"Forced" or "Mandatory" covenants

[enigma77]

Unable to be op in every facet of the game is not bad design. You are meant to make a decision. If you decided to use the best mythic+ one then the decision you made is a valuable one with meaning. If you could switch with ease then there was no decision to be made and the whole system might as well not exist. I thought you people wanted RPG elements.

Imagine playing arenas and not having the Venthyr teleport and your kill target escapes because you have no way of reconnecting in for example Blade's Edge Arena. And then imagine having that happen over and over and over again.

Many people like to play all parts of the game and like to be competitive in them. Nothing wrong with that. Punishing people for that is what's wrong.

If they don't make it possible for us to easily switch between Covenants Shadowlands is a dead expansion. The only choice should be which one you currently have active, but when you wanna do content in which another is clearly superior, you should be able to just take that one and that's it.

[DemonDays]

This just in: fun is not subjective. Something is only fun if DemonDays seems it so.

Yep. That's why it's the way I feel. That's my opinion.

But I'm pretty sure based on the feedback MANY people share my sentiment.



See I'd love to pick Night Fae for their super fun teleport spell called The Hunt. It looks insanely fun in PvP. However, it looks bad for pretty much all other types of content. It won't be fun. Nor do I like the look of the Night Fae transmog options.

Quite the conundrum hey?

[Onikaroshi]

Over the years? I was sat from raids til tbc because I refused to spec restonon my druid

Sounds like a horrible guild. We had 2 ferals and a boomie back in vanilla in our raids and cleared out a good bit of naxx and everything before it.

[DemonDays]

I think that's a bit of a stretch. Obviously some will be better than others based on the situation, but lets not pretend like we're talking about a significant difference in performance. Overall, I bet most people won't notice that much of a difference. Someone has a strong ST covenant ability and someone else has a strong AoE covenant ability. There's never been a raid/dungeon that hasn't had just ST or AoE fights. There's always a balance of both. Acting like you're losing a significant amount of dps/healing just because you picked one covenant over the other is pure speculation. We won't know until they come out, but believing blizz would be dumb enough to make covenant abilities factor into your performance that much is absurd.

It's not pure speculation.

It's literally in the game files and playable on Alpha right now.

How do you balance them for each spec? Are you aware of the amount of combinations?



There are literally abilities RIGHT NOW in the Alpha that are literally "Pick this if you want to PvP". For example - why would anyone pick the Necrolord DK ability for raiding? It is an arm that latches onto a target and continually pulls them towards you. Raid bosses will be immune. So what use does this have in a raiding setting? Then you could claim that a Blood DK could use it to offtank a mob that isn't immune and pull it to the other side of the room. To that I say - then what about Unholy and Frost? They don't tank.

[OFiveNine]

Covenants are like talents being that they are "illusions of choice"

[Jazzhands]

It will 100% cost u pvp ranking if u pick the worse/worst option if that one was good for raiding/m+

Making your character unique dosnt mean its good.

If you choose to participate in high end content you give up the ability to choose fun abilities over min/max ones. A very small portion of the population plays this way, the rest of us like to have fun and don't care that we won't hit Glad.

[Zyky]

I see terms like these being throw around way too much, like you won't get to choose the covenant you like.

This is pure bullshit. You can do whatever the hell you want. It won't cost you a raid spot, you can still do m+ and pugs won't spit on you.

Making permanent choices is a crucial part of the RPG experience. We should have more things like this so we could express ourselves and make our character unique from others of our class.

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Certain covenants will be mandatory and guilds and M+ pugs will deny you if you don't select the "correct" covenant.

[DemonDays]

Who the hell cares if you wind up picking an ability that's less fun?

It's a video game.

LOL.

Here, let's try and break it down for you.

Different abilities are fun in different scenarios. I know, shocking concept.

There are also some abilities that look insanely fun, like I wanted to pick them 100%. But the Covenant they are tied to is fucking Night Fae. Night Faes transmog options are ugly and don't suit my CLASS.

Another shocking concept!



So what am I picking? The one that looks good for transmog? The one that is fun ONLY in PvP? Or the one that is fun ONLY in raiding?

[LordVargK]

What do you mean "if venthyr skips become meta"?

Venthyr skip is already the meta. No way around it, it is most powerful spell you can have in M+.

TBH, they should keep the current obelisk system in some way or form. It just makes dungeons so much better to be able to skip packs without relying on rogues or invisibility potions.

That way venthir would not become a problem either and rouges would not be mandatory again. Honestly, the season 3 dungeon theme is quite possibly the only good thing BfA has done to mythic plus.

[Ezyah]

Remember how mandatory rogues were for shroud in the first 3 seasons of bfa if u wanted to pug at 10 or above ? That s venthyr covenant for you cause why bother taking a guy that doesnt have it forcing you to deal with a shit trash pack when you could just skip it with that other player ?

