Will the community accept diversity (of covenants)?

[Krakan]

I haven't really seen this question asked yet. Givens wow's current pug community's attitude in general do you think being "allowed" to run whatever you want covenant wise because it's hard to respec will work out as blizzard plans?

Or do you see this imploding with some new version of raider io/gearscore only taking people with the " righr" covenant?

[Nzx]

It can only go one of two ways: covenants are such tiny damage gains that they aren't worth caring about, in which case why restrict them, or they are large gains, in which case you absolutely will be refused for groups because of having the wrong one.

[Biomega]

It will depend on how the powers play out in practice.

But if there's a situation where e.g. having the teleport skill or whatever allows you to skip parts or avoid mechanics in M+ then yeah absolutely there will be groups that go "must be XZY covenant". There might also be covenants that disproportionately favor certain specs, e.g. "need fire mage, must be XYZ covenant" or whatever. And many similar scenarios.

That's the fear.

Whether it's also reality is a different question. They keep professing that it won't be a big deal, but people just aren't blindly buying into the rhetoric. That doesn't mean it can't be balanced, or won't be balanced; but people are very much afraid.

If covenants don't make much of a difference it probably won't be a big splash on most people. But at the World-First-Race level? I absolutely expect covenants to be a big problem.

[Nagawithlegs]

Depends on how many covenant/class combos become infamously bad like Survival Hunter and Shadow Priest. It has to become a meme for a PUG to care enough to decline you.

[enigma77]

If they really matter no, absolutely not. Don't have the obvious choice for raiding/m+ and your gear/score isn't stellar? Declined.

[Nagawithlegs]

If they really matter no, absolutely not. Don't have the obvious choice for raiding/m+ and your gear/score isn't stellar? Declined.

Gear/score matters but when was the last time someone got declined for their spec aside from the infamously bad specs?

[enigma77]

Gear/score matters but when was the last time someone got declined for their spec aside from the infamously bad specs?

Happens everday when looking for m+ groups.

[Biomega]

Gear/score matters but when was the last time someone got declined for their spec aside from the infamously bad specs?

I mean, what else IS there/was there to make that decision? This is the first time we have a system that's so intricately tied to power but not directly based on class/spec.

And as you said - the "infamously bad specs" get declined all the time, and even just "non-optimal" specs have a much harder time getting into groups than the meta picks. Try getting invited to M+20 runs as a Resto Shaman vs. Resto Druid or Mistweaver Monk.

[Cosmic Janitor]

If you can use stuff ike the covenant movement abilities to perform some special strats then that will inadvertedly lead to pugs selecting based on covenants to pull off these strats. If Blizzard commits the greatest of idiocites and lets covenants give unique group buffs you might see people trying to get those into the setup as well.

It all depends on execution and what hare-brained schemes blizzard has planned down the line. Currently there are some potential cases where this might be the case, while they have adressed some of the really bad soulbind abilities (hello mr. group buff procc); at least for now.

There are also some class/covenant combinations which might be required for PvP for example. I mean why would you want to take mage with the weaksauce channeled aoe whose use limits the mage in many ways over the guy that can slow cast and movement speed of his oponents while dealing extrta dmg and silencing/rooting them at the end of the spell.

I could see this being a non-issue if people actually distribute equally across all covenants, essentially leading to everyone sucking somewhere being the norm. But given how most polls already indicate a severe imbalance when it comes to covenant preferences I doubt it will end that easily for us.

[CalamityHeart]

Will the community accept diversity? 100% yes.

Absolutely doubtless, there will be plenty of group leaders in the PMG tool just about every hour of every day that will give zero fucks what your covenant/soulbind/conduit loadout is. More than enough for the average or even above-average player doing mid-level keys to not have to worry about it or even know that it's something they have to worry about, for the most part.

At the highest level? The game can implode, hemorrhage, and burn in hell with all the elitism and restrictions and exclusions of suboptimal builds and gameplay that it wants. That's just the nature of playing at the highest level.

But that's fine. I'm not the 1%, and I have zero delusions (anymore) of being in the 1% or being a wannabe theorist on MMO-C pretending to be in the 1%. That elitist attitude may trickle down every once in a while to my level and I'll be denied entry to a mid-key group by some shitter who really wants to cheese his +10 with some meta tomfoolery. But in that case, I'll probably just shrug it off and just keep waiting to get accepted into one of the 3-4 other groups I'm also signed up for.

Totally positive. The "mandatory covenant" doomsaying and hatemongering is not going to be a big deal. At least not realistically for someone like me.

[Razion]

Beggars can't be choosers - when there are so few tanks and healers to go around for all the groups trying to continually form, the more picky groups who won't take anything but the most optimal of combinations may see more success at the high end, but for all the groups in-between and especially on the more casual Key levels for example, they will either have to accept these non-optimal builds or surrender that they won't be able to play with other people who aren't as optimal.

[Project 501D13R]

It depends on the level that you are playing at, and more importantly who you are playing with, for M+ for example at 9 or lower skill is more important than build or talents, however once you get to +10 and past then the meta ends up being more important to most people.

[melzas]

In pugs? Nope, people will look at your score/prgoress anyway, nobody will care what covenant you run. Only when your group fails/your performace suck people might look over your talents (and now covenants) and then blame it on your poor choices, so pretty much the way it is now.

In organized progression oriented guilds? Absolutely. It's the same as with talents/specs in these guilds right now, people will expect you to make optimal choices rather than "whatever" choices.

[Kithelle]

I haven't really seen this question asked yet. Givens wow's current pug community's attitude in general do you think being "allowed" to run whatever you want covenant wise because it's hard to respec will work out as blizzard plans?

Or do you see this imploding with some new version of raider io/gearscore only taking people with the " righr" covenant?

To paraphrase Taliesin and Evitel, it will be a shitshow obviously

[bloodmoth13]

They will be accepted everywhere that players picking the wrong talents are accepted.

[Gasparde]

Gear/score matters but when was the last time someone got declined for their spec aside from the infamously bad specs?

Sigh... what about the inevitable infamously bad Covenants then?
I'd wager that there's gonna be quite the difference when you'll notice that the Warrior in your melee cleave group did in fact not bring the basically-Bloodlust Covenant but instead brought a 7th AoE stun just to make absolutely sure that every mob pack is gonna be at stun DR 5s after every pull.

[Sunslayer]

I think Venthyr is the only outlier. I do lead M+ key groups often and do my own group making and I can say without a doubt that Venthyr is just too good for M+ and it's a kind of thing that everyone has to have it to make it work.

[hitman84]

They will be accepted everywhere that players picking the wrong talents are accepted.

So every where except the super hi end and those who think they're super hi end.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

I expect within a month we'll get a beta build of Raider.io that also factors in covenant choice in its ranking.

And the moment that happens the "choice" becomes made for you. Blizz's options become letting you hot swap covenants, or breaking raider.io. Guess which one they'll pick.

[Dracullus]

If it will be easy to swap - probably some groups will bash you if you use really bad combo. But if it will be hard, I don't think so. No one expected from you to have bis or even good legendary in pug even in late Legion (I think this example was even used by Ion yesterday).

Of course I'm talking only about pugs for stuff like Heroic raid or Mythic+10. Basically if right now most pugs in some content require specific specs, they will require specific covenant in SL. In practice covenants increase number of specs from 36 to 144 (from balance perspective).