"Does it matter to you casuals if we hardcores get fluid covenants?" Yes, here's why.

[potis]

That's always the correct decisions if you don't like the way the community is treating you. This idea that everything should be catered to the pug community is a recent thing and frankly a pretty bad one.

It isnt exactly a bad thing, its what they are being told/shown.

People dont understand that this <random person> was raiding for years in some proper guild, probably has friends and everything in his B.net list of high caliber and because of IRL he has quit the more hardcore/raiding scene call it whatever, but still plays WoW at a high level to faceroll most things outside of last 2-3 bosses of the Mythic raid.

So there is this mentality that "Everyone is doing it because others are doing it" when in reality its..People that dont even need raider.io because they have friends to play with are doing it, and they do PUG once in awhile because not everyone can be online always, and it creates this fake idea that its doable for everyone.

Of course there are outliers, but generally my point is, decent players rise up to the challenge, they put a few more hours than needed (compared to people of equal level with a group to do thigns) because they dont have another option , and they get the job done.

"Yeah but i dont have hours to play, i want to be accepted as the undergeared unknowledgeable scrub that i am" mentality is the problem that rises out of the community.

[Redroniksre]

"Not intended" is a broad statement, there are no actual rewards or benefits within the game for doing it with a guild group.

If you want that guilds / social groups are the way to play the game, then you have to put things into the game that actually reward these types of groups.

And then? People that want to swap, still can't swap.

I also find it hilarious that you believe every person who suggest to "make your own group" is a min/maxer, this is the common sense response.

They arent the only people that suggest it, but they are part of it. And so what if they can't swap? They can just not every single day multiple times. And if they ~make their own group~ they wont lose out on content either.

[StrawberryZebra]

Versions of the covenant debate always seem to come down to this point: "Since you're so casual, what does it matter if we who play for keeps push for the ability to swap covenants? Stay out of the discussion if you don't do X high end content!"

I'll be honest - I don't understand why you're trying to frame the discussion this way.

It's not a case of Mythic Raiders wanting to take away your fun.

I'm not sure if it's ever occured to you, but Raiders like the theming of Covenants too. They like transmog, mounts, lore and so on. But theres a huge conflict of interests between picking the one that they like the look of vs picking the one that they need to choose to be successful. So immediately theres a good chunk of Mythic Raiders who aren't going to be able to choose the Covenant they'd like, and will instead be choosing the one that gives them the most power. Bundling mechanics and cosmetics together already causes a great deal of resentment straight off the bat.

Also consider the content that Mythic Raiders need to do. Shadowlands is anything like BFA, then Mythic Raiders are going to need to do World Content, Mythic Dungeons, Mythic Raids and PvP to get everything they need. They're also going to need to do Torghast too, as well as any other progression system Blizzard decide to patch in at a later date and that could well involve other forms of content, Visions being a good example here.

Covenant abilities allow you to further specialise your character in one of these areas, and usually for just one role. No matter which choice you make, you're never going to make the optimal one.

Fundamentally, the reason Mythic Raiders dislike them boils down to a point that you yourself have made; They don't want to be excluded from content based on their covenant choice. And they won't be. Because if they need to change roles, they're going to change to the best covenant for that role too and power level it like a mofo. Or if it turns out that playing Night Fae lets you deal with a hard mechanic on a hard boss fight, they're going to go out and power through that too.

That's the fear - It could be adding a ton of extra work for us. That we won't know about in advance and could very easilly end up picking the wrong one. Or the covenant we picked gets a nerf somewhere along the line that makes it bad at the content we do and we've got to jump ship.

Bare in mind that Covenents are content aimed at more casual players, yet are going to be run to exhaustion by Mythic Raiders who should really have no business at all being there. Youtuber Preach used the term "Mythic Tax" for this phenomenon. I'm not sure if he coined it or not, but it's one thats appropriate. It's a system which looks like it'll be excessively taxing on the top players, almost to an unreasonable degree.

Thing is... There's an easy fix to all of this. Just decouple the mechanical powers from the cosmetics and theming and instead have the abilities as options for your legendaries. Then everybody gets to pick the Covenant they want based on their cool factor. Everybody gets to customise their characters power by changing around their gear. Nobody is excluded from any content becasue you've got access to the same options as all the other players of your class.

It's a win-win situation for everyone involved.

[Echocho]

It's not a case of Mythic Raiders wanting to take away your fun.

The case is very much exactly that. Mythic raiders want to take away our meaningful semi-permanent choice so that they can be 100% optimal 24/7. It's very much a us vs them conversation.

Edit: Of course there are people on either side that feel differently. I'm a mythic raider and I definitely want to have a permanent choice since I find altering my character between every pull not only exhausting but immersion breaking.

