I Hate Borrowed Power

[Gaidax]

You have 2 years of those and once these 2 years are out - Blizzard will just give you other bunch of toys other expansion.

Frankly, all this "borrowed power" is not unlike talents that change between expansion or even outright various changes to core specs and classes that happen every new expansion anyway.

I actually like this scheme with powers that have expiration date, I already experienced a "snowball" design where Blizz piled on things that led to Cataclysm and absolute mess soup of spells classes with nonsense rotations and priority lists.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I think a decent work around would be every 2-3 expansions they take borrowed power abilities and roll them into new talent rows. So like.. we can start getting new talents again and they can be fixed, worked, and adjusted over the course of expansions of time to make sure they aren't insanely retarded like some covy abilities are right now.

[Cthulhu fhtagn]

Classes have always changed from expansion to expansion. I don't get how what is labeled as "borrowed power" now is any different from talents changing (or at the beginning of wow when there was just more room to add more abilities). A lot of the mechanics from bfa that people liked or blizzard thought were good design made it through to the next one in some way or another.

You cannot infinitely add things, you can't stop putting new abilities either or the game becomes very stagnant.

[cparle87]

Everything in the game is borrowed power, even class abilities. "Borrowed power" is just a buzzword that has lost all meaning.

[loras]

You have 2 years of those and once these 2 years are out - Blizzard will just give you other bunch of toys other expansion.

Frankly, all this "borrowed power" is not unlike talents that change between expansion or even outright various changes to core specs and classes that happen every new expansion anyway.

I actually like this scheme with powers that have expiration date, I already experienced a "snowball" design where Blizz piled on things that led to Cataclysm and absolute mess soup of spells classes with nonsense rotations and priority lists.

This, basically.
Additionally it allows them to test out bigger stuff for longer periods of time, they keep the stuff that works well and integrate it into the common ability set.

[Elias01]

Yeah... it's gonna suck when they do. That is why i hate borrowed power.

Can you imagine a druid without convoke? A DK with abomination limb? A Paladin without Toll?

I do hope those abilities stick around, but there is no guarantee. It suck getting attached to an ability for it to just get torn away from you.

Blizzard thinks of WoW as a 2 year game. Players think of it as longer than that. That is why we see this disconnect.

Yes we can becouse we played our classees without those skills absolutly fine. Its this or having classes unchanged for several expansions.

[druchii5]

Yeah... it's gonna suck when they do. That is why i hate borrowed power.

Can you imagine a druid without convoke?

I absolutely can not, at this point. Convoke is such a satisfying ability across all Druid specs, that the class would feel far less enjoyable without it. As you said, I hope they keep some iteration of it going forward after Shadowlands--similar to how Ret Paladins got to keep Wake of Ashes.

[AndyF1069]

I've been thinking about this recently. We're only one month into Shadowlands and I'm already fearing the day that I won't have abomination's limb. It's transformed the way I play the game in both PvP and PvE. I hope I'm not forced out of my covenant during the expansion either.

[Bigbazz]

Legion's Artifact/Legendary system was far more impactful than Covenants and it's gone. You'll live. It's not like borrowed power is a new concept anyway. Classic's Legendaries eventually stopped being relevant. As did TBC's. As did Shadowmourne in WotLK. As did the Legendary Staff and Rogue daggers in Cata. As did the cloak in MoP. As did the ring in WoD. See a pattern here yet?

This is true, but I don't think you can compare TBC/WOTLK legendaries with Legion Artifacts or modern Covenant powers. A DPS Warrior that didn't have Shadowmourne in ICC would still do really, really competitive dps with the raid drops, that same DPS Warrior in TBC would still do really really good dps without Warglaives. Those legendaries were obviously the strongest option but from Legion onwards your entire class is built around the borrowed power.

The bad thing about Covenants is the fact that the playerbase is split, and taking a choice that benefits one spec often limits you in another spec, which is worse than Legion's system of AP into your weapons, though that had a similar issue (you just had to grind out the solution).

[Cazze]

This is true, but I don't think you can compare TBC/WOTLK legendaries with Legion Artifacts or modern Covenant powers. A DPS Warrior that didn't have Shadowmourne in ICC would still do really, really competitive dps with the raid drops, that same DPS Warrior in TBC would still do really really good dps without Warglaives. Those legendaries were obviously the strongest option but from Legion onwards your entire class is built around the borrowed power.

