Funny because I’ve heard this exact sentiment about covenants dozens of times.
You’re good at changing the subject to racials and dungeon metas but still haven’t answered the question. Should we be able to swap classes on the fly? Why is it ok to be at a disadvantage in PvP or in AoE? Why can’t we always be optimal?
That doesn’t fix the issue of having to switch per boss/per style of fight/per type of content you’re doing.
I’m against ANY of those suggestions that would inherently push this game to make talent swapping per boss/per style of fight/per type of content even more of a thing.
The current talents right now serve that purpose. I do not want that for EVERY aspect of this game.
People don’t seem to look at the board picture when suggesting these abilities be swappable. You wont just be swapping your ONE talent per fight. You will now potentially have entire different builds per fight because of how impactful these abilities are. So you’ll change multiple talents, gear, trinkets, and many other things i’m sure. Its not just a simple “well, let me just change my covenant talent.”
Are you advocating for balance? Or you just want this type of gameplay where you change how you play per fight because that’s what sims better? Because I do NOT want WoW to go that route. That was one of the things I hated about TF/WF and BfA in general. Can’t have BiS if you’re constantly changing per fight scenario.
This is how I feel, 100%. Covenants, to me, are things tied to the story that carries us through Shadowlands. To me, it is part of immersion. It would be so weird to constantly swap loyalties for abilities I use in all kinds of content. Covenants should be the constant, and I wouldn’t be against it being more of a challenge/grind to switch. But the abilities should be separate. They affect gameplay, and I want the freedom to choose what abilities I want, when I want.
They do but have gotten nerf many time throught the years. Considering covenants and their soulbinds will have about 100 times more power attached to them, being more concerned about them than racials I feel is justified.
They can nail balance as far as dps go to be close, but a 10% is rather small for them but terribly huge for someone competitive. At worse it could be a 20% difference. But the worse is utility like has been said before. You can’t really balance utility as far as it goes without making all of it necessary or useless. Basicly, it just got to a simple fact that movement speed abilities are better than a shield, it would need to be a immunity to be comparable in strenght.
And some covenant class abilities for my class dk is concerning since one of them is a 20 yard mass grip (current blood dk mass grip is 15 yards). The raw power of that ability is terrifying if there’s a use because it can boost your whole raid dps and/or trivialize a mechanic.
You cannot change your character’s class. You can swap characters, sure. People play alts, that’s a thing you can do.
Players can have a preference, but there’s usually more to it than raw AOE Output. Balance Druid, for example, is garbage at AOE, but their utility is insane. Those factors are why players will play those “suboptimal” specs. They can be strong at single-target and help destroy a boss far better than an AOE-specced melee class. (Speaking towards M+)
It’s a perspective thing. Your covenant makes you SLIGHTLY better in AoE. Mine gives me a slight edge in PvP. You aren’t being punished, just enhanced differently.
Not at all. Never. Yet even I can see that swearing allegiance to a covenant, earning their trust, and gaining their power one minute, then saying “lol sorry I’m out” the next, only to swap back 10 minutes later is silly.
If balance is your issue, than we should be advocating on helping balance abilities. You think Venthyr is too powerful? Advocate for a 5 second cast, nerf the range. Whatever.
But to sit there are ask for them to be swappable talents is not something I agree with. And doesn’t fix any issue just creates more issues imo.
Everything you’re talking about is tuning and balancing.
Talent swapping doesn’t fix this.
Sounds just like a defense for meaningful covenant abilities. Good in certain situations, but not all.
Making them swapable means that you won’t be penalized for choosing a covenant in the long term. It’s a rather big difference. It’s kinda why you’re not locked from switching spec if your spec is terrible or making a new character to switch class if your class is terrible.
It does like I explained, for someone competitive it does atleast. They can’t balance them to be all equal in all situations. Competitive people will switch, people that won’t make multiple characters of the same class will be penalized at that level.
You really making a mountain out of a mole hill here.
Right, that’s what I’m suggesting in the OP. I’m also adding that swapping Covenants should not be heavily penalized. There’s more to the game than combat performance. Losing access to QoL features or temporary buffs in the open world could go a long way to incentivize staying with a Covenant.
For example, if you had portals to instances within a zone, and you recently left that Covenant, losing access to that portal (because the Covenant thinks lowly of you) would be RPG-ish.
Exactly , this is a lot of salt for covenants
It’s not an issue.
And if you don’t want to change those things - then don’t. I don’t and I can play the game just fine how I want and with who I want.
If other players enjoy playing that way - let them. That’s their worry and concern.
Not giving players the choice to switch will just lock them out of content or put restrictions on them.
If I value those restrictions because of my “RP” mindset - then I can choose to play that way by picking a spec/talents/covenant and not ever changing them.
Having a flexible system does not prohibit me from playing in a more restrictive “RP” style - so I lose nothing for that system. I also don’t want to force others to play this way if they don’t want - because I gain nothing for them having to do so.
Are we really back to misrepresenting the probable differences?
Legion legendaries. Azerite traits. Essences. Corruptions. And they’re somehow going to balance a teleport with a health potion numerically?
That “they’ll just tweak the numbers a little and it will be perfectly balanced” goes out the window with utility.
So you don’t care if other people are able to change as their content demands? Wanting to control them to prevent them from doing something because it’s “silly” seems to be a really bad basis for design changes.
Systems that will impact 30%+ of your dps? It’s like saying right now that essences, azerith traits and corruptions are a mole hill. The covenants systems are replacing those, they will be powerful, they will be in the current iteration unbalanced.
You can switch. Do you not know this?
My mage has that right now. Blink + heal + free 130k damage shield. Doesn’t help with your parses though.
Making them swappable now makes you penalized if you don’t play the proper build per fight, per encounter type. Meaning an even bigger balancing issue and terrible form of gameplay. The top 1% already do this with classes/specs/races…and it’ll be exactly the same even with the one big meaningful choice.
Making them swappable just makes it a chore for the “regular” people who don’t want to play like that, but are now forced to be optimal because blizzard will now have to try and balance around that.
I don’t understand how people don’t see the issue talent swapping covenants would cause.
Talent row’s currently in WoW are much more lax because most talent rows are the same type of “buff” but a different way.
Mages with their third talent row for example.
All three give you dps buff. But all three impact gameplay differently.
Covenants are not the same. So you’ll have to manipulate entire talent builds around just those covenant abilities.
NO THANKS.
Do not want.
Door of Shadows doesn’t do that.
Instead it’s twice the range and this enables you to completely bypass most encounters.
Blink doesn’t travel far enough to avoid those encounters.
Not freely - not the way some players play the game. If they play as a tank in raids, run M+ as a healer and dps in arenas - the way switching works wouldn’t suit those players.
Those players having the ability to switch freely wouldn’t impact casual/RP players like myself.
What do they give up in return?
Shadowmeld exists now. You good with that?