Everything died. I got to log out haha!
This is what happens when they let us know about an expansion before it’s released. There is no way to make everyone happy, so why don’t we let the owners of the game make it the way they want. Go play something else or learn to get over it.
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I’d argue it’s more because it’s easier to balance a ‘meta’ build. The combinatorial nature of the gearing and power system means blizz can’t balance everything because it’s literally impossible so they don’t. They make obvious paths to power and balance those. This is why covenants are a false choice. They aren’t; Blizz has already decided what the meta will be. You can either lean into it and do well for some types of content, or lean against it and feel warm and fuzzy about a choice. It’s a really horrible dichotomy honestly.
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There should be a giant bucket of green slime that gets tipped on someone whenever they say this.
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Like on nickelodeon? Guess your opinion is more important than mine.
ROFLMAO! I have a very vivid imagination and reading this tripped it so bad, I still can’t stop laughing.
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Just like on Nickelodeon!
And it’s not that my opinion is more important, it’s that yours is just really bad.
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Stopped reading here. If you want to push into M+ or raiding above LFR the only thing stopping you is yourself.
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Agreed, people who, in their eyes, wants the game to be better and think something is bad, they wont help fix anything by being quiet or leaving the game, thats just giving up. Thats where giving feedback comes in.
In my case, i gave up. In 10 hours i will get to know if i can post on the forums without a sub.
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My opinion is that people should relax, its not our game and if they cant relax then play something else. How is that bad? I’m basically saying don’t bother yourself…seriously, it’s pretty much the best thing for you.
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I actually agree with you and have done another thread basically laying out the three options as:
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Calm down
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Play with friends
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Or just solo and stick to queued content
If you can’t do one of those three, WoW doesn’t really have to cater to you. The option exists within the confines of “calm down” to do any number of things… reasonably.
There’s optimal, sub-optimal, and non-functional. There’s always going to be a best choice, there’s always going to be choices that aren’t “best”-- the bad design falls in choices that actively hurt your gameplay. In talents, these wind up where one choice on a row fills a gaping hole in a class, or where the other choices are so bad that taking them is effectively shooting yourself in the foot. The one that springs to mind all the time for me is Vengeance DH Spirit Bomb. Vengeance needs a way to quickly burn shards, and no matter how good the other choices are on the row, they can’t compare because they don’t fill that hole in the spec. Every choice except Spirit Bomb is wrong.
That’s what Covenants shouldn’t look like, and it doesn’t appear they’re going that way. Even if they aren’t all the #1 top choice, I’m not seeing Covenant picks that actively make you feel bad for taking them. You might feel bad if your goal is topping the charts always, everywhere, but then it’s unlikely you’re taking anything except the most optimal pick anyway.
Again, everyone can complete every piece of relevant content. That’s the most important thing, that’s where “balance” lies, in my opinion.
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Looking at the DH covenants (what I’m likely playing) there is definitely “wrong”. Right now pretty much anything but Venthyr is “wrong”. Or more to the point “Useless” like the nightborne racial… they’re there but using them can be a net loss.
Agreed and if it wasn’t double digit differences that are not tuneable (due to the basic mechanics) I’d agree. But in many cases it is that way and there is no obvious fix but literally start from scratch on the useless ones. It’s not a trivial thing and it’s not something they have time for. There will be very very wrong choices, quite a lot of useless choices, and a few ‘right’ choices when the expac launches. Moreover the fact that the ‘right’ choices almost never align with RP choices again leaves players in a bad spot of “do I do the content I want, or do I follow the RP I’d like” which just feels horrible. Players should never ever be asked to give up content for RP or vice versa. Don’t tell me this isn’t a thing: RP-PVP is real and the players involved have mentioned this is a a major issue (one guild has already gone as far as to ban maldraxxus outright )
I can get behind screaming at Blizzard to balance the Covenants properly. I’m happy to jump on that train right now, in fact. We have very recently seen some pretty major structural changes to classes and Covenants both, so I’m not a fan of “Blizz can’t do it, scrap the whole concept” right out of the gate.
Is Venthyr the one that throws the AoE curse out whenever you Meta? Regardless, I think all the DH picks look interesting… And I would be interested in seeing how they perform in different content, not just going off straight numbers. But yeah, I can definitely get behind screaming for them to be fixed and balanced properly.
So the issue is it’s combinatorial. They mathematically can’t it’s literally computationally impossible because it’s an NP complete problem. Given the nature it would literally take longer than the death heat of the universe to calculate and balance the way they’ve designed it. Because you can’t just take each ability on it’s own. You have to look at how it interacts with everything else. This is why things like sims are often wrong. They assume a defined path that a human thinks is optimal to start with because it’s impossible to find the exact right rotation for any given situation in a reasonable amount of time.
Edit this is literally the Clique problem:
For PvE your choices is Venthyr, for PvP you can consider night fae. Otherwise… don’t bother is the way it looks.
I have to fall back on, again; the baseline is “can every Covenant choice participate in all available relevant content”? For these purposes, I define relevant as content that provides tangible rewards in the form of gear-- expecting every possible combination to be able to do the same tier of key, or hit #1 in arena, is an invitation to homogenization.
They can balance to that baseline, it’s fine if things land higher.
My guess is they’ll have to because blizz seems bound and determined to force the issue. The question is more “can this combination of class/spec/covenant provide enough utility for relevant content” and that I’m very very very not convinced on. That bothers me more because that leads back to the dichotomy between RP/Gameplay. People say it doesn’t matter but for many players that are not the best (myself included) we rely on getting whatever edge we can to get through the content we enjoy (heroic raiding in my case). I’m not good enough to be a mythic raider, I know that. At the same time, my guild took quite a while to clear Nya’lotha so anything that holds us back scares me.
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I’m one of those who lost all faith on Blizz balancing abilities, or to be more accurate, on their ability to execute content well, i’m not sure they’re able release a system thats good from the start instead of waiting for months/patches to adress the issues so it gets better, a betterment that will come with a catch…
Hopefully i’m wrong this time around and they will do good. Maybe in the future i get to hear of shadowlands as a good thing for the game. As for me, i wont be around on the expansion i think. I’m very, very tired of insisting with a game hoping that tomorrow will be better and that i will have fun. I would rather go elsewhere where i will be sure to have fun.
I’m glad we participate at basically the same content level, it makes it much easier to have a conversation when our perspectives sync up.
At what point in Nya’lotha were you held back because you didn’t stack enough DHs, or had too many Feral Druids? When were people’s choices an issue, and not their class knowledge, stats, or participation in systems? I get that this is a fine point to make, but at no point in Heroic Nya did I feel held back by choices beyond “I don’t feel like trying tonight” or “I don’t want to get gear and want to be carried”. Covenants aren’t classes-- they aren’t even sub-classes, whatever Ion wants to say-- but they should feel like that same level of choice.
Picking an optimal Covenant might give you a leg up, but you should never be able to say “Well, we’ve gotten every piece of gear available at this point, everybody is performing perfectly, that last 5% isn’t going unless Sam switches from Night Fae to Kyrian.”
Edit:
I don’t honestly have much faith either. I’m in to give it a shot, but if Blizz drops the ball I’ll probably be out too.
Why does it have to be this? Why can’t it be “not enough DPS” or “Not enough healing” or “Too squishy a tank” (as the person tanking it wasn’t that for the most part). The point is more that 5% is still 5% and if the covenant choice has double digit differences that can have a massive impact on a guilds ability to progress. It’s not about that sort of comp things that the mythic guilds do. It’s literally about eking out enough of a win to declare victory and move on.
Also… Vexiona for a bit but we’re long past that now and have our AOTCs.
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