Shadowlands - Covenant Class and Signature Abilities Preview

[Niwes]

I thought these abilities were supposed to be basically flavor abilities? These seem to me quite opposite.

Have fun minmaxing your covenant and get declined for having wrong covenant.

remember WoD, when they said „We just prune abilities that are obsolete, i.e. 2 utility spells that can be combined into 1, or utility spells that are useless or never used.“ ? that was their words. what they did, was to make a lot of classes to 4 core button classes.

thats typical for blizz and exactly what Bellular says (even when idc about Youtube streamers):
Ion and others try so hard telling us how and what to do, to do it right. and then they do the exact opposite. like in „we have to come back to a situation, where item level has a meaning, so ppl can more easily decide between 2 items.“. and then they brought corruption system. lol.

typical for blizz.

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This doesn't look very fun. Every spell is like stacking three on use azerite neck traits into a single ability, albeit more class specific. Just messy imo and too decoupled from the core of the class/the regular spells. Wish they had something similar to the on use effects on legion legendarys instead, or just scratched the system entirely, and focused on making the core of the classes fun.

thats a very good advice. but way to „simple“ for modern blizz.

in the end, if Covenants would be a solely cosmetic choice, and/or above advice is used instead and game has a good amount of high quality content (real content, not „systems“), SL could be successful and ppl would be happy.

instead i see the next Legion/BfA xpac, based on „systems“ on the horizon.

[Alkizon]

Hmm. Looks exactly like something, that people did afraid of it will be... that's sad.

in the end, if Covenants would be a solely cosmetic choice, and/or above advice is used instead and game has a good amount of high quality content (real content, not „systems“), SL could be successful and ppl would be happy.

instead i see the next Legion/BfA xpac, based on „systems“ on the horizon.

True... true... Just some of mostly cosmetic stuff for open world (kind of what garrison's buildings did), to deal with local environment. That's all, nothing complicated. They should work diligently with classes, not with temporary garbage.

[Accendor]

There you go. And while they're at it, they can bring back Tier sets. They can also get rid of M+ because nobody important plays that anyway. Just replace it with a version of dungeons that gives you cosmetic rewards. They could call them "Challenge Modes" or something like that. Then they can bring back 10 and 25M Heroic raiding because everybody agrees that it was better than what we have now. And maybe we can make the big bad guy an Old God corrupted faction leader. Oh, and maybe they can add a new class that can DPS, heal or tank. And aren't there, like, Pandas or something in Warcraft? I think people might want to play those too.

Alright guys. We figured it out: Just re-release MoP and the game will be good again!

Thats a really, really weird train of thought you gave here. Jumping from "stop with the rental systems that fuck with classes on a fundamental level" to your rant post is mikd boggling.

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I am fine with this as long as it is only usable in outdoor content (world pvp, questing etc.) much like pvp talents with warmode on. Then people can still pick whatever covenant they like the most without being weaker in arenas/m+/raiding.

If it's only for outdoor content it might as well not exist... Like pvp talents.

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thats probably the best advice in this thread here. at least i have the same opinion. because otherwise, in the end, we invest time and effort. then blizz goes „Patch Notes 123: We adjusted Covenant xyz to...“. then we are pissed. thematically choice is in the end way more long lasting.

thats why i hate long term hard decisions in wow:
- if you choose based on min/max, things later change and it sucks.
- if you choose more long term, thematically, it sucks until its balanced.

its like a loose:loose. you cant do it right. thats why i hate Covenant already in the first place.

If they rebalance it, you just need to reroll. Simple as that.

[Kolvarg]

Can someone tell me the difference between rolling FotM class and rolling FotM covenant? So many people complaining about being locked in, but what about when your class gets nerfed? You still have to jump through hoops levelling and gearing a new one, just like you would rerolling a covenant (theoretically).

If you can somehow withstand your class being nerfed then you can withstand your covenant being nerfed. Or is rolling FotM the play style the game should cater to?

Well for one if there's already a problem (FotM class) they shouldn't make it worse (by adding FotM covenant).

