Overwatch Patch Notes - April 6, 2020

Shadowlands - Covenant Class and Signature Abilities Preview
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Four ruling powers control the Shadowlands, each of which is in desperate need of aid from the heroes of Azeroth. In exchange for your help, the Covenants are willing to share a piece of their power and access to the rewards and other blessings, boons, or temptations they have to offer.

As you level up on your initial journey through each of their domains, you’ll get to experience the abilities they have to offer firsthand—before you ultimately choose the Covenant you wish to dedicate yourself to.

  • Kyrians: The denizens of Bastion, these angelic beings embrace humility and service to their order.
  • Necrolords: Comprised of liches, warlords, and spies, the Necrolord Covenant calls Maldraxxus home. They make up the army that defends the Shadowlands.
  • Night Fae: Guardians of nature, the Night Fae inhabit Ardenweald and shepherd beings through the cycle of life and death. It was through their aid that the demigod Cenarius was able to make his return to Azeroth during the events of the Cataclysm.
  • Venthyr: Making their home in Revendreth, the vampiric Venthyr are the punishers of the unworthy, seeking to rehabilitate the sinful souls sent to them by the Arbiter.

When the time comes to ally with one of these four, you’ll want to carefully consider the abilities the Covenant will provide you. Each provides two abilities tailored to the theme of the Covenant. The first of these is the Covenant’s signature ability, which is available to all Covenant members regardless of class, race, or specialization. This ability helps you explore and engage with the world in new ways, and gives you a unique tool to help solve the problems you encounter in the Shadowlands. The second of these abilities is specific to your class, and gives you a new spell or power to use in combat.

To give you an idea of what to expect, we’ve put together a list with the Covenant signature abilities and class abilities. Please keep in mind that these are a work in progress and may have additional changes during the course of development and testing, so all abilities shown here are subject to change.

Covenant Signature Abilities

Covenant - Kyrian

Signature Ability - Summon Steward
  • Call your steward to bring you a Phial of Serenity that can be consumed to restore some of your health and remove all Curse, Disease, Poison, and Bleed Effects.
  • Your Steward additionally offers access to a selection of useful amenities, each once per day.

Covenant - Venthyr

Signature Ability - Door of Shadows
  • Wend through the shadows, appearing at the targeted location.

Covenant - Necrolord

Signature Ability - Fleshcraft
  • Form a shield of flesh and bone that prevents damage equal to a portion of your maximum health. Standing near the corpse of a defeated enemy when the ability is cast will create a larger shield.

Covenant - Night Fae

Signature Ability - Soulshape
  • Turn into a Vulpin, increasing movement speed. You may reactivate Soulshape to teleport a short distance forward.
  • Additional cosmetic forms can be earned and collected through a variety of gameplay.
  • While out in the world, this effect has a short duration before it wears off, but lasts indefinitely while in a rest area.

Aligning with a specific Covenant provides access to class abilities that provide additional combat-oriented gameplay options that are tailored to the theme of that Covenant. Every Covenant offers an ability for each class, but note that some Covenant class abilities are still in development and are not currently represented in the chart.

Bastion Covenant abilities shown for: Priest and Warrior.



Covenant Class Abilities

Death Knight
  • Shackle the Unworthy (Kyrian) - Admonish your target for their past transgressions, reducing the damage they deal to you and dealing Arcane damage over time. Shackle the Unworthy's cooldown is reduced when you damage the affected enemy with a Rune-spending attack.
  • Swarming Mist (Venthyr) - A heavy mist surrounds you, increasing your chance to dodge. Deals Shadow damage over time to enemies within range. Every time it deals damage you gain additional Runic Power, up to a maximum amount.
  • Abomination Limb (Necrolord) - Sprout an additional limb for a limited time, dealing Shadow damage to nearby enemies. If an enemy is farther away from you, they are pulled to your location.
  • Death’s Due - (Replaces Death and Decay). Corrupts the targeted ground, causing Shadow damage over a duration of time to targets within the area. Affected enemies deal reduced damage to you (up to a maximum amount) and their power is transferred to you as an equal amount of Strength. While you remain within the area, your Necrotic Strike and Heart Strike will hit additional targets. Scourge Strike and Clawing Shadows will hit all enemies near the target.

