Truth!
Benched my warlock after I realized, regardless if I went from dumpster tier to top tier (I’m a terrible lock), it wouldn’t be doing as good as a Demon Hunter.
Streamers are all elites. majority of players are not elite.
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Almost feels like they made convents to get us to stop complaining about class and spec balance.
It is the usual “if you dont pander to us the game will die” kind of post.
Which has been proven wrong through multiple expansions.
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If I got rejected from a M+ group that was doing a key under 10 or 15 due to Cov choice then I would laugh my ars off and join another group. That’s just ludicrous.
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Well, if you choose a covenant with bad M+ synergy you get what you wanted.
You can do like Ralph and make your own group I guess.
I fully intend on making my own groups and not judging players for their choices, I would encourage other players to do the same.
Not everyone has the hours it’ll take to form a group of dumpster tier specs and guide that group to victory.
Yes, because anything that is not 0.01% higher than average is dumpster time. Some players get carried away with min/maxing and harshly judge others for their choices, that is not cool.
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I don’t know where you got that number but I can assure you the difference between a DH and a Warlock in M+ isn’t 0.01%.
You’re in for a world of hurt if you think they’ll get remotely close to that number on balancing.
Are we talking about BFA or Shadowlands here?
It doesn’t matter.
The evidence exists across many expansions that it’ll never be 0.01% on anything. They can’t even balance DPS classes for content my man. Let alone specs, let alone corruption gear.
It’s insane to suggest they can balance convents.
Or get carried by a group that invited them simply because they were playing a meta class yet sucked at it, but because the rest of the team was competent they timed the key while the meta noob reroller got carried.
Main reason why I make my own groups now, watching group leaders invite meta noobs that clearly arent able to even utilize fotm on a good level is beyond dumb.
I ve seen many bad DHs in m+ to know this happens often enough.
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Is a perfectly balanced game good or bad? From my experience it is not fun.
A better balanced game than this trash is by definition better.
How much better is debatable. We can look to MoP where basically everyone had more mobility and larger toolkits players by and large were happier then. It was a better time for retail.
The historical evidence to me anyway says that when they gutted classes to make room for rental power that balance became impossible and the more of these rental power systems they add to the game the more impossible balance is to hit.
I’m not worried about getting into groups, I’m worried about my characters actually being effective in the content I want to do.
To continue with the warlock example. Affliction is already suspect in AoE in content like mythic+. An AoE ability like the venthyr warlock one would make a tremendous difference for this, it even boosts malefic rapture.
Now look at the necrolord ability. It gives you a huge single target damage boost, and synergizes like crazy with drain soul execute. You will straight up not have this type of burst if you do not pick necrolord. So either this is extremely OP in pvp, or affliction pvp is balanced around the assumption you will have it, and thus have weak single target without it.
This isn’t just one covenant being tuned slightly better or something, the abilities do totally different things.
Philosophically, I’m in agreement with where I think Ion is going. Rather than a subclass I’d probably call it more of a sub-race. The idea being it’s an at least semi-permanent choice that defines your character. I dig the RP of you are forming this close bond with this group and as you build trust/help them get stronger you get more power.
That said, the implementation is concerning. There needs to be a better answer for changing your specialization other than the sad trombone you get in the current implementation. Also, the reality is LFG mostly is about finding some NPCs who will get you through the content as quick as possible. Sure, I think in many cases a meh spec that you play really well beats the cookie cutter that you aren’t comfortable with, but it’s really hard to prove/quantify you’re playing the loadout that fits you best vs. you’re just bad/lazy.
The big problem is social, and I don’t think there’s a way to square that circle with covenant design. Even if you homogenize the combat abilities so they are all just different VFx applied to the same core effect then it’ll become about one covenant having a better utility spell for a given situation. The people who are mad about this won’t be happy until they can change covenants like talents.
We’re a bit deep in the dev process for a real rethink of the system, but I’d rather the covenants be focused more on the soulbinds and improving your QoL in their zone (maybe even give you a boost in a dungeon tied to that covenants’ story) and drop the borrowed power at least for instanced content. Something more along the lines of the garrison’s extra action button/ bodyguard rather than a baby artifact.
TLDR: I like the lore/RP side of a tough choice with real costs but I don’t see how it can be implemented in today’s game.
Which is exactly why character power should not be tied to rp elements. We routinely swap specs, talents, azerite gear, essences and even corruption based on the content that we do.
People keep saying its only going to effect the top 1% but I disagree. What happens when a tank leaves the raid and your forced to wait for a replacement. Right now a dps can swap (and lets be honest even at the moment it is more difficult then it was to swap prior to legion) and save everyone huge amounts of time. With all of these new systems compounding each other that makes it more difficult then ever. Do you have your legendary for that spec? A different soulbind? Is your covenant ability and class ability useless? Do you have the proper secondary stats? The proper talents? Do you have the proper conduits?
