And Ion just told you that you cant do that, you choose strengths and weaknesses, that way of playing is no longer viable in WoW unless you go full tryhard and level and gear 4 of each which most people, even current tryhards wont do.
Ion is clearly stating that this way of playing isnt welcome anymore and that is better for the game.
Lol I’m just watching the show at this point, it’s cute how everyone that supports this thinks it won’t be cookie cutter. News flash, it’s STILL going to be simmed, there will be a meta build for it. It will create problems as it’s not going to be as simple as “whoopsie I picked the wrong one”. It’s still going to be cookie cutter due to the power the covenants bring to the table. There still will be a meta as much as blizzard is trying to be anti meta. By litterally going into the opposite direction of pulling away from meta. Yeah I give you that it won’t be 100% best, yet you and I both know one will be superior over all the other ones in every situation.
I foresee this system not working well at all honestly. I think that it’s going to flop hard at the start, their going to keep pushing it through the tiers and burn the player base out again. Then fix it way late in their expansion when it’s too late and has successfully burnt out more players.
Yes and I’m saying its not the philosophy that the problem its blizzard’s ability to design the game in a way that succeeds with that vision.
Its not gonna be strengths and weaknesses, its gonna be 1 covenant will end up clearly being superior and the other two completely horrible in their balance.
Its oh man I choice this 1 covenant cause it sounded really good, I liked the RPG element. Oh no blizzard failed at balance and made it way to weak instead of equally strong to the other covenants in a unique way.
I dont think anyone is arguing that meta wont exist.
What is gonna happen though is the fact that people wont be able to be optimal at all forms of content, if you choose the covenant that does well in raid single target for example you might lose in AoE so in m+ you will be sub optimal.
And only few extreme tryhards will even bother leveling 4 of each, especially now that gearing is way slower with only one item per m+
Being a meta slave in SL is impossible with 1 character unless you only do one form of content and literally nothing else.
Covenants are designed to not be equals to each other, each one will excel at a different area, that’s the goal.
That means you dont get to be an ST god while also an AoE god, gotta pick which one you take and which one you lose. And then you gotta do both types of content with one of those without changing.
So the complete opposite of being denied on the basis of playing a bad class.
Yeah and I’m saying blizzard is gonna mess it up.
Your gonna say oh aoe god, ill choose this but the balance is gonna be so bad. It will be aoe so wimpy I might of well have chosen ST god cause it is more then useless.
“But I didn’t know at the start” well heres a huge grind to get something that is more then garbage.
See and that’s the problem I have. Blizzard pretty said and stood by the same thing with azerite, where choice doesn’t matter and so forth. Yet they tuned azerite so strongly that it became rotation breaking if you ran the wrong azerite. Then essences added.more fuel to the fire as it added even more potent abilities to our rotation that further added to the desparity they were trying to prevent. With the final nail on the coffin being corruptions which failed so badly initially given how powerful they were. Which forced them to add the vendor to fix it. I literally see the same damn thing with covenants happening. Where instead of dialing back power, they just keep turning it up more which has the opposite effect of what their trying to do. What needs to happen is they need to be as powerful as racial abilities, versus powerful extra rotation and CD buttons like they are right now. It’s all going to be such a show when SL’s comes out, and it’s going to be sad as it had so much potential.
EDIT: their entire damn soultions to being anti meta is to keep dialing up the power that everything brings to the table. Which has the opposing effect of what their trying not do when they should really be dialing it down. Yet they just double down and keep going until they break the game or ruin the current systems. Which creates even more problems and burnout. In all honesty WoW is going to be the death of itself in the end. They keep making bad decisions that backfire on them, and act all surprised about it when the community has pointed it out numerous times. Then double down and keep doing.the same thing thinking that it will eventually resolve itself rather then fixing the issue itself.
I don’t know why people are under the impression 1 ability isn’t going to make you weaker or stronger in some encounters
Rogues for example are going to be best of going nercolords for PvP, raids, M+, open world, torghast and the maw.
