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

[Malania]

No, it's absolutely not and I don't know why people keep bringing this up. Maintaining alts this expansion is a very extensive task (I'm doing this myself right now). The need to get your Soul Ash cap weekly is a super boring grind (unless you like the grind that Torghast is) that will take a minimum of 1-2 hours (that might not sound much per week, but where time is rare and no fun detected it becomes a chore). And even if people say you don't need to get your Anima to keep up, the weekly 1000 Anima quests is pretty mandatory and another funless grind of WQ that will take a minimum of another 1-2 hours. The one thing you might pass on is The Maw (thank god) and Stygia.

I fail to see how maintaining an alt in Shadowlands is easier than in BfA.

Nevertheless, it's still mind-boggling how so many in this thread fail to see the issues with Covenants and player power attached to it.

I'm running 2 atm and 2 hours a week for soul ash is a lot less than the daily grind required for both Artifact Power and Azerite power. Your Anima can be dealt with in 2 dungeons and a few world quests (over an entire week). There is no essence grind.

Ofc it has a min level of effort required to achieve something. But saying it's the same as BfA is hyperbole.

We also see that certain covenants offer more. Most of us just don't care though mate. It's potential DPS for the few raiding at the very top.

The problem with the gains in covenants is it's all potential. And the system is no better or worse than when professions gave buffs and people felt 2 gather professions were mandatory to maximize there ability. I just don't remember half the playerbase going batshit because Skinning gave them 50 crit rating and Herbalism didn't.

[Echo of Soul]

Blizzard have failed in creating a system that's about identity.

It was never about identity exclusively, it was about meaningful choice. One could argue that choosing the most powerful option is a very meaningful choice and in a way it gives your character identity. It doesn't matter what everyone else picked, the fact that you made a choice at all is what's important.

It will be interesting to see how a fully fleshed out system will look in the next expansion. This feels more like a testing ground for a much larger system aimed at giving us a vast amount of permanent choice.

[Niwes]

After reading couple of your posts I have to ask you what you believe what stats or factors that decide what constitutes performance.

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Your entire argument here can be anwered with that this is a community problem and not a Blizzard one.

Blizzards job is to make everything viable and also entertaining. They don't regard their own game a competition where people should minmax because most people dont play the game that way.

different oppinion here.

you can cut out ANY performance related task and it still sucks. here is why:

lets say Blizzard found Harry Potters Wand and magically balanced every stuff of Covenenats 100% perfect. this means it is a completely free choice of Covenant without any performance reason. but Covenenats still suck, because now you have to choose between lore/aesthetics and gameplay of Covenants.

Maybe you love Night Fae, but their abilities bring no fun to you at all? Or you really like that one Covenant ability so much, lets say from Venthir, but you hate to be Venthir, cause your toon is a Druid ?

Result: You do not even need the performance thing, to realize in seconds that this design sucks. adding balancing descision, is just the cherry on top of it. a cherry that smells like butt.

and on top of top of that there is another fact: in BfA you had to play 2 toons to see the full story and get the most out of wow (if you are someone wanna see it all): Alliance and Horde. Now you have to either play 4 toons or invest huuuuge effort into 1 char, to see all 4 Covenant parts. What a cheap fucked up way, to bound players with recycled shit. my question here: what would you say, when you buy a car and someone told you „ey, just for info: if you wanna also see how car feels when driving 100 mph+ or you wanna use gps, you have to buy the car again.“ ?

where other ppl say „but but but ... meaningful choice“ i say „Covenants are just a lousy compromise, makin no one happy.“

but thats just my opinion.

[Strawberry]

I'm a high ilvl healer. Pugs don't have balls to deny me entrance just because I have "the wrong covenant".

[Xath]

maybe in WORLD first kill, sure, bcs at their skill lvl it have actual impact, and if that is your aspiration you would choose "best" covenant even if the difference was less than 0,5%...
for everybody else damage is NOT "number one thing that matters" in any way... following tactics is
if you dont know that you either never progressed past LFR or are being pulled through by others

Being lectured by players who have only ever played in video guilds at best sure is a trip lols

[Thestrawman]

I just want to meet someone who took necrolord DH. I want to know why? That spell is god awful.

