Because if you make a heroic pug group and start becoming toxic by refusing to invite any class that community deems “bad” then we want you out of the game because
you dont need an optimized guild for mythic after the first month, for heroic it is even a bigger joke where people can often easily clear bosses with half the raid team with grey or green parses
You negatively influence the ingame community with your dumb toxicity
That is why we want covenants to remain like that so people who obsess over optimization when they dont need it can unsub and amount of toxicity from such people is reduced.
In other words, you are toxic to the community and not even for a good reason but for the delusional reason that you NEED optimization, and when you invite meta worshipers most of them cant even reach the potential of their meta build while if ppl focused on actually getting good on their class rather than being sad FotMers they would be better and perform better
It seems like it will be easy to leave and join covenants, but if you try to go back, then you will get potentially slammed. Like if you try Kyrians out and don’t like them, you can leave and try out Venthyr but if you try to go back to Kyrian prepare to work your butt off.
Using a classic equivalent, it would be like you wanted to join say the Bloidsail Buccaneers and then had to build your rep back up with Booty Bay after getting what you needed/wanted from the pirates.
You can’t tolerate the intolerant, if intolerant people are removed the rest are free to enjoy the game, if intolerant people remain because of some stupid ideology of ‘tolerate even the worst people’ the intolerant mindset will only get worse.
Again I point out that what matters is by ilvl logs, not a meta build, following the most meta build with best traits does not make you a good player, knowing how to play your class and having good result with any build is what makes a player good.
I care about skill level, not if they follow the meta build, for me if anything if they follow the most meta build it is seen as a negative
You realize if enough people unsub you get to be happy for all of a week before Blizzard changes things and gets those people to resub right? Blizzard doesn’t care about toxicity they care about money.
Me and a lot of others like me check the meta because they want to bring as much as they can to a raid so that they can progress with their raid group. I couldn’t care less if I have the highest damage I just want to down the boss with my guild. The meta is the meta because it gives people the best chance of succeeding.
Blizzard is giving people less choice by tying all of these Covenant systems together. They could have the abilities be chosen from a different system, the cosmetics from another, and the Soulbinds from another, that would give you three different choices that you could make instead of one blanket choice that affects what your playstyle is going to be, what aesthetic you’ll have, and another for whatever soulbinds are meant to be. Unlocking Covenant Abilities from Covenants gives you more choices not less and yet you have people clamoring, “Choices should matter, screw min-maxers!”
Let’s not try to pretend that this is Blizzard listening to people who shout “We want choices to matter” this is more about putting in a grind so that people stay logged in to pad play time statistics. Most people aren’t going to stay as the Covenant they first chose for a multitude of reasons, one of which is definitely to follow the meta, another is because they want to collect cosmetics, another is almost certainly going to be because there will just be nothing left to do in the game because of a lack of content.
The Covenant system also screws over anyone who likes to play multiple specs. There is no way that a single Covenant is going to have a list of perks that is useful for all the specs of all classes. This is especially true if you try to engage in every aspect of the game, Mythic+, Raiding, Battlegrounds, Arenas are the main concerns because that’s for the most part end game. I just don’t trust Blizzard to be able to handle 4 Covenants to have equally good benefits for 36 different specs in the game.
It doesn’t matter how much they try to balance it, the way it’s set up now it’s guaranteed that the community will eventually decide on optimal covenants for each spec and possibly each type of content (raiding, mythic plus, pvp, maybe Torghast).
Once that happens (probably before Shadowlands even launches), those covenant choices will be enforced and it will suck for everyone, especially people who decide that they need to level two of the same class so they can play the content they want.
Then in the next patch Blizzard will massively nerf the popular choices because that’s what they always do and everyone will have to switch to the new meta which will also suck.
I’m all for impactful choices but this isn’t the way to do it. Make it like warmode so you can only switch in town, maybe with some brief attunement cutscene or something so you can feel like you’re doing something.
Blizzard indeed doesnt, the devs on the other hand often do and Ion has stated: "A section of the community still needing to adapt and get passed the pure simcraft driven mindset that has dominated"
Which clearly suggests that their goal is to eradicate that mindset, and dont confuse it with wanting to eradicate min maxing, they clearly do not as it is still possible, what they are trying to eradicate is the average or bad players who becomes toxic by demanding others to follow the meta.