The bad thing about Covenants is the fact that the playerbase is split, and taking a choice that benefits one spec often limits you in another spec, which is worse than Legion's system of AP into your weapons, though that had a similar issue (you just had to grind out the solution).

As opposed to tbc/wotlk where you couldn't even play the "other" spec.

[Bigbazz]

As opposed to tbc/wotlk where you couldn't even play the "other" spec.

Elaborate, because it was super easy to put together an offspec set in TBC/Wrath and Wrath also added dual spec.

[Spicymemer]

Imagine being so dense you believe that getting a legendary weapon which for the most part is entirely contained within a raid and is more or less a reward from your guold for being a solid and reliable raider that is valued. is somehow comprable to player power being linked to a daily/weekly quest/scenario grind that is more or less mandatory.

[oplawlz]

As opposed to tbc/wotlk where you couldn't even play the "other" spec.

Sure you could, I swapped between holy and shadow on my priest regularly.

[MoanaLisa]

Looking at it realistically all expansion power is borrowed as it's stripped away from you with the launch of the next expansion. What you're calling 'borrowed power' is little more than slightly different expansion mechanics and systems added to give some flavor.

[Ninix]

I could make an essay on why, but to keep it short -- it's just too damn good this time around. Many of the SL class abilities are quite lame, but then you have some very fun abilities that work in such harmony with our kits, spells like Abomination Limb, The Hunt, Hallowed Ground and many others. It's not too early or too late to speak about this so please don't bring up silly arguments like that, imagine SL is ending tomorrow and you have to forever say goodbye to these beautiful abilities. Beautiful, another reason I'm so fond of them, because compared to my big old fireball they look way more up-to-date and impressive.

I wouldn't mind it if class abilities of our covenant of choice became permanent. Balance is also a non-issue, provided some of them are tuned down a little. Classes felt stale, they still do to some degree but we desperately need new skills & effects, this much is apparent at this point.

What's the difference between borrowed power through Covenant rather than a new class ability that could be deleted at the end of the expac as we have seen so many times?

I mean... the end result is exactly the same.

[conceptKitty]

It's alright, I get why they're doing it. Since WoW is basically indefinite you'd just have way too many skills and we've had a lot of skills that have been removed. At least this way we won't. I do miss some of the old borrowed powers, but okay, you get over it.

[Masternap]

I fully agree. Not a single ability, active or passive, that fundamentally changes the way a class is played, should be borrowed power. Not one. All these covenant abilities should just be talents and be reworked to fully fit with the specs. Many of them feel tacked on, but some actually make the spec feel that much smoother. Taking them away will leave a hole again, which will just suck.

If they want to use powerful abilities on legendaries or other borrowed power systems, just make them feel like a bonus, not like you absolutely need them. There are many that are like this, but way too many are pretty much needed to make a class work.

[saixilein]

The legendaries from previous expansions didn't give abilities though, so it's not quite the same thing.

There were definitely some specs that were pretty useless/weak without the bis legendry, and/or the rotation felt extrem clunky/bad/boring...

[Azerate]

"Borrowed power" makes every expansion's gameplay unique and more interesting, as opposed to just being continuation of the previous one.

[CalamityHeart]

Conceptually, borrowed power is fine. Getting meaningful changes to your class and kit as a feature of an expansion, then having it go away in favor of a different (or maybe even somewhat similar) meaningful change to your class and kit in the next expansion is fine. I don't have a problem with it, but it's easy to see why others would. It's one of those things where you're either fine with it or you're not, and there's little room for arguing in either direction. There's no convincing people who don't like borrowed power that it's a conceptually fine system, the same way that you're not going to get through to people who aren't fans of certain genres of games that those genres are awesome, if you're into that. Because they're not into that.

The "problem" with borrowed power is more a problem with how it's implemented. Like, a genre isn't shit, but there can be shit games within that genre. That's a slightly more arguable thing. Personally, I thought artifacts were good, the Heart of Azeroth and Azerite gear was awful, and the Covenant stuff has floated the concept back up to good again. What's most important when it comes to these endgame systems is feeling like I'm actually getting stronger as I advance in them. Legion and Shadowlands have done that, BFA failed tremendously at it, then managed to clean it up a little bit near the end.

But in general, it just feels to me like this game has reached a point to when people say "I Hate Borrowed Power!", it's just screaming uselessly into the ether.