Covenants will ruin Shadowlands.

[DemonDays]

Unless they've done a complete 180 on Covenant design since the reveal(lol nope). Then they will be the Azerite of Shadowlands.

We all know Blizzard is absolutely awful at balancing. Locking player power behind a choice that should be for cosmetic and story purposes is absolutely moronic.

There will be a BEST Covenant ability for your spec/class. It will be the best by a long margin. There will also be an absolute worst.

Then - nerfs and buffs will happen and the pendulum will swing again. But Blizzard has already said they're going to make it extremely hard to switch Covenants.

Why can't these morons open their eyes?

[Dellis0991]

You don't know shit.

[Sanguinerd]

I'm just going to pick whatever armor I like best and tell my guild(if they qq about it) to suck a fat one. If the time comes and we wipe because MY damage is too low I might apologize, but considering we're not some tryhard top100 guild I highly doubt that'll ever happen.

My fun > everything else so why should I care.

[shade3891]

You how this game operates either you play it or you don't. Just pick what you like and deal with it, or don't pick and wait for the "pendulum"....

They should make the choice permanent imo, no switching...

[WintersLegion]

You how this game operates either you play it or you don't. Just pick what you like and deal with it, or don't pick and wait for the "pendulum"....

They should make the choice permanent imo, no switching...

Currently its set up so that you can switch but switching will really set you back so they have to think twice about switching.

[DemonDays]

You how this game operates either you play it or you don't. Just pick what you like and deal with it, or don't pick and wait for the "pendulum"....

They should make the choice permanent imo, no switching...

That's why there should be zero player power tied to the system.

It should be a purely cosmetic/story choice.


As a Death Knight I obviously want to pick the death themed Covenant because the Armor looks sick and it will fit a DK story wise.

But what happens when the Fae fairy faction ends up being 20% dps over? Even as a "casual" Heroic raider I will feel like I want to switch.

[Wavebossa]

I just hope that the amount of power it gives it very slight relative to gear. BFA really got away from stats-on-gear mattering.

iLvl 450 with bad azerite traits, bad essences, bad corruption is likely going to get outdpsed by iLvl 400 with bis azerite, bis essences, bis corruption.

And blizz has stated multiple times, they want ilvl to be the most important factor of an upgrade. But if a Fury Warrior gets an Azerite peiece without CS/HB, might as well toss it in the trash lol.

[Relapses]

This topic has already been beaten to death. Did you really need to start a new thread on it?

1.) It's early in the development cycle so we don't know exactly how "OP" the Covenant traits are going to be.
2.) There will be a "best" and a "worst" but that's true of many things in the game. Why choose Coventants to be the one thing that "ruins" the game?
3.) We do not know how "difficult" it will be to change Convenants yet. And if you're obsessed with min/maxing that you're changing your Covenant for a sub-1% DPS gain, you deserve all the pain that's associated with this endeavor.

[Nerovar]

This topic has already been beaten to death. Did you really need to start a new thread on it?

1.) It's early in the development cycle so we don't know exactly how "OP" the Covenant traits are going to be.
2.) There will be a "best" and a "worst" but that's true of many things in the game. Why choose Coventants to be the one thing that "ruins" the game?
3.) We do not know how "difficult" it will be to change Convenants yet. And if you're obsessed with min/maxing that you're changing your Covenant for a sub-1% DPS gain, you deserve all the pain that's associated with this endeavor.

Well, we've already seen an example for a DK covenant ability that will basically be must have for PvP.

[A Chozo]

Oh no, the min-maxers will be mad.

[shade3891]

One ability with a high/medium cooldown being 20% more powerful then their respective covenant ones doesn't really matter. It's just flavor if you add your dps rotation to the total. From what i have seen from the Alpha the effects are good/useful but not OP.

Well, we've already seen an example for a DK covenant ability that will basically be must have for PvP.

You have only seen one covenant...

[Nerovar]

One ability with a high/medium cooldown being 20% more powerful then their respective covenant ones doesn't really matter. It's just flavor if you add your dps rotation to the total. From what i have seen from the Alpha the effects are good/useful but not OP.



You have only seen one covenant...

There will only be one class specific ability and we've seen every one of those for DKs.


Also these are basically active Azerite Powers except for the Necrolord ability.

