At least with the current system if you get 2100 you get (heroic gear ilvl I think?) I am not a 2100 player by any means and 15s only drop 5 lvls higher then that. It’s not a perfect system but it’s not as bad as what is being proposed. I do not want to waste my time leveling two toons of the same spec just to do both types of content
This is something im hoping to be able to check out in the beta if im invited again as this concerns me.
As someone that likes to heal M+, tank raids, and DPS everywhere else im a bit worried by that statement.
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Which is beyond stupid I should not have to level two toons of the same freaking class to play both specs to their maximum potential. This is so stupid is Literally a step backwards. Wanna know why ffxiv is popular? It’s in part because you can do everything on one toon
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I expect early on, covenant abilities will be relatively balanced. As ilevel rises, I expect things might scale in unexpected ways. This kind of thing has needed fixing throughout the life of the game.
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I’ve learned to never say “should”. That Leads to expectations and disappointment.
I mean I get it If you don’t like it though. That’s a valid complaint. But who’s to say what players should and shouldn’t have to do? Lol.
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Why?
I expect it to be a bit of a system shock for WoW to return to its RPG roots… but in the long run a good thing. Look how popular Classic WoW is right now.
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You don’t have to level two toons of the same class to maximize your Potential on that class in wow classic so that’s not a valid comparison. Know what I expect week one on these forums? Posts looking exactly like this “why do I have to level two toons of the same class to play them decently?” I don’t know how you can’t see this becoming a problem people have been begging blizzard for a system more like ffxiv being able to do everything on one toon and now their doing the exact opposite of what many people in the community asked for
That is your decision as player.
Which expansion was friendly to people who played multiple specs/classes?
The closest I can think of was MoP, but even then you would be behind on stuff like your farm or gearing constantly.
I disagree with you, I think you should read this well written post as it might change your mind Hello friends,
So that we know I’m discussing, I’ll try to make this first part akin to a TL;DR. A lot of this is “feelycrafting,” but that’s all we can do at this point.
- Conduits appear to be like “Major Traits” in Legion Artifacts.
- Soulbinds appear to like “Minor Traits” in Legion Artifacts.
- Covenants should be freely swappable. Punish players through non-combat gameplay by using RPG elements, such as NPC interactions (they ignore you).
- Covenant Signature Abilities should have overlapping/sahred mechanics, thus making each spell more flexible in usage, especially when compared to each other.
- Nerf Door of Shadows range to reduce cheesy gameplay.
- Utilize Reputations as a way to introduce RPG elements to Covenants.
I’m rarely one to site Youtubers, but I want to bring extra attention to Preach’s video because, honestly, he’s right and his points are very strong:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlXRZvHnYIU
I’m not going to echo his points verbatim, but I’d like to bring my point of view.
This a pretty long post. The TL;DR is at the top.
The Meaningful Choice Fallacy
I no longer support being locked to Covenants.
Non-damaging, unique abilities/mechanics cannot be balanced between each other.
You cannot have unique, impactful abilities AND balanced choices in most situations. You either get watered down abilities, or you get unbalanced abilities. We can probably agree that it’s not acceptable to outright lose due to “picking the wrong Covenant.” Because of this, you can expect any “wrong choices” to not be punished. This undermines the idea of a “meaningful choice.”
Blizzard can (and should) try to balance it, but there is always a right choice, and a wrong choice. You are forced into a system where you have mandatory choices or meaningless choices.
In a game where choices matter, to pick the wrong choice means you risk being ostracized. The culture in gaming today is all about optimization of one’s time. The social agreement is “don’t waste my time and I won’t waste your time.” When we have all the answers, we know what is acceptable and unacceptable.
Tuning numbers is relatively easy. What is actually difficult to tweak are mechanical strengths and utility. Blizzard recently used the terms “Puzzles” to describe ways to make different abilities feel strong or “the right choice” in a given situation. It’s not that I don’t trust Blizzard, it’s that I don’t think it’s a realistic goal. In a way, “meaningful choice” is lip service.
