"Only the top 1% will pick covenants based on performance" :S

[Lolites]

That's not confirmation bias, he is not putting extra value on some evidence that agrees with him and ignoring others.

actualy, thats exactly what he is doing, otherwise he would mention those 10 specs where most chosen (not always "best", mind you) covenant have under 50%( i would even consider 6 that are under 55%, but lets keep to those 10 for now), which means majority of people playing those specs did not in fact chosen the "best"...

he would also not ignore that highest disparity is for specs where the same covenant is both best aestheticaly fitting and best performance, so we cant realy say what was that choice based on... and thats only considering those two criteria, not to mention there are dozens if not hundreds different criteria people used to choose covenant...

[LazuOG]

Who cares what other People are choosing. Use your own damn brain.

I love ppl that posses the sheer hubris to assume that just because they thought about something themselves Its actually going to be the secretly most valuable thing, compared to the many various individuals that took their careful time measuring and testing that thing you "used your brain on" on many iterations to determine it's numeric value in this numbers based game.

Bet many ppl that say this kinda shit also low-key distrust scientific results and believe on conspiracy theories cause they can't see the curve.

Of course you shouldn't 100% blindly follow some guide, and only a fraction of ppl actually do that.

[Mercane]

"And if you for some reason think that Rogues like to be fairies or ascended angle-creatures then you're absolutely delusional" You don't speak for the rogue community. Shut up.

Ven'thyr rogues, rise up.

[VinceVega]

Venthyr isn't even ret's best m+ covenant lmfao. God what an annoying person

Really.... number 4... alright i make a edit

[Raava]

The majority of my friends and guild members who play low mobility classes picked Night Fae for the movement you gain and it just happened to be the best for their class. It doesn't always mean it is picked for performance. I picked Kyrian on both of my alts because I'm lazy and having little extra benefits on short cool-downs is nice. I mean... who doesn't want a little servant that gives you free talent swaps and great potions. It does happen to be one of the most picked on Demon Hunter, but that's not why I picked it.

[Alanar]

My casual as f brother chose his covenant based on performance too.

I will be mythic raiding so I did the same but jt happens the 2 competent covenants to be my favorite too (NF&Venthyr).

Me, and couple of friends pure choose on eastetics. The choice is differnt for everyone.

But to be fair.. I dont think it will drastically change your dps or what ever. But I guess I get it.. 1% is 1%.

[LazuOG]

Who cares what other People are choosing. Use your own damn brain.

I love ppl that posess the sheer hubris to assume that just because they thought about something themselves Its actually going to be the secretly most valuable thing, compared to the opinion of many various individuals that took their careful time measuring and testing that thing you "used your brain on" on in many iterations to determine it's numeric value in this numbers based game.

Bet many ppl that say this kinda shit also low-key distrust scientific results and believe in conspiracy theories cause they can't see that curve ppl seem so adamant about.

Of course you shouldn't 100% blindly follow some guide, and only a fraction of ppl actually do that.

[Lolites]

You are seeing things over 50% to upwards nearly 90% tilted towards one covenant out of 4 and you think its just because THAT many people of that covenant?

and you think its coincidence the highest disparity is for specs where BOTH best performance and aesthetics are the same covenant?
how about holy priest, "best" covenant is necro, it have 44%, so 56%, which is majority, didnt choose based on performance (actualy maybe more as some of necro might choose it on different criteria)

sure, a lot of people did choose based on performance, BUT a lot of people DIDNT... and actualy only the other part is provable, bcs if someone is in "best" covenant they might be there for other reason, but if someone is in covenant that DOESNT have the best performance he surely isnt there bcs of performance...

[Clozer]

wowhead went and asked all those people why those choose who they did? That must have took awhile.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correl...and_dependence

The data clearly shows a correlation between the strongest cov and people's cov choice. Quite easy to understand actually. Hopefully, you can get it now, too.

[Eurhetemec]

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.

Warlocks are really interesting example, because they don't support the OP's argument at all, even if we assume they're not swapping specs. Specifically, Destro is 38% Kyrian, 28% Night Fae, 21% Necrolord, 12% Venthyr - that's a pretty flat distribution. It's probably flatter than the distribution of most-used specs within most classes. Demo is 38% Necrolord, 38% Night Fae, 14% Venthyr, 10% Kyrian - again, that's not particularly extreme, and shows pretty much 50/50 split on which Covenant is "best". Aff, which I assume is the least-played Lock spec based solely on my in-game experience, is the only one with a fairly big "main" Covenant, with 57% Night Fae, but that's just not that bad.

For the OP's claims to be true, we'd need to see something much more severe than what we're seeing with Warlocks. And again, in some cases, we're seeing stuff directly opposite to what the OP claims is true, like with Druids.

Bizarre that you think Holy is the only "useful" Paladin spec given how incredible Prot is right now (Boomkin is also pretty shit-hot).

