9.0 General Discussion

[Chickat]

Apparently it was the best-received at the blizzcon. Just goes to show WoW is still full of edgelord-emo teens (jk, jk).

I personally like the Kyrian aesthetic (and the mail set is the best looking mail set in a long while IMO), but probably as a NE Hunter main I will go Night Fae, for lore-ish reasons. I guess I can still change my mind depending on what the sets/pets/mounts look like. What I know is I will NOT choose based on abilities or talent trees, and hope its somewhat balanced but wont worry too much about it.

That tree in the nightfae zone is gorgeous. I think all of the covenants look genuinely good. My belt paladin will go Venthyr just for the blood knight res transmog though. I plan on picking a covenant based on which sets fits which class best. So dk obviously goes with necrolords, druid obviously with nightfae etc.

[Yarathir]

All bets are off now.

[Chickat]

I'll wait till I can see the Sanctums each covenant has, and the mounts/backs. Will also kinda be based on what class I end up wanting to play. I don't like Kyrian's look though, so probably not them.

We know the nightfae sanctum is that cool world tree looking thing. Reminds me of a modern mount hujal world tree or an uncorrupted prettier heart of fear tree.

[Yarathir]

Honestly Venthyr is the one I am most looking forward to

Cool plate set
Back piece is a tombstone
Vampire and Gothic aesthetic
Whole blood theme works well with being a blood elf paladin

Think the plate set is kinda meh, personally. Love the Necrolord plate set.

Kyrian mail looks also nice. A mail set looking nice..

[therumblings]

Alpha in May, on page 3000.

[Hitei]

We know the nightfae sanctum is that cool world tree looking thing. Reminds me of a modern mount hujal world tree or an uncorrupted prettier heart of fear tree.

Reminds me of Ori's spirit tree.

[Revamp Man]

I think blizzard needs to remove the lock on certain abilities to covenants

I hope they take this opportunity to allow feedback to help with development

This thread is proof that the cosmetic choices are the important ones in the eyes of players

[Hitei]

I think blizzard needs to remove the lock on certain abilities to covenants

I hope they take this opportunity to allow feedback to help with development

This thread is proof that the cosmetic choices are the important ones in the eyes of players

I disagree. Both are important and one of the biggest cancers to the game's development has been the memetic autism of meta and balance consistently pushing for them to remove any choice in player power. Going to be pretty shitty when they get generic'd and instead of the neat specialization of there being Necrolord Priests, and Night Fae Priests, it's just "what color is a spell they use every couple minutes".

[Revamp Man]

I disagree. Both are important and one of the biggest cancers to the game's development has been the memetic autism of meta and balance consistently pushing for them to remove any choice in player power. Going to be pretty shitty when they get generic'd and instead of the neat specialization of there being Necrolord Priests, and Night Fae Priests, it's just "what color is a spell they use every couple minutes".

Tying power to what is essentially a cosmetic or story choice is shit

The balance might be great but you either need to

1. Make cosmetic unlocks permanent and soulbinds permanently unlocked

Or

2. Make swapping easy

[George Costanza]

Just do what preach and bellular said and like separate player power from the covenants or whatever it was.

[FlubberPuddy]

Tying power to what is essentially a cosmetic or story choice is shit

The balance might be great but you either need to

1. Make cosmetic unlocks permanent and soulbinds permanently unlocked

Or

2. Make swapping easy

Covenants are not simply their single active combat ability. People need to stop being so dumb about it and thinking that's all they are. Each will have 3 different "talent tree" soulbinds connected to them as well.

Basing whether a covenant is "powerful" because of it's 1 combat ability is frankly incredibly ignorant of the covenants as a whole.

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I disagree. Both are important and one of the biggest cancers to the game's development has been the memetic autism of meta and balance consistently pushing for them to remove any choice in player power. Going to be pretty shitty when they get generic'd and instead of the neat specialization of there being Necrolord Priests, and Night Fae Priests, it's just "what color is a spell they use every couple minutes".

The funniest thing about this is when they balanced power gain in PVP and left it to skilled play during Legion and how the player response was universally hated that gear did not matter in PVP.

The people who harp on about "balance" are completely out of touch with the vast majority of the playerbase.

- - - Updated - - -

This game was designed from the ground up for rewards to increase power and for increased power to lead to increased rewards. It's a positive feedback loop the game has always had. The game was never balanced from the get-go. The game has also been much closer in "balance" than it ever was before.

Harping about it like we're in the vanilla days of imbalance is completely idiotic.

[Chickat]

Reminds me of Ori's spirit tree.

I bought that game but never played it. My brother keeps begging me to. I've heard its very good.

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I think blizzard needs to remove the lock on certain abilities to covenants

I hope they take this opportunity to allow feedback to help with development

This thread is proof that the cosmetic choices are the important ones in the eyes of players

They just need to let us switch between covenant abilities or something, or pick which one we want. I personally will be picking what I think looks coolest unless an ability looks so good/cant live without it etc that I choose a different one. Unless the Necrolord ability is something like Wake of Ashes while the other abilities are slows or something really unbalanced Ill be going with what looks cool. I know not everyone has that luxury, but I don't play at near a high enough level for it to matter that much.