Preach made a great point – Encounters cannot be designed around lacking a Covenant Ability. So, if you have an ability that is “the right choice” then you’re going to find that it’s effectively overpowered.
Let’s imagine you had Necrolord’s Fleshcraft and you came across a puzzle that is trivialized by having more effective health. Basically, you just need to survive damage. Classes and specs with multiple damage reduction abilities can easily cover most sources of damage that would favor Fleshcraft , therefore Fleshcraft is weak for those classes and specs. At this point, you’d look at the other Covenants for their abilities and run the same critical thinking exercise.
Fleshcraft (Necrolords)
Every class has damage mitigation and/or healing. If Fleshcraft is mandatory, players without it will die to its puzzle. If you don’t need Fleshcraft to solve a puzzle designed for it, then Fleshcraft is meaningless. For combat usage, Fleshcraft might be the worst ability available simply due to the setup required. You can have an extra 20% health as a shield, that’s actually not terrible. But the long channel time for reapplying the shield is not fun to press. It looks awesome, feels awesome to press, but lacks that something special to make it a good combat option.
Door of Shadows (Venthyr)
It fills a niche most classes do not have access to. The ability to teleport is not a mechanic Blizzard can design gameplay around. Because of this, the ability to teleport will trivialize most puzzles related to movement. (It will not negate prolonged sprints, such as gauntlets…which don’t exist in WoW.) All endgame content the game is balanced around is instanced. By virtue of this fact alone, Door of Shadows is the defacto pick for all instanced combat, and therefore the endgame itself.
Soulshape (Night Fae)
This ability is very good for the reasons Door of Shadows is not. It is great in prolonged movement. But it’s simply overshadowed by Door of Shadows because, mechanically, a teleport is superior to a Blink in most situations, especially when Y-axis is involved. It’s not that Soulshape is bad, but a 30% movement speed increase for 12sec is probably only good for Death Knights…and even then, it’s not that great. It’s hard to pass it up an ability with a mechanic you don’t have access to. Even Death Knights have Wraith Walk available, but they don’t have a teleport.
Summon Steward (Kyrian)
Arguably, this spell is the most flexible of all of the Covenant Signature Abilities. The healing is actually pretty helpful, and so are the Cleansing effects. I feel the healing provided by the Steward’s Phial is better than the temporary health given by Fleshcraft simply due to availability. Steward’s Phial is on demand, where Fleshcraft requires a lot of time and setup. Steward’s Phial has the Cleansing effect, and Cleansing gives it that special something Fleshcraft lacks.
Signature Abilities : What needs to change?
I think Door of Shadows is the only overpowered ability at this time. Even if it had a 5min cooldown, it’s really strong. I think it can still exist as a teleport, but I think nerfing the range would do a lot of good (25 yards, down from 35 yards). If it feels lackluster after this change, I think it could be improved by making it a Physical spell (castable while Silenced) and/or castable while moving.
I think Fleshcraft is too weak as it is. First off, it should be instant and apply the full value of the shield. The theme of the spell is cool, but it needs that extra something to elevate it. Passively, if it automatically “devoured” nearby corpses within a 30 yard radius and “ripped away parts” from nearby enemies, you could have it empower your current cast (more shielding). From here, you have an on-demand shield with quite a lot of health (~30% max health on average). It would be better in many ways than Steward’s Phial , but Steward’s Phial would retain its niche and have some more advantages.
I think Soulshape is actually in a good spot. When you consider PVP usage, it allows the player to flee enemies or pursue their targets. If we see a nerf to the range of Door of Shadows then Soulshape can keep up with it in PVE as well.
I think Summon Steward is weird, but honestly not terrible. One change I think would help is if Steward’s Phial was bottomless. If possible I think it would also be pretty amazing if you could have your Steward help you with clicking Summoning Stone/Meeting Stone portals. If anything Summon Steward is your Owlbro of Convenience, so if they could click your summoning portals that’d be dandy. (You’d have to tell Owlbro to click the portal though, it needs to be that way.)
