As I feared a few minutes after Covenants were announced....it will get worse

[Eurhetemec]

Those numbers look extremely similar to the straight popularity polls people have done on Covenants, polling most casual players, so the idea that this is because of Covenant power is super-questionable.

In fact, if power was the main concern, Necrolords should be doing better than they are.

If most of the Covenants are not 80% lopsided after watching your spec get smoked on a meter as ilvl starts to play a massive roll I will be absolutely shocked. The real hammer I am waiting to drop is when Blizzard realizes this and starts with the nerf hammer on Covenant abilities that will just kill certain specs and barely touch others.

What annoys me is this was so predictable. That post I made was literally while Ion was on stage describing Covenants the first time.

You have no right to be annoyed and predicted nothing that wasn't self-evident.

Blizzard have always known that they will have to rebalance spells and abilities, and always have, in every patch of every expansion for sixteen years. Given Covenant abilities are spells and abilities, your "prediction" is like predicting the sun will rise tomorrow. And it's ridiculous to be "annoyed", because it was inevitable. You can never perfectly balance this kind of stuff in beta. It always has to be on live. They actually did a surprisingly good job or avoiding wild outliers, but there will be stuff they need to reign in.

Can you define what "80% lopsided" would actually mean, because that's an awfully vague claim? 80% of every spec in a specific Covenant for that spec? I.e. 80% of VDH are Kyrian? Also which players do we consider? All? Only Mythic raiders?

We already see stuff unbalanced but towards aesthetic in some cases - pretty much no-one thinks Night Fae is the best Covenant for Guardian Druid mechanically, but it's the largest for them at 48%.

[Not A Cat]

I always wonder if those people that make this argument would also show up to gun fights with shovels instead, afterall none of them are duelling professionals, so why even try to survive?

What's with the extreme analogy? This is a video game that yes, has competitive aspects to it, but unless you're playing at a certain level (the top 1%) then you can show up to fight a dragon with a suboptimal ability if you like that ability more because it's not going to hinder your progress.

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How is DPS loss for using covenant ability "viable", please do explain.

Because you like the ability and you can do all but the hardest content with it.

[Toybox]

so everyone has to pick the optimal choice everytime?

Absolutely not - people should pick what they like, with the caveat that other people can choose to not play with them if they so desire. If anyone is turning down a Necrolord Warrior for a normal raid, of course they're a numptey & such numpteys should be ignored, but if you're playing any sort of meaningful progression content then the expectation surely is you pick what's best for that.

[Eurhetemec]

Absolutely not - people should pick what they like, with the caveat that other people can choose to not play with them if they so desire. If anyone is turning down a Necrolord Warrior for a normal raid, of course they're a numptey & such numpteys should be ignored, but if you're playing any sort of meaningful progression content then the expectation surely is you pick what's best for that.

Which in many cases is going to conflict with what's best for other progression content, i.e. M+ vs. raiding often strongly favouring different Covenant. I fully expect there to be raiding tier issues too where one was favoured for a class in Nathria, but may not be in raid 2. Especially if set bonuses come back alongside class sets. Further in some case what's actually best and what some guide-writer claims is best is often going to be questionable (many of the people writing guides directing people to specific Covenants are not even very active players).

Realistically, there is bound to be room for personal judgment. Some people may pick the "wrong" Covenant, especially if it's not far behind, and do a better job with it and with their typical raid comp, than they would with the "right" one. Sometimes the difference stark - more often it is not.

[Jastall]

I'm actually surprised at how many specs have their "top" Covenant at less than 50% pickrate. Obviously the value is inflated a bit when your different specs prefer different Covenants, but I expected most specs to be at least Fury levels of lopsided where the top pick is used by 65-70% of players. It's not the case for most.

Now obviously the least picked Covenants usually have pretty darn terrible numbers, but that's always the case with things like talent picks or which Legendary people used. Having two, sometimes 3 viable (if not always optimal) picks per spec is pretty good if you ask me. To use Fury again, Venthyr is best for ST raids, but Kyrian pulls ahead in M+ and Night Fae isn't terrible either. Necrolords is shit, which puzzlingly seems to be a trend as it's by far the least picked Covenant.

[Toybox]

Which in many cases is going to conflict with what's best for other progression content, i.e. M+ vs. raiding often strongly favouring different Covenant. I fully expect there to be raiding tier issues too where one was favoured for a class in Nathria, but may not be in raid 2. Especially if set bonuses come back alongside class sets. Further in some case what's actually best and what some guide-writer claims is best is often going to be questionable (many of the people writing guides directing people to specific Covenants are not even very active players).

I agree, which is one of the reasons I was against abilities being tied to covenants to begin with. Not only do we have much weaker versions than the spells we were given to test on alpha/beta because it's the only way to balance them, but now we're only able to have a character optimized for a singular task (unless your covenant works out the best for M+/raiding/PvP, in which case, it's likely an oversight).

Everyone has their main focus, though. I personally chose my covenant based off of expected raid performance, as that's my biggest focus. If I was playing primarly M+, I'd likely have chosen a different covenant entirely.

