I haven’t seen any reasonable argument for keeping it as it is. That’s my point. What is a good reason to keep it locked? If you like it locked you can do that on your own.
I also think some kind of borrowed power is fun. But like essences, we should have flexibility.
Man I really don’t understand why game developers don’t balance around the classes, it would make tweaking things so much easier for 'em.
Most do. These ones don’t, hence the fact that WoW right now is basically bringing different variations on activating different borrowed power systems.
I just don’t get why we need crap like the Covenant class abilities. Why can’t we just have fun classes/specs on their own without all these gimmick throwaway systems?
A lot of people have been saying for over a year that we’re sick of borrowed power systems but here we are again going into another expansion with a stupid gimmick that is just going to cause annoyance and frustration.
Just … why Blizz?
Oh it has and there has even been mention of our favorite panda making an appearance in the comments.
It used to be hard, or at least inconvenient, to do these first two. Then we clamored and they made it easy. That was our first taste of (insert your favorite addictive substance here). They saw how popular that was and on and on in increments until we arrive here.
Somewhere along the way, in Blizzards mind, we were getting away from some of the essence of the game as they envision it. It seems like Blizzard is staging what they believe is an intervention
Could be. They are certainly doing their best to intervene between my wallet and their product.
I fail to see how that is a problem. When we move away and find ways to play outside of their vision they should celebrate that the product they made has become a product that encompasses more than they imagined, this is a good thing.
And as far as interventions go, we’re not addicts, we just want the freedom to play and explore and devise fun new ideas with the covenants.
But they have to intervene . We must not think or play outside of the box .
Using our 
and having independent thoughts should not happen and we should be satisfied with being happy little 
or 
[Checks Sarcasm Levels] Oh yeah thats up there
You are advocating for the ability to have your covenant effects changed based on the content you are doing. And not based on what you want but to the enforced meta for that content.
The way blizzard has it now is that there is no “best”. They are too diverse for there to be a definitive best choice for everything. Some are better for certain bosses. Some are better for certain pvp situations. Some are just fun QoL things.
There will be a meta regardless of whether covs are locked or not, unfortunately. Locking them makes it harder for people to get groups.
Some classes and specs definitely have a “best” right now which is an issue.
Some of us want to be able to play what is the best, some of us want to play because we like the theme and some of us want to experiment with different talents and with a locked system we are punished for it.
That’s what all addicts say… JK!!!
OT I agree a game grows and we find ways to play outside their vision. I’m saying that from Blizzards perspective they want to curb some of what they see as the “everything for everyone all the time in every situation”. The arguments for and against are valid conversation.
The abilities arent massively unbalanced…Everyone acting like they are part of the WF race and they arent.
I made a meaningful choice when I picked what class I want to play, and when I picked what spec of that given class I want to play. I made a meaningful choice when I decided I prefer playing healers more than dps or tanking. And I am okay with having to swap to my dps spec when I am out in the world doing solo content, because it costs me nothing to swap back to my healer spec when its time to do group content.
I do not see a meaningful choice in being a nightfae mw monk, when being nightfae is going to mean nothing 2 years from now. Being a mw monk is going to mean a lot still. Or maybe I’ll decide to switch. If I do, I don’t mind having to start a new character from scratch, because I know this character is going to still be there if I decide after leveling for a week that I like mw better after all. It’s not going to cost me anything to switch from one character to another, and as patches go on it gets easier to maintain more than one decently geared character or more than one gear set without much time invested.
Yet I can’t do this with covenants. If I decide I want to be a nightfae, then realize the ability sucks and go venthyr instead, I now have to “catch up” to nightfae if I go back. It’s like if I decided to play my resto druid for a week, then went back to my mw and found out I’d lost 10 ilvls on my mw because I was playing a different class.
And then there’s the fact that we all know blizzard can’t balance. My kyrian class ability (which was already terrible for 2 of my 3 specs and looked quite clearly like it was designed with MW in mind) was nerfed by 97% on the beta. It is now doing less healing than soulbind traits and trinkets. But, if blizzard decides two weeks into the tier that that was a bit much and buffs it, all of a sudden it becomes mandatory again and lol rip I have to spend two weeks going back to Kyrian. This is going to happen. We have all seen it in the past.
#pulltheripcord
Why does it matter how balanced they are? Why can’t I just play around with all of them? They seem fun, seems kinda weird that I just don’t get to use 3 of them.
We want to keep the Covenants Player Powers locked up because it just make sense. They empower you if you join them and so on.
Say what now?
#PullTheRipcord
Somewhat agree. There’s always going to be a best, the problem comes from choices being wrong/detrimental. Those need to be fixed.
So do that.
Or do that.
A mechanic to do this is already on the table. It might be a lame mechanic, but it’s still something acknowledged and being considered.
If you’re talking about the ability to swap away once or try things during leveling, then I don’t know why you keep bringing this up. It’s pedantic and it just muddies the waters, because it’s pretty obvious that this mechanic doesn’t meet what people are looking for when they ask to be able to swap around abilities.
Ion specifically mentioned something being considered for the purposes of testing Covenant/Legendary configurations, I think in the interview with Preach.
“Freebie” swaps and levelling don’t count for testing or experimentation, no.