Covenant Restrictions and Swapping : What should happen?
Honestly, with the direction Blizzard wants to go, I do not feel there is a viable option that supports a meaningful choice. In its current implementation, to balance these abilities is to make them rather irrelevant.
Conduits and Soulbinds are fine and offer a tuning knob for these Covenants. But we’re stuck on the mechanical power of these abilities. Trying to balance different mechanics is somewhat of an impossible task.
I think freely swapping is needed, but it needs to fit the RPG side of things. It doesn’t appear Covenants are friendly to each other, so a system based off Major/Minor effects would not fit the RPG theme. It would look out of place, and make selecting a Covenant meaningless.
I think the only way to handle this is to minimize any penalty for swapping. I think leaving a Covenant should have a minor impact on progression, possibly costing Anima/other currency to join antoher Covenant. However, I would refuse a stacking punishment (such as increased costs). I think swapping 10+ times in a week is a bit much, but it should be allowed. Penalties can still be introduced, but they shouldn’t significantly impact your performance. If it impacted your non-combat experience, that would be a good fit.
Swapping Covenants and RPG Elements : What should happen?
I think something most players would be okay with is creating an impact in open world content. Perhaps you could tie quality of life to Covenants. I feel this direction plays into the RPG aspect of things, but doesn’t significantly impact combat performance…it’s just sort of a pain in the butt you’d need to accept. The idea is NPCs of that Covenant are treating you as a deserter and won’t offer you assistance or services.
Reputation systems should play into this. I feel Reputations have become a measure of the number of world quests you’ve completed. I think we should utilize the “Friendship” system instead. For example, you can be Exalted, but your faction might think of you as a prick after you left them. Using this type of system to influence how the world reacts to your actions would be more fun and interesting. You’d be able to lower your “Friendship Rating” with a faction after you leave, but you wouldn’t damage the World Quest reputation bar. In this way, you could utilize the “Friendship Rating” by adding it as a restriction on specific items or interactions. Your choices would actually have in-game consequences in this system.
Just to list a few things leaving a Covenant would do:
- Lasts some amount of time, likely 24 hours or until next daily reset. Debatable.
- Loss of access to rejoin Covenant (based on timer).
- Loss of access to Flight Masters (you can arrive, but not depart)
- Loss of access to some vendors, such as quartermasters.
- NPCs would glare at you in-game as you walked by them and sometimes talk about you in public channels (/say). Similar to the Death Knight starting experience.
- Unable to purchase/use Covenant-specific items while in poor favor.
All of this wouldn’t effect combat performance; and it would absolutely play into the RPG elements of things. RPG elements don’t always need to be about combat performance.
Who cares if it’s imbalanced? : (Why I care…)
We are trying to avoid the same problem with Legion Legendary items, and BFA Azerite traits, and BFA Corruption effects.
Imbalances are pretty much the only reason why many players care about optimizing their character. They want to know what’s best. It’s as valid a playstyle as is “not caring about sims.” Imbalances are expected, but many players feel like there is no choice if the imbalances are extreme. It’s not about nerfing fun, it’s about making every option fun.
Popular arguments and ideas :
In this section I’m just going to quickly address popular arguments.
What if they only worked outside of instances?
- Covenants are an important expansion feature. It would be really bad design if you are unable to utilize a core feature where most of the endgame takes place. To support this idea means you support locking these spells out of Torghast, Battlegrounds, Dungeons, Raids, etc. That does not come off as fun.
Why not make a Major/Minor system like with Essences?
- RPG elements. Being ability to pick your Signature Ability and your Class Ability regardless of Covenants defeats the purpose of Covenants. Many players enjoy the “package deal” that we get with Covenants. There should be consequences for leaving a Covenant. Many players don’t think that should be a massive impact to your in-game performance. There are other ways to give it those RPG elements.
