Covenants are not Meaningful choice/Talents are

[Echocho]

Talents are meaningful moment to moment choices and frankly that system is good as it is, we don't need more of it.

What we're severly lackning in WoW is meaningful long term choices, that's where covenants come in. Sure you can swap them byt not on a encounter by encounter basis.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Meaningful and bad are not mutually exclusive.

Also, how are talents meaningful choices? I have a libram if I screw up my talent choices. The fact that talents are swappable with a small cost makes them inherently meaningless (outside of situations like M+ where changing talents on the fly is impossible).

Even small descisions can be meanigfull, you can't change to the extra 50% charge of your shield when the attack is already flying your way. Meaningfull can as much be making a random gamble half a year ago for the right choice now, as it can be actually going into a fight prepared because you just picked the right talents for this oponent a minute ago.

[MasterOfNone]

The easier it is to change or revert something, the less meaningful it is. So talents are really the exact opposite of meaningful.

you are confusing flexibility with meaningful. not the same thing. several talents are meant to make different situations more bearable. we dont make the content, they do. by this logic they SHOULD have easily changeable talents to work within that content. the only problem i see with covenants is exaclty what other people have said. if it is going to be extremely punishing to change them, they need to be fucking a sure that they are balanced from the launch.

[ClassicPeon]

Covenants is basically the new incarnation of a mix of Azerite/Class halls(which had mounts + xmog sets too and even better weapons) . It should not be considered a new feature. The abilities we should have gotten from lvl up/ or like artifacts/Talents

They are just putting these abilities behind covenants to declare it as a new feature and give an illusion of choice

This is an EXAMPLE OF A BAD CHOICE

No way they are gonna be balanced ( and you cant nerf them at launch when people choose their abilities)
How you gonna balance Venthyr teleport for mythic+ ? It cant be numerically balanced... even a 3min cd would make it still good

This thing of downplaying new content blizzard makes because it vaguely resemblers something they have done in the past. Its so dumb

I mean i respect people have different opinions about covenants but thats an entirely different thing

[Segus1992]

you are very wrong about what you say in regards to balancing azerite, it was a huge deal is some where worthless. the ENTIRE point, was that every trait would be viable and that NONE would feel like a bad choice. Ion himself even stated that was a goal recently in one of the beta stream discussion/QandA's.

thats why everyone is worried, they said they would balance legion artifacts and legendaries, they failed
they said they would balance azerite, they failed abysmally

now they want to balance 5 systems which all compound upon each other and synergise differently with no recourse to change and which even at the base design are clearly unbalancable. eg. Venthyr teleport, necrolord shield (if you cant design around everyone having the teleport then it becomes OP, if you cant design around everyone having the shield then it loses a lot of value. thats a doublewide gulf of imbalance)

Blizz struggles to balance class's between pvp,raiding, m+, just in talents alone, then you want to lock in covenant specific legendaries, conduits, class abilities all which will change drastically between specs. It's a balancing hellscape, i like the idea, but i cannot fathom a world in which they will be able to do this successfully

Yes, the goal was that no Azerite trait would feel bad, but there was obviously less pressure on balancing them since there were so many to choose from, you didn't have to pick any one trait, ever. That should be obvious and not up for discussion. I can't imagine you don't know what I meant with that statement, are you just trying to be obtuse?

It's very clearly obvious that the difference between balancing every single Azerite trait, when they're all individually completely avoidable and it's completely inconsequential if a single trait is bad, and balancing Covenant abilities where every single one has to be compelling for it to be a choice at all. That's why Blizzard knows there's more pressure to balance them.

your right in theory this system is great in ideology. the reality of the system is it's a hot pile of unbalancable garbage

It isn't unbalanceable in the slightest. It's actually very very easy to balance it (just make all abilities the same). The problem is that they first and foremost want the abilities to be interesting, and THEN they want them to be balanced. The heavier balance weighs in the equation, the less interesting the abilities become. We're going to see in the coming weeks/months how Blizzard neuter some abilities (in particular the Venthyr teleport), OR we're going to see them create an easier way to switch between Covenants/Covenant abilities, either before launch or after (when they realise they weighed balance too lightly).

[nessfalco]

Covenants are not meaningful choice , you know what is meaningful choice? Talents

If they really want people to have meaningful choices

1) Replace dead talents with good ones so that we really have a choice
2) Make spec have more than 1 Optimal rotation using talents
3) Delete all lower effort talents that are X dmg/heal increase , make new interactive ones



All talents should be useful in ATLEAST ONE TYPE OF CONTENT

We should Experience And try All talents possible and not be stuck with 1 talent per row for all content

There is Talents that Have no USE ever since LEGION

Im not talking about min-maxing , just having more diverse rotations with fun talents and many possible choices

A meaningful choice is when i decide what is best for me from a list of talents

For ex : Mage

Rune of power : This would be good for fights with very little movement/ burst window

Incanter flow : easier to play talent and passive , Better on fights with too much running

Now both of this talents have their use and you get to Experience all of them

It is your choice : Does my group need to kill An Add in very short time? Then maybe i should choose rune of power .

