"Only the top 1% will pick covenants based on performance" :S

[Soon-TM]

less than 25% of frost DK choosing night fae, which is "best"

It may be numerically the "best", but only in a Patchwerk-type of fight, and the vast majority of raid bosses nowadays are the complete opposite - lots of movement, target switching, dodging stuff on the ground, etc.

[OrcsRLame]

I've been in casual guilds before, and my experience is that casual players are very likely to just go to Icy Veins and copy everything from the Icy Veins guide. This is because they don't want to be willfully bad but they also don't have the time/desire to minmax to the point of needing to use raidbots or anything like that.

I don't think this is a bad thing. At the end of the day though wow is an RPG and most people if you give them a binary choice between more effective and less effective they're going to choose the more effective thing that gives them bigger numbers.

Another thing I think this forum forgets often is that it's fun to be powerful. Most people don't think in terms of what they strictly need. Very few people play the game thinking like, "Well I'm not raiding mythic, so I don't need to use that higher dps weapon." They see a higher dps weapon and they go, "Haha big stick go bonk!" because it's fun and fun is ultimately what matters to most casual players.

I would think this would be obvious if you've ever met a human before.

[Melkirth]

Decided all my picks based on astethic. Picked Necrolord on my main (DK). Picked Venthyr on my first alt (BE/lock), on my 2nd alt I will go with night fae (NE/Druid) and the last planned alt is a Dwarf hunter and he gets Kyrian. Sure paladin works better for that Covenant but since he is a Beastmaster it fits with their Larions. Got all my bases covered

[OrcsRLame]

Meh i take the best performing covenant. I am not 1% and most people i know ingame are the same.

People should get away from the thinking, that just because you like to play with a covenant you like story wise EVERYONE should do it.
I like min/maxing. I don't care that much about the covenant story. It is an hour max story per week and probably will be done in a few weeks.

I can and i am allowed to min/max the shit out of the game no matter how good i play. And i am also allowed to not take you with me in a Mythic+ run if you are not optimized. Never looked it up for M0s for now. But if everything stays like this and i take an Ret pala for example i damn well make sure he has ashen hallow... just to good to pass it up.

You are also allowed to not care about it. I don't mind. But people should stop telling me how i am "supposed" to play the game.
I don#t give a flying f** about the story. I take what comes my way but if i watn good story i don't play wow. Never was its strong suite. Not even in classic. I go play a bioware/CDPR game or something.

Fyi, Divine Toll > Ashen Hallow for m+. Kyrian paladin is actually really strong for all specs and all forms of content. It's overall the best even if Venthyr is 100 dps more on Patchwerk.

[LordVargK]

Yes, I do know, it's performance. It's not aesthetics or roleplaying because those simply don't make sense. Warlocks and faeries/angels - those are the complete opposites and don't go together a single bit.

You're wrong. I chose Kyrian over Nightfae because of the aesthetics and because the Nightfae abilitiy is super boring (as are the the other 2). And Angel Warlock is way cooler than being a generic edgelord WL. Also neither Maldraxxus nor Venthyr really fit a WL, because we are not Necromancers and not fugly vampires. So you don't know the reasons for at least one person, meaning that your opinion is not universally correct.

[oland138]

I took the covenant that I enjoy playing and like the aesthetic of and over the chance of parsing a little higher. I did the same thing when I chose what race, class and spec to play. There very little difference between what these choices are. It's a game and I'm not trying to do stuff before all the conduits are unlocked.

[ldev]

I (Prot Paladin) chose my covenant when they anounced them (Bastion). Who doesn't want to throw shields everywhere?

Now apparently its the most commonly picked and arguable the best choice and I'm now part of the biased statistics when all I wanted was to throw more shields.

It is best choice for prot, because... just fucking look at prot paladin necrolords. They're not kilometers away, they're not continents away, they're fucking worlds apart.

Numbers is not a problem. Design is the problem. Which will not be so easily tuned as noobs believe here. :|

[Merlunie]

Imagine caring what covenant you are. Most of you people will never see a mythic boss, never push past a 6, and never set foot in a raid besides LFR.

WHO CARES??

[Enclave]

did anyone really expect people to not minmax in an RPG game?
even the most casual players minmax, everyone wants to be better at the game, even if they are casuals, its just human nature

[StillMcfuu]

Well that's clearly not true. We can already see from the numbers, that most players clearly are picking covenants based on what performs best in raids and dungeons.

As an example, the vast majority of Rogue players are either Night Fae or Kyrian. And if you for some reason think that Rogues like to be fairies or ascended angle-creatures then you're absolutely delusional.

People are in general abusing the 99% vs 1% "argument" to create pictures of WoW which are clearly not true. WoW consists of many many different groups of players and most of them care about performance to some degree. The statistics clearly show this.

