But you can’t use your mage powers when you’re playing your lock. That’s the whole point.
You can pick up and go as you please, but you can’t use every class ability at a particular time because you lack the skill to use what you have.
They are tweaking numbers for their purpose, pre-orders have been more bough because they added bonus to them with BFA. But we don’t have anything for Shadowlands numbers yet that got released.
The people that are asking to be able to freely swap aren’t asking to use one covenant ability while in another covenant, or you said - every covenant ability at a particular time.
They want to be able to freely swap covenants like we can swap classes. No penalties. We just pick up where we left off and can continue progress without a time-gate or obstacle being put in our way.
They want covenant abilities to be like a talent row, so you might want to get together and iron out what you want. But man, that’s even worse.
Instant gratification, am I rite?
It’s called “leveling”. 
Some people do. Some also just want to be able to swap between covenants freely as a whole.
The idea of switching the abilities in a talent row is more of a compromise that still forces us to stay with a covenant, but that doesn’t lock down the power gain associated with each covenant.
I don’t necessarily care - but this idea is from the people that the RPG choices should be separate from player power.
But you pick up where you left off.
If you already have all those at max level - there is no time gating like there is with covenants.
In a freely swappable system - you’d still have to “level” through each of your covenants.
You can swap and start over. People want to swap for every fight in the raid.
Those people don’t like playing RPG’s. Like in the other thread, those group of guys desperately trying to equate PhD’s to Covenants because they have no clue of religious culture.
You have one side that’s grown up with playing Pacifist builds in Fallout: New Vegas and the other side that’s played Raid: Shadow Legends. If you really want a mobile game, give players instant access to everything.
Thats because you are not trying to get revenge for a perceived slight. A lot of the people supporting a lock in are actually looking to actively punish what they see as elitism.
Or we can just have world of warcraft like it has been for the last 2 decades. A compromise between rpg and multiplayer.
I play tons of rpgs outside of wow, and people will realise the problems when the expansion will launch and they will experience it themselves.
First they will be overwhelmed by the amount of systems that they added, it’s “interesting” how many new systems are in the expansion.
Second they’ll get bored or want to switch covenants to have fun with them, and once the game will tell them no well I can’t wait for the forums threads.
Or when they’ll realise that classes aren’t really in a better state even with all those stuff added. The main problem that BFA had seems to repeat himself.
1 Like
I checked out that thread.
Religion would have made more sense if there were no powers/abilities associated with the covenants.
But because there are - educational degrees does seem to make more sense.
That, sadly, seems to be the case.
So many casuals get hit in the crossfire and the “elitists” hardly get punished since they can buy multiple boosts to get 2-4 of the same class with all the gold they make selling carries.
Except, since WoD, the game has been skewing towards a MOBA and instant-gratification.
Shadowlands is the first step towards an actual RPG. No RNG crafts, professions rebooted, abilities unpruned, tier set bonuses, and a self-contained Mages Tower.
Have you read the Old Testament? You want to know how many powers/abilities the Roman, Norse, and Pagan Pantheons had?
They dont even need to buy carries. Like me, I help carry others alts through mythic +15s all they time and they carry mine.
Why do you think that wod had particuliary more instant gratification?
Maybe you would had an argument with titanforging but that’s Legion, which they are removing.
But things like mission table is coming back in strengh in Shadowlands.
Professions aren’t that better so far.
Yes they talked about tier sets, but we haven’t seen any.
The abilities unpruned don’t fix the gcds problems. And sometime aren’t far enough.
Mage tower was mostly liked by all the community not sure about that.
Thorgast will be kinda like it in some way?
Right - and with classes you don’t have to start over.
“RPG” has different interpretations and means different things to many people.
They likely just enjoy playing different RPGs than you do and have different criteria associated with what makes an RPG.
Sounds like you enjoy punishing choices as a criteria while they don’t.
Unless you swap to a level 1 you do.
If you’re saying that people with multiple geared and max level toons can freely sub into a raid - well, you’re right. But then you could also swap into a toon with the appropriate covenant, so…
But that’s the issue. The covenants add an additional layer of restriction that isn’t necessary.
We would already have to work our way through each covenant and earn all of the power/rewards with each of them.
The ask is then to swap them “like” covenants, but without having to actually worry about another character of the same class.
Pretty much. You pick what you pick and that is that. Want to swap things around to find better setups for different situations? Can’t. Turn off your brain and press the same buttons everywhere.
Your covenant will give you power. It may be a boost to AoE. Congrats you shine on trash. Your buddy got a boost to ST damage. He’ll get you back on the bosses.
I can’t swap from a warlock to a fire mage. This restriction doesn’t bother me. We don’t have access to every ability in the game whenever we want. It’s ok.