Does this encounter have too much movement? You can still use rune of power but it may be harder to use so you can go for the easier choice

This is meaningful choice

Compare to Mirror images : Unfun spell , and is never taken at all in any form of content , dead talent that should be replaced or redesigned

Druid :

Mighty bash / Mass root / typhoon

I get to choose what suits me , for ex in arena stun is better while on mythic+ maybe i need typhoon to help my tank kite/interrupt but even stun is viable if i want to use it on a priority target.



Compare to alot of rows where there is only 1 VIABLE choice... its pathetic

And when i say viable not that i mean This talent is 2-3% better

I mean its like 10% or more better than the other

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And iam sure they will keep the mess with covenants

In 9.1 ) WE FIXED COVENANTS GUYS ! THANKS US WE LISTENED TO YOUR FEEDBACK !

Can't really disagree with the core message of "why are they bothering with gimmicky shit when the core systems still have so many issues?" Every class has at least a few talents that aren't used in ANY content.

[Segus1992]

Can't really disagree with the core message of "why are they bothering with gimmicky shit when the core systems still have so many issues?" Every class has at least a few talents that aren't used in ANY content.

Honestly, with a game this massive, if they only focused on one system at a time until it was perfect we'd still be stuck in TBC. And there'd still be balance issues.

Yeah, talents being stale is an issue for some specs, but on the whole they give much more substantial choice than their predecessors did.

[Topornic]

Plus what if the Night fae ability is good for arcane but sucks for frost , its not fun to be hindered by decision i made for the ARCANE spec

What's the worst is not even that if they promise and stick to the promise to keep covenants mostly unchanged (which would not make you regret picking that covenant one week into the game) but that they are going to be fixing specs.
Let's say in the beginning your fotm is frost so you pick the covenant accordingly. Then suddenly blizzard nerfs frost, buffs and nerfs other classes or has some weird trinket drop and now you have to play fire to be competetive. Guess what, you chose the wrong covenant motherfu**er.

[Saltysquidoon]

The problem with talents isn't whether they're "meaningful" or not. It's balance and design.

We've got talents that haven't been changed since legion launched. That means some specs have been using the same talent for half a decade. Blizzard should be iterating on talents at least every patch.

Further to that some talents are just poorly designed. Not every single talent needs to have a use-case in every single type of content on every patch (that's something that should shift with balance tweaking). But right now we have talents that are BIS for every type of content in every situation. Why is that allowed?

[Wangming]

There is no meaningful choice for high-end gamers of either PVP or PVE because they will just follow the meta as defined by the min-maxers. For everyone else you can pick whatever you like.

[Thenatural]

Ion wasn't very shy in talking about this, it's a philosophical choice. They are making covenants to work with the community they wish they had, rather than the one they have, and the more I think about it, the more I think he and team 2 are right.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to have my cake and eat it to, but I have no issue with seeing where they are coming from. This community is pure dogshit and would hate anything they did, so why not take a chance for a patch and see if something sticks.


The irony is, if all of the people quit during BFA that said they would, right now we would be having a pretty calm discussion about this rather than these ridiculous threads.

[Cosmic Janitor]

There is no meaningful choice for high-end gamers of either PVP or PVE because they will just follow the meta as defined by the min-maxers. For everyone else you can pick whatever you like.

That is only true if the things you do in game are either utterly trivial (WQs) or you are just ignorant and don't care about it yourself because you have absolutely no aspirations. But you don't need to be high end to notice that in your bracket you could have it easier if you play with the better choices. Even if you struggle with running m+8 each week, your chance of success with your friends might increase if you actually take the proper talents instead of just picking the skills that look pretty. I gradually dropped down from casual (half clear) mythic raiding in beginning of BfA, to heroic, to just a shoddy normal run with some people I knew from years ago to practically nothing anymore at all, I still don't want to be the one that drags the group down each week with my friends when do our semi-drunken +15. Even when we were just doing normal I didn't want to be just bad for the sake of being bad. I certainly didn't care about buffing myself to the limit, simming my character/every piece of loot or anything like that, but I didn't want to be the biggest sucker in the group either. And I imagine most people have at least that aspiration.

The whole made up argument around "only the 1%.." is utterly dishonest.

