Shadowlands - Covenant Class and Signature Abilities Preview

Please remove the abilitys and just do cosmetics with tramsmogs or something

I wanted to go Kyrian Shaman but the Venthyr ability looks much more fun than the totem...

"You want a totem that makes some abilites do more dmg? Or a literall combined Chain Heal and Chain Lightning???"

Some of them seem only useful for PvP, such as Mindgames for Priest...

Originally Posted by Scrod

No way. There are other ways to do it.

Such as...?

First of all, rent a power starts out feeling crappy because your class is very bland.

That is basically how it always feels at the beginning of an expansion while you're leveling.

And all this fear about ability bloat is massively overstated.

You forget we went through two ability purges already in this game. It's not "massively overstated".

Classes get reworked all the time, it's ok to remove a few things in order to add others. Rent a power is just doing that on a slower time cycle, where they remove all the old powers instantly, then you SLOWLY get the new ones over time.

Okay. So what is the difference between "rental powers" and classes getting "reworked each expansion, losing and gaining new powers"?

Some of these are really cool, and some of these are, well, pretty lame. I hope that they go through some revisions before hitting live.

Originally Posted by longevity

this game has too much grind for grind's sake instead of grind for the sake of fun progression

yes this type of extra system design to add more grinds has only come about largely in the last 2 xpacs

These abilities are unlocked as soon as you choose your Covenant and there is no infinite grind resource planned for SL, only a Valor style currency with a weekly cap that is used to unlock Soulbind talents and other rewards. At least that was the plan in November.

Originally Posted by longevity

joy more rental talents instead of permanent progression

this game has too much grind for grind's sake instead of grind for the sake of fun progression

yes this type of extra system design to add more grinds has only come about largely in the last 2 xpacs

There is literally zero grinding to be done to acquire the new abilities.

Originally Posted by Daedius

Some of them seem only useful for PvP, such as Mindgames for Priest...

Depends on how it works. Imagine using it on a boss before he does a big ability that you usually have several ppl soak. So now that heals instead?

Double post

Originally Posted by shade3891

To make the game less stale over a longer period of time. But I agree it feels bad to lose stuff.

replied to the wrong person? lol

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Originally Posted by Highjinks

temporary power gains again... sigh.

see i hate this comment because its very stupid. you know why? because old system had them redoing classes entirely every expansion lol IT WAS THE SAME EFFING THING! This way it makes shit easier because its essentially a temporary addon and classes that were already good don't need massive reworks. Like Fury is awesome atm the rotation flow beautifully compared to Legion where it was fun, but the down times suckeeeddddd

The only way I see these Class Abilities working is if they give access to all the abilities at once but only one can be selected at a time with it separate from the Covenant Pledge system. Sort of like a Boon of the Covenant granted upon completing their associated Zone's Story Quest Line and you can select the one you're using from something functionally similar to the Netherlight Crucible in Oribos with like a small time limit/minor cost to limit how often a Player changes their Covenant Class ability then they could have most of the Signature Covenant Pledge stuff separate whilst making balancing and customisation less of an issue.

Originally Posted by Scrod

The difference is that long period at the start of the expansion where your class feels like shit. When MoP came out it was cool to see all the new abilities/talents pop in. When BFA came out we just lost stuff. The entire new expansion process has a terrible feeling of negative progression. It used to be that you felt like you fighting more powerful enemies and that was why things were harder, and now it just feels like you're getting weaker because the same adds you crushed at 111 are much harder at 119.

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Proof of this? I would be shocked if it were true. The whole game is about grinding for carrots now.

ahh yes....you get weaker for what is like a week of leveling....oh idk the same exact thing you felt as you were leveling in any expansion prior to this type of system lol we can't be gods starting in a new expansion, that's just stupid.

Originally Posted by Jasper Kazai

I don't get why they're so fixated on giving us temporary abilities each expansion that go away at the end. What's the point? It makes it all feel ultimately pointless.

To make the game less stale over a longer period of time. But I agree it feels bad to lose stuff.

Originally Posted by Wheeler

You'll be singing a different tune when you roll up to groups in the "Wrong" covenant and get removed. Or when you can't clear much of Torghast because Blizzard decided to nerf your covenant into the dirt.

