"Forced" or "Mandatory" covenants

[Omedon]

Lets make 3 mains so you can use the right covenant for m+ raids and pvp, sounds like fun.

Blizzard absolutely intends you to have alts in shadowlands. If you wanna call it multiple mains, fine, but they wrote four stories hoping you'd see them. In the same expansion they intensely expedited leveling. You should have alts by now. The single character player hasn't been an intended playstyle since legion. Keeping multiple alts SUPER CURRENT in BFA was a pain, but they literally put in mount rewards if you saw both stories.

[Mardux]

Its 90k echoes and one of the rarest corruption drops. It also scales with ilv.

So while it's by far the most practical and powerful build being a unstoppable insta win barring insanely bad rng it takes a ton of set up.

You can't do this without at minimum of full 465 gear and days of farming.

Insanely bad rng? Your opponent having pets doesnt constitute "insanely bad rng", and like was both discussed *and* shown in the video, that's all it takes to counter 90k worth of echoes and months of saving echoes.

[Krakan]

Insanely bad rng? Your opponent having pets doesnt constitute "insanely bad rng", and like was both discussed *and* shown in the video, that's all it takes to counter 90k worth of echoes and months of saving echoes.

Having a single non instant win match up doesn't make it bad.

I swear wow players... willing to argue one shotting people is balanced...

[kaminaris]

Its not about taking. Its about Blizzard's balance of borrowing powers for the people who said "oh, borriwng powers are just 10% of your powers, blizz defilitely can balance it so choice will not matter!" So... no. They can't balance things now. Not with current dev team. And your choice will have a great impact, especially with first balance patches.

Corruption is not borrowed power, it's just ridiculously overpowered item enchants. Think of corruption like enchants that increases item level by 50-200.

Borrowed power is artifact weapon from legion that gave you active ability and literally transformed your class and to lesser extent neck that also gives you another spell and couple passive effects.

Plus I don't think you understand what balance is. https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st...unt&dataset=75
Except for abomination of fire mage, balance is pretty good (20%)

Don't expect better balance since in MoP that difference was like 50%.

[Specialka]

Blizzard absolutely intends you to have alts in shadowlands. If you wanna call it multiple mains, fine, but they wrote four stories hoping you'd see them. In the same expansion they intensely expedited leveling. You should have alts by now. The single character player hasn't been an intended playstyle since legion. Keeping multiple alts SUPER CURRENT in BFA was a pain, but they literally put in mount rewards if you saw both stories.

Leveling and doing the story is not the same as maintaining raid ready alt with essences and corruptions where wow starts becoming another job.

[iinverse]

Corruption is not borrowed power, it's just ridiculously overpowered item enchants. Think of corruption like enchants that increases item level by 50-200.

Borrowed power is artifact weapon from legion that gave you active ability and literally transformed your class and to lesser extent neck that also gives you another spell and couple passive effects.

Corruptions are borrowed powers.
Essences are borrowed powers.

Artifact weapons from Legion are extended class/spec powers, every class/spec has its own abilities that fits the class/spec fantasy, that was later incorporated into core spec abilities.

I think you can see the difference here.

Plus I don't think you understand what balance is. https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st...unt&dataset=75
Except for abomination of fire mage, balance is pretty good (20%)

I clearly undestand about class balance, but I'm talking about abilities balance, like this:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...-done&source=5

Class balance heavily depends on borrowing powers now, so it pretty the same (except for insane firemage scaling from a sh*tload of mastery corruptuions).

Current situation allows players to quickly change borrowng powers depending on content (like this DH does 75% of his dps from single-target corruption on single-target boss at raid time, and after raidtime he switches his stars to TD for making 75% of other borrowed power damage on M+ trash). If blizz will do same balance for covenant abilities (like one covenant do pretty good ST damage anf other covenant will do pretty good AoE), it will be a pain to make balanced char for raids\keys (like me does weekend raids and high m+ keys other time). Current system has pretty sh*tty balanced borrowed powers, but it allows to switch it with single click, so its not a big problem actually. But it will be if we will not be allowed to change new borrowed powers depending on new content.

Either allow us to switch it, or make it nearly useless, or just divide lore\look\aesthetic and actual power directly impacting on players performance in competitive content.

[Easyclassictopkeklel]

Corruptions are borrowed powers.
Essences are borrowed powers.

Artifact weapons from Legion are extended class/spec powers, every class/spec has its own abilities that fits the class/spec fantasy, that was later incorporated into core spec abilities.

