I mean ultimately it comes down to people just not doing their research.
Cause Covenant Locks in the story sound like something that can work on paper, right? After all, you can’t be both Horde AND Alliance, or Aldor AND Scryer, and each faction has it’s own perks for choosing it.
But then you play the beta for like 5 minutes and quickly come to the realization that Covenants aren’t like that. They have absolutely no interest in seeing the other Covenants fall, after all, why on earth would Ardenweald care about souls like Uther or Mograine? Why would Revendreth care about souls like Draka?
It’d be like playing Legion and the Court of Farondis trying to destroy or subvert the Valajar.
I do find it deliciously ironic that the people that actually defend this idea are the ones who don’t get beta because Blizzard doesn’t actually consider their feedback worthwhile.
Abom Limb is one of those talents that I’d love to have for the very niche scenarios where it’s great, but it’s so niche (outside PvP at least), that I’d never consider it worth using.
Like imagine Abom Limb (as a talent) on Sanguine week. You walk away from the pool and the Limb automatically grips mobs towards you.
That’d be cool as hell.
But when the choice is that or abilities that are good in every scenario, like the NF DnD, it’s just not a choice.
I suppose it might, but I still think the gear disparity is going to favor high end PvE players, unfortunately. Like I said earlier, covenants are not the solution. PvP resilience and PvP power on PvP gear is a solution. To that end, I think Wrath(?) did it best, where high end raiders could participate in arenas and be high damage output, but squishy af, where players in PvP gear were tanky and could outlast, but had less damage output. That’s the dream situation right there.
Honestly I’m glad I stopped caring about pvp in this game a long time ago. If you think Blizzard is going to do a good job balancing it this time around you have short term memory problems. Covenants are gonna be hilarious honestly. I hope they put that Kyrian ability in Arena so I can basically always know what I’ll be up against when I go for the stupid mount they lock behind pvp.
They said they will not return power, they feel that PVE players should have an advantage.
As to the gear advantage, that’s shrinking. With the box being the same for M+ and PVP, and the return of a physical trinket.
Thats not to say its not a factor, just that its shrinking a bit. Utility like CC and breaking CC us much more important in competitive PVP than raw damage.
The three talents besides Kyrian very clearly make up a final tier. Night Fae is generically good and strongest for single target. Venth is good in heavy AoE possibly overwhelmingly so. Abom’s is the pvp talent/niche one. Kyrian was thrown on because they needed a 4th since they decided to tie power to covenants and someone went generic dot yeah that will work without adding any aoe component or anything class specific like a leech mechanic.
PvE has the edge in gearing because doing a +10 or +15 is easier than hitting 2200 or whatever the PvP rating is needed for equivalent gear.
And that will remain true in Shadowlands, except it’ll make it harder for PvPers to participate in M+ to gear, because the won’t be able to change their Conduits or Covenants easily to match.
If you want to fix PvP gearing, you don’t use a system like Covenants, you change PvP gear itself and bring back Resilience and/or PvP Power.
Yeah whenever I talk about Covenants I don’t even think about Kyrians for DK because it’s not even a choice. I watched a video of somebody playing around it and saving their runes to reduce its cool down and all that and it barely made to their top 5 in damage. Such a god awful ability. MEANINGFUL CHOICE HURDURR. I hate this stupid tagline.
Another one I like to bring up is the Necrolord ability for Mages. It really is only good for one spec. Who the hell designed these damn things? Was this not the expansion where you were supposed to feel like your class and not your spec? whatever the hell that even means. Don’t worry tho guys, I have Death Coil on Blood now, I’ll totally use that when my Legendary, Conduit, and Soulbinds all buff my Death Strike. Actual idiots.
For 1, that’s not the disparity I was referring to. That does exist, but it was not what I meant.
Even for the 2200 farmers, Raid/M+ items of the same Ilvl are superior. Due to unique effects and trinkets. ILVL is not the sole issue.
As to fixing the issue, its not going to be fixed, ion made a comment on it on SL streams. He thinks that Mythic Raiders / High level M+ players SHOULD have an advantage. You can’t fix it, when they think it should be a thing. This is the best fix we will get.
Also, lol the only reason they gave Frost DND back was because it had to
to be replaced by Death’s Due. That’s how bad this is. There was no thought as to how Death’s Due would actually synergize with Frost. They want you to Pick Venthyr if you’re frost because it actually meshes with the spec.
“We’re gonna make you feel like your class again” These words mean nothing, it’s all fluff like everything else Blizzard says.
It’s not, but it’s probably the main one for the average PvPer. Busted PvE trinkets are going to be something that always exists, the devs basically killed snapshotting over actually changing trinket design, so I doubt we’ll ever see that change.
But realistically the primary problem for PvP gearing is “why actually PvP for gear, when M+ is easier and more efficient”.
Which we both think is stupid. But Covenants aren’t going to change that.
It hurts everyone, not just Raiders or PvPers or M+ runners.
Why would anyone have faith in modern Blizzard? BFA was a disaster, So was WC3 Reforged, Overwatch is a mess. Overwatch 2 probably is going to be a joke too. The only slim amount of hope that i actually have for WoW is that this is supposed to be the good expansion according to the pattern.
I think the primary difficulty we’re running into here is that we should fight back. Giving high end PvE players advantages in PvP is MAD DUMB. We should tell Ion it’s MAD DUMB just like we’re telling Ion his covenant system is dumb. We should fight back instead of trying to find silver linings in horribly broken systems.
