As a long time player who currently enjoys raids/m+ and dabbles in pvp, I have to say that I’m really not excited about these covenant abilities when the basic class/specs are still in a bad state.
These new abilities (and their implementation) will only serve as another factor that will contribute to further imbalance and possibly offset the one positive, the covenant aesthetics, if a player is forced to choose a faction based on performance.
The main problems with current talents:
- The majority of specs/classes have been carrying dead talents for many expansions.
- Many talent rows lack a unifying theme, with single target & AoE abilities often being on the same row.
- This leads to just swapping between ST & AoE talents based on each fight
- Lack of synergy (also due to WoD/Legion pruning) makes it hard to create new builds and pigeonholes specs into cookie cutter setups.
When the old talent trees were scrapped in WotLK, it was with with the promise of actual choice and customization. Unfortunately, instances of that have been rare in the past few expansions.
If the time that’s being spent on designing and balancing the covenant abilities was instead dedicated to revamping the talent trees and fixing the above issues, it would be much more rewarding for the players and the game itself.
I’d much rather have a stronger core for my class that’ll position it better for future expansions, over more rental abilities that most people will pick based on guides/sims.