Patch 8.3 Hotfixes - May 4, 2020, Covenant Abilities Changes, DLC #725

Drats, that night fae covenant is starting to look way too nice for paladins. Please buff the Kyrian one!

Originally Posted by Tomana

Drats, that night fae covenant is starting too look way to nice for paladins. Please buff the Kyrian one!

Yeah, that one is looking pretty neat now. Hated the whole "spend Holy Power to cycle" idea.

And this while the Ventyr one got nerfed, and it was already a bad looking one imo :/

Kyrian is looking like almost an auto-pick for Retribution at this point... boring.

Another xpac where I look at anything Hunter and feel...underwhelmed.

Originally Posted by Snowflakesz

Kyrian is looking like almost an auto-pick for Retribution at this point... boring.

It looks neat for holy too, especially for dungeons

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Originally Posted by Eapoe

Another xpac where I look at anything Hunter and feel...underwhelmed.

You mean shooting without LOS is underwhelming? O_o

Want them to move away from this covenant idea before its to late. Don't fancy another "we told you so" from the players and "it was to late into development" from the devs. I really don't want a rubbish system for a few patch's then a bandaid that makes it kinda playable but still annoying.

Originally Posted by Snowflakesz

Kyrian is looking like almost an auto-pick for Retribution at this point... boring.

I mean if you feel yourself required to pick based on what you believe to be the "best" damage. Which is just sad really. Mostly since once it releases if anything is too wildly powerful compared to others they will balance it out anyway, so might as well pick what you like instead of what you think you have to have.

Originally Posted by Hugh Wattmate

Want them to move away from this covenant idea before its to late. Don't fancy another "we told you so" from the players and "it was to late into development" from the devs. I really don't want a rubbish system for a few patch's then a bandaid that makes it kinda playable but still annoying.

The usual cycle is intial realease with lots of hotfixes to get it working somewhat, yet still everyone hates it.
2 Patches of tinkering and changing everything about until it finally somewhat works.
Last patch completely abandons it in favor of a new system that outweights it by a factor of >2 and is completely broken.

I think the issue is simply that it's a very misguided attempt to bring something into the game that wasn never part of it. Even classic didn't force such a choice on you. It also runs into the usual layering problem with Blizzard. Blizzard barely manages to balance 1 tier of choice, which is classes, adding 2 more layers on top of it, by add 4 different variants with 3 different soul binds, seems just like a ludicrous fools errant.

Even if Blizzard thinks they can counterbalance the covenants with soulbinds, this feels awfully familiar to a common newbie mistake in designing control circuits, where newbies think they just throw a PID controller at it because it can do everything, but in most cases a PI controller does the job just as well with less effort and cost.

Originally Posted by Eapoe

Another xpac where I look at anything Hunter and feel...underwhelmed.

Ability to ignore walls while also being a 30% buff to crit on a reasonable cool down is a pretty solid DPS option on all types of encounters aoe or single target.

Originally Posted by Haidaes

The usual cycle is intial realease with lots of hotfixes to get it working somewhat, yet still everyone hates it.
2 Patches of tinkering and changing everything about until it finally somewhat works.
Last patch completely abandons it in favor of a new system that outweights it by a factor of >2 and is completely broken.

Yep my worry is that stuff will feel bad all the time.

I often jump into M+ after my raid. I raid as a DPS but i M+ as a Tank. Being sub optimal when pushing feels so bad. I hate that feeling that i am not playing the best i can. Sure its a small gain sometimes, but if the whole group tries and brings these small gains the effect can mean success over failure! Some of these ability's are not even small ether they are massive.

I don't want to be the guy who says "hold on guys, got to do a quest chain to swap talents" or "sorry guys, its gonna cost to much to change talents". I am sure if this happens, or i attend over and over being sub optimal the group would find someone else who can come regularly and optimal without them needing to wait.