Demon Hunter
  • Elysian Decree (Kyrian) - Carve runes into the ground in front of you, which detonate to deal Arcane damage and shatter Lesser Soul Fragments from enemies.
  • Sinful Brand (Venthyr) - Brand an enemy with the mark of the Venthyr, reducing their melee and casting speeds and inflicting Shadow damage over time. Activating Metamorphosis applies Sinful Brand to all nearby enemies.
  • Necrolord - Work in Progress
  • The Hunt (Night Fae) - Charge to an enemy, inflicting Nature damage and rooting them. The target is marked for a period of time, increasing your Fury from Demon's Bite and Shear against them. You may reactivate The Hunt every 30 seconds to teleport behind the marked target and ignoring line of sight.

Druid
  • Kindred Spirits (Kyrian) - Form a bond with an ally. On a cooldown, you may empower the bond for a period of time, granting you an effect based on your partner’s role, and granting them an effect based on your role.
  • Ravenous Frenzy (Venthyr) - For a period of time, Druid spells you cast increase your damage, healing, and haste by a percentage, stacking. If you spend a period of time idle, the Frenzy overcomes you, consuming a percentage of your health per stack, stunning you, and then ending.
  • Adaptive Swarm (Necrolord) - Command a swarm that heals or deals Shadow damage to a target and increases the effectiveness of your periodic effects on them. Upon expiration, travels to a new target within range, alternating between friend and foe up to a set number of times.
  • Convoke the Spirits (Night Fae) - Call upon the Night Fae for an eruption of energy, channeling a rapid flurry of 16 Druid spells and abilities over 4 seconds. You will cast Moonfire, Wrath, Regrowth, Rejuvenation, Thrash, Rake, Shred, and Ironfur on appropriate nearby targets, favoring your current specialization.

Hunter
  • Resonating Arrow (Kyrian) - Fire a resonating arrow to the target location and fill the area with echoing anima. The effect causes your attacks to ignore line of sight to enemies in the area, and you have an increased critical strike chance against them.
  • Flayed Shot (Venthyr) - Fire a shot at your enemy, causing them to bleed Shadow damage over a period of time. Each time Flayed Shot deals damage, you have a chance to gain Flayer's Mark, causing your next Kill Shot to be usable on any target, regardless of their current health.
  • Death Chakram (Necrolord) - Throw a deadly chakram at your current target which will rapidly deal additional Shadow damage. Each time the chakram damages a different target, its damage is increased, and you generate additional Focus.
  • Night Fae - Work in Progress

Mage
  • Radiant Spark (Kyrian) - Conjure a radiant spark that causes Arcane damage instantly and additional damage over time. The target takes a percentage of increased damage from your direct damage spells, stacking each time they are struck. This effect ends after a number of spells.
  • Mirrors of Torment (Venthyr) - Conjure mirrors to torment the enemy for a time. Whenever the target casts a spell or ability, a mirror is consumed to inflict Shadow damage and their movement and cast speed are slowed. The final mirror will instead inflict Shadow damage to the enemy, Rooting and Silencing them for some time.
  • Deathborne (Necrolord) - Transform into a powerful Skeletal Mage for a period of time. While in the form of a Skeletal Mage, your Frostbolt, Fireball, and Arcane Blast are greatly enhanced, and your spell damage is increased.
  • Shifting Power (Night Fae) - Draw from the ground beneath you for a period of time, dealing Nature damage over time to nearby enemies. While channeling, your ability cooldowns are reduced.

Monk
  • Weapons of Order (Kyrian) - For a short duration, your Mastery is increased by a percentage. In addition: Windwalkers’ Rising Sun Kick cooldown is reset instantly, and your Rising Sun Kick reduces the cost of your Chi abilities; Brewmasters’ Keg Smash cooldown is reset, and enemies hit by Keg Smash take increased damage from you (stacks up to a set amount); Mistweavers’ Essence Font cooldown is reset instantly and heals nearby allies on channel start and end.
  • Venthyr - Work in Progress
  • Bonedust Brew (Necrolord) - Hurl a brew created from the bones of your enemies at the ground, coating all targets struck for 10 seconds. Your abilities have an additional 15% chance to affect the target a second time with 25% effectiveness as either Shadow damage or healing.
    • Brewmaster: Tiger Palm and Keg Smash reduces the cooldown of your brews by an additional 1 second when striking enemies affected by Bonedust Brew.
    • Windwalker: Spinning Crane Kick refunds 1 Chi when striking enemies affected by Bonedust Brew.
    • Mistweaver: Gust of Mist provides additional healing to allies affected by Bonedust Brew.
  • Night Fae - Work in Progress

