But what if what I like is restricted? What if I want an ability from one covenant for PvP and another ability from a different covenant for PvE? Add in role/spec swaps and I could want all kinds of things available that are restricted by the current system. This is NOT always about the top 1% of players.
Source please?
it’s impossible to balance a game like this.
Sure, you can make the argument that “the content we are doing is so trivial that it doesn’t matter what we do”.
But then we get back to the “do you pick up gear or let it rot?” issue.
Regardless of whether you can beat the fights or not, people still like for their characters to be better. That’s the whole reason bosses drop gear AFTER you’ve beaten them, not before. 
So why even bother trying, right?
My concern with Covenants lies in the fact I play multiple specs and those specs are all varied roles because I play a hybrid.
One of the things that Blizzard said they wanted to do away with long ago was the concept of the hybrid tax, meaning you were able to do lots of things but you just could not compete with those that were more “pure” specs.
I believe Covenants and by extension their Soulbinds are not going to offer the flexibility for hybrid classes to really be able to enjoy the wide array of game modes like raids, mythic+, and pvp like we have in the past – effectively forcing a player down a similar decision path like we had with artifact weapons.
I don’t want to make this character only a tank because I want to tank M+ but there isn’t a slot in raid as a tank, so I have to be a less than optimal damage specialization because of my Covenant choice; or vice versa for my M+ team.
I don’t want to be put in a position where I need to have 2 characters of the same class because I want to experience different modes of game play, but cannot all because of a system that forces me into a suboptiomal path for one facet of play versus another.
Choices themselves are fine and I totally understand Ion’s perspective of why they want them in an RPG; but I don’t think them enforcing some less than optimal way to play due to that choice for one facet versus another is the right approach.
A player should be more than capable of playing a single character, tank any content they want, damage any content they want, heal any content they want and be able to pick the necessary options that allow them to be optimal at that content for the role they’re in at any point in time.
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would be kind of cool if they let us unlock other covenant features throughout shadowlands. pick your main 1, then unlock lesser versions of what the others offer. could apply to aesthetics to some extent too. maybe not movement…
i kind of like both directions of thinking to an extent, idk.
But what if you move on to mythic or raiding or PvP? I’m not disagreeing with you at all. I’m more just like can they really balance these abilities for all aspects of the game? And if they don’t, what about the players who want to pick one covenant and mainly do one type of game play and the covenant and the game play are the worst match for each other?
The best counter to that argument is Classic WoW. People still decline Ret Pallys and Moonkins to MC and Ony groups when they can both be cleared with 20 people. We have proof that this argument doesn’t hold up.
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I was really starting to agree with preach but the more I thought about it the more I realized it really won’t be that big of a deal. I remember Demonology was sim poorly at the start of the expansion. People on the forums said they couldn’t play this spec because how bad it was. I did it anyway. People in my guild assumed I was affliction. They saw my numbers as good damage, great in a lot of cases, and didn’t look any deeper. It was well after the first raid when the main tank noticed and swore up and down I couldn’t have been demonology that whole time. But I was.
Long story short play what you like. The more you play it the better you’ll get at it and pull some great numbers. Covenants will be the same way. You may not be world first best but you will do your part of the raid just fine.
They could do a better job ill grant you that.
Stuff is always going to be better in certain situations, easier to play, scale better, have more meaningful utility…etc
I’m sorry you feel that way. Personally, I’m glad to see the return of MMORPG elements to my favorite MMORPG. 
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If you main the tank spec and have to switch out to DPS because there is no raid slot, you were always going to do less optimal damage regardless of whether covenants exist.
How’s that any different than to not having access to the abilities or the soul binds themselves? You have lesser versions, ok – but that’s still a sub-optimal way to min/max – you still be perform worse than someone of the same class who picked that covenant as their primary choice.
Why should that differentiation of power exist in the first place?
Did you forget pvp like everyone else on GD does?
Believe it or not, such people exist. Sadly.
I’m sorry what RPG elements did we remove that haven’t just become the standard in most games at this point?
Ion did say that if one cov became massively overpowered then they were just going to nerf it. I think if they see players choosing one cov and expecting others to also choose that cov then it’s going to be put back in line with the others. I have to be honest, I have concerns about the teleportation of a certain covenant I won’t mention, that is going to cause some issues for M+.
Honestly, I like them both, but you can definitely get more peanut butter in the waffle holes.
Freely swapping specs and talents broke the game… it cannot be undone now, but it means, for example, that every mage is a fire, frost and arcane mage as the situation dictates. Every class is every spec.
I know the genie is out of the bottle. While I know there is some genuine upside to freely allowing switching specs, like being able to fill missing roles on raid night, etc… but the game lost something from an RPG perspective now that everyone is everything. The game really has become, Overwatch with raids.
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