Rogue flavor of the month is Necrolord, not Night Fae or Kyrian.

[Xavv]

Rogue flavor of the month is Necrolord, not Night Fae or Kyrian.

Bruh Necrolord sucks. It was good before it was nerfed into the ground.

Most Rogues went Kyrian

[WhirlwindTV]

"Only the top 1% will pick covenants based on performance"

This was never the major narrative. I agree that it is bullshit that we can't just pick the story that we want to play and then separately choose the pair of abilities. I very much dislike having to choose the pain loving vampires for the sake of power. Though I guess the blue slave owners aren't much better even with the great looking zone.

Still, I believe the primary fear was that OTHER PEOPLE would decline people to groups/raids based on "less optimal" covenant choices. This is definitely not going to be true outside the world first guilds. The variance between the covenants is similar to talent choices and I never once had anyone look at my talents in BFA and whisper me anything.

[burek]

Yeah it is unlikely the numbers are reliable or ever could be reliable, because WoW doesn't ask you to designate a "primary spec". So all the attempts to correlate spec and covenant, rather than class and covenant, are largely horseshit, and people making sweeping claims on that basis, like the OP, need to take a step back.

That's why warlocks are a good example, there is not much of a reason to switch specs for the content currently available. And if you want to play multiple specs the best overall choice is fairies, which also matches the statistics.

Unlike paladins or druids, who I doubt do their daily chores in a healer spec. Also, the only specs of those classes that were found useful in the recent years (at least two expansions) are resto & holy. Incidentally, the overall pick for those classes matches the best option for those specs. Of course, that also matches the roleplaying option so it's hard to make any conclusions.

But when you look at something like warlocks or rogues, it becomes clear that people pick based on performance.

[Zandalariprelate]

Blizzard needs to fix some soul links and covenants. I can't believe Maldraxxus is a joke for anything non dk

[Lakrin]

Picked mine on both the toons I have played so far based on what felt fun/what looked coolest for that class/character. It looks like I've picked "sub-par" both times, and I DGAF. I'm probably not going to be doing anything harder than M+ or Normal raids on any toon as I just don't have the time currently. I'm more interested in playing through all 4 Covenant storylines and leveling new characters using Chromie Timewalking right now anyways.

[Jujudrood]

All I'm saying is, where is this measurement coming from?
Has someone went through and analyzed all players, each choice they made, and whether or not it was "because it was best" vs "it looks pretty"?
If those happened to cross over and they chose pretty, do they count in your skewed vision of what people are doing?
Are we taking into account people who made decisions in early beta and stuck with them, regardless of buffs/nerfs, or that they may play multiple specs and went for a sub-optimal one for one spec because they just liked the way the ability integrated for another?

Like, I'm not saying people aren't picking the best; I'm sure many people went to Wowhead or IcyVeins and read through the covenant guides to figure out the best one for them.
But then again, that's what people do with classes and specs as well, so like, it's nothing different nor is it gamebreaking.
It's just wild that people want to argue that "the majority of players" do a certain thing.
Show those numbers, let's see the data back it up and I'm on board.

But anyway, I picked Necrolord for my Druid because I main as Tank and I like how adaptive swarm fits into the rotation and fleshcraft is fun.
I'm not sure if it's my "best" overall, because I also heal and do cat stuff too, but I don't care; they were fun abilities so I chose it.
Doesn't make much sense to be a druid and join necrolord, from a lore perspective (night fae fits that bill), but convoke felt funky and I didn't care for the rapid spam of self-focused rejuvs and moonfire that amounted to very little while being on a bigger cooldown.
So, that's how I chose.
Did I pick the right one? Am I part of the people who picked the best because it performed the best? I have no clue.

[Orange Joe]

My argument isn't based on unprovable assumptions its based on the statistics posted on wowhead a day ago. Nice try tho.

wowhead went and asked all those people why those choose who they did? That must have took awhile.

[Malania]

Blizzard needs to fix some soul links and covenants. I can't believe Maldraxxus is a joke for anything non dk

Top holy priest sim.

[Aflakk47]

Bruh Necrolord sucks. It was good before it was nerfed into the ground.

Most Rogues went Kyrian

According to their stats, only 28% of all rogues went kyrian. Night Fae has an overwhelming majority (I personally am part of the 13% Assassination rogues that went Kyrian, compared to 51% of Assassination rogues being Night Fae)

[Selah]

Okay... a couple things here. First off, why would only the top 1% of the game be interested in what performs best? That makes no sense. The next thing is a personal choice about covenants and choosing the one you personally like versus what's BiS. As long as the majority of people who want to be able to pick whichever covenant works best for them personally and have no ramifications on their endgame, then there's no issue. Cutting edge players excluded obviously as they will always pick BiS everything. It's when personal choice about something major like covenants gets you barred from content that we have an issue... which hasn't been something I've been seeing yet.