The issue is that Covenants are easily the biggest issue with Shadowlands. To be honest almost everything else looks amazing but with covenants everyone keeps saying wait until release. Like… NO. Last time we did that we ended up with a trainwreck. You dont need to see the train derail to know something may fail to be balanced and fun
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The game will never be balanced though. It never will be.
In Legion people avoided shadow priests like the plague for Mythic+ Yet they wanted them in raids. Some classes are better at other things, game has been like that for 15 years now.
Like I remember people brought paladins for OTs because they were the best AoE tanks. That’s what they specialized in. It was their niche. Now everyone can AoE tank. It was fun when classes had their niche because it made you feel great when you could do things better than anyone else.
Player bias, they were actually really good second half, but that never got around, just that they were “bad”
And thats fine but that doesnt mean they should let it get worse. Thats asking for more and more people to get angry.
But then class choice doesn’t matter if everyone is equal at everything. Warlocks right now are getting curses back, they get to go back to being the debuff class. People will want to bring a warlock because they bring something no one else brings.
That should excite people to play warlocks. Not that everyone should get what warlocks have.
It’s like when they gave Lust to non-shamans. It ruined the shamans identity because that was one of their core features they brought to the group. You wanted to bring a shaman because of lust.
Players picks a covenant that has the optimal ability for their class / spec at launch, Blizzard makes changes (nerfs) and that covenant ability becomes sub-optimal.
Player engages in multiple types of content, yet the abilities are set up such that picking the optimal ability for one type of content means accepting a sub-optimal ability in another type of content.
Player uses multiple specs to fill multiple roles, yet the abilities are set up such that picking the optimal ability for one spec / role means accepting a sub-optimal ability for the other spec / role.
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Im not saying that everything needs to be balanced to such a degree that no class is truly different. But what I am saying is that it shouldnt be broken. You shouldnt have something like DH sitting in BFA being easily the most OP PvP and PvE class there was. Like for a long time nobody was even remotely close to DH and if you saw a DH against you in PvP it was like knowing your loss way beforehand
I really hope they are taking in some feedback and really listen to it.
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Well there’s still the issue of wanting to be X Covenant for the thematics and aesthetics. I’d be sad if I couldn’t be Night Fae on my Druids, Necro on my DK, Venthyr on my Warlock and so on.
#1 and #2 are inevitable. Fixing #3 with easy respecs is the middle ground that I’d be okay with, but the ideal situation in my books is completely decoupling character power from the specific covenant and making it a story/aesthetic based choice.
Choose the Covenant you like, not the one that’s OP.
And that was widely criticized as a mistake. Same with Shamans and Paladins being faction exclusive.
And yet Fear Ward still isn’t anywhere near the scale of Covenants in terms of character power.
Except it meant they actually had to fix Shamans design because being carried by one exclusive ability meant that no matter how bad the Shaman was, you needed one.
Giving other classes access to Lust and making Shamans not 100% essential means that the Devs had to confront the issues those classes had.
Having “I exist purely to hit Bloodlust” always has, and always will be terrible class design.
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Well at least taking away the 5% magic damage thing makes melee better though. I was wondering what damage it effected and thought it at least increased chaos but u guess it was only like 10% of our abilities so a 0.5% dps loss to 5% for casters. Should still be neat seeing method just play 20 shadow priests, 20 arcane mages, and occasionally 20 bm hunters with no variation again.
won’t work, really the only option is easy switching, far too many aspects attached to covenants (3xSoulbinds per coventant, 2 abilities, and however many legendaries)
How would you feel if other classes get the ability to summon other players? That’s still a warlock unique ability, right?
What if someone needed to summon and then just switched a talent for it?
Tfw when you get two warlocks in a raid and they’re both afking waiting for sumss…
Every class can summon to major content (raids and mythics) though.
Yah… It’s almost as if there’s a summoning stone, or spending hours doing nothing showing people randomly teleporting entrances.
But it isnt something that makes you clearly overpowered compared to other classes. It isnt something like an ability that makes you way more viable to pick then others. Its simply a form of transportation to make lives easier. And you can summon through the stones outside of major raids and dungeons
Yes and warlocks were pissed when that change went through because they felt they lost their uniqueness.
Every warlock I’ve ever met would rejoice if they didn’t have to drop summoning stones anymore.
Besides, you don’t bring warlocks because they can summon people. You bring them because they’re a good ranged DPS and healtstones are a huge bonus (far bigger than summoning stone).
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Sure it would. You could use the exact same style of system that Azerite Essences currently use.
You mean when “Have Group, Will Travel” existed? Sure, I’d be fine if that came back.
Give it to everyone. Don’t even make it require a talent.
Though it shows how shallow you think class identity actually is, you don’t think it’s related to it’s gameplay whatsoever, but the thing that makes Warlocks Warlocks is the fact I have to turn up before 15 minutes before everyone else so we can actually pull at 8.
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That speaks more for warlocks lack of real uniqueness if they think that. Warlocks weren’t just summoners, they were the only ones with things like curses.
And i don’t recall hearing too much grumbling about the stones in TBC.