#PullTheRipcord

[Awkward-frostmourne (Awkward)]

@Sentenza-alexstrasza

What about Heroic Sire?

I used Mythic Sire as an example of the hardcore but sure.

There are 11,751 parses of Affliction Warlocks over the past 2 weeks on Heroic Sure. Of those 11,751 parses, 10,734 or 91.3% of them were done as Night Fae.

@Sentenza-alexstrasza

And how many Warlocks had their first kill on Mythic Sire as Demonology rather than Aff?

Probably zero lmao.

@Sentenza-alexstrasza

Content on that level that, that only the highest min-maxxers are clearing… are being cleared by min-maxxers. I’m not sure how you bringing this up does anything to advance your argument.

Lemme just quote myself.

@Awkward-frostmourne

And this isn’t even at a hardcore level. I could point to the numbers being much more dire than that at a hardcore level

I used those numbers to act as a contrast.

If 100% of Mythic kills on Sire (for Aff) are done as Night Fae, and 91% of Heroic kills are done as Night Fae, and 80% of Warlocks across all levels of content are Night Fae, then that’s pretty solid evidence that it’s not just the sweaty neckbeards who are picking Covenants based on power.

@Sentenza-alexstrasza

But if you look at lower bosses, I’m sure you’ll find a number of people who have killed Heroic Sire with off-meta choices.

I mean sure they technically exist.

But even on Heroic there is 12 Boomkins for every Feral, 21 MM Hunters for every SV Hunter and 11 Outlaw Rogues for every Sub Rogue and so on.

Even for levels of content where the meta doesn’t matter, people overwhelmingly choose to follow it.

@Sentenza-alexstrasza

Doesn’t that prove my point though? It’s a balancing issue. You almost never see Night Fae Frost Mages or Venthyr Fire Mages because the balance situation for those Covenant choices is less optimal, so much so that people don’t want to play them, whereas Venthyr and Necrolord abilities for Shaman are close enough that people are completely and totally fine playing off-spec with “less optimal” Covenant choices. It’s purely a balance issue.

Except for classes where the balance actually isn’t too far out, I can point to Affliction Warlocks where Kyrian is actually neck and neck with Night Fae, with less than a 1% difference in their theoretical output.

Yet again, Night Fae are 80% of the population and Kyrians are 9.5%.

Even if you perfectly tuned Covenants, not all abilities are created equal and classes would still overwhelmingly trend towards those who provide more useful abilities in general, like Soulshape for Warlocks since the class needs mobility much more than it needs an owl potion.

@Sentenza-alexstrasza

I mean it kept the game fresh from the stagnant class design situation prior to Shadowlands.

Shadowlands is shaping up to be as stagnant as every other expansion prior to it though.

The only difference is is that Blizzard are terrified of actually nerfing Covenants so they have to gut everything else if those Covenants are OP, as evidenced by the balance nerfs.

Pulling the ripcord would spice up class design more because it would allow Blizzard to actually nerf OP Covenants (hi Convoke) and allow you to play Covenants that aren’t just generically good. Like if Druids weren’t stuck with Convoke because switching to other Covenants were a PITA, you’d see a crapton of different strategies emerging, like going Kyrian for fights and to enable specs where 1 minute burst windows are gigantic, or playing stuff like Adaptive Swarm on a fight like Mythic Council where DoTS and HoTS are king.