Blizzard is currently failing with the Covenant system

[Poppincaps]

Blizzard has said that their goal is to make it so that all the covenants are equal and that you should choose the covenant based on which ability you like the most and which story/cosmetics you like the most. That's all well and good, but it comes with one fatal flaw. This has nothing to do with numbers and everything to do with the actual design of some of these abilities. Numbers they can tune, but it is highly unlikely that they will change the actual design of these abilities.

WoW has been going on for over 15 years. We know what types of abilities work in which content. That will not be changing in Shadowlands. If they don't make some big changes to how these abilities function, choosing one ability may very well make your performance in certain kinds of content very bad. I'm going to use a few classes covenant abilities to demonstrate this. I'm not going to post their entire tooltip as some of them are long, but I'll link to the wowhead page if you want to see what each does in entirety. Also I'm not going to go over every class. Just my main (Hunter) and the alt I play the most (Demon Hunter).

Hunter: https://www.wowhead.com/guides/hunte...es-shadowlands

Venthyr - Flayed Shot: Single target only which will make it bad for M+. Probably good for raiding and Arena PVP.

Kyrian - Resonating Arrow: Due to the flat percentage nature of this ability, it will be useful for both single target and AOE. Also has some potential in Arena although I think it will be pretty situational. Overall a good all arounder.

Necrolord - Death Chakram: This one is deceptive, but it essentially does the same thing whether on single target or AOE which means it is basically a single target ability that will always do the same amount of damage regardless of target count. Could be good for raiding or Arenas. Will not be good in M+.

Night Fae - Wild Spirits: Has potential on single target and AOE, so could be good for raiding and M+. Will be absolutely horrible for Arenas as you can either just walk out of it or just pillar hump the hunter while standing on top of it.

Demon Hunter: https://www.wowhead.com/guides/demon...es-shadowlands

Venthyr - Sinful Brand: Single Target with the ability to spread it by using meta. Could be good for Raiding and M+. Also potential in Arena as well. M+ usage might be more situational as Meta is a long cooldown, but could be really powerful as a 30% slow on all targets along with a powerful dot could be very useful on some pulls. Potentially a decent all arounder.

Kyrian - Elysian Decree: Basically only useful in Mythic+. Probably pretty bad in Raiding but might be okay. Will be very bad in arenas.

Necrolord - Fodder to the Flame: Could be useful for raiding and Mythic+. Will be absolutely horrible for arena. Like completely unusable. The enemy team just won't fight you where you can stand in the pool...

Night Fae - The Hunt: God damn this is a pvp ability if I've ever seen one. Will be very good for Arenas. Assuming you can mark raid bosses, could be good for raiding. Will be bad for Mythic+.

Now keep in mind I am basing this purely off of DESIGN. I am not accounting for damage numbers, buff/debuff percentages, or cooldowns. Blizzard can easily change those things. But unless they actually change how these abilities function, which they are far less likely to do when Shadowlands launches as opposed to numbers tuning, or they buff the shit out of an ability to compensate for it's weaknesses, which would probably make it OP as hell in the content it was already good in, then that's how these abilities are going to shake out.

Now as you can see both Hunter and Demon Hunter have 2 abilities that could actually be used in all 3 major forms of content with a decent degree of success. Kyrian for Hunter and Venthyr for Demon Hunter. For all the other three covenants for the respective classes, you are giving up performance in at least one other major pillar of endgame. Sometimes to an enormous degree like Night Fae for Hunters in Arena or Night Fae for Demon Hunters in Mythic+.

This is the real problem with the Covenant system as it stands. If I want to be able to do all forms of content effectively, then as a Hunter main, I basically have to choose Kyrian or I'll be gimping myself in one form of content that I enjoy. This could also complicate things with Hybrids where a covenant ability may be very useful for DPS but not very useful for healing or vice versa. Now maybe you'll get lucky. Maybe if you play Hunter Kyrian is your favorite Covenant and maybe it'll end up being mathematically the best. But the stars shouldn't have to align for you to feel good about your choice.

I also want to say that top raiders or arena players aren't the only ones who care about this stuff. It applies to anyone who cares about their performance in the game and considering that Recount is the second most popular addon and, if you add Skada and Details, which are Recount replacements, the number of downloads rivals DBM, then you'll see that the number of people who care about their performance is not a small percentage.

[Ladey Gags]

It’s just another one of modern Blizz’s failed attempts at bringing something new and cool into WoW. It’s not going to work and will be fundamentally changed in a content patch. My advice is just accept it for what it is and don’t take it too seriously

[Echocho]

No they're not. Pick the one you find most fun, numbers will always change.

[Lindon]

Guess you have stuck your head in the sand for too long.

Blizzard is not attempting to make the Covenant abilities equal. The are purposefully being created in a way that they will be "best" at different things. Say you pick the ST covenant, then you'll be a little better than the one that are playing with the AoE covenant in ST situations. You will however logically be worse than them in AoE situations.

What blizzard (Ion) has said is that they are trying to make the abilities different and good at different thing but also making sure that the difference is not to large.

[Aekero]

It’s just another one of modern Blizz’s failed attempts at bringing something new and cool into WoW. It’s not going to work and will be fundamentally changed in a content patch. My advice is just accept it for what it is and don’t take it too seriously

This is a good attitude to have. I myself will be one of the people who that just plays whatever covenant sounds good to me. I will probably try the other covenants with alts because at the end of the day I don't care that much. Keep in mind most people who don't mind it, won't be on the forums to say so.

[Spicymemer]

Rerolling to a different class is going to have a far larger impact on your DPS for a different scenario.
These covenants are small time.