Paladin
  • Divine Toll (Kyrian) - Instantly cast Holy Shock, Avenger's Shield, or Judgment on several targets within range (based on your current specialization).
  • Ashen Hallow (Venthyr) - Hallow the target area, dealing Shadow damage split among enemies and restoring health split among injured allies over time. The land remains filled with anima, causing additional Shadow damage to all enemies. You gain the benefits of Consecration while within the area.
  • Necrolord (Necrolord) - Work in Progress
  • Night Fae - Work in Progress

Priest
  • Boon of the Ascended (Kyrian) - Gain the Boon of the Ascended, granting access to Ascended Nova and Ascended Blast, and increasing your movement speed. Both abilities damage your enemies, heal your allies, and build power that will erupt in a powerful explosion of damage and healing at the end of Boon of the Ascended’s duration.
  • Mindgames (Venthyr) - Assault an enemy's mind, dealing Shadow damage and briefly reversing their perception of reality. For a period of time, the next damage they deal will heal their target, and the next healing they do will damage their target.
  • Unholy Nova (Necrolord) - An explosion of dark energy heals nearby allies and infects nearby enemies with Unholy Transfusion.
    Unholy Transfusion deals Shadow damage over time. Enemies who damage this target receive healing.
  • Night Fae - Work in Progress

Rogue
  • Echoing Reprimand (Kyrian) - Deal Arcane damage to an enemy, extracting their anima to Animacharge a combo point. Damaging finishing moves that consume the same number of your combo points as your Animacharge deal damage as if they consume 7 combo points.
  • Slaughter (Venthyr) - Slaughter the target, causing Physical damage. The target's anima mixes with your lethal poison, coating your weapons for the next 5 minutes. Slaughter Poison deals Shadow damage over time and steals a percentage of healing done to the target. This also awards combo points.
  • Serrated Bone Spike (Necrolord) - Embed a bone spike in the target, dealing Physical damage over time until they die. Attacking with Serrated Bone Spike causes all of your active bone spikes to fracture and strike your current target, increasing initial damage by a percentage per spike.
    Unholy Transfusion deals Shadow damage over time. Enemies who damage this target receive healing.
  • Night Fae - Work in Progress

Shaman
  • Vesper Totem (Kyrian) - Summon a totem at the target location for 30 seconds. Your next 3 damage spells or abilities will cause the totem to radiate Arcane damage to enemies near the totem and your next 3 healing spells will heal up to 6 allies near the totem. Casting this ability again while the totem is active will relocate the totem.
  • Chain Harvest (Venthyr) - Send a wave of anima at the target, which then jumps to additional nearby targets. Deals Shadow damage to enemies and restores health to allies. For each target critically struck, the cooldown of Chain Harvest is reduced.
  • Primordial Wave (Necrolord) - Blast your target with a Primordial Wave, healing an ally or dealing Shadow damage and applying Flame Shock to an enemy.
    • Elemental: Your next Lava Burst will also hit all targets affected by your Flame Shock.
    • Enhancement: Your next Lightning Bolt will also hit all targets affected by your Flame Shock.
    • Restoration: While an ally is targeted, Primordial Wave will cast Riptide. Your next Healing Wave will also hit all targets affected by your Riptide.
  • Night Fae - Work in Progress

Warlock
  • Scouring Tithe (Kyrian) - Deal Arcane damage instantly and additional Arcane damage over time. If the enemy dies while affected by Scouring Tithe, you generate additional Soul Shards. If they survive, Scouring Tithe's cooldown is refreshed.
  • Impending Catastrophe (Venthyr) - Call forth a cloud of chaotic anima that travels to the target enemy, dealing Shadow damage to enemies within their path. When the anima reaches the target it explodes, inflicting a random Curse and dealing Shadow damage to all nearby enemies.
  • Decimating Bolt (Necrolord) - Hurl a bolt of shadow magic at your target, dealing Shadow damage and increasing the damage of your next Incinerates, Drain Souls, or Shadow Bolts. Decimation Bolt's damage, and the bonus to Incinerate, Drain Soul, or Shadow Bolt both increase as your target's health decreases.
  • Soul Rot (Night Fae) - Expend some of your health to wither away all life force from your current target and up to 3 additional targets nearby, causing them to suffer Nature damage over 8 seconds. Additionally, casting Drain Life will also hit any enemy affected by your Soul Rot.

