Please let me choose covenant

[Sulakin-nagrand (Sulakin)]

Racials are inconsequential and people have the capability to swap whenever they want pretty easily without any drawbacks or something long and drawn out. Abilities are entirely different. Talents are swapped whenever we want as we see fit. This is either you’re stuck with it or you spend forever trying to grind out something to get abilities through some other covenant.

You pick a wrong talent, you go to a rest zone and change it. You pick the wrong covenant, you’re just screwed unless you can stomach a long, difficult grind.

Aldor and Scryers were fine. It was just gear and some crafting patterns. This is our actual abilities— which should be part of the damn talent tree and not tied to throwaway content AGAIN.

Ok Lets put things in perspective . Say that convenant abilities do 5% of your total damage . The difference between the worst and best covenant is 10% -that means the damage difference is about 0.5% of your total damage - in other words very little difference for most players ( only world first racers would worry about this .)

The other thing that everyone seems to be missing is teh fact that you also have 3 easily changed soulbinds associated with each covenant. If Blizz is on their game these will balance out the main issues with the system. for instance say Cov A is by far the best single target , then its three soulbinds should be strong in PvP, Multi target and M+ . Cov B is the strongest PvP ability -its soul binds assist with single target , multi target and m+ . etc etc .

As for your last statement I personally ( note -personally ) disagree very strongly here . I love the expansion specific abilities . They solve a whole heap of issues like button bloat for example and reduce the need for pruning while giving us fresh ways to play our classes each expansion . Learning to play my class again is something i look forward to each expansion .

[Scumßag-faerlina]

If you start getting filtered by covenant choice

you know its coming

[Byucknah-agamaggan (Byucknah)]

It’s because they removed weapon damage from the equation on all abilities, weapons are just another stat stick now.

I still think that was such a dumb choice. Weapon Normalization on speeds as well as taking weapon damage out of the equation was silly in my opinion.

[Brutalistica-greymane (Brutalistica)]

Choose what fits your style. I tend to go off meta and still do successful with builds.

[Wirt-stalagg]

Honestly, i agree with that, and limiting weapon choices of legion from what they were before, and even removing the ranged/melee slot bothers me.

[Byucknah-agamaggan (Byucknah)]

Honestly, i agree with that, and limiting weapon choices of legion from what they were before

I miss specs having the choice of what weapons they wanted to use. Things like Titans Grip vs Single Minded Fury. Thinks like Two Handed Frost vs Dual Wield Frost. Etc.

I miss more weapon choice having more impact.

removing the ranged/melee slot bothers me.

Eh, personally I am impartial there. I have more of an issue with Throwing Weapons being axed as a whole. I would really love to see either Rogue or Warrior some day get a throwing weapon spec haha.

[Wirt-stalagg]

I miss specs having the choice of what weapons they wanted to use. Things like Titans Grip vs Single Minded Fury. Thinks like Two Handed Frost vs Dual Wield Frost. Etc.

I miss more weapon choice having more impact.

God i remember all the conversations back in wrath about if dual wield tanking on dk was viable.

[Byucknah-agamaggan (Byucknah)]

God i remember all the conversations back in wrath about if dual wield tanking on dk was via

Okay, no joke. WotLK DK design was cool as heck! I loved that every spec could DPS or Tank. I remember personally being a huge blood fan for tanking while I a friend of mine was all about Frost.

Those were some interesting and fun times haha. Flawed in their own ways but enjoyable memories none the less.

[Valdaram-kromcrush]

@Byucknah-agamaggan

Indeed, and I am not complaining about that. The point I am making is that unless the Covenant abilities are as weak as Racials its going to feel like you are shoehorned into a specific covenant.

For example, take the Kyrian Hunter one that lets you attack a target even if you are not in LoS. That to me screams Arena/PvP BiS. Imagine being able to pillar hump while being able to continue doing 100% of your damage.