[JohnRoads]

Ugh - You made me have to log in.

Very simply solutions for 90% of the instances regarding play how you want to.
A. Have a guild or friends that don't care - play how you want to.
B. Search for maybe 20% more time and you will find the desired groups; or do more content to break the "min/max barriers"
C. If you are part of the "1%ers at the very top" which I assume you are given you have your Raider.io scores in your signatures - the pick the covenant you hate the most and make a blog post about it so you get clicks, comments, and other people to complain with you.... wait...

Here is hoping you're all having fun in Shadowlands like I am. Been having a lot of fun with the Covenants I picked based on what I like!

Completely agree! I chose Necrolord for my orc shaman because I thought it was the best fit. Looking over the rankings now I can see that I made a solid dps choice, but I simply chose them as I liked that covenant the best.

[Elias01]

it doesnt say anything. You still have no clue why players picked different covenants.

[Marrilaife]

So there's two groups of people on covenants:

People who think that, for instance, in Counter Strike if you chose terrorists you could only get a pistol - it's still viable (yes, you can still play and kill people and win rounds) and doesn't matter unless you compete in professional league.

And people who think that this is complete bullcrap.

No amount of arguments will persuade these groups.

So true.

Most of the "pistol camp" advice is also completely unhelpful. For example "find a guild". Yeah, last 5 years I was in 4 different guilds and sooner or later they had an issue with me not playing a fotm class. "Find a guild" is a cop out advice, also usually applies to a level of progression where people don't even finish content or take 3 months to get AOTC.

Another fallacy is the belief that if you put 10 times more effort and achieve less than average result, it's still fine. Yeah, I'd like to play a Necrolord Hunter because chakram is cool, so what, it still sucks despite buffs.

Also I have no idea why Blizzard buffed Night Fae so much in the last balancing pass. I have a friend who is a power gamer - he will always pick "what is best". He wanted to make 4 alts 1 for each covenant. Night Fae? Easy, vast majority of dps specs play it. Necrolord? He made Unholy DK. Venthyr? Uuuh, hard find, basically it's between Warrior or Enh shaman. Kyrian? After gutting of Pelagos now suddenly it comes out Kyrian covenant abilities are not that good for dps... Which dps even goes for Kyrian? Except destrolock, because he said angelic Warlock looks dumb and he's not gonna play that.

[Lolites]

Being lectured by players who have only ever played in video guilds at best sure is a trip lols

then stop lecturing people

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So there's two groups of people on covenants:

People who think that, for instance, in Counter Strike if you chose terrorists you could only get a pistol - it's still viable (yes, you can still play and kill people and win rounds) and doesn't matter unless you compete in professional league.

And people who think that this is complete bullcrap.

No amount of arguments will persuade these groups.

well good CS player will wipe the floor with you even with only pistol
imbecile who cant even aim wont kill you even if you have knife and he is armed to the teeth

so yes, as said milion times before, SKILL is the most important, not theoreticaly better performing "tools"
on the absolute peak, where ALL players are highly skilled, sure the tools will make a noticeable difference, for rest of the people not so much

[Xath]

then stop lecturing people

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well good CS player will wipe the floor with you even with only pistol
imbecile who cant even aim wont kill you even if you have knife and he is armed to the teeth

so yes, as said milion times before, SKILL is the most important, not theoreticaly better performing "tools"
on the absolute peak, where ALL players are highly skilled, sure the tools will make a noticeable difference, for rest of the people not so much

The only one trying to lecture here is you claiming that people who have done progression at a high level aka not just following videos care more about other things than damage. None of these covenants provide raid wide cooldowns which would be the only thing that can trump damage. A minimal shield that is even weaker without a body to pull from is not worth a 10 to 20% dps loss. You have quite literally zero idea what you are talking about and are trying to talk down to someone who has actually raided at that level.