And nobody is saying you should stop that, but just like FotM classes, you should spend a lot of time and effort into gearing and grinding said classes.
You wont to bring the most broken and meta class to down the raid boss faster? Sure, reroll to X broken class and gear it.
The covenants are the same thing. You arent given free gear/free lvl boost every time a class is less efficient than others due to balance issues, are you?
I can agree with that, imo covenant should be based on spec not class as specs vary in playstyle a lot.
MM hunters are terrible at arenas yet they are pretty good in other forms of content, am I supposed to ask blizzard to give me a free lvl/gear boost so I boost an arena roflstomp class like rogue, the same can be said about class balance issues.
The same way they do with meta classes and the same way they refuse to invite classes like locks or spriests at times because they are “bad” at m+ even though they can do just fine since they arent queing for world first m25
Everything Ion has done to try to “negate the simming mindset” has made it even worse. To get rid of simming you either reduce the effectiveness of secondary stats or increase the effectiveness of primary stats not by adding more things to sim. The classes would also need to be somewhat balanced, as in within 5% at all times.
Getting rid of simming really doesn’t do anything against toxicity, toxic players will continue to be toxic, you think that it would be better if simming wasn’t a thing? They’ll find something else to be toxic about, they’ll start bashing people once they’re in the dungeon or in the raid instead of just declining them from the group finder. The MDI also contributes to it because it showcases the best of the best and that in turn sets the meta, yet no one is asking for MDI to be stopped.
Where did this idea tthat people are expecting free gear and level boosts come from? No one expects to be given a free level boost and gear but people DO expect and ask for Blizzard to balance things out with a patch. When Blizzard fails to do that you get expansions like BfA where a lot of people unsubscribe and Blizzard starts attaching mounts to 6 month subscriptions and has an experience and reputation buff to get subscribers back. Saying that Covenants are just as important of a choice as choosing a class is ridiculous. One dictates the, in some cases, Race, Role, and Theme of your character and stays with you unless you delete them, the other is mainly Cosmetic and Story Related for just this one expansion they aren’t similar at all except that the Covenants will change your playstyle in some way.
And yet you defend the people who cry about wanting their “choice to matter” that’s just a huge contradiction, you can’t have the ability to join multiple Covenants and have your choice matter. The only way for Covenants to be enjoyable for everyone is if they make the ability to change them quick and easy, OR separate the Covenant Abilities from the Covenants themselves, otherwise people will complain, and if Blizzard doesn’t change them, they’ll unsubscribe and they’ll be changed once subscribers start hemorrhaging.
Like I said no one is asking asking for free boosts they’re asking for balancing to be done which is something that Blizzard is supposed to do and have failed to this point. There are multiple suggestions that pop up on the forums about how to improve Marksmanship not just for PvP but overall, just like there are suggestions for every class and spec. None of them are seriously asking for a free boost to change classes, they’re asking for changes to abilities, to damage tuning, or in other words balancing.
The reason why you still have people asking for MoP-style classes is because the general consensus is that MoP was when classes were at their most fun and things were, for the most part, balanced. If the Covenant Abilities actually ARE balanced within 1-2% when Shadowlands releases I’ll be perfectly fine with Covenant Abilities being attached to the Covenants, but I and many others have no faith in Blizzard to be able to make them balanced, not with the way the past two expansions have gone.
I am not reading that, all I am reading is that blizzard should remove all choice and make them a talent row where anyone can change them before each pull.
Which is equivalent to asking for free class/gear/level boost because your class is simming worse due to balance issues at x boss, dungeon, content etc
Because for many of us we are maining A SPEC, not a class, a spec is an entirely different way of playing therefore your character is very very different if they are MM and if they are BM hunter for example.
Blizzard is removing choice right now by forcing you to play one spec instead of being able to play all the specs available to your class. Why do you bring simming into this every chance you get? Balancing is more than just a numbers issue, it’s a playstyle issue as well, Marksmanship is unfun from a mechanical standpoint and therefore I quit for most of BfA because it was an unfun playstyle coupled with the constant grindy nature of BfA in general, if I wanted numbers I’d have swapped to Beast Mastery and I’m only Beast Mastery now because it’s easier to do open world content for me to grind out Pathfinder.