But also with classes, you can just have alts. You don't need to delete your character and undo your progress to start over as a different class. Anyone who cares enough to min/max is able to level up and gear multiple classes concurrently. That is not the case for covenants - unless you want to have multiple alts of the same class on different covenants, I guess.

Personally I don't care too much. But it really doesn't excite me or makes me want to play WoW in any way.

[DechCJC]

This is gonna be a fuckin' nightmare to choose from for anyone that does both PvE/PvP. Some are amazing in one and 'meh' or garbage in the other. Hopefully they don't have too much impact on gameplay and all have their little uses.

[ErrandRunner]

Anyone else get the feeling Shadowlands is looking more and more like WOD v2.0?

[NineSpine]

High chance that, if you care about min-maxing, you already have most of classes, at best you have to finish their leveling and start the gear grinding wheel with tons of catchup mechanics.

Here we're talking about someone having 12 chars who technically should prepare 36 new chars just to cope with future buffs/nerfs if Blizzard brainfarts a little bit too much. Even people dedicated to one class : they risk being entirely useless if the sole point of their class ever becomes their Covenant buff. Hence they should have 3 times the same class just to be able to enjoy the content.

You people are completely fucking deranged.

[McNeil]

I fear that this might be one of Shadowlands failures. Then again we are still very early in alpha, now should be the time to let them hear our concerns.

[cateran100]

"Comprised of liches"

Ahem, what? How can be anyone lich in the afterlife? Or any undead? The lore going from zero to minus?

[shade3891]

Are these maw/zone only abilities or extra skills that can be used everywhere? I remember seeing Alpha footage where the skills are zone skills.

[Accendor]

Are these maw/zone only abilities or extra skills that can be used everywhere? I remember seeing Alpha footage where the skills are zone skills.

Extra skills

[Grimalkin of Old]

Doesn't look good so far

[Swnem]

Yay... more rental powers! Just what the game needed!

[longevity]

joy more rental talents instead of permanent progression

this game has too much grind for grind's sake instead of grind for the sake of fun progression

yes this type of extra system design to add more grinds has only come about largely in the last 2 xpacs

[tylenol]

Blizzard can't balance anything in this game but it'll be different this time right?

Also, more rental mechanics! what an amazingly new innovative system

[Aliven]

Just to bring it back, so everyone remember it.

This is not for feedback. Blizzard inside build of Shadowlands is a couple versions ahead of what they put in PTR. They dont care about feedback, they care about rooting out bugs and exposure.
They proved this with every single alpha/beta so far, what we see is more or less final!

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Calling it now, if left unchanged (only doing Mage/Warrior as those are the two classes I play most)

Mages:
Deathborne (Necrolord) - Transform into a powerful Skeletal Mage for a period of time. While in the form of a Skeletal Mage, your Frostbolt, Fireball, and Arcane Blast are greatly enhanced, and your spell damage is increased.

Warriors:
Condemn (Venthyr) - (Replaces Execute) Condemn a foe to suffer for their sins, causing Shadow damage. Only usable on enemies who are above 80% health or below 20% health. The primary target is weakened, preventing a moderate amount of damage they would deal to you. If your foe survives, a portion of the Rage spent is refunded.

These will be vastly superior to the other choices, the work in progress 4th option for warrior would need to be insane to beat this.

Knowing blizzard they would make an oopsie and Condemn would not work with any execute related passive or/and trait

[Jasper Kazai]

I don't get why they're so fixated on giving us temporary abilities each expansion that go away at the end. What's the point? It makes it all feel ultimately pointless.

[bloodykiller86]

ahhh mmo-c comments filled with m...r.....n.....s lol typical day of crap talking like always

[Locruid]

Necrolord Covenant and Paladins......

Do I REALLY need to explain this?

[Logwyn]

Necrolord Covenant and Paladins......

Do I REALLY need to explain this?

I bet the way it will go is that the best power for a class will be the one that blizzard thinks fits the class's fantasy/story/arc/whateverTheyCallIt. Will it be basically the ability/covenant THEY think is your class's choice?

Or will it really be what we as players want for our character's story?!?!