I think you can see the difference here.

nah, its all borrowed power.

[Popokolara]

Normal people with actual friends

You would be surprised to learn that having friends is not reliant of making suboptimal choices.
Also this isn't the smartest place to toss out your personal hurt when people who expected such choice disagreed with you.

[iinverse]

nah, its all borrowed power.

How class\spec talents\abilities are borrowed powers?

[shammypie]

I really wish they would make the covenant abilities grab bag. I really like the fantasy behind the Night Fae and would love to play through that campaign and have those companions but the abilities are so garbo for shaman i feel gimped going that route. I'll have to sink hours into an alt just experience it and be thinking the whole time i wish i was on my main.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

You would be surprised to learn that having friends is not reliant of making suboptimal choices.
Also this isn't the smartest place to toss out your personal hurt when people who expected such choice disagreed with you.

If you have "friends" who kick you to the curb because you took a suboptimal choice I'd suggest finding some real friend's who don't just want a living body to clear content and actually like you instead.

[kaminaris]

Corruptions are borrowed powers.
Essences are borrowed powers.

Artifact weapons from Legion are extended class/spec powers, every class/spec has its own abilities that fits the class/spec fantasy, that was later incorporated into core spec abilities.

I think you can see the difference here.

It's actually the other way around.
Corruptions are not borrowed power, it's just overpowered gear.
Essences are kinda borrowed power but generic and doesn't interfere with how your class plays.

And artifact weapons from legion is extreme version and quintessence of borrowed power. Power of item that modify your class to some extreme degree that without that item, you class is just a hollow husk.

I clearly undestand about class balance, but I'm talking about abilities balance, like this:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...-done&source=5

Class balance heavily depends on borrowing powers now, so it pretty the same (except for insane firemage scaling from a sh*tload of mastery corruptuions).

It actually doesn't because you had retardedly overpowered trinkets in the past. It's the same thing.

Current situation allows players to quickly change borrowng powers depending on content (like this DH does 75% of his dps from single-target corruption on single-target boss at raid time, and after raidtime he switches his stars to TD for making 75% of other borrowed power damage on M+ trash). If blizz will do same balance for covenant abilities (like one covenant do pretty good ST damage anf other covenant will do pretty good AoE), it will be a pain to make balanced char for raids\keys (like me does weekend raids and high m+ keys other time). Current system has pretty sh*tty balanced borrowed powers, but it allows to switch it with single click, so its not a big problem actually. But it will be if we will not be allowed to change new borrowed powers depending on new content.

Either allow us to switch it, or make it nearly useless, or just divide lore\look\aesthetic and actual power directly impacting on players performance in competitive content.

Like trinkets. So according to your logic trinkets are borrowed power.
Balancing between classes is actually what matters not power of singular item.

That being said, corruptions weren't designed with everyone having access to whatever corruption you desire. Thus at this point it's expected for them be OP to make content easier as time goes on.

[iinverse]

It's actually the other way around.
Corruptions are not borrowed power, it's just overpowered gear.
Essences are kinda borrowed power but generic and doesn't interfere with how your class plays.

And artifact weapons from legion is extreme version and quintessence of borrowed power. Power of item that modify your class to some extreme degree that without that item, you class is just a hollow husk.

Both Essences and Corruptions actually borrowed powers because its nothing to do with overall spec\class fantasy, and just big button\ability borrowed from some good\bad big guy (like Titan or Nzoth).

Artifacts on the other hand gave every spec spec-themed unique ability, most of it was lately incorporated to class\spec talents\abilities (like Ebonbolt became talent for Frost mages or Phoenix flame became the talent for Fire mages, also many Legion legendaires became abilities\talents of according specs).

It actually doesn't because you had retardedly overpowered trinkets in the past. It's the same thing.

Retardedly overpowered trinkets are another example of bad balance.

Like trinkets. So according to your logic trinkets are borrowed power.

Yep, its borrowed powers too. You get it, you use it for some time, you drop it. Other words, you borrow it.
We actually use borrowed powers pretty often, but now its overridicious and next xpac you will not be allow to chose those powers depending on content -that's the bad thing about it, because we know that blizz can't properly balance borrowed powers.

Balancing between classes is actually what matters not power of singular item.

Yep, its pretty optimal because all top players use top-simed borrowed powers (which can do up to 50-60% of their dps) and can change it between every fight.
Class\spec abilities means almost nothing without borrowed powers now, you will be miles behind peeps with opt stacked essences\corruptions.