Whoever wants to play multiple toons of the same class just for Covenants is crazy. Don’t balance the game around them.
- Perspective is important. Is it any more crazy than playing multiple toons for a chance at a rare mount? Not really.
- Players want to have their character at their best. There’s nothing wrong with that, and this absolutely happened in Legion. In fact, players outside the Top 0.1% would make a new toon and powerlevel it to 110. The impact these items had were huge. It was more efficient to re-roll than it was to grind for another drop.
Covenants shouldn’t be swappable, it ruins the idea of a meaningful choice.
- Making Covenants swappable will help avoid any issues from the past. It also makes nerfing/buffing Covenant abilities easier. Blizzard is going to make changes. If Covenants were locked, it would upset a lot of players who picked a Covenant because it was determined to be the strongest for their character. This actually ruins the choice these players had made.
Why not just buff the weaker spells?
- You’re balancing in around class toolkits, not so much as the other Covenant Abilities.
- Weaker spells should be buffed mechanically. “Homogenization” is typically a dirty word, but it also means things easier to balance. Buffing weaker spells by creating some overlap across the Signature Abilities would blur the lines of where a spell is “the only good choice.” It moves away from a design that gives a clear winner, and allows each spell to be good, better, or worse when compared between each other.
- We want these spells to excel when possible, but we don’t want it to be a mile ahead. Door of Shadows is seriously overpowered.
Thank you for scrolling to the bottom of this post. There are as many right ways to play WoW as there are players. In my opinion, allowing players to freely swap Covenants will be the better direction for WoW for all players.
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I posted on the wrong character, I plan to play Monk
I wanted to tank m+, heal raids and DPS in BGs. I liked it better in TBC -> WoD when all you had to do is change spec and gear
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Even in vanilla i could switch specs from holy to prot and be just fine now it appears i cant play either or to my hearts content in SL this could very well be a deal breaker for me.
Not gonna read it. Because I wrote it. 
The message there was you cannot have a meaningful choice.
I have since changed my stance with regards to “freely swapping Covenants” and I’ll keep it simple as to why:
- Covenants do not impact your performance that much. Many abilities are passive and can be easily tuned. (I’ve help with tuning in the past, it’s not difficult when a button is fire & forget.)
- Covenants have far more exclusive content than I was expecting.
- The “meaningful choice fallacy” was directed at hardcore players.
- The “meaningful choice” in my post in this thread was related to how a player identifies with a Covenant (RPG Elements).
Basically, I am not willing to scrap the Covenant-exclusive content for the sake of making a game where you should be expected to swap Covenants between PVP, Mythic+, Raiding, World Quests, etc. I want it to be as balanced as possible, making my Covenant choice meaningless as a hardcore player, but, at the same time, making it meaningful as an important RPG element Blizzard is hoping it will become.
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Honestly I just wanted to see you fight yourself
But you’ve gone burning crusade illidan on me
I also have Obi Wan yelling “you were the chosen one!” Stuck in my head
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I’m getting the sense you haven’t provided any rationalization to anything you’ve said.
Who are you even talking to?
Why is your font white?
I guess my question is why should power be conflated with content? Why not let players choose content and power separately? Forcing them into the same choice weakens the RPG aspect of it; instead of “which group do I like more” it becomes “do I pick the group that makes me effective or the group I enjoy the lore of”?
In all honesty, I kind of feel like they’re giving up on balance in Shadowlands. They’re going to do the bare minimum and call it good.
That’d explain why they’re bringing back multiple weapon types for specs even though they told us when they removed thhem that they were impossible to balance, why they came out with the “we don’t want you to worry about min/maxing” so early, and why they keep acting so confident that they’ll be able to keep things balanced despite having never done so in the past.
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And bfa is? lol
Covenants being vastly different performance wise based on spec, legendaries requiring weeks of grinding to get 1 and its spec locked.
Nah, but with how annoying alts and secondary specs/roles are in BFA, it’s kinda irritating to see Blizzard double down even harder with Shadowlands.
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