What covenant will you choose?

[Baconeggcheese]

Its like you completly ignored what i said,i didnt say one covenant vs other covenant makes that difference,im saying best vs worst covenant+your soulbind+your conduits,ends up in differenced of OVER 50%,these logs are all over the place a simple search of the official forum shows it,and yes,people will just say...well pick the best ones duh

well by doing so we either end up with dumbed down raids to account for potentialy half your raid group being half a player,or players being forced in picking the best so they actualy do content,either way.,..there will be no choice because they decided to link covenants with player power,this is pure lunacy from blizz....in shadowlands they linking 4!! systems,when in legion and bfa they failed with just ONE /facepalm

There is no reason to ever consider dumbing down raids in a game with 4 difficulties. Especially when you already don't need to be perfectly min-maxed for any of them.

It'll just be like people have been saying from the beginning, there will be correct choices and incorrect choices. No different than picking a sub-optimal spec vs a meta spec. a person can play the game sub-optimally, but the game has never completely adjusted raids across the board to accommodate for those players.

[chiddie]

Theorycrafting, as a non raider resto shaman I should probably go Ventyr or Kyrian. Fair enough, if I was raiding I would have to go Necro, which really does not fit a Panda Shaman at all (not that there is a Covenant that perfectly matches shamanism in general, but Necro is the worst for sure).

[Baconeggcheese]

Anger Management isn't even the biggest one - Sudden Death, Massacre, and Deadly Calm are the ones I was referring to. You may be right about the final tier as well, but I'm thinking Ravager isn't a bad pick there either since it allows more Condemns during its windows.

This assumes those three talents are normally in line on their tiers of course.

I don't feel like those talents would be locked in with condemn. AFAIK condemns main value is giving you a second execute window.

Sudden death is pretty much unaffected by that, maybe hurt a little by giving you a free condemn potentially during your already increased execute windows where the only benefit you're getting is the lack of rage spent since that button press would have already been a condemn. Which has anti-synergy with anger management.

Massacre again is unaffected by that since all its doing is giving you a larger execute window which remains just as situational with or without condemn for arms. For Fury it gives CDR, which benefits the second execute window so fury is a lot more likely to lock in massacre than arms I'd guess.

Deadly calm doesn't really have any unique synergy with condemn as far as I can see.

Whereas anger management directly benefits from the second execute window via rage refunds. In for the kill benefits from anger management giving more colossus smash. Skullsplitter likely gets picked then as well because more rage synergizes with anger management synergizes with in for the kill.

Tuning decides all of this at the end of the day anyway, but my guess would be anger management, in for the kill, and skullsplitter with the 30 and 40 rows being situational.

[Segus1992]

I don't feel like those talents would be locked in with condemn. AFAIK condemns main value is giving you a second execute window.

Sudden death is pretty much unaffected by that, maybe hurt a little by giving you a free condemn potentially during your already increased execute windows where the only benefit you're getting is the lack of rage spent since that button press would have already been a condemn. Which has anti-synergy with anger management.

Massacre again is unaffected by that since all its doing is giving you a larger execute window which remains just as situational with or without condemn for arms. For Fury it gives CDR, which benefits the second execute window so fury is a lot more likely to lock in massacre than arms I'd guess.

Deadly calm doesn't really have any unique synergy with condemn as far as I can see.

Whereas anger management directly benefits from the second execute window via rage refunds. In for the kill benefits from anger management giving more colossus smash. Skullsplitter likely gets picked then as well because more rage synergizes with anger management synergizes with in for the kill.

Tuning decides all of this at the end of the day anyway, but my guess would be anger management, in for the kill, and skullsplitter with the 30 and 40 rows being situational.

Unless Condemn has been nerfed since I last tested it on the beta, it does a lot more damage than Execute (it does Shadow damage which ignores armor, and bosses have 32%), meaning anything that lets you Execute more becomes better with Condemn.

Deadly Calm is better with Condemn because Condemn is expensive (40 rage, 32 with the rage return) and you want to fit as many as possible in the window. I admit that one may be less of an autolock than the others (4 Condemns isn't going to be a huge deal in raids), but as long as Condemn is stronger than Execute, Sudden Death and Massacre are absolutely autolocks unless they're undertuned without it.

[Baconeggcheese]

Unless Condemn has been nerfed since I last tested it on the beta, it does a lot more damage than Execute (it does Shadow damage which ignores armor, and bosses have 32%), meaning anything that lets you Execute more becomes better with Condemn.

Deadly Calm is better with Condemn because Condemn is expensive (40 rage, 32 with the rage return) and you want to fit as many as possible in the window. I admit that one may be less of an autolock than the others (4 Condemns isn't going to be a huge deal in raids), but as long as Condemn is stronger than Execute, Sudden Death and Massacre are absolutely autolocks unless they're undertuned without it.

Could you go check in on those numbers again? Dunno how easy it is right now with the current beta setup.

I remember condemn actually doing less damage than execute for arms for a while, and then they buffed it iirc. Unfortunately don't have beta to check myself, so I'm perpetually behind on what's going on.

Condemn would need to be strong enough to undermine other talents even though those other talents will still have some amount of synergy with condemn. It'd specifically need to be strong enough with whatever synergy the talents you're mentioning have with condemn over others.

Which could be the case, I haven't done all the theorycrafting. Just spitballing right now.