I’m pretty sure hunters are going to have a few more options to play with but the choice between the top and bottom look a lot more balanced and yet as a hunter player looking at it, it still looks stupid because there are just some abilities that might work in some aspects of the game pretty well but then there are a few options I just know are going to be the best all round choice
It’s even worse for the classes that are going to have to choose their covenant decided on what they play
The beta wasnt any better.
Cant really say im satisfied with the player-dev communication in Shadowlands neither.
Yeah, its definitely better than it was in the previous 3-4 expansions but it was practically nonexistent then; being slightly better than that still feels slightly less than acceptable.
Theres still a handful of classes/specs waiting with bated breath on any substantial changes whatsoever.
It’s weird isn’t it? When we’re young, school and stories kind of teach us we should be able to reason our way through anything. That we should be able to talk rather than fight. That there’s always compromise to be made in the middle somewhere, if we can just find the perfect words, the perfect angle to magically unseal and convince the other person’s mind.
Then you realize in real life with adults, two people can absolutely want two reasonable but opposite things for entirely valid reasons on each end… and only one person’s gotta get what they want.
“Them’s the breaks” and “strongest takes the ball home” are lessons we all get to learn one day.
Blizz cant stop it from happening covenant ability A. Does x of dmg on x cd while covenant ability b. Does y dmg on a y cd. One will clearly be better in all scenarios unless you make them the exact same.
A major difference is also the fact that azerite is RNG, you gotta hope you get lucky and get 3x trait so people who coudnt were left behind, covenants on the other hand are a choice, no rng involved so by design they are gonna excel in some areas, be weaker in others but in a sense be more balanced because no rng is involved. (Because apparently Blizzards includes rarity when balancing power, aka how they let gushing wounds be OP af simply because it was rare pre vendor)
In addition Azerite once again similar to covenants excel in one area more than the other, yes I would love to stack 3x shadow word pain traits but that is rly weak single target wise, if it was good single target wise it would be utterly broken aoe wise.
Essences assisting with some classes and opened up more ways to play with, like blood of the enemy being rly useful for burst moments, again their goal is to have different things for different PLAYSTYLES, not different SITUATIONS, for example their goal is if someone is into huge bursting moments of course they are gonna choose blood of the enemy, and these people would excel at fights that require bursting down adds etc but will not excel in sustain dps.
Again if you sim everything by 5min patchwreck of course 1 thing will excel, the whole point is that some excel in different playstyles.
Corruption goal was clear imo, they knew people would just stack 9x same corruption if a vendor was a thing, they wanted people to try out different builds based on what they get, of course that lead to the obvious RNG problem where someone gets 9x gushing wounds and the other person gets 3x void ritual, 3x avoidant and 3x masterful rank 1.
So their plan on making people try different things failed because of how unbalanced rng is, and again covenants are not RNG, you are gonna
Will balance problems be a thing? certainly, but I ll always support more rpg elements than less choices, and with covenants being locked
And if that happens it is unintended and they will attempt to fix it.
Which of course is gonna cause many ragequit threads from meta slaves when their meta covenant gets nerfed, no worries made a thread in preparation for when that happens
It’s GD. Literally anytime a YTer, streamer or the raiding community is mentioned they lose their collective minds. They are completely oblivious to the state of the game and are completely unaware that blizzard is heading down the same road they have been in every expansion with broken systems and classes.
They are delusional and should never be listened to when it comes to game direction and balance.
Okay, so you replace RNG that wasn’t too terrible given they added the vendor when the chest kept spitting out azerite pieces. With very lengthy grinds which in essence is about as lengthy and bad as RNG grinds in some cases. Like its all a trade off, you trade one thing for another. You trade being able to “experiment” with builds and so forth with being locked in to s single build until your forced to swap. Your locked into a sing spec without being able to play the others. Your locked into either tanking, healing or dpsing until your ready to spend a whole week swapping. That to me is another failure of the covenant system. For people who like to play more than one role or spec, it’s going to seriously suck not being able to switch at will. It’s not a question of meta at that point, but of what role you wish to play as at that point in time.
