Legend has it every time Ralph pays for a carry he comes to the forum to complain about elitists
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yea, once per week.
imagine if you got a legendary and you can only change it once per week. seriously. each one has very clear advantages. this change punishes the players most who enjoy doing different forms of content. if ALL you do is raid, there will likely be one path to take. but what if there is one that works very well for raid, but not all for pvp?
you see, right now, some essences for some classes/specs work for all forms of content. to that, some essences also work well for multiple specs if youâre a hybrid. for some specs though, this isnât the case and they need to swap out. is that the players fault that they need multiple essences to perform at the same level as their counter parts?
do you get that?
some specs simply wonât have to change because their choice will always be the best regardless of the content they do. is that fair in your mind?
you see, I like doing both arena and M+ and its very clear that some of these have PvP in mind. some though are useless for pvp, but will likely be very good for PvP. many of them are utility and have NOTHING todo with min/max. so you you itâs fine I should perform poorly in one content versus another simply because Iâm bound to some arbitrary system?
So stop all thought process the player is too stupid or too competitive to have the agency to choose their own destiny got ya.
Shadowlands is becoming the only mmorpg that actively stops and restricts players from using the power they gain. In all the rpgs I play players have full access to their tools and full choice on how to play it.
Another minus from me.
create your own group then problem solved 
Thatâs great. Itâll make raiding feel more like it used to before the rise of datamining. Thanks for trying, Ion!
I can imagine a lot of scenarios that would instill terror in the hearts of the bravest folk, but this is not one of them.
Different systems will have different limitations, there is no universal rule for what will work best because context matters.
I think the system is going to allow you to have enough choices that you arenât going to be saddled to a certain level of performance by anything other than your own ability. 
More I hear about covenants and itâs systems the more disappointed I feelâŠ
Thatâs not how the meta works. Nor is it how BiS works. The only reason players know what their BiS pieces are is due to min/max. It has always been a part of this game no matter how hard you push yourself in it.
In a sense? Yeah, and because the wow community is notoriously toxic and tryhard Blizzard realized it is time to step in, especially when you see people act ultra competitive in a game that the lead gave said isnt about being ultra competitive and obsessing over performance.
why over complicate this?
do you think the system of essneces and azerite are so different the convenants? we have had systems like this before. in the end, itâs another button to press or another passive to consider. this isnât new.
that has never been the case. ever.
ability counts only so far depending on what you enjoy. there have always been specs and classes they have excelled in one content or another. there have always been some builds and types of gear that excel more then others. always.
you see, when players like Ralph complain about min/max, they are always hypocrites. every player, him included, will put on the best possible gear they have to achieve their goal. we donât put on gear based on how it looks and then think we can go off and clear a raid. we have to put in some effort. what Ralph and players like him want to do is draw a line closer to the effort they are willing to put out. some players like to put out the most effort possible and achieve the best results possible.
where you draw that line should be up to the player to decide. locking players into anything for any amount of time restricts that. some players have lots of time and like to make the most of what they have. some players have natural or practiced ability, some donât. that doesnât mean they donât have the same goal though.
in the end, ability only counts for so much. we have seen this time and time and time again. to ignore that is honestly just silly. In legion, I was one of the top survival hunters in M+. problem was, I didnât have the right legendary⊠and I was playing survival. Because of the legendary, I was doing 20% less damage or more then what the spec was capable of. Because I was survival I was still far behind MM hunters. I had all the ability but was limited by what the game offered. I eventually went MM and ended up in the top 100 US as a hunter. ability alone isnât enough in a game where buffs and nerfs happen on a whimâŠ
youâre pathetic. this community is one of the best I have ever been a apart of. sick of seeing these posts.
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Want my opinion? Sure, it just happens that Ion agrees with me in many things.
In an rpg you build a character and gravitate to a build, when people dont do that and jump to cookie cutter build they clearly show no interest in RPG elements and these players should be ignored as they are not here for the RPG part of the game.
No 3 hunters should ever be the same outside of rare occasion, the more choices and more systems that cannot be changed the better because it reduces the chance of them being the same.