I know we don’t have all the details yet, but its fair given how BFA turned out to be fully critical and make concerns heard earlier than later when we have reached the point of no return.

This guy gets it.

Imagine grinding for that single ability then it being nerfed into the ground. It would feel terrible.

@Wirt-stalagg

It happens all the time though. One second something is OP, the next it’s not.

This is not an excuse. I agree with Byuck. If the abilities tunings are minor then it isn’t an issue, but that was shown to clearly not be the case with Azerite armor or artifact traits, so why would I trust blizzard to get it right now when there is even more at stake now than before.

List of Nerfed Azerite Traits in PvP just take a look at this. All of these traits were nerfed post launch. This sucked badly for a lot of players. No fault of their own the entire meta flips and all of the work they did grinding was wasted, but at least it was ONLY gear. Now imagine its your abilities you grinded for and everything else beyond that becomes a casualty of bad tuning.

[Wirt-stalagg]

I miss em too, I’d play the hell out of classic wrath if we get it.

[Byucknah-agamaggan (Byucknah)]

This guy gets it.

Imagine grinding for that single ability then it being nerfed into the ground. It would feel terrible.

Like how Infinite Stars was nerfed, what, four times since it came out? Two or three of the nerfs within the first two weeks? At least with that it was RNG, but imagine working towards something that wasn’t RNG and instead was a time sink of time and effort only for it to get absurdly nerfed.

[Wirt-stalagg]

oh well, it’s preferable to having everything be no impact.

I’m sick of everything being easy to switch.

[Wirt-stalagg]

it’s still stupid powerful on like 2 fights. It was just stupid stupid powerful.

Infinitely stupidly powerful?

[Byucknah-agamaggan (Byucknah)]

Infinitely stupidly powerful?

Yeah, it certainly was absurd when it first came out haha but I think its a valid point in the context of the argument I am making. /shrug

[Valdaram-kromcrush]

Like how Infinite Stars was nerfed, what, four times since it came out? Two or three of the nerfs within the first two weeks? At least with that it was RNG, but imagine working towards something that wasn’t RNG and instead was a time sink of time and effort only for it to get absurdly nerfed.

Completely agree. This is an issue.

oh well, it’s preferable to having everything be no impact.

I’m sick of everything being easy to switch.

Things need to have an impact yes but not this. Let all of the cosmetics be something you have to decide between but not something that Blizzard will probably nerf after you make your choice. If something is nerfed after a massive time sink that will feel horrible. The trade off for impact just is not worth it in any case.

[Wirt-stalagg]

I’d be fine if they gave each covenant all 4 choices in their own style, but a lot of people seem to be wanting to only have one, and that’s boring.

I like the choice between the 4 abilities.

[Wirt-stalagg]

Let all of the cosmetics be something you have to decide between but not something that Blizzard will probably nerf after you make your choice.

Then i won’t even bother picking, i’ll just grab the one my mouse goes over, I don’t even transmog, I don’t care what i look like.

[Onni-antonidas (Onni)]

I don’t see why they can’t take the new class abilities and just turn them into a new talent row. Seems like that would fix the big issue that people have.

[Wirt-stalagg]

i have a feeling they’re going to build them into the soulbinds, which wouldn’t work as talents.

Plus, talents have no impact, you can just change them pretty easily.

[Valdaram-kromcrush]

Impactful decision making is important to me too but in the right context. I understand where you are coming from but just trying to think back in the past there have not really been anything that has ever been locked in to this degree (at least thats how they tout it) and also game changing at the same time. Maybe Aldors vs Scryers? Picking a spec in classic/BC maybe?

For me impactful decision making should be in combat, make a bad choice then you die or get a dps loss for instance.

If Blizzard could tune all of the abilities to be within 1% of each other then I would be fine with everything else being locked in, but I just don’t trust Blizzard enough to do that." Impact" isn’t worth it to me to pick a covenant and then feel robbed after the eventual nerfs come in.