The chance that a player’s favourite covenant doesn’t offer an ability they find fun is large enough since there’s only 4 of them and come as a big package. It’s one of the most complained about issues of the system involving class abilities. I’d say that’s objective enough and you know. You just don’t want to accept that covenant choices have major flaws.
The most hilarious thing about this discussion that I don’t think has been addressed is the more hardcore a guild is, the less they are punished by this system.
Here is how a top tier guild will go.
- Pick the best PvE raiding covenant
- Finish prog
- Swap to best pvp/m+ covenant until new tier.
It actually impacts the “”“1%”"" the least.
Lots? Each fight is like a puzzle and classes come with different pieces that help solve the puzzle. There’s nothing less fun about using your class efficiently.
If you could switch classes per-fight, you could perform far better
Ok, but you can’t. And switching Covenants isn’t as drastic a change as class.
Class is the only choice in the game that sticks without completely re-rolling or paying money. Everything else has gone from being rigid (classic) to flexible (retail). Keeping covenants locked and suddenly trying to “make choice matter” doesn’t fit with the road map they’ve followed since Wrath.
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I was wondering how long before Routu fell back on the But you can’t change classes defense.
Nobody wants the ripcord pulled so we can emulate changing classes, some of us just like being the best version of our spec in multiple forms of content at the same time.
Usually the gear makes this something you need to work for the ability to do well, in addition to the time you must spend to set up and learn a new spec.
Nope. That’s why I said I would prefer they were removed rather than being another meaningless choice.
And that’s why them not being in the game, or forcing blizzard to balance them, are the 2 best options for me. Because I don’t find it to be a meaningful choice if you can just swap it at-will.
Or, and stay with me here, you can just swap at your pleasure. And the issue becomes moot.
The problem will still exist in guilds, it doesn’t matter how lenient your guild is, some abilities will be better than others and they will affect how you play the game. ( Blizz isn’t exactly 100% on parsing abilities within 2-4%, and they’re notorious for nerfing anything into the ground making your “locked” ability feel bad)
You can, at this point, choose to play the ability you like because it’s fun and engaging to you, never swap and have the time of your life.
Or change it up if you want to try something different/have something that’s better suited.
You’re conflating “flexible” with “meaningless” when they aren’t the same thing. It’s subjective and other players find it more fun to be able to switch, whereas you don’t, but that doesn’t make it meaningless.
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So at this point your hoping that this system is a turning point for the game and basically it goes back to the way classic use to play.
I have some bad news for you…
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Defense to what? What am I defending? You can’t change classes and that means you can’t be optimal all the time. It’s a fact. Sometimes, entire classes are not viable. As a top tier M++++ super duper hardcore raider, you should know this. So to combat this why not #pulltheripcord on classes? That way, Blizzard doesn’t have to balance anything and players can spend 80% of their playtime swapping things with little switches.
And if (1) they were perfectly balanced, or (2) did not exist, you would have that. Without even adding a new meaningless switch!
Why do people keep going on about switching covenant.
We don’t want to switch covenants we just want to remove player power like the class abilities from them and make them no different then switching regular talents , which is what they should of been in the first place.
Once again in this thread I will say it .
If Blizz had never put the class abilities into the covenants none of you saying they are an important part of the covenants would of cared or said without abilities these covenants are meaningless. You would of all accepted them as cool rp choices.
Guess what if they separate the covenant class abilities from the covenants and turn them into talents that you can freely change like normal talents or not use if they are not that impactful guess what covenants will still be cool rp choices.
The only real reason people want the lock has nothing to do with the abilities having any thing to do with the lore because even the biggest wow lore nerd Nobbel thinks locking the abilities doesn’t make sense.
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Unless you’re doing cutting-edge content, any combination will work. You still have to put in effort, but getting AotC for Heroic Raiding or M+15 weekly is still achievable.
If you want to experiment go for it. Use all your specs and if you still don’t like that Covenant, swap over to another one.
The two week task is not incurred unless you try to rejoin the same Covenant, so in theory you can try all four without waiting two weeks.
But they’re not talents. The abilities are tied into the Soul Binds and the Conduits, so you’re going to tear out a large chunk of them as well.
You’re right! Instead we get expansions where multiple classes have specs that are so bad people don’t play them the entire time!
Blizzard spectacular at balancing aren’t they, don’t worry this time they asked us to trust them they’ll get it right!
Can’t wait for everyone to make a meaningful choice at the end of leveling when covenant abilities are disabled in 50-60 dungeons so you can’t even get a feeling for them outside of questing. Great!
Trust them though, they’ll get it right this time. There will be no such thing as a bad choice 
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Yes! And then finish it off by making it so I don’t have an annoying switch I have to do on these abilities, by removing them entirely!
So why have them be locked at all?
It must drive you mad you can easily change talents and specs huh?
It’s meaningful choice lite*
*still a little meaningful, but not too much!
Slows the game down a little. Allows Blizzard the time to crank out more raids and work on more patches if there’s a stop gap for the Meta chasers.
Gotcha, I’ll have to think on that.
Once again you don’t have to switch if you don’t want to just make your own groups.
But don’t deny people that want to be able to switch abilities to do so . That comes off as hey I have no self control and to make sure I don’t have to worry about changing you should be forced to not be able to change.
But that’s not how he wants to play!
I would argue this is a larger problem because spec switching is available. Thus, blizzard doesn’t have to balance them as urgently.
Additionally, as I stated earlier, having “easier to play” specs being the lower DPS tier should be the balance goal, so those who can’t do higher-end content due to skill are able to perform higher in their lower-tier spec. So arcane mage doesn’t work for your M+ guild but is a fit for a lower-skilled guild doing normals.
Yeah that’s lame.
Nope. If they can’t balance them, I would prefer is they were removed. As stated repeatedly.