Now that its been proven min maxes are the majority will content change?

[Kithelle]

Precisely. Is NF my best choice from a min-max perspective as a balance druid? Yes. Is it also the most obvious choice thematically? Also yes. Same for Pallies and Kyrian, etc.

This might shock the OP and others, but Blizzard seems to have worked to make the obvious thematic choice for a class also very good choices for character power for those same classes.

So it makes sense for my Assassin to join Night Fae? A bleeding heavy spec that is literally names after a word for killing people

Night Fae is also great for Havoc

Venthyr and Night Fae are good for Ret depending on what your goals are

I guess it makes total sense Venthyr is the dominate choice for my Enhancement Shaman? Can forget Elemental dead worship like Necrolord being their best!

Nothing says Affliction Warlock and Shadow Priest like Night Fae!


Most of the specs I play the overall best covenant doesn't fit thematically

[Doffen]

Sadly yeah, and a lot of them appeared thanks to BFA, BFA inflated the ego of a lot of players in a fake way thanks to corruption, now with corruption gone, nothing carries them now so they do subpar dps, so one could say that right now with CN being harder + no titanforging or corruption, how you play now is how you actually perform, not past BFA fake glory, some guys are actually proud of their Nyalotha parses.
.

As a casual heroic player(just have to add that you know) I am glad that Shadowlands brought this aspect into the game again, agree 100%. Too many freeriders in mythic raiding that would usually never ever be in there.

Skill should be rewarded.

[Swnem]

So it makes sense for my Assassin to join Night Fae? A bleeding heavy spec that is literally names after a word for killing people

Night Fae is also great for Havoc

Venthyr and Night Fae are good for Ret depending on what your goals are

I guess it makes total sense Venthyr is the dominate choice for my Enhancement Shaman? Can forget Elemental dead worship like Necrolord being their best!

Nothing says Affliction Warlock and Shadow Priest like Night Fae!


Most of the specs I play the overall best covenant doesn't fit thematically

Yup. That is why almost no one has attachments to their covenant. What's best makes too much of a difference to care about fantasy.
Fantasy is performing well within my class.

Btw Holy Paladins are also greatly changing to Venthyr now cause of the huge damage. Holy fantasy as Venthyr? Suuure. You can go fantasy... or you can do as much damage as a DPS in your healer. Fantasy gets thrown to the curb versus results.

I guess it's not surprising to see some people still in denial here and ignoring that evidence has been presented for it. No one cares about their ass pulled assertions.

[Justintime328]

Then change.

I'm an aotc raider with a few mythics mixed in and I'm not a 90% parser. I dont want to nerf my friends even further by choosing something that does significantly less damage.

[Doffen]

I'm an aotc raider with a few mythics mixed in and I'm not a 90% parser. I dont want to nerf my friends even further by choosing something that does significantly less damage.

And thats your choice. It might be the right one for you, nothing wrong with that? What spec are you playing?

While I understand where you are coming from, mythic raiders are in a spot where many, if not most would play whatever is best. Just checking warcraftlogs it does, and has been confirmed for years. You playing a warlock, one of the overall best raiding classes atm, with affli being strong. Is that the spec you are playing? If so, is it because then you dont let down your friends or is it because its most fun?

I wont assume anything, hence the questions. But with any rental power, wouldnt you just pick whats best anyway? On a generally basis, that answer is yes. So why do Covenant matter that much to those players? Should blizzard just remove those things then? Wouldnt it make the game less interesting for the player base overall?

[Echocho]

I'm an aotc raider with a few mythics mixed in and I'm not a 90% parser. I dont want to nerf my friends even further by choosing something that does significantly less damage.

Okay so you've picked the one you want. What's the problem exactly?

[MrLachyG]

With covenants we finally found a way to put to the old argument to rest. Min maxing is what matters to the vast majority of players. Most specs have upwards of 90% of the active player base picking the covenant that offers them the best performance. (There are some exceptions like havoc but that specs dead and its abysmal numbers seem to point towards min maxing rather then against.)

Now that the old argument has been put to rest do you think in the future we will see blizzard moving away from meaningless systems like covenants and relics now that it has been shown players only care about what gives the best performance barring a tiny minority?

When you’re unbanned I’d love to see this proof you have

[Echocho]

When you’re unbanned I’d love to see this proof you have

It's probably the Preach video where he "proves" that people minmaxers by checking the armory through the API. He checks characters that does difficult end game content and concludes that this is proof of all players minmaxing while completely ignoring the entire casual playerbase who don't partake in content like that.

[Cthulhu fhtagn]

The fact that so many of the recommendations for bis covenants and legendaries were initially outright wrong points towards people not being min maxers themselves but instead just want someone to tell them what's best without really thinking about it themselves.

