No, the covenant strengths are incredibly muddled. Most people aren’t going to want to sift through a bunch of information and run hundreds of sims. They will be relying on people who play this game for a living to tell them what is the best direction to take. Many others will be selecting for anesthetics, i will grant you, but having unlocked covenants will not affect that choice.
Edit: People in this thread have pointed out that this is already happening in beta. People just asking what cov is best for their class.
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Honestly, I would also be down with making covenants cosmetic only. Ex: A nature Death Knight with spells and abilities that look different but perform the same. I think covenants are excellent for creativity, but the problem is they seem to be acting as a boat anchor in their current format and it is causing division. Like, I see what Blizzard is doing here, and I mostly agree with why they’re doing it, but they need to make sure it’s done right. I just don’t want to go into Slands with players expecting another BFA.
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There’s a lot comparable from BFA to Shadowlands.
They compared the covenants like azerith gear reforging.
The only big thing in my opinion that is gonna be different is they seem right now to want to work more on classes, and that the next expansion might have more finish to it.
For me a big thing concerning about covenant abilities is the gcd, lot of them add to it. And unholy dks/frost dks could use less abilities on the gcd.
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That is the smart thing to do if your choices are locked in or are very rigid. 
What is selecting class and race for $500.
The lack of self awareness here is why you all should be ignored when you puke up the phrase “meaningful choice”
Blizz please don’t make the same mistakes you keep making. Learn from Legion legendarys, Azerite armor, and corruptions. Player choice is king over arbitrary locked in systems.
#pulltheripcord
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I appreciate your reply, you’re helping me to think about this. I don’t like an us versus them debate, it just turns into two sides throwing insults and seeing what sticks. I don’t want to see a free for all, and I don’t want covenant abilities that turn into talents and end up with “take only this one all the time.”
I haven’t given up on shadowlands yet, and there are many things I’m genuinely excited for, as well as a few things I’m concerned about such as my class. My only concern with “wait and see” is that sometimes we can end up waiting too long, and it may be too little too late. I hope it isn’t. I’m willing to give this a chance. I just hope that Blizzard considers everyone when this system goes live, and considers how this system is going to affect everyone, from the world first professionals all the way down to the person who hit max level for the very first time 2 days before prepatch.
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And I hope they change the good abilities so players decide to choose the covenant based on their play style and not because wowhead or icyveins tells you that this is the best.
Min-Maxing is as old as time itself but the player base that want this change are the players that should be playing League of Legends and not turn the end game in an MMORPG into a MOBA.
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Great post. +1
I must say that BlizZard wants to copy systems from legion and BFA and yet are making similar mistakes.
That tells me that they think this is okay to hold off from using the rip cord till a later patch.
How did that plan work out in BFA? 
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Min/maxing is a playstyle, that you like it or not.
Some people are more goal driven and have fun that way. If you don’t enjoy playing with them then you should play with friends or a guild or a community that feels the same way you do. Like I mostly do by playing with a guild. Nothing stops you from playing the game your way.
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Thats not fair. Noone is in here telling you that your playstyle is wrong, so why are you firing at us like this? We just want the freedom to play with the covenants without be locked into a single one.
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I am a filthy casual. Necrolords look cool to me because they remind me of Hood’s army from the Malazan Book of the Fallen.
Not a fan of their class ability for pallies though. The Kyrian one just looks way cooler to me (not even from a numbers standpoint). So what do I do? Tell myself I enjoy another layer on top of what I already picked with a class, spec, and race?
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WoW isn’t a MOBA today though, so it stands to reason that it doesn’t need something else added on top of what exists in order to prevent it from being something it already isn’t.
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Current devs don’t like the talent system, so don’t expect a talent pass any time soon They think their talent systems with systemlands are better and more “fun”.
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They need to make darn sure the game is right before it goes live, even if we have to wait longer. I’m definitely open to compromise and I am willing to be patient. Ultimately I just want the game to be fun, we can all agree on that.
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Aside from the strange crowd that seems to take pleasure in the thought that this system will be revenge on a certain type of player, that’s all any of us really want.
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I take no pleasure in players suffering, even though I do have my complaints about the community.
I can appreciate that. We need to hard stop this us vs them mentality. We need to find a solution that is agreeable for all parties.
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Yeah, it’s pretty clear you aren’t one of those people. Think we want the same thing, just disagree on the method for getting there.
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It means being good at everything, every situation, all the time. Over the course of WoW’s life Blizz has, on their own and based on feedback, given us more and more power and agency a la carte. For some reason they’ve decided to back step on that concept for whatever reason that is. Now it seems we’re a bunch of craft starved cookers that need an intervention.
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