Stuff like this happens all the time. MoP was the cloak (needed both), WoD was the Ring (needed both), Legion was the legendary items that were pure RNG for most its existence, BFA was Corruption and Azerite.

The only solution would be multiple toons with different sets. This also feels bad when one toon is more geared over the other and you know just swapping some stuff around on the more geared is the optimal way to go.

I see allot of people in these types of arguments say "just play with friends it wont matter". Thing is when you really want to push and everyone else also does, then it does indeed matter. Even if you have a guild of 25 raiders and all are fighting for a spot to push cutting edge you take the best of that 25 every time. Same for M+ you take the best choice thats possible all your choices are probably friends! You need to have players on reserve not many guilds run with exactly what they need and no more. You can easily be that "friend" that gets sat out. Corruption was a good way to show this along with legion legendary items. You would see more regular players dropping to the bench while some of the not to good ones jumping into the raid more due to the effect of the items they got from RNG.

If you pick the wrong choice, it takes to long to swap or cost to much, or maybe you don't want to swap. You will probably find yourself on the bench more.

Originally Posted by Hugh Wattmate

Want them to move away from this covenant idea before its to late. Don't fancy another "we told you so" from the players and "it was to late into development" from the devs. I really don't want a rubbish system for a few patch's then a bandaid that makes it kinda playable but still annoying.

I mean recent interviews have given me hope that if they are unable to balance it they will make it easy af to change. you can't really compare it to azerite gear as that shit was not dropped onto players til like the last few weeks of Beta. Covenant abilities, at least the first 2, have been up since day 1 of alpha and are probably all going to be alpha tested before the beta is opened. more testing of that feature the better

Originally Posted by kaid

Ability to ignore walls while also being a 30% buff to crit on a reasonable cool down is a pretty solid DPS option on all types of encounters aoe or single target.

How many fights, outside of PvP, do you know of that involve (1) LoS, and (2) LoS where you’re still in range of the boss?

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Originally Posted by Tomana

It looks neat for holy too, especially for dungeons

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You mean shooting without LOS is underwhelming? O_o

Look at my reply to the other person.

Originally Posted by MrLachyG

I mean recent interviews have given me hope that if they are unable to balance it they will make it easy af to change. you can't really compare it to azerite gear as that shit was not dropped onto players til like the last few weeks of Beta. Covenant abilities, at least the first 2, have been up since day 1 of alpha and are probably all going to be alpha tested before the beta is opened. more testing of that feature the better

While it is great that Ion said that, the crux here is simply that "if they can't balance it" is entirely up to their interpretation. They are seemingly also okay with alot of other downright broken things and their blunders with both pearl and corruption gear hardly give me confidence that they will get the intervention threshold right this time. I mean just look at the distribution of classes on higher m+ keys (and this already starts showing at +10) or the consistent cookie-cutter arena builds that have dominated since they implemented the feature. Not to mention the faction imbalance in mythic raiding..

While it's true that they haven't implemented all 4 conveants yet and we have yet to see what they have in store for us with soulbinds (currently that feels a bit like azerite, in terms of vagueness), what they have shown us so far doesn't exactly give me alot of confidence. From the current Venthyr vs. Kyrian choices there is probably only 1 or 2 which seem like actual choices. The rest is so skewed, they might as well start from scratch with some abilities.

Originally Posted by MrLachyG

I mean recent interviews have given me hope that if they are unable to balance it they will make it easy af to change. you can't really compare it to azerite gear as that shit was not dropped onto players til like the last few weeks of Beta. Covenant abilities, at least the first 2, have been up since day 1 of alpha and are probably all going to be alpha tested before the beta is opened. more testing of that feature the better

