Development Update: The Road to Shadowlands

[korijenkins]

PvP stats PLEASE. It solves every problem. The complaining will vanish if they do JUST THAT.

[Radazar]

Well this shit better go live asap , they won't change their mind on covenant until they see the outrage on live servers.

lmao even if they do change it then people will bitch that they went back on the system they put into the game. their is no making you people happy

[GreenJesus]

No wait hold the f***ing phone!

"Speaking of Twisting Corridors, as we finalize tuning, Twisting Corridors should come into its own as the “Challenge Mode” wing of Torghast, offering eighteen-floor runs at a higher level of difficulty than the rest of Torghast, with cosmetic rewards for clearing certain thresholds."

Is that what has become of the supposed "Infinite Dungeon" that Torghast was ment to be? Are you legit telling me that there will be no infinite climb mode and that I will only get 18 floors to climb; Then I will have to start over from scratch and just do 0-18 again? That can't be it? There still must be a infinite mode which is there just for s**ts n giggles? Screw if it has any rewards or not of any kind; What I was looking forward too in Shadowlands was to climb this supposed "infinite tower" they pushed so heavy at Blizzcon; So for the love of the Jailer please tell me this 18 floor thing is it's own thing and that there still will be a mode that just goes on forever...

Does this mean that regular Torghast is just the "shits and giggles" version to complete a questline, but the 18 floor "Twisting Corridors" is the actual repeatable content that will have all the rewards? I mean.. to be honest I'm not sure being forced to go up 99 floors a week would have been very fun.. I feel like 18 floors is already a good amount of floors. Since I don't have a lot of time I feel like this change is good for me.

[Wulfey]

For the covenants, it will be mathed out early on which Covenant is the best for your spec/class. You will pick that one.

The real worry is when Blizz learn of this math and nerf the crap out of the mathematically superior one.

Take Condemn/Venthyr for Warriors. This is a flat no brainer. Condemn is miles ahead of the other covenant abilities due its utility in all aspects of the game.

What happens when they nerf it?

[Alcsaar]

You're of course allowed to think that, and they're allowed to disagree.

There is nothing to "think" about. The best covenants will get mathed out and then 99% of people will choose the strongest covenant for their spec/class and that will be it. Covenants are an illusion of choice and nothing more, and that is what makes it a poor system. Not to mention I can already see people getting denied from mythic+/raids because they aren't their BIS covenant.

[Brash]

For the covenants, it will be mathed out early on which Covenant is the best for your spec/class. You will pick that one.

The real worry is when Blizz learn of this math and nerf the crap out of the mathematically superior one.

Take Condemn/Venthyr for Warriors. This is a flat no brainer. Condemn is miles ahead of the other covenant abilities due its utility in all aspects of the game.

What happens when they nerf it?

Then it comes more in line with the rest of the spells but is still good?

[Cosmic Janitor]

Yea, this is fucked. Either they will end up with a shit system until 9.3, OR they will nerf covenant abilities so bad you don't even press them which will just mean "choose venthyr for the teleport". GG Blizz, GG.

Thanks to various shoe-horned in interactions this won't be the case anymore. At least not across the board. For m+ you pretty much want one of each coveant if you run a permanent team, since they allow for some completely broken skips or power upgrades in the dungeons.

The first raid currently could mean that many people either roll kyrian or go alliance for hardcore progress to get rid of the bleeds (from all the non-vampire mobs..).

[Omedon]

There is nothing to "think" about. The best covenants will get mathed out and then 99% of people will choose the strongest covenant for their spec/class and that will be it. Covenants are an illusion of choice and nothing more, and that is what makes it a poor system. Not to mention I can already see people getting denied from mythic+/raids because they aren't their BIS covenant.

Not everyone cares about the layers of content where people are denying each other. Most if not all content will be developed as covenant agnostic because it's intended for everyone to see it regardless of covenant. Difficulty levels are not content. Covenant campaigns are content and yes, there your covenant will matter... because that just makes sense.

[Darknessvamp]

Tl;dr on Covenants: they're not changing it before launch, they don't intend to figure out how to switch out the soul bind talent tree buffs that apply to the abilities to make them swappable, they'll probably change it after a patch due to complaints or two into the expansion.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Does this mean that regular Torghast is just the "shits and giggles" version to complete a questline, but the 18 floor "Twisting Corridors" is the actual repeatable content that will have all the rewards? I mean.. to be honest I'm not sure being forced to go up 99 floors a week would have been very fun.. I feel like 18 floors is already a good amount of floors. Since I don't have a lot of time I feel like this change is good for me.

6 floors is for weekly power gains, 18 is for farming cosmetics/toys/pets/etc.

[baseballfan]

“what do you play?” in Shadowlands to be “Kyrian paladin” or “Venthyr paladin” rather than just “paladin.” I have heard that somewhere before.. in the past... in BFA beta.. perhaps? almost exact forumla. BFA- "What do you play? In Bfa we want people to be a "Prot paladin" or a "Ret paladin" rather than just "Paladin"".