[markos82]

Easy fix, remove covenant buffs from m+ or lock them to only lower keys

[Thorcall]

No, you should be forced to compromise. If you focus 100% on ST or AOE you would suck at the other, a healthy mix of both should be the way to go.

Load outs aren't part of RPGs, that's MOBA or FPS gameplay. Building your character is part of the RPG genre. Swapping should always be possible but not on a fight by fight basis.

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That's always the correct decisions if you don't like the way the community is treating you. This idea that everything should be catered to the pug community is a recent thing and frankly a pretty bad one.

In that case, instead of being good at one thing and sucking at another, you are juste bad at the two. Btw as a "mythic raider" you should know that single target is almost always prioritise in mythic raiding, except if you want to rank on some random "heretic add cleave" boss, and you should never do a choice like that on progress...

[StrawberryZebra]

The case is very much exactly that. Mythic raiders want to take away our meaningful semi-permanent choice so that they can be 100% optimal 24/7. It's very much a us vs them conversation.

Edit: Of course there are people on either side that feel differently. I'm a mythic raider and I definitely want to have a permanent choice since I find altering my character between every pull not only exhausting but immersion breaking.

As much as I hate to quote myself...

Because if they need to change roles, they're going to change to the best covenant for that role too and power level it like a mofo. Or if it turns out that playing Night Fae lets you deal with a hard mechanic on a hard boss fight, they're going to go out and power through that too.

You may think it's exhausing now changing between each boss fight, but how much more exhausing is it going to be for you having to change your Covenant 2-3 times during progression on each raid tier? Because that's what the future of Mythic Raiding could look like in Shadowlands.

But it doesn't have to be that way. If you seperate Covenant choice from the power gains then you can still have a meaningful choice without upsetting game balance. If the abilities are tied to a legendary then you've both got a meaningful investment into unlocking them, but can still change them if you need to.

It's not an "us vs them" situation at all - There are options where everyone can get what they want without having to take away from others.

[Squigglyo]

The abilities wont be balanced perfectly, but they also wont be a make or break.
A few % more dps isnt going to kill it.


The issue I have is being locked in to 1/4 of the rewards.
Mounts/Pets/Titles/etc

My only option currently is to have 3 alts that I gear up, grind renown, etc. Being 'forced' to do that is shitty. I would much prefer to change my covenant, even if it was on a weekly/monthly cooldown.

[Echocho]

In that case, instead of being good at one thing and sucking at another, you are juste bad at the two. Btw as a "mythic raider" you should know that single target is almost always prioritise in mythic raiding, except if you want to rank on some random "heretic add cleave" boss, and you should never do a choice like that on progress...

I never change my talents so I always pick a few AOE talents where I won't sacrifice too much of my single target damage since there are always aoe components in some fights that are very important. Most of my guild have the same mentality so we're never forced to completely alter our gameplay to gain a few seconds faster kill times.

[Mozu]

"Yeah but i dont have hours to play, i want to be accepted as the undergeared unknowledgeable scrub that i am" mentality is the problem that rises out of the community.

Yep, this is the crux of it. "It doesn't matter that all I do is transmog and pet battles, I want to be invited to +20s with my roleplay talents because we both pay for the same subscription!"

It's an insane position, but it seems almost the majority feel this way these past few years.

[Delekii]

So yes, if you get what you want up there at the high end, the damage trickles down. It matters. There is another viable perspective, people are allowed (intended) to pick their covenant for concept and flavor, and it's blizzard's job to make each covenant "not wrong" for 99.9% of the players doing the vast majority of the content, and we have no reason yet to believe they haven't done that. Keep giving your feedback, and I will keep validating that people seeing covenants as an opportunity for character expression are not wrong.

Thank you for reading!

Extremely few people have any issue whatsoever with the ideal world scenario where covenants are all balanced and everyone picks what they want to pick.


Here is the important part:

That world does not, and has never, existed in the history of WoW.

This is a clash of idealism vs. pragmatism.

It's like when people say "women shouldn't have to be scared about walking alone at night through back alleys and parks". I agree, 100%. I'd assume that the vast majority of people do. But it's not the current reality. The current reality is that there are rapists and murderers around and they do target vulnerable people, so while it is a good idea to advocate for a world where this kind of caution should not be required, it is illogical and dangerous to tell women to walk down back alleys and through parks at night, because it is not currently safe to do it.

You're 100% right that it is on Blizzard to balance the game in such a way that you can pick whichever covenant you want to, without fear of reprisal from other people. It is not currently the case, and, more importantly, has never been the case in the history of wow, that Blizzard has been able to achieve such balance. Advocate for that world all day every day; most of the population will be there to support you. But advocating for the behavior that world would enable without first achieving it is an action toward disappointment and failure.

