My thought is just take the class abilities out of the covenants and make them talents.
They can leave the base abilities as well as soulbinds and such in the covenants to give them meaning . Just open the ability to play around with the class ones with out it feeling punishing.
Ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect?
A player who isn’t good enough to fully understand how Blizzard’s incredibly arcane stats, random procs, and various modifiers apply to their class in a way that matters for the content that they are doing is not going to complain (or at least make meaningful complaints), even if they should.
Blizzard, and especially Ion, have a wealth of data but also a rather surprising ability to apply it incorrectly. The broader audience failing to complain about an objectively terrible system that is too complicated for them to even understand should not be treated as a mark of success.
If that’s what Blizzard has to do, that’s what has to be done. If Blizzard designs content so tightly, they are the ones who are designing such a community.
You raise a fair point. We’ll find out if Blizzard actually DOES care about build diversity and uniqueness by how well their own content mechanically allows it.
In each role: tank, heals, DPS; If the weakest spec with the weakest covenant can be proved, mathematically, to be able to clear Mythic Raid and +15, their design goal has merit. If they can’t, then you stand correct. And the whole facade that Blizzard built comes crashing down.
I guess we’ll find out.
The sad part is I could absolutely see them nerf things later on knowing it would “screw over” people who picked the optimal choice and justifying it by saying well you shouldn’t have only picked one based on its min-max potential so sucks to be you.
Have you heard the ‘tryhards try to pretend that anyone not worshipping meta and being a meta slave is believed to be instantly bad and have no idea about the gsme’?
Trying to pretend as if anyone that isn’t a meta tryhard has no idea how things work or how it affects stuff is quite rich while many hards even refuse to acknowledge any attempt to fix the community and demand a broken status quo remain for their benefit.
Hell it is even more hilarious now that people point out that stacking FotM and meta builds turns content into easy mode
So a meta try hard guild that clears some boss with meta stacking is far less skilled that a guild that clears it with a balanced comp
You gotta admit, nzoth had so many issues the first week or 2 of release and during wfr that it made the game more popular just to see how bugs people could find.
Yes. It’s frequently regurgitated as if it’s a real defense by the same players who have no idea what’s going on.
The “meta” is more important than it’s ever been, because the game is less balanced than it’s ever been. There is a multiple thousands of DPS difference between one copy of the worst trait and one copy of the best trait.
Your guild lags behind PUGs. You don’t get to be worse than PUGs and then act like it’s just you being some galaxy-brained group of contra-meta players.
Good players do not ignore how the game works. Your argument is a joke.
States a fact
Jumps to personally attack me and guild
Sorry m8 but it is a fact that raids and dungeons are balanced for balanced comps, which means raids/dungeons will always turn into easy mode when you stack broken meta classes
But of course you dont want to admit that because that would make you feel you arent as skilled as those people who actually have a decent balanced comp xD
Keep deluding yourself skill has anything to do with copying meta
Made a thread about it
That your guild is worse than PUGs is a fact.
The irony.
High performing guilds clear the content long before they have the ability to stack the meta traits. It’s only after they have it on farm that they gain the ability to get enough stuff to be able to continue stacking the meta traits for higher parses, because that’s what they like to do. Most guilds are not in the world first race, where they will level 4-8 characters and do loot funneling runs to get a several month head start on item acquisition.
You are pretending that their achievements do not mean anything because it makes you feel better about being worse than any random group of 20 average players.
Sure it will be able to after multiple nerfs and many resets of gear.
The issue is they can’t tune a raid around one fourth of your raid being Necrolord, so their Fleshcraft ability can’t ever be OP in a raid setting. Meanwhile, a movement speed buff is forever good.
Simply put, there is almost no way (in pve) for these abilities to outshine others without them being 100% needed for a mechanic.
Which also translates in one thing, if you stack the OP fotm/meta spec, because the content isnt balanced around everyone having that, they roflstomp easymode through content.
Which is another reason why covenant locking is positive, many wont be able to be optimal for all situations so comps will be far more balanced outside of ultra tryhard circles so they ll progress is a far more normal level mode.