[Lahis]

You didn't read anything, did you? They are trying to directly address covenant feedback with new changes.

They can keep polishing turd till the end of time, but it will still be a turd.
Blizzard has never succeeded in balancing system like this.
Covenants will be the great fault of this expansion which they'll admit was a mistake when doing 10.0 interviews two years from now on.

[Biomega]

Then it comes more in line with the rest of the spells but is still good?

Well, ideally - but there's been tons of examples in the past where that hasn't been the case, and Blizzard's balancing has oscillated wildly between OP and useless (with a few exceptions). That's what people are worried about, and with good historical reason.

They keep promising that everything will be balanced and that the real DPS differences will be on the order of racials (nevermind the fact that past racial imbalance is directly responsible for the wild population skew towards Horde). Whether or not they actually WILL balance it like that is another matter entirely, and with Blizzard's track record so far many people simply aren't buying into the promise. No matter how often it's repeated.

[OmedonIsAGenius]

Not everyone cares about the layers of content where people are denying each other. Most if not all content will be developed as covenant agnostic because it's intended for everyone to see it regardless of covenant. Difficulty levels are not content. Covenant campaigns are content and yes, there your covenant will matter... because that just makes sense.

Difficulty levels are not content.

Yeah because normal dungeons are the same as a +27. Because LFR N'Zoth is the same as mythic N'Zoth. Excellent point kind sir.

[Firebert]

If you really want to go Kyrian on your rogue, but can’t justify it because every guide currently says that the Necrolords’ Serrated Bone Spike is too good to pass up, or if an otherwise appealing covenant has benefits that seem irrelevant in PvP, those are exactly the sorts of imbalance we want to fix, and your feedback is essential to that process. In the coming weeks, we’ll be doing numerical tuning, making changes to underlying ability designs when needed, and potentially leveraging covenant-specific conduits if a covenant needs some targeted shoring up to ensure that they’re viable in a particular type of content. As our combat team shifts its focus primarily to tuning, we’ll be rolling those changes out to Beta servers ASAP for further testing and iteration.

If you have beta access and are complaining about "BiS covenants", get on the beta and start feeding back to Blizzard.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

[schwarzkopf]

Excellent news that the covenants remain meaningful, was worried they'd give into the whingers.

There isn't any reason to have a problem with covenants in any system where classes exist.

I'm 100% behind trying to reverse the homogenisation.

[Orpheus66]

PvP stats PLEASE. It solves every problem. The complaining will vanish if they do JUST THAT.

Thank you for being so high on the comments, please PLEASE have PvP specific stats (like PvP power!)

[Omedon]

Yeah because normal dungeons are the same as a +27. Because LFR N'Zoth is the same as mythic N'Zoth. Excellent point kind sir.

Literally same maps, mobs (in most cases), and content, yes. Difficulty levels are not content. All content is available to all players regardless of diffcilty.

[Alcsaar]

Not everyone cares about the layers of content where people are denying each other. Most if not all content will be developed as covenant agnostic because it's intended for everyone to see it regardless of covenant. Difficulty levels are not content. Covenant campaigns are content and yes, there your covenant will matter... because that just makes sense.

It doesn't matter if content is designed for all covenants to be able to do it - all that matters is what people will require when forming groups. We already see item level requirements and Raider IO scores - to think for a second that people won't also require BIS covenants would be silly.

[Reead]

No wait hold the f***ing phone!

"Speaking of Twisting Corridors, as we finalize tuning, Twisting Corridors should come into its own as the “Challenge Mode” wing of Torghast, offering eighteen-floor runs at a higher level of difficulty than the rest of Torghast, with cosmetic rewards for clearing certain thresholds."

Is that what has become of the supposed "Infinite Dungeon" that Torghast was ment to be? Are you legit telling me that there will be no infinite climb mode and that I will only get 18 floors to climb; Then I will have to start over from scratch and just do 0-18 again? That can't be it? There still must be a infinite mode which is there just for s**ts n giggles? Screw if it has any rewards or not of any kind; What I was looking forward too in Shadowlands was to climb this supposed "infinite tower" they pushed so heavy at Blizzcon; So for the love of the Jailer please tell me this 18 floor thing is it's own thing and that there still will be a mode that just goes on forever...

You're reading it wrong. Twisting Corridors has always been limited to 18 floor runs at a time, to prevent your powers from scaling too far out of control. Once you've completed an 18 floor run, you can skip to floor 18 on your next run and begin there, with your anima powers wiped.

Torghast is broken out into 6 floor "blocks", and you can skip to any "block" you've completed on a previous run. i.e., once you've cleared an 18 floor run you can skip to Floor 7, Floor 13, or Floor 19 on your next run. If you then begin at Floor 19 and successfully complete floor 32, you can begin your next run at 33 (or any other block interval below that).