[kranur]

If the abilites are too impactful, this will always be a bad idea and will always blow in their face.

Should just make them something subtle like scryers/aldor.

Now I don't know how much they affect the gameplay and numbers cause I just don't care anymore, they'll probably fuck it over and swap it around in the first major patch.

[Kralljin]

It’s just another one of modern Blizz’s failed attempts at bringing something new and cool into WoW.

Irony is that they want to "recapture" the idea of "meaningful choice" that the game used to have in its earlier days.

So yes, it's something new, intended to restore something that has been lost.

[Nerovar]

Irony is that they want to "recapture" the idea of "meaningful choice" that the game used to have in its earlier days.

So yes, it's something new, intended to restore something that has been lost.

What were the meaningful choices that have been lost?

[Poppincaps]

No they're not. Pick the one you find most fun, numbers will always change.

I guess you didn't read the post at all. None of this was about numbers. Purely about the design of the abilities. I was actually pretty generous as I'm pretty sure some of the abilities I listed as "good" in certain types of content will be pretty bad based on numbers.

Guess you have stuck your head in the sand for too long.

Blizzard is not attempting to make the Covenant abilities equal. The are purposefully being created in a way that they will be "best" at different things. Say you pick the ST covenant, then you'll be a little better than the one that are playing with the AoE covenant in ST situations. You will however logically be worse than them in AoE situations.

What blizzard (Ion) has said is that they are trying to make the abilities different and good at different thing but also making sure that the difference is not to large.

Equal, balanced, whatever semantics you want to use doesn't matter. The reality is that the difference between some of these abilities in certain types of content will be large based purely on design. Wild Spirits will never be good for Arena. There's no balancing that will fix that, unless they make it so attacking an enemy inside the zone one shots them.

And if they truly want to make each covenant good at one thing and bad at others, they're failing at that as well as the Kyrian ability for Hunters, as an example, is good in basically all content.

[Astator]

The problem is that they have a long history of failing at balancing overall class power and tuning talents to make them relatively equal. For that reason, any design involving a choice that can't be changed freely, such as covenant, is worrisome. People will be rejected from joining a group because of weaker covenant just like people are currently being rejected for weaker specs, talents, gear stats choice, etc.

[Poppincaps]

Rerolling to a different class is going to have a far larger impact on your DPS for a different scenario.
These covenants are small time.

Sure, but what if you're already playing a bad spec and you pick the worst covenant? Now you're either an even bigger burden on your group or you feel obligated to pick the good covenant because you already picked the bad spec.

[Kralljin]

What were the meaningful choices that have been lost?

-Professions (Certain Professions are superior to others in regards to power / moneymaking; not necessarily removed, but far less relevant)
-Talent respeccing (you had to pay up in order to swap)
-Spec specific gear (Meaning you had to prioritize a certain spec over another)
-Removal of ML (if you were a notorious guildhopper, you wouldn't get any quality loot)

Just to be clear, i'm not a fan of locked covenants, but the statement "meaningful choices have been lost over the years" is something i generally agree on.

[Spicymemer]

Sure, but what if you're already playing a bad spec and you pick the worst covenant? Now you're either an even bigger burden on your group or you feel obligated to pick the good covenant because you already picked the bad spec.

Bad specs dont exist, just bad players.

[Kithelle]

No they're not. Pick the one you find most fun, numbers will always change.

That's not possible because everyone is a mythic record chaser...so they need to squeeze every last little dps despite none of these abilities being massively OP and they should all be good at everything because people don't want RPG shit in their RPG game that they complain about has lost a lot of RPG feel

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

No they're not. Pick the one you find most fun, numbers will always change.

Honestly the numbers always changing is what's going to kill this system ironically.

Everyone will pick what is most OP in 9.0, then when it's all fundamentally rebalanced in 9.1/9.2 they suddenly won't be the most OP covenant and demand to change without dealing with the "earning trust" part of it.

[Poppincaps]

Bad specs dont exist, just bad players.

This is just false lol. If you look at Mythic Nyalotha parses and ignore Fire since it seems to be an outlier. There's a 20k dps difference between Arms Warrior and Windwalker Monk. Are you saying that every Windwalker monk that does Mythic Nyalotha is just bad and every Arms Warrior is just good? Obviously not.

[Deferionus]

It’s just another one of modern Blizz’s failed attempts at bringing something new and cool into WoW. It’s not going to work and will be fundamentally changed in a content patch. My advice is just accept it for what it is and don’t take it too seriously

You are being optimistic. This end up being cited as one of the flaws of Shadowlands in a year and a half from now as we debate the next expansion's gimmick and Blizzard tells us what they learned from covenants and why the new gimmick is better. The logical thing for Blizzard is to move away from these gimmick systems but instead they are being rolled out off of the assembly line.

Anything that locks you into a choice and is not easily changed as going to Stormwind or Orgrimmar and spending some gold will get backlash from players who care about top end content.

[Spicymemer]

This is just false lol. If you look at Mythic Nyalotha parses and ignore Fire since it seems to be an outlier. There's a 20k dps difference between Arms Warrior and Windwalker Monk. Are you saying that every Windwalker monk that does Mythic Nyalotha is just bad and every Arms Warrior is just good? Obviously not.

Arms warriors have been around for 7 years longer than monks, those players have had more time to refine their skills.

[Tyze]

No they're not. Pick the one you find most fun, numbers will always change.

"Pick whatever Azerite trait you find most fun, numbers will always change"

Didn't happen really. They had the exact same idea with azerite gear "we want players to pick what they want to pick" yeah sure but you will do shit damage.

I'm just not gonna play dps this expansion, it's gonna stress the shit out of me same as bfa traits and all the simming etc etc.