Hello, I’m a 15 year Veteran of the game and current Mythic Raid leader of a 12/12 Mythic guild. I’ve already got Three Shamans in preparation for the coming expansion in case Blizzard don’t change their system but I feel like their current locked in system of the new abilities isn’t meaningful choice, but the opposite.
A fixed system forces players who want to do their best in their content of choice to pick a covenant based on the ability strength, there is no meaningful choice about this. It is what players will do.
A open system would not punish people who want a fixed system while simultaneously allowing people to push harder and do more challenging content.
As the point has been brought up in other threads, this is me not turning WoW into an e-sport. Blizzard has provided the means of more challenging content in the forms of high level Rated Battlegrounds, Arenas, Mythic raiding and Mythic+.
Blizzard have proven time and time again they do not have the presence of mind to foresee a broken ability/trait/essence well enough for the community to put their faith in the covenant abilities being balanced on release, any nerfs that happen after release would be devastating to people doing content you either also enjoy, or do not.
Example Situation: I think Nightfae looks the coolest, but I’m pushing challenging content and the raid is relying on everyone working their hardest and maximising my DPS/Heals but the covenant strongest for raiding is Necro. Do i let down the raid because I want to look cool?
Example Situation 2: I like to raid Mythic but I prefer keys, do i pick the skill best for M+ and let down the raid or the opposite?
I will copy what I said in a couple other threads before people come in screeching in disagreement.
Blizzard has an issue with making Covenant easily swappable, and I think the explanation Ion gave in his interview with Sloot made sense, essentially describing the Covenants as a big package of various things you get.
What I would like to see, and many other players do, as this has been extensively discussed for 7 months now, is them taking one part of the Covenants packages, aka the class abilities, and put them into a talent row or something similar.
The choice of covenant remains a big one even without the class ability being tied to it, as the package provided by covenants would still be quite big:
You gain access to the 3 unique Soulbinds of the covenant you pick, influencing your character’s strength;
You gain the unique Covenant signature ability;
You experience the unique Covenant Campaign;
You unlock the Sanctum specific to your Covenant, which will essentially be an Order Hall-like hub;
You unlock the various cosmetics elements related to your Covenant (Most notably the armor set and the cloak transmogs).
Why not untie the class abilities Blizzard? The decision still matters.
Meh…Blizz is going to bend the knee before the first patch. It is okay the diablo B devs are slow learners…probably has to do with their common core training.
They bent the knee with account bound essences after everyone had quit and gone on to new games. I think you’re doubting how headstrong and out of touch Blizzard devs are.
They doubled down on Warfronts, to this day i haven’t met a single person who has ever enjoyed a single warfront.
I agree it is what players will do. The question should be why does everyone think they should min/max everything. The game is not built around that. If you are competing for world firsts then having multiple characters ready to go should be normal for you.
Aldor and Scryer from TBC had choice in the way of shoulder enchants. Technically one was better than the other for certain classes/specs. It was a real pain in the butt to change from one to the other, so much so a feat of strength is in the game for being exalted in one and changing over to exalted in the other.
Granted the game and its players have changed a lot since TBC. This is how choice should be however. You pick something and you need to live with the choice you picked. Pick what is most fun, best for the content you mainly do, or maybe pick what is best for the content you are worst at. Making a choice should matter and the fact that you are not 100% ideal for everything is GOOD FOR THE GAME.
It’s because Blizzard has put difficult content in the game where every % matters. When keys are being timed by seconds, bosses being killed with one person alive, people surviving on 1% on high rated arena - Why exactly wouldn’t you pick the ability which is going to improve your strength the most?
The difference between Scryer/Aldor was so minimal and impacted gameplay in such a tiny way it’s kinda awkward to see anyone even compare it to the covenant based abilities. Crit vs Mana regen will not be the same in balance as Nightfae vs Necro.
Why does the game have to be this way? They changed respeccing from Vanilla because it was out of touch and boring. Now i can play all three specs. Why can i change talents mid raid?
My choice should be based on what i think looks the coolest or what zone/lore i find most interesting.
One of the most interesting aspects of rpg gameplay is build variation.
Currently, that doesn’t exist at all in WoW, save a few cases.
Locking covenant abilities behind your selected covenant is a way to enforce that. But people don’t like that apparently, people like to do exactly what everyone else is doing.
People here seems to not like the idea of having 4 ways to play a spec because one will be better at that content, people want just a single way to do things.
So If it has to be that way, scrap covenant abilities altogether, remove them from the game, keep covenant just a RP choice.
It doesn’t actually. It has the opposite effect of what you’re describing.
Take Discipline Priest as an example:
Boon of the Ascended (Kyrian) is looking extremely strong for raids, but Unholy Nova (Necrolord) looks good and fills a weakness the spec has in Mythic+.
Mindgames (Venthyr) could see usage on specific situations where enemies use healing spells often where the spell could reverse that into damage.
If I am completely restricted to, say Unholy Nova (Necrolord), I will never be as effective in raids as I can be, and for the odd situations where Mindgames would shine, I would be stuck.
Making the class abilities available to pick whenever you need is EXACTLY what allows build variation.
Not really, because then it just becomes another talent row, something you change based on the content you’re doing, is not build variation.
Build variation is two specs doing different things on the same content. I would love if a disc priest A would be different from disc priest B during the same raid.
So, with that in mind, I think removing them from the game would have the exact same effect as having them be a talent choice.
“I love the idea of a disc priest A doing less healing and contributing less to the raid because he prefers to do Mythic plus, I also love when he will be benched because he is doing less healing”
There are already six separate healing specs to choose from. I mean, that’s a thing still right. It’s not like guilds will run 4 disc priests one from each covenant.
