No, I don’t. Because everything is grindy and tied to RNG. Nothing is impactful or permanent. If my choices were permanent, then I could work arround tweaking my build. As of now, you get borrowed power that directions you towards a way to play the game.
Like I said, the game is streamlined, it kinda plays it by itself. 0 agency. 0 variety. 0 customization.
They even removed tier sets, lol. No more stats, its all STR. Not hit/expertise. No caps to reach. No leather/mail item is gonna be good for me. Nothing.
Iirc the normal definition of borrowed power is “a major change to gameplay that exists only for a time in this expansion” and doesn’t have anything to do with the difficulty of earning it. Just that it’s temporary.
Well, suck it up nerd, to customize your character you need to GRIND BOY! Rings a bell… something you’ve said yourself perhaps…
Right. Now you remember.
Covenants are not permanent either. Unless the world ends in 2 years? Then you could argue it is kinda permanent.
You are given the ability to take whatever azerite, essences, and corruption you want. And you do not take it. That is the power of player agency: You took the decision to not create gimmicky builds because you care about your character’s power.
Yep. Pick the least bad Covenant and roll with it. Nice agency!
If anything iLvL will remain the biggest determinant of whether you get in groups.
Also, I frankly don’t understand the need for Blizzard to include a gimmick in each expansion. In Legion it was the artifacts, in BFA it’s the necklace, and in SL it’s the Covenants. I don’t see why they don’t just make each class kit more interesting and leave it at that… I frankly don’t mind if Covenants were just purely cosmetic…
No and no. If you are playing a X RPG game and you are a fire mage and you choose to increase your shadow damage over increasing your fire damage, thats not agency. You are just being stupid. Of course it is not gonna work. Its different than choosing something that increase your fire damage dot, over your fire aoe or single target.
WoW BfA gives you a bunch of random options with 0 synergy. You can’t make a unique build. The game is made with a build in mind for each spec. Templates. Its bad. Covenants will hopefully change that.
That’s still dependent on both the same covenant being good for all content, which it probably won’t particularly for PvP and if it’s different for M+ and raiding, then picking based on covenant abilities would probably come further down the line in the decisions.
And how much power covenant abilities give will be a huge factor. There will be a spot where ilvl beats covenant ability in throughput. We don’t know where that is yet.
And spec/class will overrule them all likely.
The only thing that matters in M+ is throughput and skill at dealing with mechanics. There’s a lot of factors dictating the first one.
Covenants are not permanent. Is this hard to understand?
Have you forgotten that Shadowlands won’t last forever or?
What in the world…
You need to do some research before talking out of your butt too much. Fire mages actually increases their fire damage by picking the good corruption effects!
I think you need a reminder on what agency really means: The capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power.
Locked up player powers prevents the capacity of acting over your character’s powers and customizations. A direct contradiction to agency.
I wasn’t refering to wow. I just did a super simple example of how having random nonsense options to choose in a RPG game does not give the player options, but you couldn’t even understand that so yea… hope Covenants hit HARD and make people like you and OP question yourselves as to why you are still playing this.
I lost count of how many times I forgot to change azerite/talents and went with a PvP build in a +15 pug. Guess what? I was still top dps.
I am playing my DH in 8.3 for thag very reason. I am able to get into whatever raid boss I want on my Aff lock, without issue. I cannot get into a M+ to save my life. The class is bad at AOE so I dont get taken.
This is no difffent, except now you will subdivide further.
The fact that my Aff lock is denied entry to keys for being Affliction, is proof that will carry over. If you think people care you had to make a hard choice that’s a LOL. They dont.
IE yes you will still be declined for having the right coventant for the wrong content. If you have a PVE boon Covenant that’s garbage in arena and you think I am going to Q with you, you have another thing coming. Same applies to Raids and M+. This is going to pigeonhole everyone in to 1 of those 3 content choices.
I think the obvious solution is for this game to move past pugging as a primary grouping method like it’s direct competitors did.
Queue for everything except the top tier.
Here’s the thing though,the choices SHOULDN’T be considered poor to begin with. What’s the point in options that sound appealing and flavorful if you can’t do anything because of going with the route that’s the most fun rather than the one that feels factory mass produced/conforms to the alleged golden child robot formula? When these features are implemented,they should have it to where all are viable so people can add much needed diversity of play to the game instead of stacking a group of race/class/spec combo because a souless spreadsheet says so. When a game requires and railroads you into a means of conformity just to progress and enjoy its entirety rather than get left in the dust when trying to pug [because guilds are pretty much dead or have server monopolies these days]
Back in my hayday before I shelved my rogue,it was mostly trial and error,a wipe happens? Back to the drawing board and assigning different people to different mechanics while still letting them be the class/spec combo they want and 9/10 from my experiences? It worked well. We didn’t need spreadsheets,add ons [save for maybe DBM],stat shaming websites or some streamer talking out of their butt as though their opinion is gospel to make endgame fights work. And if more ideal specs were suggested,people were willing to help their fellow player [even when cross-realm became a thing in CATA there was no issue] rather than the “Shut up,don’t waste my time,you suck,you picked a crap spec and your opinion doesn’t matter!” mentality that seems to have festered into the community over time and moreso prevalent today.
Ironically coming from those who say they miss the feeling of community yet seem to turn up their nose at said community seeing other players as lesser/inferior rather than someone with potential who just wants to have the same fun as everyone else no more,no less. The people airing grievances about this are absolutely justified in airing it as it is a legitimate concern given homogenization/sameness has always been a VERY common critique,yet people have to play the same specs or else miss out/conform or bust.
This could very well bite Blizzard in the butt if they choose to stick with methods that keep pushing this mentality forward and players who want to progress and have fun without worry of conformity out.
TLDR- Kinda pointless to give choices if only one option is considered the right way which IMO is boring AF.
And that’s my point about the power level. The worst case scenarios are Only going to happen if Covenant abilities are extremely, extremely powerful. Pyro bracers + scorch belt combined levels.
Because otherwise there are going to be bigger factors which determine who gets brought, spec being the biggest one followed by ilvl.
Exactly. No matter what there will only be one choice depending on the content. So just scrap it. Stop pushing systems that are designed to fail. Seems like common sense to me.
Did your 10k dota MMR get you the PVp build? For those that don’t know, everything this dude says is a lie. He claimed multiple times to be 10k in dota, which there is like 10 people that are. Dont listen to anything he says, he is a troll, if not a flat put liar and Ion fan boy.