Most people doing mythic raiding or arena are not getting paid for it
Except it’s not even anywhere in the same planet as 0.5…its 10-20% 
choices matter so if you wanna choose the one you like and be 20% weaker and kicked out of tons of groups have fun until they either learn to balance or pull the rip cord
Then go play Overwatch. WoW is not for you.
When I play D&D I don’t get mad because my friend rolls back-to-back natural 20s and I don’t.
RNG has been a part of WoW since before Alpha 1. If you don’t want RNG, you don’t want WoW because you don’t want an RPG. Overwatch is there waiting for you. Go play that instead.
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Who let Ralph out of jail?
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Do we actually know if it’s 1% or if it’s way more or way less?
Has nothing to do with what we’re talking about.
Talking about classes right? Extra layered systems shouldn’t be part of this equation. If they are they should function just like talents and specs. Freely swappable.
That’s how single player games work. In a game where there needs to be a modicum of balance because there are so many classes and specs, limiting power this way causes nothing but problems.
Wow is a video game and fun should be the first consideration.
The problem is these new disposable systems that wow introduced. They go against RPG character progression.
I’ve probably been here longer than you. I played when the only REAL focus of wow was raiding.
So you think it’s good game play when RNG twilight dev is your #1 damaging ability? If so then LOL…
Overwatch games are being ruined by unfun/broken stuff like widowmaker doing 300 damage across the map for clicking head.
The tops players just want a fun game, it aint fun seeing your class doing 20+% less damage against other and you cant do anything about it.
Beside that, good thread as usual Raphy
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Never said they were. Some people do, though.
I love the covenant ideas, but please get them within 5%. Or at least get 2 within 5%. If there is one bad choice per class/spec, I’m fine with that. Changing a covenant one time could be doable, but wasting time constantly changing them would be terrible design.
I do not think wasting time changing them compares to wasting time farming multiple characters to have specialized characters for content you want to perform well on or not be drowned out by the over performance of other covenants you do not have due to the restrictions.
In BFA most people never changed their essences from fight to fight. This was a situation mostly at the super high end of raiding and mythic plus so it never really impacted most of the wow population to begin with. I know I only changed my essences once per an entire raid encounter when I got comfortable with the encounter.
The only times I swapped frequently was when I wanted to experiment with interactions of spells and talents with essences at the start of the raid tier. That experimentation felt great and it feels like I am losing that play style that made theory crafting with guildies so much fun. It should be up to the players to decide the frequency of swaps. The more rules Blizzard puts against this the less fun these systems become.
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This wasn’t a problem, when you could just raid for your BiS loadout and just enjoy the game…
Maybe if blizzard would stop putting walls up in front of all the content we have been doing for the last 20 years people wouldn’t mind…
You want flying? Go grind pathfinder and wait 70 percent of expansion.
You want your neck essence? Go grind an old raid that isn’t current content, go farm a rep that has been useless since the first patch for anything but having the rep.
You want to use a good corruption piece you just got? Go farm back piece upgrades to use it.
You want a decent piece of azerite armor? Make sure you do your weekly M+ for 2 months so you have the dust because unless you are doing mythic raiding you don’t have the chance to get a 475+ azerite armor any other way.
You want to play an Alt? Redo all the steps mentioned before this.
The problem isn’t the changes for the better. The problem is they are literally taking things we’ve had for the last 15 years and locking it behind walls that are unbearable to even do on your main.
Then when you go to play and alt, you are literally sitting there like do I even want to play it knowing I have to redo all this?..
There are so many simple solutions to this stuff too that blizzard just refuses to do. Why? because they want to time gate you and force you into being on a mandatory amount of hours every week. When before the player just played those hours because they were actually enjoying themselves. Not because they felt like if they didn’t they would fall behind.
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Playing devils advocate, blizzard is doing this because the gameplay has gotten faster. It took months to get ragnaros down 16 years ago, it took 1-2 days of classic being out to do the same. We have world first now and people racing to get the fastest kill. So blizzard locks it behind gates content to slow the game down.
That being said. It’s not fun what they have done. I played FF and actually fell in love with how they do flying in that game (do quests, explore the zone, get flying for that zone) I fell into that issue of, do I want to do this all over again?
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This game is classified as MMORPG. I really don’t understand what you are expecting. It has been a MMORPG since classic so I’m not sure what you mean about “numerous expansions”.
Right now, I am currently able to modify my toon in any way I see fit with quite literally zero temporal limitations. Is the game not an MMORPG right now?
My numerous expansions comment was in regards to this:
That just isn’t the case right now. We can optimize our toons as we see fit for each encounter, each content type, and each spec. We could also do this in Legion. And WoD. And MoP. Hence… numerous expansions.
What you need to realize is that the game isn’t vanilla or BC or even wrath anymore. We have the tools to figure out what’s optimal. And they’ve countered our knowledge by pumping out fights that are aimed to test us EVEN WITH min/maxing.
If min/maxers were crushing these fights, you’d have a point. But they aren’t. Even with everything min/max’d most end fights still take competent guilds hundreds of pulls to down.