Warrior
  • Spear of Bastion (Kyrian) - Throw a Kyrian spear at the target location, dealing Arcane damage instantly, dealing additional damage over time, and generating Rage. Enemies hit are tethered to Spear of Bastion's location for the duration
  • Condemn (Venthyr) - (Replaces Execute) Condemn a foe to suffer for their sins, causing Shadow damage. Only usable on enemies who are above 80% health or below 20% health. The primary target is weakened, preventing a moderate amount of damage they would deal to you. If your foe survives, a portion of the Rage spent is refunded.
  • Conqueror’s Banner (Necrolord) - Brandish the banner of the Necrolords, increasing your movement speed and causing Mortal Strike, Raging Blow, and Shield Slam to grant you Glory. Killing an enemy grants additional stacks of Glory. Reactivating this ability plants the banner in the ground, granting an increased amount of maximum health and additional attack speed to you and your allies within range of the banner. Lasts additional time per Glory, up to a maximum amount.
  • Night Fae - Work in Progress

We look forward to sharing more information as development continues, and we hope this preview helps you find the Covenant that’s right for you.

Which Covenant is your current choice? Join the discussion on the forums.
This article was originally published in forum thread: Shadowlands - Covenant Class and Signature Abilities Preview started by Lumy View original post
Comments 205 Comments
  1. crakerjack's Avatar
    They don't even have all the abilities fleshed out and we're supposedly 7-8 months from release? I'm glad there's some information to work with, but it definitely is alarming when they don't even have the abilities ready at the very least.
  1. Relapses's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by crakerjack View Post
    They don't even have all the abilities fleshed out and we're supposedly 7-8 months from release? I'm glad there's some information to work with, but it definitely is alarming when they don't even have the abilities ready at the very least.
    Blizzard: Here's some pre-Alpha information.

    MMO-C: WTF, why isn't this information complete?! Lazy Blizzard.
  1. crakerjack's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by BoltBlaster View Post
    Its early alpha. They have plenty of time to figure it out.
    Oh I'm sure they do, plus it's not out of the realm of possibilities that they push the release to early 2021. Just figured the abilities would be fleshed out before any testing started. Kind of hard to compare/contrast and figure out which ones are BiS for ST/AoE when they're not all available.
  1. Wheeler's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by BoltBlaster View Post
    Its early alpha. They have plenty of time to figure it out.
    Here we go again, boys.
  1. Fiacla's Avatar
    The druid Kyrian ability reads an awful lot like Symbiosis from MoP.

    Though cool, I don't want to pick Kyrian just to have symbi.
  1. seamnstr's Avatar
    This doesn't look very fun. Every spell is like stacking three on use azerite neck traits into a single ability, albeit more class specific. Just messy imo and too decoupled from the core of the class/the regular spells. Wish they had something similar to the on use effects on legion legendarys instead, or just scratched the system entirely, and focused on making the core of the classes fun.
  1. crakerjack's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by otaXephon View Post
    Blizzard: Here's some pre-Alpha information.

    MMO-C: WTF, why isn't this information complete?! Lazy Blizzard.
    Hey man, there's 2 extremist sides on this board. Those that defend blizzard regardless and those that shit on blizzard regardless. Don't group me up with people and I won't with you. I like WoW and just because I have some actual criticism/concern doesn't make me some WoW-bashing hater. I didn't remotely say anything about blizzard being lazy or shadowlands is the end of WoW. I merely said it's a little alarming. Get your bullshit slandering out of here, doesn't do shit for anyone.
  1. Sosuke Aizen's Avatar
    Yay Druid’s get symbiosis again lol
  1. sientoo's Avatar
    this sound impossible to balance
  1. Biomega's Avatar
    Oh, this is not good. It looks like we'll be in EXACTLY the spot people feared we'll end up with, where covenant abilities have significant power disparities and min/max players will feel forced to either reroll constantly or feel gimped. Of course, we don't have exact values for everything yet - but even from a purely mechanical perspective, you can already see that some abilities have vastly different mechanics to them than others.