To me it looks more like people are avoiding stuff that's outright bad for them, rather than only going for the #1 most optimal Covenant. Yeah, sure if an ability outright sucks, people avoid it, even more casual players - especially as most of the ones that suck are pretty obvious. But if it's merely mediocre? Or just "not the best"? In a lot of classes, people are absolutely taking those. In some classes, most people are.

And yeah the chore issue further undermines the whole thing - and that does even apply to Warlocks and the like - I know at least one Warlock who changes specs for their dailies and so on and likely logs out in that spec.

[Jessicka]

Players at max level putting out those stats to be picked up, pretty much are that 1%.

I have no fucking idea which is best for me, I picked Venthyr because they're cool. A lot of the talents look very situational as well, once you start throwing in adds and movement, things get a very different feel to them and Kyrian felt particuarly bad at that as Demo.

[Blackmist]

I was honestly really happy that Night Fae was top for hunters, because it was the most fun class ability they gave me while levelling.

I was dreading it turning out to be something like Kyrian, and then I'd have to explain to every cunt over the next two years why I'd chosen to gimp myself by half a percent in exchange for a fun ability.

Same with the legendary. I know the "best" one is the embers, but I know my limits. I'd rather pick something that just works on its own like every other class, so I don't end up dying to something stupid while trying to drop tar traps and flares in a boss fight.

[Malania]

That's not confirmation bias, he is not putting extra value on some evidence that agrees with him and ignoring others. He is literally reviewing a statistic based on a full data set and making a hypothesis, its as clean as it gets.

On the other hand, what you re doing is trying to use a single outlier data point to contradict him at best.

He hasn't made a hypothesis. He had made a conclusion based on a data set that offers nothing to support it. If offers no conclusive reasoning behind any player choices. If the data doesn't support a reason, he can't make a conclusion for it.

And I simply offered him a point of view for why the data set can be read alternatively. I'm not the outlier either. Multiple posts in both threads have posted to state they made the same decision as me and it coincidentally lined up with a sim.

I offer no conclusions other than you're make assumptions with nothing to support it. There's sims for classes and specs that don't line up what you should be seeing if you believe the highest simming would by default bring in the highest numbers.

I disagree with the assumptions for both of these threads until you can provide me hard evidence either way. Until then, I'm happy to just wait and see.

And really in the end, the covenant system is no worse than previous expansions power systems. People whined when professions offered stat increses and they felt changing their profession was now mandatory to be competitive.

[TheFirstOnes]

Ven'thyr rogues, rise up.

Kyrian Ret Pally here. How do you like the double judgement crit? ;P May suck for you, but it's a dream for us.

[Bigbazz]

I chose Venthyr purely because of buffed Execute, but also prefer the theme to the sickly Night Fae/Kyrian shite and the steroid demons aren't exactly my flavour either.

[Declaron]

Whats most interesting really, is that players do not "perform" at 100% of their classes capability/output 100% of the time. As such, covenant X might be Y% better than covenant Z, so people pick X, completely disregarding the fact that the Y% advantage covenant X ability sims does not, or rarely ever, outweighs the million variables that affect their performance in a given situation.

Sure, if an ability was say 20% more powerful 75% of the time theres an issue, but its just not like that in the vast, vast majority of variables currently on the table.

TL;DR, unless your top 0.5% in a top 0.5% guild its going to make little to no difference to you whatsoever. Pick whatever you want and enjoy it.

[valax]

it's not as much as the other abilities are worse for dungeons or raids , they are just worse all around in some cases.


As paladin pressing divine toll feels WAAAAAAY better than any other covenant ability.
As a DH nothing really screamed game changing potential , so i went night fae because at it does something unique with that 50yd charge.
As DK i went venthyr but i'm probably going to switch him to necrolords
My Warrior will probably be defaulted to venthyr at this point so that i have each character into a unique covenant, regardless of it being good or not.

[MikeBogina]

I picked Venthyr for my Demon Hunter and Kyrian for my Spriest, mostly for aesthetics and their stories interested me more. I believe Venthyr is actually the best for Demon Hunter, but for Priest... Kyrian might not be lol

[RedditIsDown]

Who cares who chose what for whatever reason? We should be choosing soulbinds and covenants separately. It's stupid that we have to make a decision between player power and preferred aesthetics when that dynamic is something only a hardcore roleplayer would really care about. How many of those do we have? Enough to warrant dragging the entire player base into a forced semi-permanent "Meaningful choice" roleplay dilemma?

[Addiena]

Icy Veins is garbage, but the reality is sims prove everything that happened to be accurate. The overwhelming majority of players are picking what's meta and best.

Then what would you suggest people use? thats in a easy to read and navigate format, that lists pros and cons for each choice, that doesnt drown the poor reader in 6 million useless numbers and figures, that doesnt force people to understand obtuse mathematics and most importantly doesnt require a PHD to understand.

Id go on about simcraft but I hate that POS with every ounce of my soul, Raider IO can go die in a fire too.

Not everyone can be a PHD wielding leet raider with a 30000 IO score and so most will go to either Icy-Veins or Wowhead where the information that they WANT to know is easily obtainable in a easy to consume format.