If you want to have disparities between options be as obscene as 25-35% and have them be “semi-permanent”… then make the content stupid easy. Because as is… you didn’t actually give us options… you just gave us traps.
OR… come out and tell us that they expect us to have to roll 2-3 toons of the same class to be competitive.
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Uh, some think that is what LFR-heroic raiding and dungeons up to M+15 are for, now heroic raiding and M+10 and higher can be tough for pugs or those that might be B-C ranked players at best, maybe low As individually but it takes a group of similar skilled to down the bosses.
Maybe what is needed is for people to realize that you don’t NEED to min/max outside the high content (Mythic raids, M+ 16 and higher, high rated PvP) or for Blizzard to come out and say that the higher difficulties are balanced around everything being done, gems on all gear that can have one, fully enchanted, simed to the max possible, etc. Where as the lower difficulties are meant to be done with even sub-optimal set ups.
I mean, I think that’s always been the case. It’s why I’ve always said play what you enjoy, rather than worrying about which class/spec/race, because at the end of the day… unless you’re going for CE it isn’t going to matter. It’s not going to be the reason you won’t achieve AotC.
The thing is… you don’t need semi-permanent locks in place to play that way either… I know players that take very suboptimal specs, talents, essences, azerite traits, and corruptions and still have a blast in the game right now. Me being able to change my spec, talents, essences, azerite traits, and corruptions as needed has ZERO effect on them.
So again… why do you need to lock me out of optimizing my character to tackle my content that’s built around me optimizing my character?
Finally, regardless of what content someone attempts… many people play the game for the purposes of optimizing their character to the best of their abilities. For many that’s the entire point of an RPG. Why are we locking them out of their enjoyment as well?
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Theoretically, true, but in practice? I would not count on that. The main issue, and likely what leads to a lot of these things, is the dang trickle down. In other words, the B-C ranked players that are doing the content you DON’T have to optimize for yet treating it as the content you DO or at least SHOULD optimize for it you want to do it.
Maybe to smack the ones who treat the lower content the same as the upper with a cluebat?
I am one that would question: is it the abilities based on what they have chosen or is it the abilities others say they should have. Like for me, I have a hunter, I prefer MM yet BM is the “top spec”, I really can’t play BM so should I have to do BM and maximize that when the ability for it does not really come to me?
If people REALLY wanted to optimize to the best of their abilities, they should be allowed to play what they want and optimize the abilities through practice, gear/stats, etc.
RPGs are also built around the idea of teamwork, and covering the weaknesses of the other party members. However, in the classic RPGs you tended to get the lions share of the skills/abilities that were dictated by the level of your class/classes. It would be akin to say looking at the talent trees and giving the character every single one of them.
Hell, I would take the current system, with the charges, in crease the amount one could have yet allow charges to be gained by doing content, like say 1 charge for a full clear of an LFR wing, 1 charge per boss on normal raid, 3 on heroic and 5 on mythic. For the covenants? maybe clearing a full raid will make it so you can use their abilities or serve as an emissary to the other covenants, thus unlocking their skills for your use.
I mean, I’m not going to deny the trickle down effect, but at the same time… If people want to optimize? Why stop them? They enjoy it? So what’s the point of arbitrarily tying their hands?
Also… Why do you want to play with people who would exclude you if given the chance? Particularly if you don’t care about throughput?
If you don’t care about output to the point that you’re willing to sacrifice 30% output… then you should find other like minded players and play with them.
Cause you know what’s going to happen when you get in those groups that care? You’ll just be kicked anyway when the see that you’re doing vastly inferior damage. Just like you’ll be put on the bench in more serious guilds for those willing to optimize. You won’t be benched because you chose X covenant. You’ll be benched because you do 70 dps, while the other character of the same class does 100 dps.
Hey, I’m with you there in regards to MM vs BM. I much prefer MM. But regardless of how you slice it… MM is currently behind BM in every way due to poor scaling. And whether you care to admit it as “other people telling us that” we have literally thousands of logs to prove it at this point. It is behind. Period.
No. It would be akin to giving us talent trees, giving us a certain number of points to fill them out filling only a portion of the tree, then letting us reset the points as we see fit. Which is exactly what vanilla/classic was. We could build a spec, then respec it as we saw fit for a gold cost.
As opposed to SL, which we’ll have a time penalty every time we want to swap.
It’s sorta funny that vanilla/classic is actually more lenient in this regard than SL. That’s how far of a step backwards these changes are.
I mean, it’s better than the week long lock I agree, but it still has almost no net benefit from my perspective.
If you don’t care about throughput, then me being able to optimize doesn’t effect you.
If you don’t care about throughput, then you probably shouldn’t be joining groups who are hyper-focused on throughput.
The locks serve no purpose.
Edit: OK I thought of one purpose. And that’s the stop players from constantly making numerous UI changes, as that would be annoying, but at that point… I’d say that the whole system is bunk. At that point, it’s literally just aimed at forcing you to choose which piece of content you actually care about for each character. Which just pushes players to feel like they have to have multiple chars of each class.
Sorry mate… As cool as this looks on paper… I’d rather they just straight up delete soulbinds (or better yet turn them into bodyguards) and delete conduits.
Then just make the covenant abilities an expansion based new talent row.
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