[DemonDays]

Unable to be op in every facet of the game is not bad design. You are meant to make a decision. If you decided to use the best mythic+ one then the decision you made is a valuable one with meaning. If you could switch with ease then there was no decision to be made and the whole system might as well not exist. I thought you people wanted RPG elements.

For a game that has such a minuscule amount of content for each specific "type" why shouldn't I want to perform optimally in all of them? Why shouldn't I want to have fun in all of them?

Oh I picked the raiding Covenant. Too bad there's only one fucking raid available for 6+ months and I can only play it ONCE per week for 3-4 hours.

Fuck I picked the PvP covenant. I can only really have fun with it in BGs and Arenas. It's shit everywhere else.

etc etc etc.




It's actually pretty comical that these things needs to be pointed out to people.

[exochaft]

Unable to be op in every facet of the game is not bad design. You are meant to make a decision. If you decided to use the best mythic+ one then the decision you made is a valuable one with meaning. If you could switch with ease then there was no decision to be made and the whole system might as well not exist. I thought you people wanted RPG elements.

My issue, similar to many people's issue, is the Venthyr one is likely to be the best signature ability in ALL facets of the game. The only ability that comes kind of close is the Night Fae ability, but it still seems inferior in various aspects based upon how it works, it's cooldown, player downtime, etc. When taking what we know of soulbinds at this point, their existence currently doesn't make the situation improved much. There's only one Venthyr soulbind available right now, and one trait makes using the Door of Shadows teleport gives you an absorb shield equal to 15% of your max HP, giving you close to the baseline absorption of the Necrolord signature ability. The rest of the available soulbinds do not indicate that their respective signature abilities will come even close in power to the Venthyr ability.

I will say there may be niche scenarios where every signature ability, in conjunction with a soulbind, will be useful. However, if there is one signature ability that's likely good (or even great!) in all scenarios/content and the rest are niche/underwhelming in comparison... that's not really a choice.

[Lahis]

There's always the caveat that not everything is implemented yet, such as Soulbinds. Be that as it may, I doubt even Soulbinds could balance the power between signature abilities.

Souldbinds can't help with the movement abilities. They're output abilities/procs and stat effects.

[crakerjack]

It's not pure speculation.

It's literally in the game files and playable on Alpha right now.

How do you balance them for each spec? Are you aware of the amount of combinations?



There are literally abilities RIGHT NOW in the Alpha that are literally "Pick this if you want to PvP". For example - why would anyone pick the Necrolord DK ability for raiding? It is an arm that latches onto a target and continually pulls them towards you. Raid bosses will be immune. So what use does this have in a raiding setting? Then you could claim that a Blood DK could use it to offtank a mob that isn't immune and pull it to the other side of the room. To that I say - then what about Unholy and Frost? They don't tank.

Again, I don't think in the big scheme, as in overall, these abilities will make that much of an impact. Unless you're pushing world firsts or R1 gladiator, I don't think it's going to matter much. I can see why people are stressing out about it, but honestly just pick the covenant that'll give you an ability that you believe will be best for you. Just accept that you won't have the perfect ability for every scenario. It's not like it'll make a difference greater than 5%. Just because you picked X covenant ability over Y covenant ability doesn't mean you hindered all your parses by some significant percent.

We're both just speculating so it doesn't really matter what we think. We'll both find out when SL releases or when we're deep into beta and the numbers are added up. You think there'll be significant differences in performance, I don't think it'll make that much of a difference.

[DemonDays]

Again, I don't think in the big scheme, as in overall, these abilities will make that much of an impact. Unless you're pushing world firsts or R1 gladiator, I don't think it's going to matter much. I can see why people are stressing out about it, but honestly just pick the covenant that'll give you an ability that you believe will be best for you. Just accept that you won't have the perfect ability for every scenario. It's not like it'll make a difference greater than 5%. Just because you picked X covenant ability over Y covenant ability doesn't mean you hindered all your parses by some significant percent.

We're both just speculating so it doesn't really matter what we think. We'll both find out when SL releases or when we're deep into beta and the numbers are added up. You think there'll be significant differences in performance, I don't think it'll make that much of a difference.

Again.

You. Are. Missing. The. Point. Well, you're missing multiple points.

You say pick the one that looks the "best" or "most fun" for me. In which scenario exactly? I play Heroic Raiding, Mythic+ and I dabble in a bit of PvP. If I don't participate in those 3 types of content then this game honestly has fuck all to do in it.

Please. Educate yourself. Read the Covenant abilities.

I'm surprised the tooltips don't say "PICK THIS FOR MYTHIC+, PICK THIS FOR RAIDING, PICK THIS FOR PVP". Because that's literally how they've designed them.



