I think the best solution for this is to let people choose their covenants and they get the generic covenant ability that everyone gets. Then the class specific abilities are free game and we are allowed to choose one regardless and we can swap them throughout the expansion for a cost of some sort.
This allows people to choose a covenants they want based on flavor, lore, and cosmetics, while also allowing people to play with the ability they want to or whatever is cutting edge. There is some impact in choice too, as you still get locked in to one of the generic abilities, but it is not as big of a deal.
Being optimal is so you can minimize progression time and quickly get Cutting Edge. Which is the overall goal. Nobody is going to seriously gimp themselves under the mentality of “Yeah we’ll do whatever we want” and still have the expectation to clear the raid on their first run.
As for the 30% crit thing, it actually doesn’t matter to a casual player. If you’re hopping into BGs and fighting other casual players then you can score a kill by pretty much utilizing any Covenant. But in the higher rated Arena, where everything’s more organized and your decisions matters, it’s going to spell either success or failure again for people who are making a pushes into rating they haven’t been to before.
I disagree. Players got to progress themselves towards abilities they wanted in whatever order they wanted. That’s a choice in how you got to level your weapon. And you only benefited the more AP you got.
Tell me why it’s a problem for me to want to perform well in multiple avenues of the game.
You don’t need to Sim every piece of gear or every ability to do well in a casual game like World of Warcraft. There’s no point, for there’s no competitive edge you get from doing it; just the pseudo feeling of completionism that most min/maxers suffer from.
Doing well is extremely subjective and impossible to quantify.
I’d rather have choices that have consequences instead of being able to change everything on a whim because ability A does five more damage than ability B.
It absolutely matters. 30% crit is a very significant damage increase, to say nothing of the fact that it also apparently includes ignoring line of sight.
Just because you can win otherwise does not mean that it doesn’t matter.
If everybody else in the BG on the enemy team randomly got a +25% damage buff I bet you could I still score kills, but that would certainly put me at a disadvantage. It would certainly make my gameplay experience a lot less enjoyable.
They picked up the abilities they wanted but by the end of Legion you got AP so quickly that there was barely any time to relish the choice before you had everything max out.
Like I said: It was cool right up until we had enough AP to just pick everything. At that point, there wasn’t really choice anymore.
Perhaps. The success of Classic probably shows that. But I also think it put to light how choosing what you like can be disheartening when no one wants to invite you.
This is very extreme example yet concerning nonetheless for those at the higher end where such a decision means not getting chosen.
Overall I’m somewhat neutral, as I play at a level where I can choose and still participate in the somewhat higher end content. I’ve built a good relationship with the rest of my raid team where I can participate, regardless of choice.
That said, I will be choosing based on game play, not numbers or looks.
Actually you do. Because Blizzard has created such a complicated system with their gearing instead of having a clean cut listing of priorities on your stats that people are constantly guessing what they should be going for and what’s considered an upgrade.
As for that “feeling of completionism”, nobody’s going to seriously sell themselves short if their goal is Cutting Edge or Glad/Rank 1. It’s a goal that players have set for themselves and their team and are wanting to find ways to make that happen as soon as possible because the clock’s ticking.
Doing well means that your chances of reaching your goal can be realized. So telling people that they have some kind of problem and are a cancer to MMOs makes no sense when the game doesn’t support a clear cut guide for gear progression and the goal their going for has a time limit that when gone, is gone forever.
To be honest, I don’t know. But I think Blizzard should’ve looked at the core of classes and gameplay first before they introduced this one. They started to in Legion. By god they should’ve kept going but they abandoned it. Elements like my Hunter being able to light the way in the bottom of Vault of the Wardens as well as the final boss felt great. Logically, flare should work in those situations and it did.
They’re bringing back core class abilities but they aren’t going all the way in terms of RPG elements. Right now, they’re only doing half of what I think they should be doing. I said this earlier, Fire Mages can still damage Fire elementals.
WoW has never had a complicated gearing system. Everything is so straightforward and blatant that its impossible for anyone to believe there’s any complexity in it.
You can still achieve those things without completely bastardizing RPG elements.
I’m telling min/maxers they are cancer. And they are. No MMO has ever benefited from number humpers.
Depends, min-maxers who are willing to work around what they have and make the best of it are fine. It used to be that way before Blizzard decided to make it possible to flip flop with about any meaningful decisions you ever made for your characters through paid services and such.
Its those who expect to be catered to in every possible way, at every step of their “calculations” that are unbearable.
False. With the introduction of titanforging you can get upgrades practically anywhere. And in some scenarios, older pieces of gear were BiS because of that. Hell I got a piece of gear that was better than Mythic raiding just by doing the “Against Overwhelming Odds” quest.
They’re rectifying that finally in SL by making gear drops static.
When you’re on a timer? You’re not thinking about the RPG elements and are more focused on completion so that you can relax.
Well then you better tell Ion to pack his bags because he literally got his job by taking the game that seriously.
What about us casuals that do a little of everything and want the best ability for what ever aspect of the game we are playing at the time . Should we be punished because of hate towards min/maxers
Here’s the thing there has never been anything like this in wow before ever. So yes complaining about something being added that has a potential to negatively impact many players after 15 years is justified.
Edit : Just to be sure, i’m not saying he’s terrible and i think he’s realizing now that turning the game into EJ’s wet dream probably wasn’t the best course of action…
But that was clearly his intention for the past 2 expansions.
Yeah but I don’t want to just pin everything on him. That would be forgetting that there’s an entire team behind him who are also more than likely making calls and suggestions as well. The point I’m making is in a world where there are so many conveniences and QoL, it makes no sense to have a restriction like this be tied to power progression.
If it were Vanilla, I’d be fine with it. Because the world and how the players interact with it is vastly different than Retail where everything is awesome and cool when you’re part of a team.
Just to be sure, i’m not saying he’s terrible and i think he’s realizing now that turning the game into EJ’s wet dream probably wasn’t the best course of action…
But that was clearly his intention for the past 2 expansions.
If it was, it wasn’t good. Legion actually had some solid RPG elements into the gameplay that enhanced the experience. The class mounts, the flare ability in Vault of the Wardens, Prot Paladins having the ability to expose demons which worked great in Court of Stars and many other things in that same dungeon.
Right now, throwing in a Covenant restriction system with a game that has this level of QoL attached to it makes no sense to me personally.