[Xath]

then stop lecturing people

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well good CS player will wipe the floor with you even with only pistol
imbecile who cant even aim wont kill you even if you have knife and he is armed to the teeth

so yes, as said milion times before, SKILL is the most important, not theoreticaly better performing "tools"
on the absolute peak, where ALL players are highly skilled, sure the tools will make a noticeable difference, for rest of the people not so much

A good cs player with a glock will lose to a mediocre one with an ak unless they completely get the drop on them. Wow is flat out not a hard game in pve the primary difficulty comes from maximizing play without tunneling and thereby being bad and taking extra damage. Most people can execute a max rotation on a dummy it's when you throw in other stuff to pay attention to that their performance drops however it's absolutely still best to have the maximum possibly ceiling regardless of if you are Lolites or Thd.

[ldev]

well good CS player will wipe the floor with you even with only pistol
imbecile who cant even aim wont kill you even if you have knife and he is armed to the teeth

so yes, as said milion times before, SKILL is the most important, not theoreticaly better performing "tools"
on the absolute peak, where ALL players are highly skilled, sure the tools will make a noticeable difference, for rest of the people not so much

I mean what the fuck? You compare different players? Why? Why? Like, why? How?

I'm and vast majority are not schizophreniacs, we are ONE player. And this one player will have 300 dps difference right now with poor gear without scaling. He's half as bad as normal people? 150 dps difference. Like, fuck, my skill in necrolords is the same as my skill in venthyr covenants. Fuck. Differently skilled players will behave differently - yes. Yes. Duh doi. Get your fucking nobel prize for this grand discovery you seem literally everyone somehow misses. We're talking about the same player and how he gains or loses dps because covenants are shit balanced. Fuck.

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Please, can someone explain to him that we are talking about covenants - how choice affects the one player, not about how others are performing?

[Seiryu99]

Do you have supporting evidence that the "vast majority" of people chose it for performance over aesthetics? Based on what you've linked. I see a few raiders chose it. As I stated, it's purely confirmation bias. I chose a covenant I liked. I didn't know it was the top performing when I selected it. I actually chose the covenant months ago. It was 3rd in DPS when I looked at it before SL launched.

You consider over 2 million players a "few" raiders? Who cares if everyone picks a single covenant? I literally couldn't even care that a majority of people pick a single covenant it was obviously going to happen, but the delusion of some people in these forums who thinks its just the top "1%" and trying to defend (what is there to even defend? post like this dont make sense in general) it even though it obviously isnt the case is mind-boggling. "I picked based on aesthetics so its obviously everyone else mustve as well!!" Nah, even if literally every single person in this forum picked "based on aesthetic" THAT is the true 1%. Doesnt change ACTUAL recorded statistics

Its a 50-90% difference in pick rate between the first and 4th picked covenant for every spec out of 2,004,652 players (att of writing). Like they literally have the # of players in the breakdowns in the wowhead link lol. Out of 49k recorded rdruids 43k of those are nightfae compared to 903 venthyr. Im totally sure the super l33t top "1%" mythic raiders have 49k rdruids in their ranks or 80k+ prot pally's.

[Accendor]

Its awesome how this thread is literally "here are the numbers, they proof what we have feared" VS "lol the numbers are not true"

Its like with wearing masks, one side has well rounded arguments and actual statistics to support their claims as well as experts stating the same and the other party is like "na, this can not be true"

[Lolites]

I mean what the fuck? You compare different players? Why? Why? Like, why? How?

I'm and vast majority are not schizophreniacs, we are ONE player. And this one player will have 300 dps difference right now with poor gear without scaling. He's half as bad as normal people? 150 dps difference. Like, fuck, my skill in necrolords is the same as my skill in venthyr covenants. Fuck. Differently skilled players will behave differently - yes. Yes. Duh doi. Get your fucking nobel prize for this grand discovery you seem literally everyone somehow misses. We're talking about the same player and how he gains or loses dps because covenants are shit balanced. Fuck.