On top of that. I'd like to pick the Covenant that thematically also looks good - for my chosen class.

So the most fun ability FOR ONE SINGLE PIECE OF CONTENT looks like Night Fae. Oh WHOOPS. Night Fae has the ugliest, dumbest looking armor for a DEATH KNIGHT.

This system is a lose-lose with a sprinkle of dogshit on top of it.

[crakerjack]

Again.

You. Are. Missing. The. Point. Well, you're missing multiple points.

You say pick the one that looks the "best" or "most fun" for me. In which scenario exactly? I play Heroic Raiding, Mythic+ and I dabble in a bit of PvP. If I don't participate in those 3 types of content then this game honestly has fuck all to do in it.

Please. Educate yourself. Read the Covenant abilities.

I'm surprised the tooltips don't say "PICK THIS FOR MYTHIC+, PICK THIS FOR RAIDING, PICK THIS FOR PVP". Because that's literally how they've designed them.



On top of that. I'd like to pick the Covenant that thematically also looks good - for my chosen class.

So the most fun ability FOR ONE SINGLE PIECE OF CONTENT looks like Night Fae. Oh WHOOPS. Night Fae has the ugliest, dumbest looking armor for a DEATH KNIGHT.

This system is a lose-lose with a sprinkle of dogshit on top of it.

I'm missing the point? I said "pick the ability that's best for you" and you interpret that as "pick the best ability for each facet of WoW." When I said pick the best ability for you, I meant pick a covenant ability that fits into your playstyle and what you do. What you're arguing and having a hard time accepting is that you won't have the luxury of switching to the perfect covenant ability depending on the situation. Your fixation on having the best setup isn't necessary, and kinda comes off as whining. We don't know enough yet so I feel like this level pessimism has bias behind it more so than actual facts. Is it a possibility that blizzard could drop the ball and make them completely unbalanced? Sure, but I don't want to discuss how wildly hypothetical that scenario is. What's more realistic is that each covenant ability will excel in a specific way and in other ways it won't. This'll be the case for each covenant ability and you don't even have the slightest clue what they're planning. Maybe for all we know, that "niche" death knight grip ability might make it so people can cheese certain mechanics in m+ or some boss fights like you suggested. We don't know for certain how this'll all pan out, but I'm willing to give it a shot before I convince myself without any tangible information.

[taishar68]

Souldbinds can't help with the movement abilities. They're output abilities/procs and stat effects.

They may be that right now, but that doesn't mean it can't change.

I've spoken a bit about covenant abilities, and while my personal feeling regarding it is that I don't think it is a big deal, I know so many people think it is, and I respect that. But I will add one thing to this conversation, re: PuG groups will demand specific things; change the culture.

Look, we can all sit here and say "the community will force this and that's why it sucks", or, we can also say, "we are the community, and we will do it the way we like." There is room for both out there, and those that want to play irrespective of Covenant ability need to create their own groups, network, create or join like minded communities, Discord groups, etc. I remember an old story (I'm 51, most of my stories are old) about not being invited to a club because of reasons, so the person in the story made their own club, and had a hell of a time.

But I would wager all of our debating and arguing and hand-wringing will all be moot, because I think Blizzard saying they would loosen the restrictions on the switching means they already planned on doing it. Just a hunch, but we'll see what happens over the next few months.

[DemonDays]

I'm missing the point? I said "pick the ability that's best for you" and you interpret that as "pick the best ability for each facet of WoW." When I said pick the best ability for you, I meant pick a covenant ability that fits into your playstyle and what you do. What you're arguing and having a hard time accepting is that you won't have the luxury of switching to the perfect covenant ability depending on the situation. Your fixation on having the best setup isn't necessary, and kinda comes off as whining. We don't know enough yet so I feel like this level pessimism has bias behind it more so than actual facts. Is it a possibility that blizzard could drop the ball and make them completely unbalanced? Sure, but I don't want to discuss how wildly hypothetical that scenario is. What's more realistic is that each covenant ability will excel in a specific way and in other ways it won't. This'll be the case for each covenant ability and you don't even have the slightest clue what they're planning. Maybe for all we know, that "niche" death knight grip ability might make it so people can cheese certain mechanics in m+ or some boss fights like you suggested. We don't know for certain how this'll all pan out, but I'm willing to give it a shot before I convince myself without any tangible information.

I'm sorry. Has everyone forgotten Legion and BfA already even though we're still in the middle of one of them?

It's not a possibility that Blizzard "could" drop the ball and make them completely unbalanced. It's pretty much a gaurentee. This isn't pessimism anymore, it's literally reality. They cannot balance these. They have proven over and over again they cannot do it.