[SinR]

Or you can be a BM Hunter and oh hey best of both worlds yo

[Tesshin83]

How is DPS loss for using covenant ability "viable", please do explain.

Very easy. DPS loss or increase is not the most important factor that contributes to performance.

[Jastall]

They had months of beta and left a bunch of Covenant skills completely useless although there were tons of feedback. Then there are the majority of Covenant skills that are not terrible, just severly undertuned. And then we have the clearly overpowered skills. The result which class / spec is favoring which Covenant we are seeing now.

E.g., Condemn, the Venthyr skill for Warriors contributes to 15-25% of their overall damage. Does that sound balanced?

You do know it replaces Execute, which is a hard hitting ability baseline? It's not like you just cast free Condemns on top of your usual rotation and get a 20% damage boost the second you pick Venthyr. A guildie is Kyrian and in M+0 his Execute damage was about 40% less than mine but he covered much, if not all, lost ground with Spear of Bastion which also generates more Rage over the course of a dungeon.

[ldev]

What's with the extreme analogy? This is a video game that yes, has competitive aspects to it, but unless you're playing at a certain level (the top 1%) then you can show up to fight a dragon with a suboptimal ability if you like that ability more because it's not going to hinder your progress.

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Because you like the ability and you can do all but the hardest content with it.

Well then, that ilvl 10 good looking green - completely viable.

Literally everything's viable.

Cool.

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Can we have a normal topic for this topic without trolls like these?

[Dellis0991]

Original thread 10 minutes after Covenants were announced
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...nts-now/348779

and now the results:
https://www.wowhead.com/news=319716/...io#wowranks-io

As has been predicted from the day this feature was announced even with heavy nerfs people would have to be willing to purposely gimp themselves in PVP and PVE just for an aesthetic choice. Once Raider IO takes over the expansions tomorrow this will get far worse not including raiding.

Out of the source information I can count 10 specs (not at 50% concentrated) that have an option on what they want to play but some of those are before impending nerfs that will force the players to optimize their Covenant choices.

Why Blizzard why did you do this? For those of you enjoying the expansion I say great and have fun but the freight train is coming in the form of FARRRR more power unlocks, gear scaling making the differences far more stark and far more access to meaningful abilities.

Most players aren't worried about optimization for raids when it comes down to raiding and so the majority don't care or don't know, it won't affect raiding because no one will be looking that hard except for assholes with elite fixations and like always they are bunch miserable bitches anyway.

[Shaetha]

As an FYI I have not touched Shadowlands since launch due to this fear of pigeonholing.

Good. Now go talk about a game you didn't decide to hate for someone else's sake. Alcoholics don't hang around bars looking for other people that quit.

[Lucifa42]

Well then, that ilvl 10 good looking green - completely viable.

Literally everything's viable.

Please familiarise yourself with the straw man argument and how it applies to your post.

[UnknownShadows00]

I still remember when these forums complained about the gross homogenization of classes. What would be a good balance?

[Nyel]

You do know it replaces Execute, which is a hard hitting ability baseline? It's not like you just cast free Condemns on top of your usual rotation and get a 20% damage boost the second you pick Venthyr. A guildie is Kyrian and in M+0 his Execute damage was about 40% less than mine but he covered much, if not all, lost ground with Spear of Bastion which also generates more Rage over the course of a dungeon.

I know that and it was just an example. 10% for a Covenant skill is a lot, but there are several outliers that are so much better than their counterparts. And again, it doesn't explain why several classes have completely useless Covenant skills (Nightfae Paladin and Priest for example, which is ironic due to Nightfae being the best Covenant for a lot of classes/specs). The balancing just isn't there and with huge gaps of 10-20% from worst to best you just can't brush it away like "it doesn't matter only for the 1%".

[Mightytasty]

Literally twice as many Night Fae as Necrolord. The Necrolord dev really dropped the ball if your spells are only good for Unholy FDK and Resto shaman. Bottom trash tier for every other class pretty much.

Inc 300% fleshcraft buff

[Hinastorm]

Doesnt matter unless you are doing world first.

While mostly true, even a heroic guild will have a much easier time with everyone picking the "right" covenant versus a bad one.

It does matter.

[Darsithis]

Anyone who rejects someone for their covenant is dumb unless you are a top 200 world raider. Thats my opinion. You can clear any mythic raid with any covenant once properly geared.

Exactly. Skill trumps all, if you lack the skill to succeed, it doesn’t matter what covenant or gear you have...

[Mightytasty]

Doesnt matter unless you are doing world first.

Do you PvP?

[Toybox]

Exactly. Skill trumps all, if you lack the skill to succeed, it doesn’t matter what covenant or gear you have...

It's not an either/or decision, and pretty much anyone progression minded would be best served by doing both. As an example, you could get Gladiator last season without any PvE trinkets on a Rogue, but the Drestagath & Motorcycle trinkets would make the journey a LOT smoother.