[News] Shadowlands: A Look at Covenant Class and Signature Abilities *Updated 5/13

How do you not understand that people want to choose a covenant based on lore or other things that won’t change their gameplay or performance? How do you not understand that most players use the same builds for their class as everyone else does. There are literal add-ones and websites people use to have their character as optimal as possible and they don’t want THIS.

Covenants SHOULD be a cosmetic choice but because it adds abilities and there will always be a best choice per class based on raiding or PvP. Most people will choose THAT best choice over maybe wanting to choose something for flavour.

It’s just one bad design over another. Instead of them making our classes better and core gameplay better, they add things that won’t be there at the end of the expansion for the third time in a row changing how we play our class.

16 Likes

you guys have to spend tons of money on consmuables. no life IE. do every WQ that has ap as a reward. and many other things. but not getting the mog you want because you want a more powerful ability is where you draw the line? 0.o

Honestly I don’t like that this is tied to power. I think a better design would be each covenant modifies the look of key abilities that your class has, that would make each choice meaningful to the player and not make you worry about balancing.

33 Likes

you can bet I will be ostracizing people that try to enforce a meta. Play the game how you want. I will not be judging players on how they want to play but instead their personal skill. If they are able to do the content they are perfectly fine.

1 Like

you guys have to spend tons of money on consmuables. no life IE. do every WQ that has ap as a reward. and many other things. but not getting the mog you want because you want a more powerful ability is where you draw the line? 0.o

Why punish players at all? Why punish any players? It was the same thing with making it harder and harder to reforge azerite. Why is blizzard designing systems that people tell them are bad from the get go and calling it a feature. You built the whole system. Make it better.

9 Likes

Who doesn’t want their character to be the strongest it can be? It has nothing with pushing world this or arena that… I want my guy to be as strong as possible… Just like in every RPG since ever.

9 Likes

That’s not how a lot of the fights work though. If it were as easy as “just get better gear”, then there would be a lot more people clearing mythic.

Not to mention, people that are trying to progress aren’t going to appreciate it if they’re wiping for 4 hours at 6% because a bunch of their players don’t want to swap to their most optimal abilities.

Me wanting to stick with sub-optimal builds when I could switch to something and have a better chance is just incredibly selfish and wastes the time of everyone in the group.

2 Likes

making a choice is not a punishment. why do you think choosing a over b is a punishment?

Sooo pick the one that you think makes you “stronger.” I’m failing to see the issue here.

1 Like

ItS NoT a PoWeR sQuIsH.

I do understand. However I believe that this is an RPG and player choice should have consequences. If you choose to be an angelic kyrian why should you have the ability of a vampire???

1 Like

i don’t care about being as powerful as i can be. i care about being as powerful as i need to be to do the things i want to do in the game. which is why my highest ilevel toon is 441 and i don’t spend time chasing gear or essences or anything else that i don’t need to do to do the things i want to do.

2 Likes

Honestly I don’t like that this is tied to power. I think a better design would be each covenant modifies the look of key abilities that your class has, that would make each choice meaningful to the player and not make you worry about balancing.

This guy nailed it! Thank you! Logical and meaningful post here!

7 Likes

I feel like this is a point worth reiterating, especially since the people railing against you have conveniently avoided this argument.

11 Likes

Do you even listen to yourself, let me paint you a picture. Imagine you are in a 19 Siege of Boralus. Imagine your fighting Sergeant Bainbridge and the healer is runing the “fun” talents, essences and azerite traits for it. Not the ones that literally matter on a key that high, but the ones they thought looked cool and they just wanted to play them. Now imagine when he does his noose abilitly, which hits really hard on that difficulty, and the healer cannot keep up with it becuase their healing output is low becuase their not running proper talents, traits or essences for it. Their going to die, and make the fight that much harder for the rest of the fight becuase the healer cannot keep up. Then rinse and repeat this and it wipes and will more than likely cause the key to deplete. The same scenario can be argued with covenants as they are currently, to where it simply does matter. As that 1% as some put it can be the deciding factor between wether you live, or you die. Along with wether you kill the boss, or you wipe to it due to lack of healing or DPS if the fight simply is taking too long as the healer goes OOM. This is literally what people are trying to get at, that it does in fact matter, and its not becuase people are being exclusatory. Its becuase it really does make a diffrence at that level. Like I cannot tell you of all the wipes that we’ve had on mythic bosses that were at 1% becuase somone was underperfoming. Please understand this is a real scenario, and we’re not just saying it cause we can.

11 Likes

Ill never understand why blizzard apologists are still trying to defend this when mythic raiders are offering suggestions that benefit literally everybody.

21 Likes

To be honest I wish I could just not choose one. I am hoping these abilities are not heavy damage focused and more utility based. Based on past experiences this is a bad idea, I will roll trait A, then 2 weeks into LIVE you will nerf it and waste hours of my time to reroll to a useful trait again. ZERO faith in this working out.

4 Likes

the problem is, why are you placing character progression with a system for cosmetics? It doesn’t feel good, I don’t want to play as kyrian or venthyr, but if they are the strongest I will begrudgingly use them, and have very little enjoyment in doing the reputation and dailies, or even story, which is pretty much how terrible warmode feels if you don’t really care for the story of it.

The real question is, why are you so insistent that these stay together instead of character progression being split? idm if it’s grind your first one and that’s your cosmetics, but then grind the rest for the remaining actives.

2 Likes

alternatively you all get better at the game by improving your skill level and complete the content.

that’s why you have the choice to pick the stronger thing vs the flavorful thing. you don’t like the choice though. that doesn’t mean it’s not there. i will pick what i want the same as you do. i won’t get the BiS talent and you won’t get the cosmetics. guess what. we both make that choice.

4 Likes