Can you think of a single thing they have tried to balance and done successfully?
Talents? Very rare you swap those around, every tree has multiple options that are not viable and get avoided. (often these are talked about during beta/alpa and balance does not happen)
Azerite? Do you regularly change stuff around per fight? Are you happy to get any item and use it? (This while late on beta was pre warned about)
Corruption? Are they all equal in power? (they even said they were "happy" with the balance at one point!)
Legendary items? Happy to get any one of them when they were a thing? (This was pre warned about the entire of testing, look what happened they tried to balance those also)
Raiding? Remember back when we had 10 and 25 man? that failed they ended up doing 20man instead due to issues balancing. (again people were moaning about the balance for yonks before they gave in. It's still kinda an issue with Flex, Nzoth for example with 2 groups of 10 people vs 1 group of 20 is significantly different.)
Specs? How many times has a spec been in the gutter or been insane, Feral druids? Shadow Priests? Shamans? (talked about during testing all the time, well known and nothing done.)
M+ Comps? MDI is full of different comps right? Pug groups are totally going to take a shadow priest for a high key.

The above are just a few example. Blizzard have always failed with balance and always will. Even if something is only a few % different thats enough for community to perceive the worse one as bad and avoid it and those using it. The game started to be like this in Wrath for allot of people, and its only got worse since. We have spent longer playing WoW optimally then not at this point. Being optimal is the new normal for this game, has been for ages. The game and it's audience has matured as have the things surrounding it such as forums, websites, youtube, communication outside of the game, addon in the game. You can still be optimal and have fun if the game is designed around that. You cant however be optimal and have fun when the game is fighting you. This just causes frustration and awkward moments. "sorry guys, got mastery in chest again no twilight dev still RIP" "Sorry guys swapping traits cost to much at the moment" "just hang on an hour while i change covenant"

Covenants are suppose to be about choice. Right now they are only ever going to feel like bad choices. Unless they balance everything perfectly in every situation for every class and role (they cant) it always will feel bad at some point. The other option to make them feel fun and still like a choice would be remove player power. Have them just reward you in other ways such as mogs, titles, mounts, pets and unique quests end game tailoring the experience to your preference.

Maybe i am just being cynical. Maybe they finally for the first time balance multiple talents and abilities to perfection for every spec, class and role in the game in PVP/M+ and raiding. Who knows.. But judging from past efforts and even current on-top of the huge task at hand i very much doubt they can.

The Dev time imo is better spent on something else that everyone can enjoy.

Originally Posted by kaid

Ability to ignore walls while also being a 30% buff to crit on a reasonable cool down is a pretty solid DPS option on all types of encounters aoe or single target.

while that seems good it's entirely niche in design, it would be great for pvp (especially LoS arena maps) other than that not really. While BM exists as is, MM needs a massive rebuild from the ground up. You can't have one spec hard hitting and super mobile, while the other has 1 major big hit skill and you have to sit around waiting for your cast to go off hoping that one of the many mechanics hasn't decided that you are the target.

MM needs to go as mobile as BM in a rebuild. Or it will never be used by the majority of users an easier, more mobile, and usually higher dps output class. Even hunter players like me that absolutely despise pet ai moved over to BM for EP/Ny'alotha due to MM today being SV in HFC in how bad it is output wise.

Originally Posted by Super Kami Dende

I mean if you feel yourself required to pick based on what you believe to be the "best" damage. Which is just sad really. Mostly since once it releases if anything is too wildly powerful compared to others they will balance it out anyway, so might as well pick what you like instead of what you think you have to have.

You know how long it takes blizzard to fix broken things? Months any semi-hardcore raider will pick what’s best dps,hps output. Now they said they didn’t want people to switch convents so idk what’s the price going to be...

That's the annoying thing these days. When the game goes live it'll be two months of hot fixes and realm restarts along with the I'm quitting brigade. SL has almost peaked my interest but Blizzard have to bring a game to me rather than me playing and looking for a game.

Originally Posted by Eapoe

Look at my reply to the other person.

Well, yes, it's an obvious PVP choice. I'm tempted to level my hunter (who was untouched since WOD) just for it, to be fair.