I feel like the Soulbind trees will be a lot easier to balance than the covenant abilities. Most of the soulbind talents seem to be the more boring or quality of life talents, and not a hugely big throughput talent. Nobody is going to pick a new covenant because it gives 5% crit over 5% vers. What people will change covenants for is situational abilities that literally make a raid easy mode over the other abilities etc.

[threads]

guys i think it's not this week

[Chickat]

Just do what preach and bellular said and like separate player power from the covenants or whatever it was.

That will make them glorified reps at that point. What would they even move all that player power back into? I think the only thing that needs done is letting you pick which covenant ability you want at 60. I know thats not thematic, but thats the only thing that makes sense. Soulbinds are a non issue. There will be 3,4,5 6 etc soulbind trees you can swap out situationally. This raid boss wants the aoe Soulbind, and this one wants the crowd control one etc. Thats fine. Maybe make the other covenants regular reps, and at exalted you can use their ability instead as an exalted reward?

[Nyel]

Just do what preach and bellular said and like separate player power from the covenants or whatever it was.

Then Covenants are pretty pointless. Customization is nice but just fluff. And they already feel like reputations turned into a feature, without contributing something to character progression they will even look worse as a feature.

I agree though, separating them would solve the inevitable problem with balancing. Just give every class a new talent row instead.

[ExiHext]

What I still fail to understand: why didn't they just make covenants pure aesthetics? Mounts/Pets/Armor/questline? Most people will choose a covenant for the aesthetic and I already have this feeling that people who go Kyrian will get screwed with soulbinds. Covenant should be just for the looks, soulbinds (or whatever progression system will be in place) should be free to choose from, regardless of you covenant.

[Sondrelk]

What I still fail to understand: why didn't they just make covenants pure aesthetics? Mounts/Pets/Armor/questline? Most people will choose a covenant for the aesthetic and I already have this feeling that people who go Kyrian will get screwed with soulbinds. Covenant should be just for the looks, soulbinds (or whatever progression system will be in place) should be free to choose from, regardless of you covenant.

Because not everyone cares about minmaxing, and if it was only aesthetics then you would have players complaining why they have to do something that gives them no power. Gaining cool abilities are in a way the ultimate carrot on a stick for players, so adding minor buffs or possibly even flavorful cool abilities at the end of a covenant grind incentivizes players to log on each day.

Besides, unless one covenant is massively more powerful than the others, or the first raid is only single target bosses and one covenant gives 10% more damage pure single target then we can have a perfectly varied meta. Most likely we will have a somewhat decent spread of bosses, from sustain spread AoE to burst single target, and the players having a "right" choice for that boss makes them feel good.
As i have mentioned several times before, class identity, and racial identity lives or dies on the specific feeling of "glad i chose X, because that works perfectly against Y situation". For instance i love it when i play on my DK and i get a massive amount of small adds to kill with diseases, similarly i love it when i play on my hunter main and get to easily top DPS meters when a large pack of adds shows up.

[huth]

I bought that game but never played it. My brother keeps begging me to. I've heard its very good.

It's a good metroidvania. There's also a second part out.

[huth]

The funniest thing about this is when they balanced power gain in PVP and left it to skilled play during Legion and how the player response was universally hated that gear did not matter in PVP.

The people who harp on about "balance" are completely out of touch with the vast majority of the playerbase.

It also shows that the majority does not want balance at all/thinks "balance" means "i am OP".

What I still fail to understand: why didn't they just make covenants pure aesthetics? Mounts/Pets/Armor/questline? Most people will choose a covenant for the aesthetic and I already have this feeling that people who go Kyrian will get screwed with soulbinds. Covenant should be just for the looks, soulbinds (or whatever progression system will be in place) should be free to choose from, regardless of you covenant.

Because that would make them meaningless and remove player agency. They should do the opposite and make sure different covenants are best suited to different parts of gameplay(e.g. Kyrian Monk is best for raiding, but Venthyr is better for M+), while also requiring significant effort to change them so the player has to choose which one is most important to them.

People have grown far to used to making trivial decisions that can be changed at will.

[Sondrelk]

It also shows that the majority does not want balance at all/thinks "balance" means "i am OP".



Because that would make them meaningless and remove player agency. They should do the opposite and make sure different covenants are best suited to different parts of gameplay(e.g. Kyrian Monk is best for raiding, but Venthyr is better for M+), while also requiring significant effort to change them so the player has to choose which one is most important to them.

People have grown far to used to making trivial decisions that can be changed at will.

They shouldnt make it so one is unquestionably better. But if Kyrian gives monks a 2% DPS increase in pure signle target while Venthyr gives a 3% DPS increase in burst AoE then we are on the right track. The important part then is just making sure that the raids do not heavily lean towards a single type of boss.

I do definitely agree that they should make it difficult to change covenants, or perhaps more fittingly, if you change covenant you ahve to regrind most of it, so that players can easily change their minds early, but raiders cannot simply change covenants between pulls, or even when going from Raids to M+