Because they know not everyone can just swap to warriors or mages nilly-willy. They would take into account that everyone can be a Necrolord or Venthyr at once though, and design accordingly. They do make certain assumptions when designing content, like some bosses in Mythic requiring priests for mind control in the past.
I don’t think it would be the strict definition of required, but I think the playerbase would consider switching to be mandatory even if technically you could do it on other covenants.
We’ve all got talents that are basically dumpster fires and Blizzard rarely ever does anything about them. So long as the entire package works, they really don’t seem to care too much about the individual choices when we can just switch them around.
We’ve also seen fights in the past where specific setups, while not strictly required, make things a lot easier.
You didn’t need a shield tank geared for maximum block value for Heroic Anub’Arak in WotLK, but it made the fight like 10 times easier to have that kind of a tank on the adds and as a result, virtually every raid guild did exactly that.
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The didn’t do that with azerite traits, requiring everyone to reforge for specific fights.
They don’t make you change from arcane to fire or be unable to complete content.
They wouldn’t do it with covenants either.
Then I have a deal for you. Classic does all of these things. I played a protection warrior in Vanilla and a Resto Druid in Classic.
I moved back to retail because I was tired of grinding reputation as a resto druid.
It was sarcasm. 
Absolutely, no one’s denying that. But they’re not tuned so harshly as to require that shield tank, because they knew not everyone would have one. Druid and DK tanks did Heroic Anub’arak still and Blizz wouldn’t dream of just forcing them to reroll.
Covenants are different though, in that if they were swappable, it would be assumed that we could pick up their ability any time we want and they would design accordingly.
Azerite traits were just minor tweaks to abilities. My specs all fundamentally do the same thing; damage. Covenants are different in that they provide all around utility, that are much different from each other. There absolutely would be fights that require the Venthyr teleport, and so on.
Azerite gear fiasco 2.0. Blizzard loves repeating the same mistakes.
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No they wouldn’t lol.
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I’m against freely swappable covenants but I imagine even if they were there still wouldn’t be any literal forcing of swapping.
At most you’d end up with another heroic Anub’arak scenario where one covenant was vastly superior and as a result, most sane raiding guilds would get everybody to switch for that fight.
I don’t think we’ve had a fight where you were forced to have very specific abilities since Vanilla.
The pro-locked side insists that there’s a lot of people who would never want to switch. What sense would it make for Blizz to totally change their design to start requiring anything that specific for a fight when so many people would hate it?
Kind of, but kind of not.
Seriously, if you hate that it is easy to swap specs, then you should really give Classic a shot. When they gave us dual spec in Wrath (I think that’s when that happened), I was so relieved to be able to quest AND tank. It was a huge quality of life improvement. I don’t want to go back because I’ve already been there / done that, and for me, it sucked.
Just with Mythic raiding, they’re tuned in a way that assumes you’ll have certain classes. I know Blast Furnace in Warlords required priests for mind control, and so forth. In situations where Blizzard assumes you’ll have something, they’re going to put in a mechanic that requires that something.
As I said, if they know we have it, they’ll require it. Why I would rather just not be able to switch in the first place.
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I WAS BEING SARCASTIC WHEN I SAID THAT!
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No it didn’t, it was just a strat that some people used, not everyone. The last fight that actually required mind control was Instructor Razuvious in the original Naxx.
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So you are saying that they made a boss fight with multiple viable strats for downing it? But that goes against everything he keeps saying!
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100%. I think it’s borne out of laziness and/or the failure of these people to understand (or care about) the nuances and mechanics of the game.
I get that they’re there to just “have fun” but the moment complexity and depth are introduced, the protest and crying begins.
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false, it has more meaning, because you choose to stay despite the ease of switching.
being in the right spec wont matter, your numbers will matter. if everyone knows a pandaren fire mage can do 20% more damage that you are doing at your ilvl, ya gonna get booted when the pug wipes without them ever checking.
blizz tunes the high end content around what method can do and guess what, they are bringing 3 of everything. so, i guess its going to be tuned for raiders and M+ers in perfect covenants.
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And no one’s going to care. There’s no sense of pride and belonging with my choice.
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no one is going to care either way why you are the covenant you want to be.
all you are doing is trying to limit other players enjoyment of the game.
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And you’re trying to limit mine. Covenants are better and far more interesting if we have to make a tough, meaningful choice.
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