Those things don’t sell character boosts to minmaxing dragonslayers.
As I understand it, part of the reasoning behind covenants impacting gameplay is that if they don’t, a lot of players will regard them as “fluff” and disregard them as much as possible, potentially even skipping them entirely (if that can be done). In that case, for many or even most people, covenants will be entirely meaningless.
That might be fine if covenants were something that Blizz didn’t dedicate too much in the way of resources to, but it’s clearly a focal point for this expansion and that’s reflected in their investment. They’re likely not keen on having invested so heavily in something that many players frankly don’t give two hoots about.
For the signature abilities, I think they offer enough to be worth using and be a factor in the decision, but not enough to force a choice on their own. Very similar to racials. Sure the absolute top end min-maxers will swap to Kyrian when some raid boss does a disease and they expect everyone to self-dispel via the Steward Vial. The game shouldn’t be balanced around those people, because it isn’t healthy for the game in general. This is like super hardcore guilds rolling multiple Fire Mages in Legion to get more chances at good legendaries, or super hardcore guilds in TBC swapping all their members to Leatherworking for drums.
Covenant class abilities are different, there are meaningful implications for every type of content and you have seriously gimped yourself if you pick the wrong one for the content you prefer, or if you do M+/Raids/PvP/whatever all on the same character.
For the cosmetics and questlines, I think they are fantastic. THAT is the meaningful choice I am excited about here, choosing my post-60 questlines based on which Covenant I like the best, and seeing that story through to completion. Very similar (in theory, because its all NYI on alpha) to more traditional RPGs where there are major story implications for choosing to save or kill optional party members.
I look at it like the Legion class order questlines, except instead of being pigeonholed into being a glorified courier for the Kirin Tor, my Hunter can choose which questline I want to do.
Sorry, I’m generally only talking about the class abilities. The rest of it isn’t as big of a problem, although there can be some issues with soulbinds and the generic covenant ability.
Soulbinds are completely NYI.
The covenant signature abilities are a short range teleport, a minor absorb, a sprint, and a dispel/heal/Jeeves. None of those are enough to make you choose one covenant over another IMO, unless your choices are dictated to you by extreme guild progression, and if you are in Method or Limit, you know what you signed up for.
I think you’re downplaying these a little bit, but I agree for the most part. It would mostly come down to dungeon/encounter design, but I think Blizzard can avoid any real outliers in those departments.
I think it’s maybe not great that, for example, a dispel is pretty useless to classes that can already dispel.
I’m not, I’m speaking from experience. Door of Shadows is super fun and useful, but I’m not going to pick Venthyr and be saddled with emo vampire garbage aesthetics just so I can BAMF around like Nightcrawler.
Fleshcraft is a nice way to tank up, especially on classes without an absorb or much self sustain, but again, I’m not going to pick Necrolord and be saddled with Scourge-esque aesthetics just for a minor survivability boost.
Steward is a nice to have, but 90% of the time I can get the mammoth if I need a repair or vendor, the heal is smaller than what most classes have baseline, and the dispel is highly situational. If I pick Kyrian, it’s because I like the Titan-esque aesthetic.
Soulshape is pretty cool, but a 12 second 30% sprint and 10yd teleport on a 90 second cooldown are not that big a deal. Again, I already have tools that do the same thing, but better. If I pick Night Fae, it’s because I like the aesthetic and theme.
It’s not a hard choice is the issue it’s just a tedious one. The answer will be level multiple characters of your main class and with let loot be loot it will be a viable but annoying one.
Maybe these don’t mean a huge deal in Mythic raiding, but Door of Shadows will be absolutely busted in m+. If the venthyr covenant ability is even close to best ability, anyone who pushes m+ will be choosing them just for door of shadows. I can think of a billion things I would do with in BfA it will be so good
It’s hardcasted and on a 1 minute cooldown. I can see it being abused for some skips, but they can also just tune the trash counter so you can’t do those skips anyway.
It also requires LoS so the usefulness is limited. Mostly I’ve found it nice for bouncing between platforms in Torghast.
Yep you’re right! If they tune the trash to do that then it won’t be as useful. I doubt they will though since the most popular dungeons were the ones that gave you agency to choose your route and the least popular were the ones that locked the route in.
Just think about the trash in front of Volkal! If there’s any of those kind of packs… door will be extremely useful, much much better than the other 3
Skips requiring a covenant ability will be super toxic. You’ll have tryhard group finder pugs forcing specific covenants for an invite, on top of the IO, ilvl, and class/spec “requirements”.
Oh I’m not saying they would be required by any means. I’m saying that they would be far superior to the other 3.
Any group that was all venthyr would have a massive advantage over any of the other covenants
And thus it would become meta.
And thus people who can use raidbots and read icy veins will refuse to bring non-venthyr into their pugs, because the perception in group finder is that everything has to be meta all the time.
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You are probably right. I think either it needs to be changed or the others need serious buffs.
The others are all minor benefits but door has the potential to take 5 minutes off of a run. Doesn’t seem balanced
I did read your post and there isn’t. There flat out isn’t.
Yeah the door is really strong in M+ on the other hand Ky could be gamebreaking in certain raid encounters and the bone shield is really good for tanks to. Almost like it’s 2 rows of talents that should be able to be chosen seperately.
Shield is channeled isn’t it? So it won’t actually be very good… and yes ky could be decent for pure dps but any spec that has a cleanse can already do that…
Yes, but it’s a short channel, and you can get a partial shield if you break the channel early.
Still doesn’t seem that good to me tbh, maybe on bursting weeks…