[RoKPaNda]

I mean that's not really min/maxing. There's a lot more to it than just googling "what covenant best"

[MrLachyG]

It's probably the Preach video where he "proves" that people minmaxers by checking the armory through the API. He checks characters that does difficult end game content and concludes that this is proof of all players minmaxing while completely ignoring the entire casual playerbase who don't partake in content like that.

So anecdotal proof. Right, got it. In that case OP you’re wrong

[Electric Lighter]

And thats your choice. It might be the right one for you, nothing wrong with that? What spec are you playing?

While I understand where you are coming from, mythic raiders are in a spot where many, if not most would play whatever is best. Just checking warcraftlogs it does, and has been confirmed for years. You playing a warlock, one of the overall best raiding classes atm, with affli being strong. Is that the spec you are playing? If so, is it because then you dont let down your friends or is it because its most fun?

I wont assume anything, hence the questions. But with any rental power, wouldnt you just pick whats best anyway? On a generally basis, that answer is yes. So why do Covenant matter that much to those players? Should blizzard just remove those things then? Wouldnt it make the game less interesting for the player base overall?

The issue comes up when certain contents more or less lock you out of content. For some specs not going one or the other utterly cripples you in pvp or pve. It acts as a restriction to what characters would normally be able to do via talent changes.

- - - Updated - - -

It's probably the Preach video where he "proves" that people minmaxers by checking the armory through the API. He checks characters that does difficult end game content and concludes that this is proof of all players minmaxing while completely ignoring the entire casual playerbase who don't partake in content like that.

I mean we have the stats of every character that appears on the armory

https://wowranks.io/stats

We have the numbers your talking about... this casual palyerbase your trying to conjure doesn't exist

[Swnem]

So anecdotal proof. Right, got it. In that case OP you’re wrong

It's not just the ones that do difficult content. It's all characters at 60.

What's more anectodal? Statements backed by data or assertions without any? Be careful who you listen to.

[Gasparde]

It's probably the Preach video where he "proves" that people minmaxers by checking the armory through the API. He checks characters that does difficult end game content and concludes that this is proof of all players minmaxing while completely ignoring the entire casual playerbase who don't partake in content like that.

Wow, it's a good thing you're giving a totally objective and 100% fact based description of the situation then. Good thing you're totally not just pulling things out your ass to make everyone disagreeing with you look bad. Because fuck Preach and his anecdotal evidence for not aligning with your anecdotal whatever it is you have.

Preach has done a video on Covenant / Class / Spec distribution and that had absolutely nothing to do with casual, elitist, raider, PvPer, m+er, pet battler, whatever. He was specifically referring to this site (https://wowranks.io/stats) - and this site looks at all the characters, not just the mean raiders, even the ignorant and dismissive casual like yourself.

That site shows you 7 million characters and the choices they've made. 7 million characters across all areas of the game. Be it 3k MMR RBG characters or 1/10 LFR world quest casuals. This very site shows you that just about 85% of all Druids are Night Fae, that just about 70% of all Hunters are Night Fae, that just about half of all DEMON HUNTERS are fucking ANGEL PEOPLE (because they've obviously chosen that for the RPG aspect - because that's what you super reasonable RPG casual chubby bunnies do), how just about 70% of all Mages are Night Fae, how just about 70% of all Monks are Kyrian, how just about 75% of all Paladins are Kyrian, how just about 60% of all WARLOCKS are fucking FAIRY PEOPLE (again, the casual RPG loving crowd coming in strong with their thematic choices) or how Shamans and Rogues are the only class that has something even just remotely close to a choice (although even that choice goes away when you look at specs instead of classes).

You're fucking ignorant. That has got nothing to do with Preach. There are numbers proving that you are a minority, you just don't care about the facts because fuck the facts and you're always right anyways. And everyone disagreeing is just an elitist. And elitists don't matter. Because, as we can clearly see, they are in such a minority, evidently proven by shit like 70% of all Rogues being either fucking angel people or fucking necromancer death brawlers instead of bloody bleeding fuckers. You're fucking ignorant and it's a disgrace that there are people actually believing the ignorant, misleading and flat out false bullshit claims you're spewing.

[Swnem]

I mean that's not really min/maxing. There's a lot more to it than just googling "what covenant best"

Yes, but it does prove that generally people care more about output than fantasy. Tying them together was a mistake.

[Draknalor186]

With covenants we finally found a way to put to the old argument to rest. Min maxing is what matters to the vast majority of players. Most specs have upwards of 90% of the active player base picking the covenant that offers them the best performance. (There are some exceptions like havoc but that specs dead and its abysmal numbers seem to point towards min maxing rather then against.)

