If you scroll down and see it broken down by spec, it looks like the majority of people just picked a Covenant based on what third party websites told them was best for their class/spec.
75% of characters are one of the Wowhead recommended covenants for their spec
Some other highlights from the data:
60.6% of characters are playing the most popular covenant for their spec.
84.6% of characters are playing one of the two most popular covenants for their spec.
The most uniform spec is Holy Paladin where 88.9% are Kyrian and 95.1% are Kyrian or Venthyr.
The second most uniform spec (over one covenant) is Resto Druid where 87.6% are Night Fae.
The second most uniform spec (over two covenants) is Prot Paladin where 94.6% are Kyrian or Venthyr.
The least popular covenant choice is Necrolord Holy Paladin where there are only 310 characters, or 1.1% of all Holy Paladins.
10 specs have a proportion of characters playing the most popular covenant below 50%, with 4 specs below 40%.
8 specs have a proportion of characters playing one of the two most popular covenants below 75%, with 2 specs below 70%.
It’s noticeable that the highest single spec covenant choices are where the “BiS” covenant correlates with an obviously lore appropriate choice (Kyrian Paladin, NF Druid, etc), but there are some very popular choices that aren’t also. 71.7% of Enhance Shamans are Venthyr, whereas 64.2% of Elemental Shamans are Necrolord.
In my opinion, this data shows it’s pretty clear that a sizable majority of the playerbase is choosing their covenant based off of performance concerns rather than aesthetics or some sort of “meaningful choice.” There is no lore, story, or aesthetic reason why, for example, 75% of Vengeance DH’s are Kyrian when 30% of Havoc DH’s are Kyrian, other than a majority of players optimizing, minmaxing, and following guides.
EDIT: Just to be clear because a lot of comments are mentioning this, what I’m not saying is that everyone is blindly following the Wowhead guide, I’ve just used the Wowhead guide as a baseline for what’s considered the “optimal” covenant choices for each spec and showing that the majority of the playerbase is following that.
Doesn’t surprise me. I did, partially because it was my best, but it was also fun to press. Originally I wanted to go with Ven’thyr, but the flayed shot ability was boring and the teleport while strong is niche and Night Fae is all around good. It’s a win-win as long as my class ability doesn’t get nerfed into oblivion.
Not me, I chose the Covenant that had (for me) the best story first, then the best zone, then the best armor. I chose Kyrian. The guides say the best Mistweaver spec for Mythic+ is Night Fae. Also my brother mains a Blood DK, he also chose the Covenant he liked best, Venthyr and not the one the guides said to choose. I know a lot of people on my server who chose this way.
Kyrian was also the best fit for my playstyle, bouncing back and forth between mistweaving and fistweaving depending on my current mood.
Not saying people didn’t choose what the guides suggested but I also know that over the next two (+/-) years the Covenants will be nerf’d/buffed as Blizzard sees fit. So choosing the Covenant the guides suggested may not have been the best way to go about it.
woo so I’m not most people and so are a few people I know xD because we went for the ones we liked lol some of those happened to be the best ones as well lol
I took night fae because from the moment I saw the trailer I wanted to go night fae xD
I also find it humorous that people are missing the point with their “but I picked “. That’s fine, but that is not the point. Ion went on record saying he thought it would play out differently and that people would actually weigh their choices and make a decision not wholly based on throughput. People on this very forum said the same thing. That is not looking to be the case.
i chose venthyr because i liked the red chain heal and all my guildies saying their BIS was night fae and when i checked mine it was venthyr so I’m semi grateful, not keen for the nerfs tho
Amazingly, people can evaluate these things for themselves, and choose based on whatever criteria is actually important to them. Unsurprisingly, for the front runners especially, the gameplay considerations of their chosen abilities are going to be high on the list. Not just character power, but how it actually feels to use it.
I’ve tried out the abilities on offer so far on quite a few classes/specs. In almost all cases, it is immediately and abundantly clear that one of the primary abilities is significantly better or more fun than the others.