[Hitei]

I'm just going to pick whatever armor I like best and tell my guild to suck a fat one. If the time comes and we wipe because MY damage is too low I might apologize, but considering we're not some tryhard top100 guild I highly doubt that'll ever happen.

My fun > everything else so why should I care.

This. I'll pick the one with the best aesthetic rewards/mounts/covenant hall.

0.001% of the playerbase should be worried about the DPS difference between covenants, and from the mage examples it seems like it isn't a matter of best or worst so much as a choice in situational specialization.



Kyrian is very obviously the strongest option here for ST (It will probably be nerfed some), but it is going to be completely destroyed by Necrolord and Night Fae in any AoE encounter or in mythic+. Venthyr is going to be extremely strong against melee in PvP and very specific bosses, but picking Kyrian gives you very strong ST burst. If Night Fae can be channeled while continuing to cast regular spells, that is nothing to scoff at.

[Nnyco]

You have only seen one covenant...

All four dk abilities got shown already, of course they can still change though.

[Aucald]

I would need to see the Covenant system in action before I declare it a failure - right now we've got some NYI info on potential buffs and a few cosmetic previews, not really enough to decide on how they feel or what else in store concerning them. Too early to really judge them one way or the other.

[Asotcha]

I'm just going to pick whatever armor I like best and tell my guild(if they qq about it) to suck a fat one. If the time comes and we wipe because MY damage is too low I might apologize, but considering we're not some tryhard top100 guild I highly doubt that'll ever happen.

My fun > everything else so why should I care.

I'm with you. Transmog is forever Plus, I'm really looking forward to seeing these storylines each place is involved with. I remember hearing that they progress beyond leveling into max level like the class halls.

[DemonDays]

I just hope that the amount of power it gives it very slight relative to gear. BFA really got away from stats-on-gear mattering.

iLvl 450 with bad azerite traits, bad essences, bad corruption is likely going to get outdpsed by iLvl 400 with bis azerite, bis essences, bis corruption.

And blizz has stated multiple times, they want ilvl to be the most important factor of an upgrade. But if a Fury Warrior gets an Azerite peiece without CS/HB, might as well toss it in the trash lol.

Ion Hazzicostas is a pathological liar. His words consistently fail to match what he implements into the game.

If he says something. You can generally expect him to do the exact opposite.

Case in point: Corruption.

"We want to reduce the RNG of titanforging and make iLevel matter."

Corruption does the exact opposite in both cases.

[Nerovar]

I would need to see the Covenant system in action before I declare it a failure - right now we've got some NYI info on potential buffs and a few cosmetic previews, not really enough to decide on how they feel or what else in store concerning them. Too early to really judge them one way or the other.

We've seen the general direction these abilities go with obvious BiS choices for certain types of content/certain situations and we have the confirmation that switching between covenants will be punishing. How is that not enough information to judge this system when it's literally the only information Blizzard has decided to release and it's still very obviously flawed at a conceptual level?

[Valysar]

Covenants will sublimate Shadowlands with magnificent transmog/mounts/spell etc.

[DemonDays]

This topic has already been beaten to death. Did you really need to start a new thread on it?

1.) It's early in the development cycle so we don't know exactly how "OP" the Covenant traits are going to be.
2.) There will be a "best" and a "worst" but that's true of many things in the game. Why choose Coventants to be the one thing that "ruins" the game?
3.) We do not know how "difficult" it will be to change Convenants yet. And if you're obsessed with min/maxing that you're changing your Covenant for a sub-1% DPS gain, you deserve all the pain that's associated with this endeavor.

As others have already pointed out.

We've seen previews of ALL four DK abilities for the Covenants.

There is one that is must have for tanking. One that is must have for PvP etc.

This is completely idiotic.

- - - Updated - - -

We've seen the general direction these abilities go with obvious BiS choices for certain types of content/certain situations and we have the confirmation that switching between covenants will be punishing. How is that not enough information to judge this system when it's literally the only information Blizzard has decided to release and it's still very obviously flawed at a conceptual level?

These same people were the ones claiming that the shitty Azerite levelling gear was just a preview and the raid gear would be way better.

Lo and behold Azerite ends up being the worst system they've ever added to the game.