The thing is... there is a part of me that might want to give M+ a try some day, and if that moment comes, I will appreciate if the approachability of "no one sane will be asking you to switch covenants" is built into the social compact of the game for reasonable, worthwhile players.

Nobody will ask you to switch covenants; they just wont ask you period. That's the difference. Ask the shadow priests and feral druids prior to buffs in BfA and Legion.

Ask the sub rogues, the marksman and survival hunters, the affliction locks, the frost mages, the holy priests... the list goes on. In the current world we live in, having to lock yourself into a covenant is likely a burden with extremely high likelihood to be a point of failure for your character to be invited to groups that is entirely in Blizzard's hands. Blizzard moves at glacial speeds to fix such problems.


When Blizzard proves that they are capable of balancing such powerful abilities before they are released, or even at such a point that they are not burdensome to the longevical health of the given choice's cohort, then you will not see a quarter of the complaints that you do now. These complaints are based in practicality, not idealism.

[Shelly]

So you would have to make two characters, one for AOE fights and one for single target. Even if you aren't that hardcore, you would make yourself completely ineligible for any kind of high level pvp. Any 3v3 team would run at the sight of a guy focused on aoe.

No. For that you'd actually swap your soulbinds and possibly your conduits - both of which are going to be very easy to do.

For swapping out an entire covenant that would be more like if you have a fight that requires a specific movement so you need that venthyr teleport (which will most likely be used to snap mobs rather than avoid mobs), or you need an aggro dump so you'll grab Night Fae (which is probably going to be the preferred covenant for M+ and possibly healers in raid), or you want a way to cleanse a bleed so you'll grab the Kyrian (another strong contender for M+), or maybe you're looking for a strong absorb for world questing so you go Maldraxxus. (Also could be the preferred DK tanking covenant since you can do some massive disrupts with the class ability.)

As things stand now if you're super-serious about M+ yes, you will have multiple characters that have different covenants that you'll cycle through M+. That being said that's not uncommon right now anyway so it's not exactly changing the status quo.

We also won't have a meta and I'd expect the meta to change multiple times over the course of the expansion the same way it did in BfA. Remember how at the start it was mostly rogue groups? Then come the Daz'Alor patch and Reaping and suddenly it was double-DK? Now it's mostly triple-hunter.

Expect the top-end meta to change. The changes will certainly effect people doing high-end keys, but for most folks trying to just get a 15 for their cache's it's not going to be a big deal and you'll be viable.

Finally, the inability to swap covenants has absolutely NOTHING to do with casual players. Whether they be the true casuals that can only play 4 to 6 hours a week or the MMO casuals that do 20+ hours a week but aren't high-end so don't think they count as hard-core.

It has everything to do with just Blizzard making a design choice. If they don't like the choice they'll introduce tweaks as the expansion progresses - the same way they did with Azerite - or they'll completely scrap the system come post-Shadowlands. As it stands the system isn't nearly as doom and gloom as the MMO-Chicken-Littles tend to make it out to be.

[Saltysquidoon]

"But people can just look it up the right configuration," you might say. News flash: that's an answer ignorant to the fact that not everyone will do that, will want to do that, or will think that should be necessary in a game of this caliber. "Well then they aren't entitled to membership in my group and I am free to decline them," you might say... and you wouldn't be wrong, but rigid covenants are exactly the kind of front that WoW can potentially address, on their game's level, the whole "why am I being declined" issue.

If you character is so poorly optimised you're being rejected from groups because you can't be bothered to put *SPEC NAME* guide into google you deserve to be rejected. WoW has always been like this and always will be, it's a game fundamentally driven by math. That is an inescapable, ineffable truth.

Also, I don't understand your near-obsessive need to soliloquise about your hyper-casual outlook on the game. No one cares you're a super casual player, not only does that mean all of these things don't affect you (as you admit) but no one is telling you not to be a casual player.

I never change my talents so I always pick a few AOE talents where I won't sacrifice too much of my single target damage since there are always aoe components in some fights that are very important. Most of my guild have the same mentality so we're never forced to completely alter our gameplay to gain a few seconds faster kill times.

I was going to post about how you'd be changing your soulbinds between raiding and M+ at the very least so the 'semi-permanent' part of your argument is just wrong. But this admission just shows that you're a lazy sub-optimal player.

I refuse to believe you've never been told to change your talents or be benched on prog if you literally never change them and are actually a mythic raider, that's just not how the scene works unless you're talking like outside the top 1000 guilds.

[WaltherLeopold]

So it doesn't matter to you is what you're saying. Whatever they do with covenants. In your own words - it doesn't affect you if they make it swappable.

So just make a better and more informed decision when picking your covenant.