The covenant system is even more of a nightmare to balance than Artifacts, Legendaries, Azerite, Essences and Corruption. It is more convuluted and intricate than all of those systems combined. They are setting themselves up for failure.




I also enjoy how you completely skirted over the Transmog issue of Covenants too. How do I pick the most aesthetically pleasing and the "best" one for my gameplay. Oh wait, I can't.

- - - Updated - - -

At 20+ maybe yeah. If you can't complete a 10 or 15 in time I promise you it ain't because of your covenant ability.

At 2400+ maybe yeah. If you can't get past 2k I promise you it ain't because of your covenant ability.


These 2 are silly since they directly contradict each other and there will not be a single covenant that will be best at both ST and AOE so you defeated your own point with this.

If you want to play at the top 10% of the game yeah sure there will always be a strict mathematical solution as to which covenant (or any ''borrowed power'' for that matter), but if you aren't in that top 10% of WoW's population then it literally does not matter what you pick since all of the abilities will be viable, if not optimal for any situation encountered. Some of ya'll need to stop kidding yourselves js.

Yeah.

You're talking about performance. ONE facet of it. Which is specifically why I said FUN and PERFORMANCE both. Reading comprehension can be hard.



Also your last point. I think you need to re-read what you wrote. I mean really? I specifically said that there are Covenant abilities that excel in Aoe/Cleave and those that are single target only. That's entirely my point. Thanks.

- - - Updated - - -

My issue, similar to many people's issue, is the Venthyr one is likely to be the best signature ability in ALL facets of the game. The only ability that comes kind of close is the Night Fae ability, but it still seems inferior in various aspects based upon how it works, it's cooldown, player downtime, etc. When taking what we know of soulbinds at this point, their existence currently doesn't make the situation improved much. There's only one Venthyr soulbind available right now, and one trait makes using the Door of Shadows teleport gives you an absorb shield equal to 15% of your max HP, giving you close to the baseline absorption of the Necrolord signature ability. The rest of the available soulbinds do not indicate that their respective signature abilities will come even close in power to the Venthyr ability.

I will say there may be niche scenarios where every signature ability, in conjunction with a soulbind, will be useful. However, if there is one signature ability that's likely good (or even great!) in all scenarios/content and the rest are niche/underwhelming in comparison... that's not really a choice.

Exactly. There is literally no situation where a TARGETED teleport that ignores walls/heights/platforms is not better than the other 3 choices. None.


"But Blizzard will balance it."

LOL. Azerite, Essences, Legendaries, Artifacts, Corruptions. All totally balanced systems. Amazing stuff.

[Luhnatic]

Hi,

Imho, the fact that it will be very hard/tedious to change covenant will make them non-mandatory (and then they become real choices).

When they removed talent trees after wotlk, they expected people would be able to choose talents based on preferences, but it was so EASY to change them (tomes of clear mind) that the community made it mandatory to always have the optimal talent for each encounter/situation (based on sims).

That's why this time they make it hard to change, you will have to make a REAL choice to give an orientation to your character, and no, you won't get refused from content based on your choice, because everyone will be in the same situation. Don't have the cutting edge M+ covenant? You won't be the only one, so you will always find some people to run those with you. Only extremly hardcore players (mythic raids world first / highest world M+) will have mandatory choices.

Personnaly, I welcome this, as I won't have to constantly change covenant because the community expects me to always have 'the most optimal choice' all the time.



Luhnatic la~

[A Blue Smurf]

And this entire argument is exactly what happens when you remove the majority of all RPG elements and player agency from the game and then try and ham-fist one or two RPG elements back into it.

You cannot re-design a game from a traditional RPG into an actionRPG while still catering to traditional aesthetics and choices. Which is exactly what they've been trying to do with Artifacts/Azerite Traits/Essences and now Covenant abilities. They say that the soulbinds will 'balance' this choice, but you cannot balance a singular choice like this with any sort of additions when the choices AND players themselves are so varied without serious homogenisation.

If they want to have 'permanent & meaningful' choices that consist of both cosmetics, thematic aesthetics and performance then they need to have tiers of choices that cater to each individual element otherwise it will never be balanced nor satisfy the player base - especially given the content focus they have (timers/esports M+/rated BGs and Arenas etc etc). Within these tiers needs to be a multitude of options in order to truly create of system of choice and not just the illusion of choice. This becomes even more evident when you consider the fact that the majority of players participate in multiple types of content.

Ultimately they need to decide on the genre they are developing - is this an RPG, an ActionRPG, a sports game with RPG elements or is this a behemoth of multiple genres that encompasses (with detail) elements of all the aforementioned.

It cannot be a lite-version of all three and still appropriately cater to the thematic development ideals that define those genres.