Oh I look at covenants as the new way to sneak in spec focus over class focus.
Pretty much we are going to be spec locked again and if you want to use another spec you are going to need to make another toon
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I have no contribution to this topic, I’m just posting to say I love your name, “Blimpo!”, Haha everytime I say it I laugh, it’s the best!
Is preach the guy who got a temp suspension for exp exploits a while back?
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Thank You. Very kind of you.
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So the original Tryhard tells the current Tryhard he is not their priority .
Did he say that with a straight face while quoting from the corporate issued notes.
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yup…then made a video about how he hated he let people down cause blizz canceled his visit when in reality he was mad he got caught…not like he wasn’t streaming it for all to see…lol
People like us being those of us that enjoy seeing others punished for not playing the game the way we want others to play the game.
If you deviate from our vision of role-playing, then you get punished. Either through limited options, or by having to have multiple characters of the same class.
I’m of the opinion that the practical consideration is significantly overblown and that it has more to do with feeling bad than anything. That the actual impact of the covenant abilities will be small when placed beside conduits and particularly legendaries.
I don’t think it’s a great system but it’s being blown way out of proportion.
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So its not a strawman if you put on the costume yourself and dance around in it? 
I was literally hoping this thread could proceed without the use of the word “tryhards”.
You literally throw that around in every possible context. Who are you referring to? Progression raiders? People who care about optimization? Or just people who don’t share your dogmatic view on what an RPG entails?
I think you’re confusing my argument and reasons of others.
I’m not for punishing specifically the “top 1%”. Others may think those people get punished by these systems and want those people specifically punished - but that’s not the bulk of the people that get impacted by the restrictions.
Being top 1% also isn’t necessarily playing how we don’t want players to play.
If you stick to one class, one spec you can still be 1% and not get punished for deviating.
What blizzard wants to do, and depending on class (not shaman) will likely succeed, is have different covenants fill different niches. They have been pretty explicit about it.
Take Warlock for instance in the latest wowhead write up on the state of Affliction;
The Night Fae Soul Rot ability causes drain life to become aoe.
The Necrolord decimation bolt is essentially a single target execute ability.
There is no world where those 2 abilities are “balanced”. It’s a pick your poison situation. And that’s how they want it.
Personally I think this philosophy won’t work (they’ve tried it before, people don’t like specialization like this) but it won’t cause a large variance in power compared to other xpacs and their systems taken as a whole.
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The reason I don’t think specialization like that will work is because it’s nice in theory but encounter design does not mesh with it well commonly.
While on a significantly more impactful scale, look at spec niches for instance in the past. Make a spec good at aoe but not as good at single target but then don’t have Raid fights with aoe and the niche is worthless. M+ spec balance has had this issue for ages where specs who can’t take advantage of large target counts which last relatively shortly struggle A LOT.
Covenant abilities won’t be as impactful as spec specialization (since there are many other borrowed powers in addition to the base spec) but it’s just that previous history shows that the great ideal of being able to specialize in different types of content very rarely matters.
From what I’ve seen so far, Castle Nathria has a good mix of styles of fights (and look super fun), “but” there’s maybe only 1 that’s really aoe driven while there’s a lot of nice cleave fights. And lots of boss movement too. And a lot of aoe covenant abilities in particular seem designed more for M+ where mobs mostly stand still so ground effect abilities get their full useage.
What gets me is did they now say they realized spec focus was a mistake and were going to go towards more class focus but in a way don’t covenants force us back into spec focus.
It’s almost like when they said they were shifting back towards class focus they were bold face lying.
While there’s certain covenant abilities that definitely don’t translate well between specs, many of them do. Idk much about hunters but something like vesper totem for shaman for Kyrian works perfectly for all 3 specs.
I was only using specs as an example of them trying to do spec specialization in the past (and to a certain extent it still exists but not as impactful) and it not going the want it to because of how dependent it is on fight design.
And I expect that error to be repeated here but just on a much smaller scale since legendaries we have full choice as well as conduits and both are insanely powerful in their own rights.
The whining never ends with you people. Can’t just accept the game is going in a direction and play it and have fun. Instead you’ve gotta be miserable and look at the bad side of everything.
“Waaaaaah I can’t have the best AoE ability when I want it!”
“Waaaaaah I can’t have the best single target ability when I want it!”
“Waaaaaaaaaaaaah I can’t have the best utility ability when I want it!”
“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah Blizzard is ruining my fun but i’m still going to pay $15 a month and play their game and cry about how much they ruined it for me at the same time!”
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I don’t consider you “high-end” and I don’t care what you do with your time at all either. I just don’t want you to have your ‘community’ of lemmings that all chase a meta blindly and insist that all the abilities be the same. I know you’d argue you don’t but that’s what Blizzard will do. You will say “X ability doesn’t do much damage but it does Y utility, change it” and this will happen over and over until all the things are homogenised like talents and classes and there’ll just be the big number and the little number and you’ll all just spec the exact same way. That might not matter to you people who never have fun and just enjoy doing +25 keys for some unknowable reason but I’m not having the entire rest of the game made the same the way everything else was made the same to appease you since you’ll all just spec the same way anyway whether the difference is 1% or 10%. Just let it be crazy and different. Just go spec what the guide tells you and stop acting like you actually care what things are.
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The biggest thing for people imo, and I am not downplaying it at all, is that the covenant system makes people feel hopeless. People like pushing themselves as hard as possible and the covenant system feels like going to jail in Monopoly “do not pass Go. Do not collect 200”.
Gear drops at least gives people hope.
You can clear +25s without 100% optimal setups and will be able to without optimal covenants (this likely will happen if BiS raid covenants are different than bis M+) it’s just the fact that you can’t be the best you can be just really sucks for some people.
I’m not one personally but I know a lot are.
Blizzard already made their mind: we’re in beta and they’re still going ahead with this system. I would be very surprised if Blizzard did a 180 on a core expansion system this late in the development process. This battle is lost. (Or won depending on your side. I’m okay either way personally.)
If I was affected negatively by this system I would instead ask Blizzard to just disable it in Mythic raids, arenas and high Mythic+ keys. Keep it on everywhere else (it’s still a core expansion system after all) but I see no harm in deactivating those systems in areas where it supposedly harms the players.
know whats funny is people have been asking for a system to do everything on one toon like ffxiv and this is legit a massive step backwards from ever coming close to that
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