Now that the old argument has been put to rest do you think in the future we will see blizzard moving away from meaningless systems like covenants and relics now that it has been shown players only care about what gives the best performance barring a tiny minority?

I don't play Necrolords because it's the best, i play it because it suits my DK the most.

On the shaman tho i play Venthyr because it's the best for enhancement.

I tho like venthyr thematiclly as well tho.. rather pick venthyr than ardenweald

[agentsi]

With covenants we finally found a way to put to the old argument to rest. Min maxing is what matters to the vast majority of players. Most specs have upwards of 90% of the active player base picking the covenant that offers them the best performance. (There are some exceptions like havoc but that specs dead and its abysmal numbers seem to point towards min maxing rather then against.)

Now that the old argument has been put to rest do you think in the future we will see blizzard moving away from meaningless systems like covenants and relics now that it has been shown players only care about what gives the best performance barring a tiny minority?

People may min/max, but 95% of the players don't even do their rotations correctly, to begin with, they just want to see their character's "potential" if done correctly.

So while most might do this, they shouldn't change the game because of it. Ion has mentioned it many times in Q&As that he knows folks do this, but logs show that most players don't even use trinkets or CDs effectively. So while a trinket may sim better if it is on-use, if you aren't using it, it is a DPS loss. And VERY few players understand this.

[Doffen]

The issue comes up when certain contents more or less lock you out of content. For some specs not going one or the other utterly cripples you in pvp or pve. It acts as a restriction to what characters would normally be able to do via talent changes.

Thats it though, some see it as an issue. Some do not. So who are we gonna listen to? Nothing with Covenants that locks me out of content. Nothing of that locks the three times as many that do heroic Castle Nathria compared to mythic. Why are so many warlocks playing as affliction? Is it because they have a choice then, or is it because it performs better? If we have that for classes, how is it really an issue when it comes to a sub thing like Covenants? The issue is a much larger one when it comes to how specs perform, rather than what the Covenants give them.

Many do care about performance, no doubt. I would wager most do. But Covenant only "locks" out a very low minority in the game. And those would do ANYTHING to reach their goal. And that's their choice. With Covenants or not. So in the end, the issue is all about rental power. If it wasn't Covenant, it was corruption,essences or Azerite Armor. Or maxing Artifact weapon or getting the best legendaries.

[Electric Lighter]

Thats it though, some see it as an issue. Some do not. So who are we gonna listen to? Nothing with Covenants that locks me out of content. Nothing of that locks the three times as many that do heroic Castle Nathria compared to mythic. Why are so many warlocks playing as affliction? Is it because they have a choice then, or is it because it performs better? If we have that for classes, how is it really an issue when it comes to a sub thing like Covenants? The issue is a much larger one when it comes to how specs perform, rather than what the Covenants give them.

Many do care about performance, no doubt. I would wager most do. But Covenant only "locks" out a very low minority in the game. And those would do ANYTHING to reach their goal. And that's their choice. With Covenants or not. So in the end, the issue is all about rental power. If it wasn't Covenant, it was corruption,essences or Azerite Armor. Or maxing Artifact weapon or getting the best legendaries.

You change it for those it effects since the others have proven they don't care... what a dumb question to ask.

You can't have the I do whatever i want attitude then try to play it up about why don't people cater to you.

[NineSpine]

WoW is kind of a odd game. A lot of players claim that the majority doesn't do anything and just picks randomly but there hasn't ever been anything to show that as being true. Now with SL we can see that there is a massive trend of players picking the strongest power option regardless of the level of difficulty they play at.

I will be honest. I don't actually believe wow has ever had a massive majority of players just pushing buttons randomly in the game to see spell effects to go off but on some level every player strives to be better at the game over time.

I think the idea is so heavily pushed is mostly due to it being used as a reason for simplifying the game for a broader audience and that isn't a bad thing but by the same token if the majority of the player base is more interested in playing wow like an rpg where you use the best items and skills to win it begs the question just how simple should the game be made?

Take a look at recent content... isles. warfronts, torghast. Out of those three you can make a pretty decent argument that if warfronts and torghast were properly tuned the community would of embraced the content rather then rejecting it beyond gearing alts.

Torghast especially considering how fun it was on beta before it just became another thing that was designed to not be something you can fail.

You first have to realize that "Players are min maxing" and "Players are picking what the community says to" aren't the same thing.

An extremely casual player might not be sure what covenant to go with and then looks it up and sees universal recommendations for one so they go with that. Is that player min maxing? I don't think so. They just don't care very much and will go with whatever the most common opinion is.

"I don't know what build to go with, what does it say online? I'll do that." and "I must maximize every ounce of my character!" aren't the same thing.