I've been in casual guilds before, and my experience is that casual players are very likely to just go to Icy Veins and copy everything from the Icy Veins guide. This is because they don't want to be willfully bad but they also don't have the time/desire to minmax to the point of needing to use raidbots or anything like that.
I don't think this is a bad thing. At the end of the day though wow is an RPG and most people if you give them a binary choice between more effective and less effective they're going to choose the more effective thing that gives them bigger numbers.
Another thing I think this forum forgets often is that it's fun to be powerful. Most people don't think in terms of what they strictly need. Very few people play the game thinking like, "Well I'm not raiding mythic, so I don't need to use that higher dps weapon." They see a higher dps weapon and they go, "Haha big stick go bonk!" because it's fun and fun is ultimately what matters to most casual players.
I would think this would be obvious if you've ever met a human before.
Decided all my picks based on astethic. Picked Necrolord on my main (DK). Picked Venthyr on my first alt (BE/lock), on my 2nd alt I will go with night fae (NE/Druid) and the last planned alt is a Dwarf hunter and he gets Kyrian. Sure paladin works better for that Covenant but since he is a Beastmaster it fits with their Larions. Got all my bases covered
You're wrong. I chose Kyrian over Nightfae because of the aesthetics and because the Nightfae abilitiy is super boring (as are the the other 2). And Angel Warlock is way cooler than being a generic edgelord WL. Also neither Maldraxxus nor Venthyr really fit a WL, because we are not Necromancers and not fugly vampires. So you don't know the reasons for at least one person, meaning that your opinion is not universally correct.
I took the covenant that I enjoy playing and like the aesthetic of and over the chance of parsing a little higher. I did the same thing when I chose what race, class and spec to play. There very little difference between what these choices are. It's a game and I'm not trying to do stuff before all the conduits are unlocked.
Last edited by oland138; 2020-12-08 at 02:29 PM.
It is best choice for prot, because... just fucking look at prot paladin necrolords. They're not kilometers away, they're not continents away, they're fucking worlds apart.
Numbers is not a problem. Design is the problem. Which will not be so easily tuned as noobs believe here. :|
My nickname is "LDEV", not "idev". (both font clarification and ez bait)
yall im smh @ ur simplified english
Imagine caring what covenant you are. Most of you people will never see a mythic boss, never push past a 6, and never set foot in a raid besides LFR.
WHO CARES??
did anyone really expect people to not minmax in an RPG game?
even the most casual players minmax, everyone wants to be better at the game, even if they are casuals, its just human nature
This was never the major narrative. I agree that it is bullshit that we can't just pick the story that we want to play and then separately choose the pair of abilities. I very much dislike having to choose the pain loving vampires for the sake of power. Though I guess the blue slave owners aren't much better even with the great looking zone."Only the top 1% will pick covenants based on performance"
Still, I believe the primary fear was that OTHER PEOPLE would decline people to groups/raids based on "less optimal" covenant choices. This is definitely not going to be true outside the world first guilds. The variance between the covenants is similar to talent choices and I never once had anyone look at my talents in BFA and whisper me anything.
That's why warlocks are a good example, there is not much of a reason to switch specs for the content currently available. And if you want to play multiple specs the best overall choice is fairies, which also matches the statistics.
Unlike paladins or druids, who I doubt do their daily chores in a healer spec. Also, the only specs of those classes that were found useful in the recent years (at least two expansions) are resto & holy. Incidentally, the overall pick for those classes matches the best option for those specs. Of course, that also matches the roleplaying option so it's hard to make any conclusions.
But when you look at something like warlocks or rogues, it becomes clear that people pick based on performance.
Picked mine on both the toons I have played so far based on what felt fun/what looked coolest for that class/character. It looks like I've picked "sub-par" both times, and I DGAF. I'm probably not going to be doing anything harder than M+ or Normal raids on any toon as I just don't have the time currently. I'm more interested in playing through all 4 Covenant storylines and leveling new characters using Chromie Timewalking right now anyways.
All I'm saying is, where is this measurement coming from?
Has someone went through and analyzed all players, each choice they made, and whether or not it was "because it was best" vs "it looks pretty"?
If those happened to cross over and they chose pretty, do they count in your skewed vision of what people are doing?
Are we taking into account people who made decisions in early beta and stuck with them, regardless of buffs/nerfs, or that they may play multiple specs and went for a sub-optimal one for one spec because they just liked the way the ability integrated for another?
Like, I'm not saying people aren't picking the best; I'm sure many people went to Wowhead or IcyVeins and read through the covenant guides to figure out the best one for them.
But then again, that's what people do with classes and specs as well, so like, it's nothing different nor is it gamebreaking.
It's just wild that people want to argue that "the majority of players" do a certain thing.
Show those numbers, let's see the data back it up and I'm on board.
But anyway, I picked Necrolord for my Druid because I main as Tank and I like how adaptive swarm fits into the rotation and fleshcraft is fun.
I'm not sure if it's my "best" overall, because I also heal and do cat stuff too, but I don't care; they were fun abilities so I chose it.
Doesn't make much sense to be a druid and join necrolord, from a lore perspective (night fae fits that bill), but convoke felt funky and I didn't care for the rapid spam of self-focused rejuvs and moonfire that amounted to very little while being on a bigger cooldown.
So, that's how I chose.
Did I pick the right one? Am I part of the people who picked the best because it performed the best? I have no clue.
Okay... a couple things here. First off, why would only the top 1% of the game be interested in what performs best? That makes no sense. The next thing is a personal choice about covenants and choosing the one you personally like versus what's BiS. As long as the majority of people who want to be able to pick whichever covenant works best for them personally and have no ramifications on their endgame, then there's no issue. Cutting edge players excluded obviously as they will always pick BiS everything. It's when personal choice about something major like covenants gets you barred from content that we have an issue... which hasn't been something I've been seeing yet.