I’d hope that Blizzard has learned their lesson from that, which it seems like they have. I don’t think the two are remotely comparable.
No they’re not. Don’t attribute to malice what is better explained by incompetence.
For anecdotal reference, I don’t sacrifice RP / character integrity for min/max (best example here is that I don’t use Healthstones. Heathen things 
even when mythic raid prog).
I want to be able to pick a motif (covenant) that matches my characters rp but not have that tied behind what appears to be a lackluster to use skill.
Throughput isn’t a consideration. I reckon that both the “throw five shields” and the “unholy consecrate” skill from kyrian and venthyr respectively won’t be game changing, but when compared to how thematic blessings are for the paladin class, night fae just clicks - but only because of the paladin class ability. The night fae covenant motif doesn’t (yet) jive with my backstory.
Thus my main boggle is not tied to throughput. It’s tied to my character identity, something I’ve not heard mentioned yet.
Legion was class identify - more about spec identity I humbly think. BFA was faction identity. And now it’s back to class Identity with depruning.
The character identity is freely up to the player to choose. But I feel there is a lot of baggage that comes with one choice (which covenant) that feels like your rolling for a backstory for a DnD session that lasts most of 2 years.
Ok, lol maybe a bit over the top. Nonetheless, thank you for your respectful input. Sorry for being verbose.
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Try doing BfA without Azerite gear and tell me your toon feels complete.
It doesn’t, because they’re incompetent. Not because they’re twirling their moustache about making making my class feel like garbage.
How much of the Night Fae story have you seen? I can understand this point of view, but past mostly mechanical things, we don’t know that much about how they feel. Unless you have beta.
And yet we’re comparing them, right? Are you stating that the comparison is comparable from the perspective of choices matter, but not comparable to how deletrious a wrong choice was in vanilla? The latter I’m hip to and agree with. It just seems that if the choice isn’t that major to begin with, can we free up the aesthetic and story side of the covenants and tie the choice mattering some other way?
Please, can you make this happen 
I’m thinking of it from my characters backstory to the third war and Uther’s involvement in the campaign, as well as Uther being a founding member of the Order of the Silver hand, an organization my character grew up around. (Holy smokes if Tirion was around I would jump on his covenant regardless of aesthetic!)
I can easily see a paladin fitting each covenant. Of any race. I just am trying to fit a puzzle piece for my story and how I see my character.
To be fair, I do like making a choice. This is overall cool. And I’m excited. I just wish I could have as class-thematically accurate a spell as blessing (night fae) for all of the covenants. (heck, even the game devs stated auras are thematic to paladins so they’re bringing them back to all specs, and the night fae class ability started as an aura).
I can’t say why Blizzard is doing anything, only that I like or dislike it. If they wanted to redesign the game as Hello Kitty Adventure Island, and I liked that choice, I couldn’t say why it was happening or what Blizzard was smoking.
The only comparison I was making was that semi-permanent choices a la Covenants were a thing that used to exist, in the form of Talents and some pretty lame Racial abilities. I can’t speak to how well it will work, only that Blizzard has veered so far from that design I’m amazed we’re not just respeccing classes on a boss by boss basis. They seem pretty wary of making the system that punishing again.
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It’s not incompetent because it is intentional .
They take about half our power away at the end of the expansion pretty much and slowly give it back over time as the next expansions borrowed power.
They do it so they don’t have to really ad anything new . Just give x passive this name with this borrowed power for this xpac and give it this name for this expansion .
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Yeah, I agree. The abilities probably won’t be brutally game changing like stacking TD - though I really like the potency of having a teleport stun ability (one of the venthyr soulbinds) that shores up a weakness of the paladin class - mobility.
People are just upset that they won’t be able to swap between covenant abilities whenever they feel like it.
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Bingo.
A lot of us casuals just want to have fun. We don’t care about Fotm or min/maxing. We just like playing and experimenting.
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The game screams YOU CANT DO THAT, IT ISNT DESIGNED LIKE THAT.
If you want to be optimal for everything then clearly you shouldnt be playing a game where it is designed around being optimal at one specific thing and sub optimal for everything else
I am not sure how hard that is for some realize, the game isnt designed for you.
I find nothing aggressive in it even if I did, there wouldn’t be much to apologize for. This argument is getting old yea? We all been threw it so many times most are getting tired of explaining their point of view. Others still tired that the other side just seemingly isn’t able to get it, or willingly chooses to blindly ignore it. It’s more then understandable at this point for some level of frustration to seep threw.
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In my case, it’s because picking your Covenant based on roleplaying considerations will gimp your character for some or all types of content. Just as I was finally coming to terms with having to play the game RP lite, Blizzard forces us into RP not.
I agree, but the individual I was specifically conversing with wants the best no matter what cost. My argument was tailored towards this.
All the paladin abilities look lame.
Again though they refuse to learn from their mistakes. By the end of legion they knew people wanted faster power gain and to target things. What did they do for the first tier? Made Azerite random not drop from M+ and have no vendor. Eventually they fixed that but it’s still a slog to get a specific piece. They aren’t choosing a lesser evil they are choosing the worse evil every freaking time. Players want fewer barriers but they keep throwing up more and more.
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No it really really really doesn’t. This isn’t a single player game. Yes in a zero sum game there need to not be semi permanent trade offs with talents it would be fine because you could change them to best suit the fight. The semi permanence aspect is the issue.
Sometimes what the players want, and what the game needs isn’t the same thing. Ability bloat, and power creep are big problems. The only solution they have found is borrowed power, although corruption over titanforge was a pretty disgusting display of power creep.
I’m not saying this is the best solution out there, just the only one they found that works. Currently the system works a lot like seasons, or leagues in ARPGs. Every expansion is a power reset and with that a new mechanic to play with to keep the illusion of power growing while actually keeping you at the same relative strength.
What players want is what keeps them subbed. It’s not a solution when they are continually losing players. The difference is in ARPGS it’s very easy to get a new set and play around with it. I had all the warrior sets last season in less than a week and there was zero opportunity cost or barrier to going back and forth. The issue is they are treating the game like Diablo without the easy change back and forth nature of diablo.
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