Reposting abridged version so ppl maybe actually read this.
I play a Night Fae mage. I’m sure most of you are aware of the significant balance changes fire mage has received. I want to perform well as my class. For mage, it looks like that means going arcane or frost, which means going Kyrian or Venthyr.
As a Night Fae, I have completely maxed out my covenant sanctum. I have purchased mounts, toys, and transmogs. The fact that I have to be labeled as a BETRAYER by my covenant, and lose all my progression to play a new spec in a near-optimal way is gut-wrenching.
Could we please untie class-specific borrowed power from covenant choice? For example, make night-fae’s shifting power a “mega-conduit” instead of a covenant specific power. You can timegate the hell out of mega-conduit swaps, and you can force players to complete a covenant campaign equivalent to unlock a new mega conduit. That way it would still be a meaningful choice that players would have to work hard for, without sacrificing what they’ve already worked hard for.
yeah completely invalidating a sense of character continuity to effectively respec is pretty toxic. “Oh you thought 50g to respec in classic was bad?, how about we gut your mount collection and make you replay the previous patch instead?”
yep you sure do. you have to regrind all 80k anima or whatever it was to max your covenant. you have to re-level all your table mission followers too. you also lose access to all covenant specific mounts, titles, toys and pets too. things like the “fun guy” title for getting exalted with marasimus.
I never really invested much into any covenant from the beginning since I’ve been swapping Kyrian>Venthyr>Kyrian>Venthyr>Fae>Kyrian>Fae>Kyrian>Venthyr or whatever. But man for those who have put time and effort and now are getting screwed over by balance changes…
I don’t know what else to say other than who the heck thought this was a good idea?
yeah. to be fair i cant even imagine what its like to develop a game like wow and try to balance systems without having stuff feel homogenized. with that being said, i really hope they recognize that having a system that forces players to choose between progressing their character’s story vs. optimizing their characters power is a major problem for an RPG to have. even if its just some of the players. there are (relatively) straightforward ways they could fix that, without sacrificing their design intent. I hope they implement one.