I think “we don’t” as that would undermine one of the core parts of the expansion.
If one hunter can shoot through the pillar you’re hiding behind and your hunter can’t, thats pretty clearly more than a 10% advantage.
If one assassination rogue can debuff healing by 25% and the other can debuff by 40%, thats pretty clearly more than a 10% advantage.
Certainly “how soulbinds impact this” is an unknown variable and the assessment lacks control, but this is hardly premature conjecture.
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When I make groups (which isn’t often) I accept pretty much anyone within the default recommended ilvl range; filtering people makes me feel bad because I like to give everyone a chance.
So I would absolutely take someone with the “wrong” covenant.
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Yes, because I personally find the idea of demanding someone else minmax to be obnoxious, especially for content that doesn’t need to be calculated down to the .01% of optimization.
This being said…if minmaxing is your thing def do your thing and I’ll do mine 
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All of the abilities aren’t even in the Alpha yet, much less tuned. And we don’t know how they will interact with soulbinds and other such things. The sky may fall at some point, chicken little, but it hasn’t even gotten close to starting yet.
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Well if you’re pushing the most difficult content then you would want those with the best traits to push that content. If you’re the coach of a track team, then you want those that have the best diet, train the most etc. If you want the best team you take those with the best attributes.
Even with pugs if someone is taking a skill, talent, covenant, etc that is known to not be the best, then it’s more likely they aren’t putting in the effort to be their best.
if transmog wasn’t a thing, would you take a player with a sword thats 100 ilvls lower because it just looks better?
No such thing as a wrong Covenant.
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Is not much different from the idea of people banning certain specs of a class or even talent picks…
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Right, and the prevalence of being rejected by spec is already very common. Lots groups just auto decline feral, enhance, shadow, etc.
It would not matter to me, since I’m really casual.
But I know there will be threads on this topic, when SL is out. I see what you mention EXACTLY happening to raiders/mythic people; I’ve already started to feel sorry for them. 
Obviously thos “Method” people, that I know nothing about except people mention them, will select the exact best ones for what they do.
I’ll actually pick the best all around casual content one, for me, probably
Swarming Mist (Venthyr)
A heavy mist surrounds you for 8 sec, increasing your Dodge by 10%.
Deals (20% of Attack power) Shadow damage every 1 sec to enemies within 10 yds. Every time it deals damage you gain 3 Runic Power, up to a maximum of (30 / 10 * 5) Runic Power.
unless
Death’s Due (Night Fae) which replaces Death and Decay, is way better.
Drain power from each enemy within the area, reducing their damage done by 10% and increasing your Strength by 80 for 10 sec.
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The answer to that is obviously yes. Even if these abilities purely boiled down to utility, and they were numerically similar, some utility (notably Venthrys general ability) is so drastically powerful that it could define certain strategies within a fight.
You could rephrase this question similarly with any of the previous systems that Blizzard have rolled out.
“If someone had utility legendaries in 8.1, would you take them to Mythic Gul’dan, or any other boss that requires a significant DPS check”?
“If someone had Rank 1 Essences, would you take them to Mythic Azshara?”
“If someone was running 0, or 100 Corruption, would you take them to Mythic Carapace?”
“If someone picked their Azerite Traits seemingly at random, would you recruit them?”
Typically, the answer is no. With maybe an exception to the Legendaries simply because you couldn’t control which ones you actually had, especially early on in the expansion.
A lot of these choices aren’t rejected because of potential, but simply because actively making the wrong decisions in regards to optimization shows that you don’t really care. Guilds can forgive a lot if a player is learning to improve themselves, but the absolute first step of improving your skill as a player is learning how your class actually works from a mathematical standpoint.
Or put differently, the main difference between Gemming and Enchanting for X Stat over Y stat is simply that choosing the right stat means that the player did enough research to understand the difference between the two.
Why do people assume that someone who understands theorycrafting to the point of min-maxing their Covenant wouldn’t understand the actual fight mechanics better than someone who picked Night Fae because Night Fae are pretty?
Also the assumption that the difference in Covenant is only 1% is laughable.
“It’s only alpha, beta, PTR, they’ll fix it in X.1, X.2, X.3!, next expansion we won’t have to worry about it!”
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Honestly? I could care less what other people roll. If it works for you and you do decent DPS/HPS/EHP fine I don’t care. What bothers me about the system as described (currently) is that I can’t be sure I’m bringing my best game to the party. That’s incredibly frustrating and I’m definitely not top 1%. I suspect the differences will be a lot more than 10% in some cases to the point that blizz will be forced to either do drastic and extremely painful balancing that will massively upset the people that took those abilities; or gut the system all together as Ion has suggested.
To me if considering gutting the system is a ‘fix’; then the system is fundamentally broken.
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That is a very very bad and dumb idea. Not to mention the Covenants are not actively going all out head to head against each other.
As for ‘wrong choice’. That is a bull crap statement. If I want to play what I want then I will. I shouldn’t be forced into playing something I don’t want to play for the sake of being 2k to 5k better. That is not how an MMO should be played and as Ion said, the SImCraft bull crap needs to stop because it ruins the fun of a game because people make things feel like a job.
If people want to act like that, then they can just leave. i will never play with those types of people.
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if me n my group of friend ever get really serious about the game instead of just enjoying our goof off time in a world that doesnt exist again enough to start trying to actively recruit others, yeah. even then…if your cool, fun/funny, not a drama queen … who cares if you are min/max and thats for both our horde and alliance side
I’m going to bet that similar to showing azerite gear and traits now, raider.io will start showing the users covenant choice and soulbinds as well.
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You know I am actually using 1% as an arbitrary number, right?
Someone should be able to choose Nightfae, because that is their desired covenant vs being forced to go necro or Venthyr for the “best ability” in order to be competitive in m+. Even people who enjoy M+ like myself, also like to get the best looking armor they often can, covenants have good mogs.
I’m going Fae along with my wife. I don’t care if another covenant makes me do 2 more dps, we are going what looks fun to us. If that makes someone not want to let me join their group I would not want to group with some elitist jerk like that anyway.
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Covenants are dumb idea and should be removed. Its just dumb. Everyone with an IQ over 3 can see that people will take only certain covenants for instances and pvp. Its just dumb.
Yes because the ‘wrong’ covenant won’t mean much to begin with
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Because this world is filled with guides any brain dead person can follow to make themselves think they are good. Too many players are incapable of thinking for themselves and just copy what the interenet tells them is the right choice.
And I am am picking Night Fae cause it seems fitting for a Shaman and love their style. I can assure you I am much better than the wannabe min/maxers gaming is plagued with.
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