I honestly just don’t want covenant abilities to do more damage than main staples of your class. If for instance bone spike is doing more DPS than sinister strike or backstab it needs to be looked at and toned down. I don’t want to see essences and corruptions all over again. Procs and borrowed powers shouldn’t be more powerful than the class that wields them.
Are we talking about covenants here or characters?
Right, classes do this already, why do we need covenants to also do this?
Are you sure, because Blizzard didn’t exactly put any effort into stopping mages from doing so. Not one balance change against fire mages.
I don’t think these things are related. They actually ended up relaxing the cost of changing azerite gear later in bfa.
They aren’t saying anything about being optimal or suboptimal; they don’t even know yet. For all we know some classes will be meta just based on the principle that their best raid covenant might also happen to be their best m+ covenant, and by virtue that might make them op by comparison to other classes.
I was talking about characters
Because the more layers the more fun for the rpg crowd that likes to combine things, the character+covenant combinations to play around with either balancing your weaknesses or maybe boosting your strengths even more if a hallmark of rpg character building.
The more simple something is, the less rpg and more boring it feels, classes these days lack much depth so adding another system on top of them is the only way to make things interesting (Dont suggest to focus on classes and remove borrowed power, we both know this wont happen)
That is indeed an issue, and I am sure blizzard is aware, why they dont nerf them is indeed a question unless they feel they are only rly good in raids though if they pull around them they also become op in m+
Ion literally said he learned from azerite vendor, he knows ppl arent gonna be stopped by a huge gold cost to be optimal at all situation, so he knows that isnt the way to lock people into one build, so their goal is to find ways so people dont change builds for everything, covenant system is their idea, and they also said conduits are gonna be changed but have a form of semi permanence so people dont change all the time.
Ion quite clearly stated you are meant to have strengths and weaknesses instead of changing to be optimal for x boss and X dungeon. That means he wants people to choose one build and be optimal at one thing and sub optimal at another.
That is the design goal, if a covenant ends up being best for m+ and raids then yeah, that clearly is not the intended design and they are gonna have to balance things.
And we both know their nerf hammer gonna start swinging like crazy so you cant rly know what is best for what until post launch fixes before mythic opens.
Yeah, players like to experiment with different builds and get a feel for what they enjoy and what they don’t. It’s a shame that covenants don’t promote this ideology.
Pruning being bad doesn’t magically make covenants good.
You’re probably right, it won’t happen (because of borrowed power filling that budget), but this is ultimately the solve that many players are looking for.
Example #38 of why I oppose covenants; I can’t count on balance.
Regardless of what Ion said, the only way this argument translates to covenants is by assuming that your choice of azerite power is a meaningful choice, and not just the illusion of choice. Similarly, this is another concern of mine for covenants.
Then put this into class design. More layers doesn’t fix the problem, it exaggerates it.
This doesn’t sell me on covenants, in fact it does the exact opposite.
Maybe I am just tired but I fail to see how what you are saying has anything to do with abilities being required for certain bosses. Then again, most of your posts sound like wordsalad to me now.
Either way, my point stands and the covenant locking has little bearings on my mind regardless of it’s impact on my gameplay.
They do, I am so hyped to try different builds and more
I know I am right cuz borrowed power exists to avoid overbloating of abilities which is why we are never ever returning back to pure classes
And I much rather have an unbalanced mess than a boring homogenized game
Difference is covenants not only are being tested rn, they are not rng, you choose what you get, choice exists, you get something, you lose something else.
The main issue is that people want to be optimal at all situations and that is no longer allowed.
Not gonna happen, like i said borrowed power is here to stay, and the more systems the more fun the game, if you want a boring homogenized balanced game I would suggest some non rpg game.
SOunds like you dont enjoy the core design of them, you wont enjoy them in any way then but I will.
Totally agree. Covenants should only be cosmetic and out of combat perks. Once you make them AZ and Legendary Traits, you are asking for trouble and that is actually what they are atm.
Same, SL could have been a good xpac after what we got in Legion and BFA with borrowed power, they could have done all this with our actual talents and specs we have, not adding layer on top of layers of new trees and power grinds to get the trees unlocked. Only to have them nerfed and you are out of luck.