[Shakou]

This is a dumb thread. Covenants combine the progression systems of Legion while removing most of the RNG, giving players much more agency to choose their path than we have ever had, and making our choices deeply impactful if not permanent.

It will be the single most impactful choice a player has ever been able to make in the game past deciding what class to main.

BTW It's ignorant to decide what covenant to join based only on the active covenant abilities, there are also legendaries and a system of passives to consider that augment your existing abilities.

[Tyris Flare]

I've put this in another post, but here's my most recent experience with blizzard balance:

I played Guardian Druid in BFA. From very early on it was clear that they were weak. It was also clear that monks were very strong. Here's what the "blizzard balancers" did:

8.1: 12% damage increase for guardian, new talent for kiting. Brewmaster stagger reduced by 25% and black ox nerfed.
8.2: Massive rage buffs for guardian. 15% buff to mangle and thrash damage. 33% increase to frenzied regen healing. Guardian can dispel in bear form.
8.3: Brewmaster stamina reduced by 5%, stagger by another 15%

So after 3 rounds of nerfs/buffs (and these are obviously massive), which tank is stronger? ...Still brewmaster.

Where they are right now is actually pretty reasonable, but seriously, they basically needed to buff guardian damage by about 25%, healing by 33%, and reduce stagger by 40% to get to a place where brewmaster is still better. The biggest issue to me is that none of these changes are hard to do, it just takes freaking forever for them to adjust.

This is really the rub. They have to actually dedicate a team specifically to game balance and implement quick, frequent updates to the game - which they have shown time and time again that they are unwilling or unable to do.

They are willingly putting themselves in the terrible position of having to pay a lot more attention to minutiae and risk upsetting players.

[InfiniteCharger]

These aren't really meaningful choices if they go away every expansion.
This is a big part of the problem. Your class and spec, plus the talents you pick are supposed to be the epitome of meaningful choice.
But they have been reworking classes and specs almost every expansion for a very long time.
And now these rental temporary abilities and talents is just another way of reworking specs and abilities every expansion.
So it is not a meaningful lasting choice. I shouldn't be learning new abilities and talents every expansion only to have them replaced in the next.

[MasterOfNone]

These aren't really meaningful choices if they go away every expansion.
This is a big part of the problem. Your class and spec, plus the talents you pick are supposed to be the epitome of meaningful choice.
But they have been reworking classes and specs almost every expansion for a very long time.
And now these rental temporary abilities and talents is just another way of reworking specs and abilities every expansion.
So it is not a meaningful lasting choice. I shouldn't be learning new abilities and talents every expansion only to have them replaced in the next.

maybe, but if you dont do new shiny on expansions, people will get tired of the same old stale and lose interest. you have to realize this is a double edged sword.

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This is a dumb thread. Covenants combine the progression systems of Legion while removing most of the RNG, giving players much more agency to choose their path than we have ever had, and making our choices deeply impactful if not permanent.

It will be the single most impactful choice a player has ever been able to make in the game past deciding what class to main.

BTW It's ignorant to decide what covenant to join based only on the active covenant abilities, there are also legendaries and a system of passives to consider that augment your existing abilities.

its not a dumb thread when people voice concerns of balance. you are literally drinking the blizzard koolaid. blizzard has NEVER been super quick at balance and you want people to make these meaningful "permanent" choices based on that reputation......

[InfiniteCharger]

maybe, but if you dont do new shiny on expansions, people will get tired of the same old stale and lose interest. you have to realize this is a double edged sword.

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its not a dumb thread when people voice concerns of balance. you are literally drinking the blizzard koolaid. blizzard has NEVER been super quick at balance and you want people to make these meaningful "permanent" choices based on that reputation......

The issue is that choice is supposed to revolve around skills and abilities you get at the class and/or spec level. That is and has always been the core of DND gameplay. Doesn't matter whether it is table top or online, that is the meaningful choice that matters in these types of games. So right from that, WOW has always had some amount of meaningful choice. The problem is that they never had a long term vision for how talents and abilities would expand over time. If they did, they have decided to scrap it or change it. In tabletop gameplay the "new shiny" is in the fact you can roll new abilities and spells for the dungeon. But those abilities and skills are well defined and part of a core ruleset. In WOW, they keep resetting classes and skills every expansion leaving players with no real meaning to the choice they already made way back when and this is part of the reason people get upset. New shiny is important, but that shouldn't be at the cost of having your class and spec changed every expansion and rendering the reason you chose a specific class or spec meaningless. Artifact weapons, azerite armor, essences and now covenants actually remove choice because they further erode the concept of a core class/spec toolkit that is well defined from game to game. And therefore it isn't really a meaningful choice at all.