And for even MORE they are maining A CLASS, there are MANY people who play multiple specs or are you saying that every Paladin has only rolled a Paladin to play JUST Ret, or JUST Holy, or JUST Prot? Why are your preferences more important than theirs? How does it HURT you to allow people to choose how THEY play the game?
You’re just as bad as people who decline people from Group Finder if you think that people who play multiple specs and roles should be punished. How would Blizzard be able to make it so that a Covenant is SPEC-based instead of CHARACTER-based? I have seen nothing in the past that makes me think they’d be able to separate that choice based on the SPEC of a character, they can’t even make Azerite Armor Spec-based and yet you’re asking them to make Covenants Spec-based?
How exactly are they stopping you? Because I am enjoying MM and will continue to play mm since I find by disgusting and survival to not be my thing.
Are you saying you don’t like the gameplay? Because the gameplay will not be liked by everyone, everyone likes different things so you won’t like many specs while you will love others gameplay wise.
Stop pretending you are always the majority, of anything the current covenant arguments prove there’s a huge number of people who support the system while a loud minority keeps acting like they are the majority cuz bellular is against the current version of covenants.
Because when it comes to covenants caving to fotmers and min maxers hurts the game because bad players worship said people and try to FORCE OTHERS to also min max, that is how it affects us, because people instead of getting better by learning their class they tell themselves they got better because they copied the method meta build for x content and also tell others what to do.
It’s called programming, they can, whenever or not they choose to spend resources on that is another matter
This isn’t just about me and my enjoyment of Hunters, they are punishing people who enjoy playing more than one spec. If I don’t enjoy the way Hunters play I’ll either quit, or I’ll find another class that I want to play, I didn’t for BfA because I detest other aspects of the expansion.
So you’re allowed to think that you’re the majority just because you like to play one spec and I’m not allowed to argue and say that the majority likes to play multiple? Where is your proof that the majority plays just one spec? Where is your proof that the majority are in support of the system? Have you conducted a poll? You keep making bad faith arguments and bringing in things that no one else has mentioned in this thread. I’m just looking that the system and basing on what Blizzard has done before and assuming that they won’t be able to make it balanced in any way.
What hurts the game more is another expansion being bad at the start. I personally think that there will be a lot less Tanks and Healers available for pugs if it’s too long of a grind to switch between Covenants. Who’s FORCING you to min max? You might not get taken into Mythic+ if you’re playing a certain class, sure but that’s never going to change, to think that Covenant choices are going to be the make or break for why people invite you to keys is laughable.
People don’t take Shadow Priests and Warlocks into keys because the way they’re perceived is that they don’t have good AoE not because they’re unable to do them. Players who copy meta builds are always going to copy them because they want to succeed at whatever content they’re focused on, this argument is completely useless because this isn’t even Covenant based, if you want people to stop declining certain classes for keys and raids, ask Blizzard to make changes to have those classes be more desirable.
Do you really think that Blizzard would spend more time on making sure that Covenants are able to be Spec-based than just making Covenants able to be switched between more freely? The programming for switching Covenants is already there. Answer me this, why would they spend more time making it so that your choice is locked in on a spec-by-spec basis?
Inevitably, one choice will be the best for raiding and one will be the worst.
It’s impossible to have exactly equal balance. This difference is inevitable.
If you happened to pick the wrong covenant choice, you just screwed your character for the entire expansion. Time to re-roll.
Seems like dumb game design to me. Personally, I think permanent choices like that should only affect minor things, like racial abilities. But in Shadowlands, they affect major expansion abilities.
Based on how bad BFA is, I have very low confidence Blizzard will get it right next expansion.
But with classes you can switch freely and never lose what you’ve already earned on those characters.
That’s the punishing nature of covenants - they’re even more punitive than class swapping because if you go back to a covenant you’ve “leveled” you’ll have to spend even more time to get to where you were before than you did the first time; you never have to worry about that with classes.