If the answer to any of these is no perhaps it wont be a big deal but they are cumulative so if for example I switch from fury to prot which has opposing secondary stats with a lower ilvl shield and weapon on top of a mythic + dps covenant and a dps legendary only a single soulbind which is a build for fury and no prot conduits I could be 25% (this is assuming a 5% per listed system but lets be honest many of these will be far more, like what we’ve seen for corruption and essences) less effective at tanking compared to a main tank. This will put tremendous pressure on the healers who like wise may not have the best build.
How then do you design the fight? Were every choice doesn’t matter and you can still win. Were 25% of the raid needs to make the correct choice? 50%? 75%? Pick a number any number and what you will find is that there will be groups who can not complete the content because of their choices and others that will face roll it because the choices for that content.
I also want to point out that if this is truly about rp and meaningful choice then the very idea that people are willing to level multiple characters that are identical except the choices of covenants etc say that it will negatively impact the rp elements of the game. The largest argument against account wide reps is that each characters achievements is completely separate from all of your other characters.
As far as the part of the conversation that deals with the community gate keeping others because of the choices they make he is quite simply wrong because he doesn’t seem to understand the underlying psychology behind the phenomenon.
My concerns are based primarily on:
- The track record for balance has been abysmal.
- The track record for small nerfs or buffs as required is poor. The nerf hammer comes heavy and hard to everything it seems from corruptions to the reorganization and nerfing of the Shadowlands Prot Warrior talent tree.
- All of these systems compound the problems of any individual system we’ve seen in the past.
- This won’t solve the gate keeping problem. If you could even consider it a problem.
- As much as I appreciate the willingness to communicate with the community it seems like “we’ve heard what you’ve said but we are going to go ahead and do it anyway.”
There are many ways to solve this from giving a free switch once a week, to locking abilities for the content you are doing (say that M+, that raid lockout, that bg que,) or simply adding more abilities.
I personally prefer the last one. Give each covenant an aoe, single target, and utility ability that you can switch at any time (and again you could lock this per content you do or by having to hearth to your hall, or paying a fee in some resource.) This would lock you into your covenant while still being able to make choices based on the content your doing. That way if there is a dead ability for your spec you could still choose something else. It also allows people to commit to rp more without feeling like they are having to give up a mechanical advantage.
As it stands now there is simply to much tied to a single choice.
- Dailies/weeklies
- Covenant abilities
- Covenant class abilities
- Soulbinds
- Mounts
- Transmog
- Zone looks
- Story lines
- The rp element of what you think your character would actually choose.
This feels like choosing a class to be honest. And the results have been similar how do you get around not being able to switch classes? By making another character. Imagine then if you could only have a single character on your account. What would you choose and how pissed would you be if they nerfed it to the point were you couldn’t get invites to content and the only recourse you had was to delete your character and level over in another class.
Lastly I want to point out one of the questions Ion asked. Should there be randomization in the game. The short answer is yes and I think most players would agree to this. In fact as far as I’m aware its never been brought up. The real question is the degree of randomness. And that has been a problem the last two expansions, due to the compounding nature of borrowed powers. In vanilla you had: did the item drop and the randomized number within a range based on spell and gear. Now its do I have the proper secondaries, a legendary, the right legendary, the best relics, proper azerite gear, bis essences, did a corruption roll, was it a good one, what tier did it roll, can I even use it or will that corruption push me over the limit I’m comfortable with, trinket procs, weapon procs, enchantment procs, talent procs, will all these proc at the right time or when the enemy is at 1% health (and it is amazing how often this happens.) This becomes a problem because it changes the range from say 20-40 damage to 20-250 damage. Often which is outside of you control and that is not good game design.
So what is the best amount of rng? I’m not sure but what I can say for certain is that the last two expansions have fallen well outside of what I consider acceptable or fun. Furthermore it creates lag and requires players to sim more often something I thought the development team wanted to get away from.
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The sad part about gearscore was, a team of good raiders went in and beat Ulduar in blues. In the same vein, players who get world firsts aren’t exactly stacked with good corruptions and top-of-the-line gear. And no matter the power system, it’s I keep saying it over and over: up to a certain point, you don’t need the gear; it makes the content easier, not beatable.
Ultimately, everything lies on the player. If you’re good, you can get by with the bare minimum and still succeed. If you suck, you’re going to need more and more gear to act as a buffer to account for your lack of skill. Realizing that you’re nowhere near as good as you think you are ain’t something to be embarrassed about, it’s something to realize and correct.
You mean like factions? You have any idea how much choice and freedom I enjoyed for more than a decade simply for choosing the Horde because I thought they were cooler?
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Exactly and lets not forget the shamans on horde and pallies for alliance in vanilla. It had to be changed. Instead of forgetting past mistakes we should learn from them.