Adding flavor to each expansion with temporary story based enhancements and twinks is one thing, but having temporary class defining abilities and enhancements is something totally different. And the only reason they are doing this honestly is partly because 1) players said classes were bloated on one hand and 2) because players said they wanted more things to do. So they have been trying to design progression systems with that in mind. But I would think you could combine core class progression with alternate progression systems without throwing the baby out with the bath water every xpac.

[Aigilas]

Yes, the goal was that no Azerite trait would feel bad, but there was obviously less pressure on balancing them since there were so many to choose from, you didn't have to pick any one trait, ever. That should be obvious and not up for discussion. I can't imagine you don't know what I meant with that statement, are you just trying to be obtuse?

It's very clearly obvious that the difference between balancing every single Azerite trait, when they're all individually completely avoidable and it's completely inconsequential if a single trait is bad, and balancing Covenant abilities where every single one has to be compelling for it to be a choice at all. That's why Blizzard knows there's more pressure to balance them.



It isn't unbalanceable in the slightest. It's actually very very easy to balance it (just make all abilities the same). The problem is that they first and foremost want the abilities to be interesting, and THEN they want them to be balanced. The heavier balance weighs in the equation, the less interesting the abilities become. We're going to see in the coming weeks/months how Blizzard neuter some abilities (in particular the Venthyr teleport), OR we're going to see them create an easier way to switch between Covenants/Covenant abilities, either before launch or after (when they realise they weighed balance too lightly).

I am not not being obtuse, i am answering what you said how you said it. the idea that didnt ever have to pick one trait should not be up for discussion? of course you to pik 1 trait remember thunderous blast? for hunters in 8.2 8.3 had to pick dance of death and primal instints, every class every spec had traits they HAD to pick to do well, due to the sheer output of them. how can you possible say thats not up for discussion that you never had to pick 1 trait, that is so demonstrably false and any1 who has played BFA at even a heroic level would know this.

to the next point

if as you suggust blizzard takes one of 2 routes, route one being neutering venthyr teleports and interesting abilities like this or route 2, introduce a way to switch covenants easier.

than you are proving my point. it is unbalancable, if you must take something out becuase it cannot be balanced, it is unbalancable, if you have to allow people to switch covenants at will, you do that because they made it unbalancable, i'm not sure what point you think you are making, but your not making it.

[MasterOfNone]

The issue is that choice is supposed to revolve around skills and abilities you get at the class and/or spec level. That is and has always been the core of DND gameplay. Doesn't matter whether it is table top or online, that is the meaningful choice that matters in these types of games. So right from that, WOW has always had some amount of meaningful choice. The problem is that they never had a long term vision for how talents and abilities would expand over time. If they did, they have decided to scrap it or change it. In tabletop gameplay the "new shiny" is in the fact you can roll new abilities and spells for the dungeon. But those abilities and skills are well defined and part of a core ruleset. In WOW, they keep resetting classes and skills every expansion leaving players with no real meaning to the choice they already made way back when and this is part of the reason people get upset. New shiny is important, but that shouldn't be at the cost of having your class and spec changed every expansion and rendering the reason you chose a specific class or spec meaningless. Artifact weapons, azerite armor, essences and now covenants actually remove choice because they further erode the concept of a core class/spec toolkit that is well defined from game to game. And therefore it isn't really a meaningful choice at all.

Adding flavor to each expansion with temporary story based enhancements and twinks is one thing, but having temporary class defining abilities and enhancements is something totally different. And the only reason they are doing this honestly is partly because 1) players said classes were bloated on one hand and 2) because players said they wanted more things to do. So they have been trying to design progression systems with that in mind. But I would think you could combine core class progression with alternate progression systems without throwing the baby out with the bath water every xpac.

oh im not defending the reset every expac. im simply saying that they have to do SOMETHING. this is quite the balancing act of keeping everyone happy. if we leave these choices alone then you will have x% of people that say they dont change shit and un-sub. blizzard a lot of the time seem to try to make everyone happy and end up failing on a large scale. they need to make a good decision for the game that will retain most people due to engagement and just accept the losses on the other end. if you make a balanced good game, people can let go of their initial judgements of something like "you didnt rework talents this expac un-sub" for a better balanced game i thiink. the problem is blizzard is more concerned with numbers of subs than quality of game.

[docterfreeze]

As long as talents are throughput vs throughput they aren't a choice in PvE. Every encounter has an obvious pick, assuming you care about your performance.

Covenants on the other hand encourage you to pick something and stick with it. You have a real choice of what you want to excel at, or if you value form over function you get to choose your look and your home.