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Please, can someone explain to him that we are talking about covenants - how choice affects the one player, not about how others are performing?

if the player is good and plays on high enough level, it will make a difference for him, AS I SAID...
if he is moron and/or plays on lfr level, it will NOT MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE, or at least not noticeable, it can actualy be better on paper but due to him not being able to properly use it it can perform wors in reality
and obviously, higher the level you play on more important the difference is, but unless you play 30+ dungeons or hall of fame raiding, or pvp on the absolute peak, it will not be so huge to actualy hinder your progres IF YOU ARE CAPABLE of using the covenant you have chosen

so the SKILL is what matters more... if you cant grasp that sorry i have neither time nor crayons to explain it to you

[Marakara]

Lots of people look up guides on which spec/legendary/covenant to join. It's just the mentality of gamers today, you see this in hearthstone and mtg, nothing blizz can do about it

[Lolites]

You consider over 2 million players a "few" raiders? Who cares if everyone picks a single covenant? I literally couldn't even care that a majority of people pick a single covenant it was obviously going to happen, but the delusion of some people in these forums who thinks its just the top "1%" and trying to defend (what is there to even defend? post like this dont make sense in general) it even though it obviously isnt the case is mind-boggling. "I picked based on aesthetics so its obviously everyone else mustve as well!!" Nah, even if literally every single person in this forum picked "based on aesthetic" THAT is the true 1%. Doesnt change ACTUAL recorded statistics

Its a 50-90% difference in pick rate between the first and 4th picked covenant for every spec out of 2,004,652 players (att of writing). Like they literally have the # of players in the breakdowns in the wowhead link lol. Out of 49k recorded rdruids 43k of those are nightfae compared to 903 venthyr. Im totally sure the super l33t top "1%" mythic raiders have 49k rdruids in their ranks or 80k+ prot pally's.

he considers those of the 2m who chose the best a few, bcs they are in fact NOT a majority if you go over all specs...
sure, some specs gravitate to "best" covenant, but there is nothing proving HOW or WHY they chosen that covenant... or are you seriously saying NOBODY playing holy paladin would chose kyrians or resto druids wouldnt pick night fae for aesthetics? rly? on the other hand vast majority of balance druids picked night fae too, despite ITS NOT BEST for them... almost like there was thousand different criterias people use to choose... for frost dk less tahn 25% chosen "the best", why is that if majority choose based on performance?

and ofc "I picked based on aesthetics so its obviously everyone else mustve as well!!" is faulty logic ...but same fault is if you say oposite, that YOU choose based on performance so everyone else have...

[Sezh]

I don't see any problem with these numbers whatsoever.

[Malania]

You consider over 2 million players a "few" raiders? Who cares if everyone picks a single covenant? I literally couldn't even care that a majority of people pick a single covenant it was obviously going to happen, but the delusion of some people in these forums who thinks its just the top "1%" and trying to defend that this even though it obviously isnt the case is mind-boggling.

Its a 50-90% difference in pick rate between the first and 4th picked covenant for every spec out of 2,004,652 players (att of writing). Like they literally have the # of players in the breakdowns in the wowhead link lol. Out of 49k recorded rdruids 43k of those are nightfae compared to 903 venthyr. Im totally sure the super l33t top "1%" mythic raiders have 49k rdruids in their ranks or 80k+ prot pally's.

There is corresponding evidence that supports the covenant chosen matches the order of performance they're simmed it. None said noone has taken the highest performing cov.

Using a BM Hunter as that's what I play atm and really only qualified to comment on currently; NF sims best and has the highest pick rate at 74%. However the difference is simmed potential DPS between NF and Kyrian was only actually 2% ST. 74% based on a 2% difference for potential DPS says 3 things about the people who DID take NF for performance.
1) The WoW Hunter population vastly over estimates what 2% more DPS equals.
2) The WoW Hunter population vastly over estimates their ability to get in a mythic high end raiding guild where the low gear vs tight enrage mechanics would make an extra 122.80 DPS the game changer.
3) if performance for top DPS is the aim, you should be MM anyway and probably aren't aiming for a DPS target.

None of the nay-sayers are saying that people did not take the highest DPS covenant. People will do anything for 1% more damage, it's frankly stupid. We're just saying that not every one of the 74% is choosing NF purely for DPS. Observational data shows people are taking the ones they like. This means of the 74% in NF it's far more likely that because it's not the top performing DPS spec anyway. People are taking it for other reasons than pure DPS.

Frankly it's the fact that people can't seem to understand there are other interpretations of the data and math's behind it than pure "This is the best" so thats the only reason why people have chose it that is more mind boggling.

You don't think that as a theme druids fit more with NF and that's also why it's possible a large section of the 43K chose it? They like the forests, they like the transmogs, they like the story?