Title says it, I don’t come to the forums often (if ever), but I’m seeing a lot about covenants being “bad” but no real explanation as to why that is… I’m pretty hyped for them and looking forward to Shadowlands as a whole. Why the hate? Am I missing something?
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Apparently people don’t deal with boundaries very well.
They want it all! They want it immediately! And they want it served on a silver platter to them!
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ummm…because abilities will be timegated too now? Just a wild guess.
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The 1%ers care more about gameplay than lore.
The 25%ers-1%ers are worried about not being able to push into the 1% because of their covenant choice.
And I don’t want another button. I just got comfortable with MM’s confusing, hot mess.
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Open up several of the covenant topics and you will get your answer.
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The truth is that the difference will be so not worth even looking at that if you pay attention to it, it’s pretty much spite.
We’re talking about only accepting goblins for the rocket jump level of spite. Which nobody does.
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Covenants are a massive system in Shadowlands. It’s basically the Garrison, Azerite, Legion artifact relics, a massive rep grind, unique weekly events, two new abilities, 3 additional talent trees (3 available to each Covenant, 1 active at any given time), transmog, and a huge quest campaign, all tied to a single choice you make at level 60. You can freely swap to a different one, but that would reset any progress (obviously), and swapping back to one you previously left will be very difficult/tedious/time-gated.
All of that would be fine, honestly, except that the active abilities are so wildly different from each other that there is no possible way to balance them. The covenant signature abilities are all utility, but they are completely different kinds of utility that are gamebreaking in some scenarios and useless in others. The class abilities are the same, some single target, some AoE, some buffs, it’s all over the place. People are concerned that they will be forced to choose a covenant for those abilities, because you NEED to be X for PvP, or M+, or whatever. Then when they go to do some other content, like a raider who PvPs on weekends, they might as well not even have covenant abilities because they are useless in that context.
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Sounds like a videogame. Excited.
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There is no time gate. You get the abilities as soon as you join the covenant.
The quests and transmog and stuff is time-gated, and you have to do quests to unlock the Soulbinds.
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Oh, really, so rank 1 covenant ability is as good as rank 14?
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The Convenants offer different abilities. Naturally, these are of interest to min-maxers that crave that tiny edge in speed-running endgame content. That’s basically it–it’s mostly just a discussion over whether it matters or not and whether or not people will get denied to groups over it.
Personally, I don’t see the majority of players ever having to worry about it.
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Yeah I’d be super excited to play 4 different characters and try them all.
in a single player game like Skyrim or KOTOR, not in WoW, where the game is designed around being able to change everything but your class on a whim, and everything but your professions with zero effort beyond having spec appropriate gear.
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It’s not boundaries it’s the fact they have to make a choice. They have massive commitment issues.
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Abilities are not conduits.
Conduits are like Legion relics. You get them as drops, and harder content gives you higher ranks.
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“where the game is designed around being able to change everything but this specific thing that you can’t change”
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Ion: We want your covenant choice to be meaningful. When you pick a covenant, you gain abilities tied to it. If you change covenants, it will be hard to change back.
Faction 1: Trolls/Fanboys/“Hardcore Casual” - SUCK IT ELITISTS! YOU CAN’T BE GOOD AT EVERYTHING ANYMORE!
Faction 2: Blizzard can’t balance a flat board in the middle of a flat table and wields the nerf bat like a meat cleaver. Given their track record, how can we expect the 4 covenants to be close to equal enough to not have one covenant as a 20%+ clear performance winner, get massively nerfed to dumpster, then get buffed back up. Why penalize people for switching?
Faction 3: People that play all specs for their class and not just 1. “What do I do when covenant A is the best for spec A, but covenant B is better for spec B? Why am I being penalized for wanting to play each spec to the best it can be?”
Faction 4: Min/Max - “I want to be able to optimize my character for the content I’m running at the time, be it raid, M+, or PVP. Why can’t I continue to do that like you’ve let me since the game began with a similar amount of effort?”
Faction 5: I like the aesthetics of Covenant A, but their abilies are absolute garbage. Covenant B is the best for my class/spec, outperforming Covenant A’s by over 50%, but I hate the way they look. Why must I pick a Covenant I hate visually just to be competitive?
Faction 6: WE’RE TIRED OF BORROWED POWER! HOW MANY TIMES MUST WE TELL YOU THIS?!? CLASSES AND SPECS SHOULD BE COMPLETE IN AND OF THEMSELVES AND NOT NEED RENTAL POWERS TO ACTUALLY FEEL VIABLE!
I’m sure there’s others I’ve missed.
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Well, that doesn’t sound like timegated at all. Thank you.
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is it really so bad that they want the game to have some kind of… permanence? Like if every choice is undoable with zero consequence, then that choice… doesn’t matter. I think, from what I’ve read and the research I’ve done after reading a few of these posts, that it’s a great system, if a grindy one. I think M+ and high-rank PvP is toxic as hell and don’t mess with it anyway, so for me, this looks exciting.
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You choose your class at character creation, I don’t expect to be able to change that.
You can change professions on a whim, you just have to re-grind them.
Everytime someone complains about the Covenants all I can think of is
The conversation is them yelling at Ion about it.
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