Yup, I’m in a heroic raiding guild that does progression very well compared to the rest on our server. No, I don’t want to hold my team back. I want us to succeed, and I want to be competitive on the dps charts while we do it.
I also know that none of our members are ever kicked to the curb because of their specs or talents being sub-optimal, because we value teamsmanship and skill and don’t all have time to play constantly. I know that each of us has opportunities to shine and fights that don’t favor our characters. I know it was frustrating when the spec I love got nerfed into the ground and the RNG gearing system f’d me out of getting decent corruptions during progression, but that didn’t mean progression was a problem or not fun, nor does it keep me out of 15+ mythics on the side.
If we were world-first competitive mythic raiders, we’d be 1%ers with multiple alts each ready to go depending on the boss fight. Instead, some of us have alts to screw around and have more varied play.
So, yeah, I get the concerns about balance, and I def care about progression and performance. I also care about the identity of my character and am intrigued by the RPG elements and deep progression of my chosen covenant. I’m willing for there to be a give and take there, because there’s more than just dps numbers that make this game fun.
And Ion’s certainly right about one thing if nothing else: I know I don’t want to spend time during progression raids switching covenants and managing conduits. A few gear sets and the occasional tome for talents is enough. I want to spend my time with my friends figuring out how to use our diverse characters - as they are - to overcome the challenge.
Ignore them. These people that spout out that nonsense are the same type of people that shout out it’s racist to want to understand people you are talking to. We want things. it must be because we hate.
I’ve said it like 5 times in this thread. We cannot sacrifice gameplay for lore. If that is the problem, we need to not have gameplay focused abilities and mechanics tied to the covenants.
Except not everyone has such an understanding team. They’re going to expect high levels of performance. Otherwise people wouldn’t be so focused on simming results.
I never said that lore can’t affect gameplay. I said that we cannot sacrifice gameplay because of lore. Tying major player power to covenants, then heavily restricting your ability to switch due to lore is not a good system.
But gameplay is already being sacrificed because of lore. I can’t be a forsaken Paladin. Class/Race restrictions make for gameplay issues and those restrictions exist because of lore.
Except that I want them to be game-affecting. I want my decision of covenant to affect how my character plays and their power. I don’t want them to be ‘everything the same but with a different coat of paint on it’.
I think people have lost the idea of what character building used to really mean. They hear it and they just think about min/maxing. They forget that it’s also about the story of the character. How it obtained it’s powers.
You are trying to act like pretending something is one way, is the same as it actually being that way. I can pretend covid doesn’t exist, but that doesn’t make it true.
Notice how I said MAJOR player power. Currently with essences, corruption, azerite traits, neck levels, etc. Our character only does about 30-40% of the damage/healing output. So it’s pretty safe to assume that with covenant abilities, soulbinds, conduits, legendaries, etc. this choice will make up nearly half of our output in SL. That is much more game breaking than a racial that makes up .3% of your output.