Getting these right is good for ALL of us. Not just good for the people that do WQ's and pet battles and call it a week.

We as a community need to REALLY test these things out and do everything we can to help them succeed with these, because if we don't - They'll screw it up and SL will be another monumental failure. If it goes well - Everyone's happy.

Even if they were well balanced you'll probably have assholes that will act just like this...because don't you know every player is a mythic record chaser

Big question is if the Devs will actually listen to feedback, past few years they have been stubbornly ignoring our feedback in Alphas, beta and ptr runs until it gets added to live and it turned out as much as a bad idea as feedback from testors have suggested.

*YAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwn*

This is worth an entire expansion...?

Originally Posted by Scrod

The difference is that long period at the start of the expansion where your class feels like shit. When MoP came out it was cool to see all the new abilities/talents pop in. When BFA came out we just lost stuff.

BfA gave you "early tier set bonuses" in the form of Azerite Gear. Not the same thing, and a bit underwhelming, I agree, but we don't know how the progression will be in Shadowlands.

The entire new expansion process has a terrible feeling of negative progression. It used to be that you felt like you fighting more powerful enemies and that was why things were harder, and now it just feels like you're getting weaker because the same adds you crushed at 111 are much harder at 119.

It's called "level scaling" and it allows us to pick and choose our own leveling path instead of following a fixed path every single time. And this "we fought more powerful enemies" reasoning falls apart when you consider, for example, that before "level scaling" was a thing, the giant rock mobs you'd fight at the upper left corner of Hellfire Peninsula are less powerful than a simple blood elf in Netherstorm. At least by your reasoning. Because it's all a gameplay illusion. They're not "more powerful".

I don't recall feeling this meh about an expansion in ages.

Funny like Hell breaks loose after the first Alpha notes where like 30 percent of the Abilities are missing. People net to step down a little. Before Legion no Class hat an answer to everything even if some got pretty close. It is okay that the Covenant Abilites for all diverse. They all have their place and its your job to maximize the effect.
The Class specific ones could be ok too depending if Content will be reworked too. Some issues are there are (Only DPS wise) some better for AoE and some better for single Target. We have to wait if it will really matter.

Originally Posted by Lucavian

Depends on how it works. Imagine using it on a boss before he does a big ability that you usually have several ppl soak. So now that heals instead?

No doubt there'll be a cap.

Originally Posted by javierdsv

Oh, so chosing a covenant will not be based on what you like, but what you sim best for your spec.

This is going to suck, unless you can pursue a different covenant allegiance after you're done or advanced with your first.

They NEED to let you go for all covenants and let you switch between them if they want this to be appealing.
And even so, it will be very non alt friendly... but we are already used to this right?

My suggestion to them would be to: Make the class specific abilities an unlockable TALENT in the same row if you complete all that covenant content, and let you unlock them all. So when you finish the content of all 4 covenants you have 4 talents to choose on the same row.

Well, Blizzard preaches that choice of covenant is up to players, but sadly we all know thats not how this game works.
So yes, by the looks of it - Covenant choice sadly depends on your main spec.

For instance, like i mentioned earlier, look at DKs "Swarming Mist" Covenant ability and then look rest of them. Swarming Mist looks like obvious choice in all cases. Or warriors "Conqueror’s Banner" ability for group play or "Condemn" for soloing. Conqueror’s Banner looks far too good for most cases again due to sheer utility.

They did say that you can switch Covenants, and progress with new one keeping the progress on old. However it will not be easy, nor cheap, as its not intended for us to swap Covenants frequently.
In addition, all covenant cosmetics are covenant locked so you wont be able to use covenant transmog that you earned if you are not specced into that covenant.

Honestly, Covenants should be scrapped in their current form.
My idea was that we should get another talent row with unlockable talents as we cap covenant progression - with 4th Covenant being class wide ability.
Picking and sticking a covenant would provide boost to talent that you unlocked via that covenant, with minor boots to other talents as well. mostly passive.
This way you would experience all zones and covenants, but also have a goal for your progression. In addition, not having "optimal" covenant wouldn't hurt as much as it is in current iteration.