    Take Priest, for example - reversing enemy damage/healing sounds like it will either be largely useless or RIDICULOUSLY overpowered. Think of what'll happen if you can use this on raid bosses with massive global damage mechanics (or significant self-heals), and what that would do to class stacking. Which means it won't work on those enemies/skills. Which means it'll be a useless skill, because randomly negating some medium attack or two from enemies will never be better than dealing extra damage.

    And so on.

    Even if two out of three abilities are comparable, we're still in hot water if people avoid one covenant like the plague because it's so much worse. And of course there's always the very real possibility that you choose a covenant for its overpowered ability, only to see that ability nerfed to uselessness or see another ability buffed to higher power, making you hate your life for having to reroll. Blizzard's track record with this has not been great to say the least.

    This is just a whole universe of disaster waiting to happen. And yes they'll promise they'll balance, and they'll promise they won't just go and nerf things - they've promised that before. Look what happened.
  1. Relapses's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by crakerjack View Post
    Hey man, there's 2 extremist sides on this board. Those that defend blizzard regardless and those that shit on blizzard regardless. Don't group me up with people and I won't with you. I like WoW and just because I have some actual criticism/concern doesn't make me some WoW-bashing hater. I didn't remotely say anything about blizzard being lazy or shadowlands is the end of WoW. I merely said it's a little alarming. Get your bullshit slandering out of here, doesn't do shit for anyone.
    Cry me a river dude. Using language like "alarming" and questioning why pre-Alpha information is WIP is very much in line with the typical boring cynicism which permeates nearly every discussion on this forum.
  1. munkeyinorbit's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by BoltBlaster View Post
    Its early alpha. They have plenty of time to figure it out.
    Early alpha for blizzard means locked in and ready to go. This is pretty much it. All of the feedback we give won't be ready until 9.1 with band aid fixes and then proper fixes in 9.2 where blizzard will homogenize all of the abilities and pretty much abandon their core design philosophy. We will then get a 'we have learnt a lot from this process and will be looking at working closer with the community ..' just before 9.3.

    More blizzard bullshit. They haven't learnt a dam thing. Or they have and they just don't care. This in top of the rumoured delay for a release of 2021? #SL2021
  1. Appelgren's Avatar
    Lol.... pvp will be even more ridiculous now
  1. PixelFox's Avatar
    Ugh, another set of linked choices to make. They should make it a DAILY choice of which Covenant to follow rather than a once-and-for-all-but-lol-respecs thing.
  1. Savara's Avatar
    The start looks good but I'm worried we will be locked into these abilities without any flexibility that is either lengthy or costly
  1. Relapses's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by munkeyinorbit View Post
    Early alpha for blizzard means locked in and ready to go. This is pretty much it. All of the feedback we give won't be ready until 9.1 with band aid fixes and then proper fixes in 9.2 where blizzard will homogenize all of the abilities and pretty much abandon their core design philosophy. We will then get a 'we have learnt a lot from this process and will be looking at working closer with the community ..' just before 9.3.

    More blizzard bullshit. They haven't learnt a dam thing. Or they have and they just don't care. This in top of the rumoured delay for a release of 2021? #SL2021
    This guy gets it. Why even bother reading what Blizzard wants to do with the game? Those jerks are just gonna do whatever they want anyway!

    Personally I'm just going to cover my eyes when I see information about SL on MMO-C's front page. And if I hear somebody talking about their plans on voice comms I'm just going to hum loudly over top of them and yell "I CAN'T HEAR YOU JUST LIKE BLIZZARD CAN'T HEAR ME!" until the offending party gets the picture and shuts up.
  1. Sorshen's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by BoltBlaster View Post
    Its early alpha. They have plenty of time to figure it out.
    Lol, classic. This will be quite a ride.
  1. Mikhas's Avatar
    Why so many abilities feel like the single target, AoE and PVP ability? How I am supposed to choose the covenant I want if they have the worst ability (IMO)?
  1. decisive123's Avatar
    hey look more borrowed powers we'll lose again, I really hope they top it off with anima gear that procs random micro healing and damage thatll make up 90% of our recount details and completely overshadow my actual class abilities
  1. Mhyroth's Avatar
    Add more stuff so it's impossible to balance.

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