to swap at will. The current projected system for how they will work doesn’t seem like its going to be very player friendly. Its going to basically make the game even more cookie cutter, and force you to choose what sector of the game you want to play in. With swapping covenants being a very tedious task to do and making it difficult to branch out. LIke this won’t hurt players that simply aren’t pushing into harder content, but this will put a huge cap on players that are.
As for the meta argument it does matter when you are pushing bosses on mythic, you need to get them down as quickly as possible as the longer the fight goes on, the harder it is. Healers have limitied mana, along with enrage timers capping how long the fight can last. So you literally need to go in with everything you can versus halfway or subpar. So really it can make some players “useless”, not completly, but chosen over others that simply do more healing or DPS in a fight. Which can literally be the determing factor as to wether you win or not.
You are the one sounding like you’ve never raided before. That, or you have been in the absolute worst guilds.
Please let’s not start with the “it’s too early to give feedback” from now until 9.1.
sounds like you should just pick what you enjoy then and not worry about a 1% increase in power? sounds like that’s what blizz is wanting anyway, right?
But you don’t NEED these things to complete that content. Sure it makes you more optimal to have them and thus do more damage or more healing but picking something else won’t make it to where you can’t complete the content.
I don’t know. Some of these look really situational and bizarre. I guess Ill have to play it and see but upon initial reading I don’t feel that excited.
Keep up these (watercooler) insights - - enjoying the read 
Technically you don’t NEED to wear gear to a mythic raid if you don’t mind getting kicked or carried.
I really don’t get how you guys can say this is a cool system. If this were Skyrim or some other offline RPG, sure. Mid game decisions that affect end game outcome is FINE. It’s NOT fine in an online MMO-RPG. There’s a reason other MMOs also don’t do this. In an MMO, the most important decision you make is at the start of the game. It’s the class you pick. In games like Skyrim or KOTOR, the decisions you make throughout the game determine your class/playstyle/etc. And its fine if they lock you out of certain things. You start as a blank page and fill it in as you play, locking you out of other roles. In WoW/FFXIV/etc, you do all of that locking by selecting your class. This is why every other game system is easily swappable.
Where did I say that? I’m saying I would like to see some actual numbers and how things go with soulbinds and the baseline class numbers with the level squish changes.
This system is garbage. Give every Covenant the same ability but change the look of it to match the covenant that you choose. Please don’t go down this route where the min/maxers are FORCED to choose.
but you can’t complete the raid without that gear. There is a difference between choosing a certain build for your character and actually being prepared for the content.
This system is going to be a disaster if it releases with these broad strokes largely intact. You can very clearly see where people are going to be punished for choosing a covenant for its story, and when different covenants are better for your main spec vs off-spec, or raiding vs PVP.
And these problems are so easily avoidable. Make them take time/effort to unlock individually, and only let us have one set of covenant powers active at a time, but let us freely switch them up like talents or specs.