Which vendors again were a solution to the problem caused by the RNG, vendors didnt have a design goal other than to solve a problem.
Covenants on the other hand arent rng and exist for a specific reason, you cant blame RNG for being in a certain covenant that happens to excel at AoE while for example you want to focus on ST.
Meanwhile if you care about 5 min patchwork if you get azerite that is good for aoe that is useless to you and you had no choice.
The removal of RNG is making the choice serious, because now YOU DECIDE your strengths and weaknesses, you decide to go for single target and perform less in AoE
I can understand that, which was why I always said covenants should be spec specific instead of class specific, yet some people just had to go about “class over spec”
f you had the ability to choose which covenant ability and soul binds you wanted whenever you wanted, there would be a 100% right way to play the game for every single encounter
So, I’m just going to point this out.
In Shadowlands there still will be an absolutely best covenant and conduit set up for each boss. The idea of a meta will not go away from this. The only difference is it will make so you will no longer have the option on whether you want to play optimally all the time or not.
Now you’re forced to play optimally some of the time, and sub-optimally the rest of the time and it’s entirely out of your control.
When certain classes stop getting invited to high key/heroic groups because they picked the garbage covenant for their class we will see a real backlash to this system(Like if you’re a DK and go for Maldraxus) . But so many people think this only affects the top 1%.
It’s exactly what people thought about Legiondaries, and what people thought about Azerite armor. It’s the new expansion cycle.
Exactly and that is how you are meant to play RPGs, Ion show that every single hunter at high end was clone #5835 and because players clearly were playing the game wrong, he is creating a system where they are no longer allowed to play the game wrong.
Ah yes just like they said they wont invite based on azerite, essences or corruptions while the vast vast majority of time the spec is what is being discriminated against because nobody is gonna bother inspect you in detail
Exactly and that is how you are meant to play RPGs, Ion show that every single hunter at high end was clone #5835 and because players clearly were playing the game wrong, he is creating a system where they are no longer allowed to play the game wrong.
So people have just been playing the game incorrectly for the past 15 years? The thing that literally not a single person has ever complained about or said needs to be changed? That the other hunters are the same as them in terms of abilities?
This is an MMO, not a single player RPG. Blizzard is just trying to fix imaginary problems that don’t actually exist in the game.
Ah yes just like they said they wont invite based on azerite, essences or corruptions while the vast vast majority of time the spec is what is being discriminated against because nobody is gonna bother inspect you in detail
True, what will happen is you’ll clear far less high end keys since you’re playing sub optimally so your IO score will be dramatically lower which means you’ll get invited to far less groups.
Or when you get invited to a heroic pug and they kick you because your DPS is in the toilet since you have garbage essences, corruptions and azerite gear.
If you honestly believe for a second that this system wont cause friction in the pugging community then you’re choosing to be ignorant. We have been down this road twice already, and we are just going down it for a third time.
Yes.
Speedrunners are allowed to exist, the games arent made for them nor would their problems be something the devs see as a problem. If for example devs for X game create a system that makes speedrunning not possible, then speedrunners cant whine because the game wasnt designed for them in the first place.
Ion clearly stated you are meant to find a build you gravitate towards with strengths and weaknesses, when tryhards try to stack 9 fire mages for X fight that benefits the most from them then yeah, they arent playing the game right because raids are designed to be beaten through balanced comps instead of roflstomped through meta broken builds which of course make the skill required by a team far lesser when you stack fotm. (With the exception when they fail and make immunities mandatory, otherwise any spec can do even mythic)
Exactly, and any decent player can still pug just fine even now, even in legion and even in shadowlands.
The rejections we suffer are expected, some go through more than others because their spec is seen as bad by an ignorant noob community who worships meta builds as if they are doinga 29 while they are doing a 15 and any spec can do a 15 no problems.