[callipygoustp]

You won’t be forced to swap

You want to keep me from being 100% optimal because you don’t want to be told you aren’t

Yep
{10char}

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Anyone taking bets on whether or not we see the OP post a second time in this thread?
I'm betting: not a chance.

Edit:
Oh snap! He already did. I lose.

[TrollHunter3000]

Versions of the covenant debate always seem to come down to this point: "Since you're so casual, what does it matter if we who play for keeps push for the ability to swap covenants? Stay out of the discussion if you don't do X high end content!"

Staying out of the discussion is entirely the point of why players like me care. An approachable on-ramp to later game ambition is at the core of why covenants are being presented as intentionally diverse and simultaneously rigid. The entire intent to let new blood try M+ or raiding difficulties beyond LFR (which, once again are more optional than ever and we literally and intentionally have nothing to threaten each other with in regards to content access so long as the main thoroughfare of queuable difficulties include every raid and dungeon), giving people the option, whether it be with the intended established community or the odd available (but less intended) PUG is at the core of why covenants are being presented this way.

"Don't be new on other people's time" is a motto that has grown into WoW as time efficiency rears its ugly head as a key metric in using pick up groups to run PVE team content such as M+ and raids above LFR. The more gears and wheels that will freely rotate into a position that could be optimal or less optimal, the harder "being new" is, and in a situation where WoW does its best to protect us from the worst of each other in as much content as possible (which arguably won't and can't include premade team content, but they're allowed to try), the less approachable that later game content is. This is an important factor.

"But people can just look it up the right configuration," you might say. News flash: that's an answer ignorant to the fact that not everyone will do that, will want to do that, or will think that should be necessary in a game of this caliber. "Well then they aren't entitled to membership in my group and I am free to decline them," you might say... and you wouldn't be wrong, but rigid covenants are exactly the kind of front that WoW can potentially address, on their game's level, the whole "why am I being declined" issue.

I've said before that they will never fully address such a community issue as FOTM and meta, but this might be one of the ways they can actually do that: by cutting down on easily changeable variables and, in a world where the great vault is ticking and you have X number of M+ runs that your OCD is wrongly forcing you to do (another thing that isn't Blizzard's responsibility to work around), making it harder to actually form the perfect group might, in theory, have you take that less meta-class newer player of the "right" covenant into your group just to get it done and over with.

At the end of the day, no, these headaches won't be mine, so long as I can see all the content and achieve my cosmetic goals in queueable or soloable content, I will continue to do what I've done for two expansions now: pretend M+ doesn't exist. The thing is... there is a part of me that might want to give M+ a try some day, and if that moment comes, I will appreciate if the approachability of "no one sane will be asking you to switch covenants" is built into the social compact of the game for reasonable, worthwhile players.

So yes, if you get what you want up there at the high end, the damage trickles down. It matters. There is another viable perspective, people are allowed (intended) to pick their covenant for concept and flavor, and it's blizzard's job to make each covenant "not wrong" for 99.9% of the players doing the vast majority of the content, and we have no reason yet to believe they haven't done that. Keep giving your feedback, and I will keep validating that people seeing covenants as an opportunity for character expression are not wrong.

Thank you for reading!

What the fuck are you talking about? You blatantly contradict your entire premise multiple times. Making it harder to switch covenants would make it harder for casual players to switch to any hardcore raiding if you ended up choosing the wrong one at the start.

[Ersula]

I'm waiting for the hardcores to realize they can just do what they're proposing but leveling 4 of the same class & entering each in the covenant. You could knock out leveling them in the pre-patch alone

[Nyhtt]

What your incoherent babble fails to understand is that a covenant will not make you a good player. If you're trash you're still going to have a hard time "getting into M+"

What you failed to understand is, this game does not have a reliable way to tell if someone is trash or not. I have invited plenty of people into pugs who had a good RIO and high ILvl for them to do dps of someone half their ilvl and ignore all M+ mechanics.

You can literally buy ilvl and Rio

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My issue with covenants isn’t that I’m being forced into one ability. Idc what ability I get as long as it is good. But a whole cosmetic and gameplay system is tied into that choice. I will reroll my fucking class after playing warlock for 14 years before I play Kyrian or Night Fea.

[Ersula]

My issue with covenants isn’t that I’m being forced into one ability. Idc what ability I get as long as it is good. But a whole cosmetic and gameplay system is tied into that choice. I will reroll my fucking class after playing warlock for 14 years before I play Kyrian or Night Fea.

I mean, you don't have to wear the cosmetic items. The weapons arent' even covenant-restricted. Also me being thrilled the play a maldraxxian necromancer after being forced to wear priest robes for 15 years

[peggers69]

Not the mama!