I like the set 
I know, I mean, imagine if you want to play a Warlock as Venthyr … but Night Fae is the most beneficial. It feels weird. You’re trucking around with your demon … using fel magics, and supporting nature.
It just feels wrong.
Now going Kyrian could be interesting. You’re trying to reform. And you’re trying to keep the demons alive so they can “see the Light” (pun fully intended). I mean there ARE Holy Demons in Lore.
And there are enough people that DO care about lore, but also care about progression as well.
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I had to look at the set. Ok, you like it. Cool. It just looks … disturbing to me. Almost S&M level disturbing. But hey … you do you!
No one I’ve seen has complained about separate abilities. What most people don’t agree with is having one ability that is vastly inferior for their spec compared to the other Covenants when in PvE or PvP. I can assure you this is a fairly universally disliked issue as far as content spread goes.
I hope they don’t let this become the next Azerite gear debacle and just add some more abilities while they have time.
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Look, this whole thing is a way to make borrowed power systems more punishing to players.
Please go hate yourself
-Love Blizz
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Guild asked me if I planned to maintain an alt healer in addition to my main in Shadowlands
I said, of course, I will play 4 priests!
This is gonna be fun. 
(kill me)
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I can see that of course. Wiping at .01% happens now, last expansion, the one before that. Etc, etc. Not having the ability that churns out that extra .1% that would have finished the boss is the splitting of the hairs that Mythic requires if you are aiming to full clear in a timely manner. That’s what I meant by liking to game the game. I see it now. Having four of each class and raiding eight hours a day to gear them. That doesn’t sound like fun at all.
But my point is Blizzard didn’t make you want to do that. Mythic raiding came about to give player an seemly impossible task so they wouldn’t be bored. The community created the standards how to overcome them. Blizzard might even have to make Mythic raiding slightly easier so people don’t have to feel the need to game the game. But that is half the fun. Souls-like gaming. By that I mean really hard and using intense RPG things to make it easier, like split runs and leveling up more than one of each class. Yeah.
Blizzard trys to add choice into the mix but we always come out with a cookie cutter builds. I think it will happen in shadowlands too. That might be a road they down in the future. No talents or extra spells. Just a class you can’t customize. But I guess that would make Mythic raiding a little more accessible. Haha
A hundred times, this.
If you are not someone who cares about optimization, giving other players a choice of covenant abilities doesn’t negatively effect you. You can still choose the coolest, non-optimal ability.
If you are someone who hates “min max culture” and you think that “forcing covenant lock in” will break it, you’re playing a different game. You will still be expected to take the correct ability for the correct game mode and when you don’t you will face some level of exclusion.
No Venthyr rogue or mage is going to have an easy time pugging mythic+ or joining a mythic raid guild. No non-Kyrian hunter or non-Venthyr DH is going to have an easy time getting picked up for an arena team. Period. There is not a single class in alpha that doesn’t have this problem.
Personally I would like to see them keep the “signature” abilities tied to the covenant but free up the combat ones for swapping just like regular talents. The signature abilities are still pretty meaningful mobility choices but it’s far less “makes or breaks an entire game mode”.
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This is why Covenants are potentially going to be a disaster, imo.
Also I think the people who are pro-restrictions are not as many as it seems.
It really feels like a small handful support it.
Honestly if Covenants go live as currently planned I feel like it would be Legion but you only got to choose one weapon for the entire expansion.
Far too restrictive compared to current game design and goes against the way the game has been developed for years with constant buffs/nerfs that wildly swing power around.
If Azerite and Corruption are any indication of the level of balance we can expect, Covenants will fail and we the players will suffer for 2 years under a bad system, again.
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This is kinda what I’m trying to echo as loudly as possible. People gain nothing by being pro-restriction but everyone has to gain by making them independent.
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None. Fanboys just can’t accept that Blizzard has bad ideas sometimes and anyones who is against them is a “hater”.
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Hate this so much, but it’s true.
You’re allowed to love a game but be critical when they introduce a bad change. Once day they will learn hopefully, but it might be too late.
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They’ve been trying that over and over and it’s not working. Repeating it won’t make it comes true.
They’ve backtracked on the thinking that they had to restrict certain abilities of your class to the specs. “Spec identity…blah blah blah”
One reason they removed reforging to make certain gear pieces “more impactful” instead of players just getting a decent piece and reforging it to preferred stats. Didn’t work. Reforging was more enjoyable and your gear drops had better impact.
Also, removing the on-the-fly choices by pruning so many abilities didn’t make the choice during combat or from the talent tree more impactful. It actually made it feel LESS impactful. Restricting the use of abilities and then sticking them into the talent tree didn’t do squat but piss everyone off.
The impact is in choice->reaction, NOT restriction->choice. What makes abilities more impactful is for them to actually be impactful and interesting. And that begins in class design.
In other words, having more abilities overall creates more choice and more impact. It’s just going to make X covenant choice mandatory depending on which class/spec you are. It really looks like more laziness and using it as a crutch for their content. Instead of more depth for your covenant choice, they just slap an ability to it and call it a day.
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So pro-restriction people still don’t have an argument for the positives?
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Tbf, a lot of the feedback is from non mythic raiders and non streamers too. But the people in support of the system as is ignore that. Also the seemingly main champion of keeping it the way it is here on the forums even said the abilities need to be assigned by spec, not just by class.
So really even the people who supposedly support the way this system works don’t fully support it.
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Actually hilarious when phrased that way.
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We’ve seen how they balance corruption and Azerite before it. A potato could do better. Why anyone trusts them to balance covenants is beyond me.
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What do you mean? Nerfing a corruption by 50% after people bought tokens to buy gear seems perfectly fine to me! 
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Yeah it’s comical. Absent complete incompetence it’s near impossible for something so egregious to make it live. 50% smh
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Once you choose a covenant the only way to change it should be through the cash store for 3 tokens. Aaaaand they should rotate which abilities are nerfed every few weeks.
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