That being said, corruptions weren't designed with everyone having access to whatever corruption you desire. Thus at this point it's expected for them be OP to make content easier as time goes on.

Yep, it was pretty sh*tty at the beginning where one player gets RNG staaaars! and did 2x dps of the player that wasn't so lucky just because of borrowed powers, not skill.

[Soon-TM]

Doing your minimum is disrespectful to the people you're playing with. You're wasting their time.

But that's ok with these super special snowflakes. After all, why care about others' time in an MMO? /s

[Voidwielder]

They are completely oblivious to the fact that Meta-gaming is a thing now, especially in a game where you judged on performance.

We saw this in LoL, we saw this in CoD: Warzone and everyone knows that's how WoW has been played since... actually, vanilla.

[Elias01]

They are completely oblivious to the fact that Meta-gaming is a thing now, especially in a game where you judged on performance.

We saw this in LoL, we saw this in CoD: Warzone and everyone knows that's how WoW has been played since... actually, vanilla.

Meta gaming becomes thing when yoy as dev allow it to exist. It has nothing to do with players.

[Kralljin]

Meta gaming becomes thing when yoy as dev allow it to exist. It has nothing to do with players.

Absolutely not.
Has Classic catered to the "Meta-gaming" people?

Nope, still a thing there.

[kaminaris]

Both Essences and Corruptions actually borrowed powers because its nothing to do with overall spec\class fantasy, and just big button\ability borrowed from some good\bad big guy (like Titan or Nzoth).

Artifacts on the other hand gave every spec spec-themed unique ability, most of it was lately incorporated to class\spec talents\abilities (like Ebonbolt became talent for Frost mages or Phoenix flame became the talent for Fire mages, also many Legion legendaires became abilities\talents of according specs).

You seems to have wrong borrowed power definition.

Essences are like boosts. it's neutral power, not really borrowed otherwise every trinket ever created would be borrowed power <- according to you.
Corruptions are literally trinkets just all over the gear.

Artifact weapon was pure 100% borrowed power.

It's like implanting a bigger engine into VW golf from higher tier VW car model, that you will have to return at some point.

Does it fit your car/class (yes, with modifications)?
Is it same brand? yes
Is it permanent? no
Does it change how you drive/handle the car/class? yes

-> borrowed power

Neither essences nor corruptions alters your gameplay, it just makes you faster and stronger (and things may be proccing faster).

Artifact was actually the worst borrowed power and unfortunately nothing of that except for spell remained.

Retardedly overpowered trinkets are another example of bad balance.

Balance is entirely different aspect.

Yep, its borrowed powers too. You get it, you use it for some time, you drop it. Other words, you borrow it.
We actually use borrowed powers pretty often, but now its overridicious and next xpac you will not be allow to chose those powers depending on content -that's the bad thing about it, because we know that blizz can't properly balance borrowed powers.

Nope, most old trinkets still work they are just weak. Artifact is dead, turned into a normal weapon.
You still own it, they still boost your power, they are not borrowed.
Same goes for old tier sets (just not the oldest since some players exploited them)

Yep, its pretty optimal because all top players use top-simed borrowed powers (which can do up to 50-60% of their dps) and can change it between every fight.
Class\spec abilities means almost nothing without borrowed powers now, you will be miles behind peeps with opt stacked essences\corruptions.

Your gear is 90% of your power so if you change it you will switch borrowed power. No sorry your definition of borrowed power is straight up wrong.

Yep, it was pretty sh*tty at the beginning where one player gets RNG staaaars! and did 2x dps of the player that wasn't so lucky just because of borrowed powers, not skill.

So like being super lucky with trinket procs in previous expansions, got it... NOT.

You are not doing twice the dps of other players with same corruptions. It means you either died in mid fight or your gear is crap or you are not skilled enough.

[Soon-TM]

One of the issues with covenants is how they will impact hybrid classes. For example, the Necrolord signature skill is looking pretty nifty for tanking, but it is next to useless for most DPS specs.

[Popokolara]

If you have "friends" who kick you to the curb because you took a suboptimal choice I'd suggest finding some real friend's who don't just want a living body to clear content and actually like you instead.

I dont have this kind of friends. I dont know why you think i do, or anyone not playing suboptimally is like that. Because thats the whole mood you set.

Btw asking you to play optimal or remove you from a competitve effort? That is logical and they can still be my friends.

Stop for a moment and see what you are doing.
Or dont.