[Segus1992]

Could you go check in on those numbers again? Dunno how easy it is right now with the current beta setup.

I remember condemn actually doing less damage than execute for arms for a while, and then they buffed it iirc. Unfortunately don't have beta to check myself, so I'm perpetually behind on what's going on.

Condemn would need to be strong enough to undermine other talents even though those other talents will still have some amount of synergy with condemn. It'd specifically need to be strong enough with whatever synergy the talents you're mentioning have with condemn over others.

Which could be the case, I haven't done all the theorycrafting. Just spitballing right now.

Tested quickly on beta just now, and the difference is about 20% more damage for Condemn.

[deenman]

There is no reason to ever consider dumbing down raids in a game with 4 difficulties. Especially when you already don't need to be perfectly min-maxed for any of them.

It'll just be like people have been saying from the beginning, there will be correct choices and incorrect choices. No different than picking a sub-optimal spec vs a meta spec. a person can play the game sub-optimally, but the game has never completely adjusted raids across the board to accommodate for those players.

It did in vanila when the difference between classes/specs was huge,and NO class/spec is 50% weaker than other like the covenats/soulbinds/conduits will have

[Baconeggcheese]

It did in vanila when the difference between classes/specs was huge,and NO class/spec is 50% weaker than other like the covenats/soulbinds/conduits will have

Why would you even bring up vanilla in response to what I said?

[deenman]

Why would you even bring up vanilla in response to what I said?

Didnt you say the game never had classes with such huge differences?

[Baconeggcheese]

Didnt you say the game never had classes with such huge differences?

Oh if that's your only point for bringing it up ignoring everything else said... you're high specs have massive differences in classic. There's a reason every raid is 60% warriors 20% rogues and then a spattering of other things.

Balance was a hot mess in vanilla.

[Toxuvox]

I won't raid higher than Heroic, and I don't care about min-maxing every scrap of throughput possible. I'm more interested in the story and/or aesthetics of the covenants, and that's gonna change depending on the race/class I'm levelling at the time, so for me, I'll probably end up with all of them before long. Based only on the visuals, I like the Night Fae, but that may not be a good fit on the likes of my Undead DK or Lock.

[deenman]

Oh if that's your only point for bringing it up ignoring everything else said... you're high specs have massive differences in classic. There's a reason every raid is 60% warriors 20% rogues and then a spattering of other things.

Balance was a hot mess in vanilla.

well the thing is...in vanila atleast,you didnt need all those warriors to actualy complete the raids,every single boss including naxx bosses could be beaten with any class comp,the early raids even more so

but today,if classes end up with the vanila differences...no mythic boss will ever die unless they make the raids easy

[Segus1992]

well the thing is...in vanila atleast,you didnt need all those warriors to actualy complete the raids,every single boss including naxx bosses could be beaten with any class comp,the early raids even more so

but today,if classes end up with the vanila differences...no mythic boss will ever die unless they make the raids easy

So your argument is that balance only matters because the game isn't easy? While that's true in PvE (duh), are you really asking Blizzard to make the game easy so they don't have to worry about balance?

[Baconeggcheese]

well the thing is...in vanila atleast,you didnt need all those warriors to actualy complete the raids,every single boss including naxx bosses could be beaten with any class comp,the early raids even more so

but today,if classes end up with the vanila differences...no mythic boss will ever die unless they make the raids easy

You absolutely don't need perfectly min-maxed everything to kill mythic bosses. We wouldn't be able to do sales immediately after finishing the raid if that were the case.

[deenman]

You absolutely don't need perfectly min-maxed everything to kill mythic bosses. We wouldn't be able to do sales immediately after finishing the raid if that were the case.

Yes,you dont need to be min maxed to DO them,but thats when the min maxing is less than 10% like,and it gets even easier over time with nerfs and gear upgrades so ofc people can do sales...

- - - Updated - - -

So your argument is that balance only matters because the game isn't easy? While that's true in PvE (duh), are you really asking Blizzard to make the game easy so they don't have to worry about balance?

No,im asking for them to not link covenants ''choices'' with player powers that lead to differences of over 50%

[Segus1992]

No,im asking for them to not link covenants ''choices'' with player powers that lead to differences of over 50%

I'm not aware of any covenant choice that adds even 10% damage, let alone 50% more than another choice, so what are you talking about exactly?

[deenman]

I'm not aware of any covenant choice that adds even 10% damage, let alone 50% more than another choice, so what are you talking about exactly?

not just covenants alone,conduits plus soulbinds best to worst is over 50%,my worry is that blizz will have to dumb down content to account for a bunch of players being half a dps

[Segus1992]

not just covenants alone,conduits plus soulbinds best to worst is over 50%,my worry is that blizz will have to dumb down content to account for a bunch of players being half a dps

Example? I'm assuming you mean best soulbind of the worst covenant, and worst conduits is just ridiculous to compare to class balance at all since they're just like azerite traits except there's fewer and you have more control.

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

I chose Venthyr when I voted on this poll a while ago, but I'm actually going to pick Kyrian. Kyrian is much better for PvP, can be used offensively and defensively, and it will be better for dungeons. Venthyr will only be slightly ahead on single target, but I'm not going above heroic raids with my warrior anyways.

[Factcheck]

Necrolord, I know it's not the best, hell, not even in contention for Death Knights. I'm doing it purely for looks, love the armor and love the Lich Slap ability.