Okay, my apologies. I must have seen someone else talking about it.
Give classes actually new permanent skills for once. Tired of every xpac where I gain temp things that get taken away in the next one.
I do talk about that, but in this case, nah.
terms like “optimal” and “min/maxxing” dont even really fit covenant abilities because they’re so situation AND spec specific, you can pick an ability for one spec that’s decently strong in SOME situations and completely worthless for your offspec in every scenario. It’s unnecessary punishment for people that enjoy playing competitively in multiple forms of content when all of this should be cosmetic -only
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I just want to pick a cool theme without knowing I’m locked out of a cool ability from another covenant.
We already chose two levels of restriction by picking a class and then a spec. Adding another on top doesn’t feel great.
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What about the covenants that will enable builds? I’ve been watching closely and the big threat that covenant abilities, not soulbinds which are a separate and also harmful issue, create is that they will encourage specific builds unique to said covenant. And by builds I mean things like if there is a ele shaman lava burst centric build it will likely incorporate the necrolord ability because it synergizes heavily with lava burst. Similarly you have dks that will take venthyr specifically to play breath of sindragosa, and mages that go arcane to synergize with their necrolord ability. In each of these cases the abilities are specifically good for those specs, so if those players want to play a different one it’ll feel bad because they will be worse off then if they picked the covenant that synergized with enhancement or unholy or fire.
Its also not great that these builds might be situational in themselves, the aforementioned venthyr dk will have little success taking their pve breath of sindragosa synergy build into pvp even if they traditionally did well for themself in raids and arena in previous expanions. This might push general use players into taking a weaker choice for their favored content, but a choice that isn’t worthless in other forms of content. And I don’t think that is a meaningful decision, I think that is a failure of design.
To emphasize I don’t think its bad that these enable various builds; I think its bad that such builds are locked into covenants, if we were free to move around on short notice(short enough to call the group for m+/arena/raid) then we would have a fun system on our hands.
My opinion on that would mostly be centered around how niche that build/playstyle is currently.
I don’t really know anything about Frost DK or Elemental Shaman, but I can say if Covenants open up something new and interesting by virtue of their ability or soulbinds, cool. If they’re only re-enabling something that already exists or existed, that’s really lame and Blizzard needs to fix it, independent of Covenants.
Edit: This is regardless of whether or not Covenants are locked or unlocked, and I don’t think it makes a good case for unlocking them. For me, I shouldn’t have to take any ability to Fistweave; it should be doable and viable out of the box.
I suppose we don’t know exactly what it’s going to be, but Ion said it’s going to be some sort of isolated thing like Torghast or proving ground, right? That still doesn’t really give us an opportunity to -really- test things, I think. But, like I said, we don’t know so…just gotta wait and see, hopefully it’s ready in time for beta testers to actually give them feedback on it so we’re not left guessing.
I did say it might be lame, and Proving Grounds would be super lame. Torghast maybe less so, but who knows.
I mean, strictly from my perspective, either is gonna feel pretty bad, as neither really grants much opportunity to test how it would work within a healing spec. But, you’re right…anything else we discuss is only speculation.
any ripcord pullers 
#PulltheRipcord
Well often times new builds have similar themes to older ones from older expansions so they could be similar to older stuff. Part of my worry is that a build might exist that can be used, as you say breath of sindragosa doesn’t necessarily need the venthyr ability function, but it might not be worth using over just playing unholy all the time with say nightfae or vise versa where the venthyr dk doesn’t have much business playing unholy even if they can make the build work.
On a lark I tried to make a fistweaving build with the current stuff and fortunately it doesn’t seem too covenant dependent. That said part of that is because I don’t know how some of the finer details line up The base would be the fistweaving legendary and rising mists+new chi-ji. After that I tried to figure out if any covenants/conduits would amplify the build and discovered that mw conduits are kinda bad, you have the obligatory chi cocoon conduit that no one uses(one every expansion) 2 conduits revolving around mastery and one that rewards using rising sun kick a lot, but doesn’t improve the damage(healing) of rsk. For this reason the covenant choice might become significant if only because you don’t want most mw potency conduits as a fistweaver.
After that it was picking a covenant of those I could make a case for everything but kyrian which seems tuned toward the only cast healing spells variation of mw(improved mastery improved essence font).
Venthyr is probably best in that if the monks count for your physical damage in regards to improved chi-ji it becomes a even bigger healing cd, and even if not its 1 button every 3 minutes that damages and heals without breaking the flow of kicking things to heal.
Necrolord has potential in that if the bonus shadow damage counts toward the fistweaving legendary that has your tiger palm/crane kick/rsk do converted healing it probably has the most fistweaving synergy, but I don’t actually know if it counts toward that healing, and by the time you get a legendary to test you’ve picked your covenant. Half the power budget going to improved mastery heals is a minus though.
Nightfae is also promising in the sense that it doesn’t do much direct healing but it enables some bonus healing from rising mist while overall increasing damage potential. It would be THE fistweaving choice if it was physcial damage instead of nature based on how chi-ji’s tooltip reads.
I already pulled my own ripcord by making Shadowlands the first expac in the history of WoW that I haven’t bought up front.
Just waiting on Giga-Brain Ion and his Good Idea Squad to give me a reason to un-pull it.
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And don’t worry current plan is to get it in 9.3.
But that’s not why we fight, we need it now if we want WoW to survive!
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Acti-Blizz won’t let WoW fail. Way too much cash on the line… more likely outcome is that Ion and his cronies will get mushroom stamped out of the company if they keep failing.
I too would prefer the game be fun right here and now… but failing that we still might get a silver lining!
This is an important distinction to make. Is the Breath of Sindragosa playstyle viable outside of Venthyr? Not the best-- it doesn’t have to be the best-- is it functional, and does it not feel like total crap? If yes, no problem. If no, Blizzard needs to fix DK. It has nothing to do with external power systems, and everything to do with their shoddy class design.
I read everything you said, and I’m sorry I don’t have a more in depth response, but Blizzard hates fistweaving and just doesn’t want it to be a thing anymore. It sucks.
I’m for covenant abilities being separated out. Sadly doesn’t seem like that will happen. What is most likely is they will go live with this as is, then open it all up if enough people don’t like the system.
They are basically doing like always and waiting for general feedback after everyone has access. So maybe three months into Shadowlands, everything would be opened up.
I’d be fine with that if it’s an unbalanced mess that Blizzard can’t be bothered to get a handle on.
The problem is, while you and I - Most of the people in this thread might hang around for 3 months into the expansion trying to work our way around a horrible system with the greater audience? Players who came back for BFA to test out the new things early on and were met with things like Islands, Warfronts, Neck Grind and the frustration of the original iteration of Azerite might not appreciate being conned into buying another lazy expansion.
From my experience, those who left early BFA had absolutely no interest in returning - Even less so when they realised what they needed to do to catch up for Essences in 8.2, then the Cloak and corruptions in 8.3.
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I’m one of those, I quit halfway into 8.0, came back for 2 weeks to get flying in 8.2. and just came back again 2 weeks ago. Most of my raider friends are in the same boat, and that’s only 20 people that I can speak for specifically, but I think it might be representative of the whole. At least to a degree.
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