Like Ion said, there will ALWAYS be a mathematically optimal build for each fight, dungeon, encounter, thatâs just how mmorpgs work, if someone says otherwise they are simply ignorant, therefore ultra tryhards will try to do that and must be stopped not only because no 3 hunters should ever be the same, but because encounters and the game isnt balanced around all dps being optimal, raids and dungeons are balaned around balanced healthy comps where people arent even ultra optimal, so people who minmax like crazy including minmax their comp trivialize encounters often by stacking OP/fotm meta specs which reduces the difficulty SEVERELY.
And lastly, WoW has a very toxic tryhard community, we ve seen it before we master looter, we know also from reports others try to force people to change to meta build even if they hate it by saying they ll bench them or demanding them to change for an invite first, pugs are a whole different level of toxicity.
Locking covenants and conduits is the right choice, because it disrupts the toxic behavior by never allowing them to be optimal for everything unless they level and more importantly gear 4 of each, and most tryhards arent gonna be doing that, especially with the new 1 gear per m+ in shadowlands
This is just gatekeeping.
You donât get to decide why people like RPGs.
Except we had everybody being clones of each other back when it wasnât easy to respec.
The only thing that ever prevented clones was when WoW first launched and the internet wasnât the powerhouse of information that it is today. We didnât even have YouTube back then.
Today anybody can Google âShadowlands best covenant for Prot Paladinâ and just do whatever Icy Veins tells them is the best choice, and no amount of game design can fight against this.
The bolded parts contradict each other. Youâre wanting to stop something that, by your own admission, will always happen.
Whatâs ignorant is thinking you can fight this. The best you can do is limit it so that the choice matters within the raid and they canât change between boss fights, but youâre still going to have the overwhelming majority of people using the same builds.
We saw it back in Vanilla, and TBC, and WotLK. and Cata, and MoP, and WoD, and Legion, and BfA. Iâm not sure at what point you think Shadowlands will be any different.
You have no room to go on about toxicity when youâre one of the most toxic people here against anybody and everybody you deem to be a âtry hardâ.
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Yes, thank you for giving with one hand and taking with the other. The end result is still negative.
Once a week is a problem if you play multiple specs ⊠like many do.
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Blocked that idiot a long time ago. I simply look at his threads to see if there is genuine discussion going on. Which DOES happen in spite of his best efforts.
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I stated a few facts and problems, whenever you like it or not the devs make the game and make the rules, if you cant abide by a gameâs rules you should probably not be playing the game.
We all abide by the gameâs rules, but we also offer feedback on the forums.
This isnât âshut up and take whatever Blizzard gives you or just stop playingâ like you appear to want it to be.
Oddly no one is talking about the covenant switch back penalty idea. Combine these two and ralph may have a point on playstyle erasure.
For me, i would have happily accepted both a free soulbind respec system and avery insignificant penalty system for switching back to a former covenant (something like 'collect these ten drops. You can find them on any Lvl60 boss/rare in game). This would have minimised the impact on players who like to min-max, whilst also keeping the covenant system wholly intact for new or returning players.
Were Blizzard about trying to make sure everyone has an improved experience, theyâd have logically gone this way. Sure, theres an inconvenience and penalty for switching, but its not so dramatic to make it genuinely prohibitive. And you still have to play within the confines of each covenant load out. But if its what you want to do, think of it like the 100g respec (there and back again) from vanilla or the dire maul buff.
But they arent going that way at all by the looks of it. They want you locked into your soulbind (confirmed). They are speaking about how the cost of returning to a covenant should take 1.5 to 2 weeks. Theyre really trying to lock you down. And youâd have to assume thatâs a deliberate choice (not just some accidental oversight).
People supporting player non-sensical player restrictions are funny. âGotta stop the tryhardsâ like that affects you in ANY WAY. Get over yourselves if you honestly think this whole ideology is any way positive.
Thatâs what you dont get, your feedback is useless on this, why?
Because blizzard WANTS TO LOCK people into builds with strengths and weakness and wants to stop the degenerate way of changing to optimal build for each boss, m+, content
That is literally their goal, you and others crying âbut I want to be able to be good at everythingâ is useless feedback they thankfully ignored
Blizzard has said âthe higher up you go the more that bothers you, we understand that feedback, it isnt a surprise to us but across the totality of the game and the broader audience "
In other words, they care about the entire game rather than the whims of some tryhards, they clearly say they UNDERSTAND the feedback, they CHOOSE TO IGNORE IT because their goal is to make a game for the broader audience
You see? He literally admits that some feedback is useless and ignored if it goes against their intended design.