There's no choice in Covenants - they will be min-maxed anyway

[Savagedragn]

Maybe people should just play the way that's most fun instead of going for the biggest numbers? I mean I'm pretty sure that's how the silent majority play?

Sounds like the unicorn system Blizz would love to find. If everyone could do the things they wanted, play the way they wanted, and still be competitive.

People in this thread are pretty silly though. Only the VERY vocal EXTREME minority gives two shits about min maxing a 1% advantage.

[This One Time At Bandcamp]

I dont get this argument.. Everything in the game is min/maxable, why are you focusing on this one feature?

[PointerToAddress]

One complaint I've seen is that for classes that have more than one role, it'll be hard to choose one because one Covenant may be better as dps but bad at heals. Take into consideration that the main source of power in a Covenant are the Soulbinds. It's a whole talent tree where you can socket different things/abilities/perks, and you get 3 of those. So what do you do? Take one of the trees as the dps tree, one for tanking and one for heals. If you look at the Soulbind traits, some ore focused for defense and some for damage, I image there will be for heals. And since you can swap Soulbinds with a tome it'll be much better than Azerite traits, for example.

But since Blizzard only dedicated one or two slides to the Soulbinds many are taking the Covenants to be either only the Class abilities or that there is only one Soulbind.

[Yelmurc]

I really wish they'd make covenants cosmetic only. Give the talent tree's to your followers and level them up. As for the new abilities, add them to the base class set and you'll learn these as you level up. Just don't make them all super powerful. Each ability could be for a spec and maybe the 4th ability is a movement ability.

[Krille]

One complaint I've seen is that for classes that have more than one role, it'll be hard to choose one because one Covenant may be better as dps but bad at heals. Take into consideration that the main source of power in a Covenant are the Soulbinds. It's a whole talent tree where you can socket different things/abilities/perks, and you get 3 of those. So what do you do? Take one of the trees as the dps tree, one for tanking and one for heals. If you look at the Soulbind traits, some ore focused for defense and some for damage, I image there will be for heals. And since you can swap Soulbinds with a tome it'll be much better than Azerite traits, for example.

But since Blizzard only dedicated one or two slides to the Soulbinds many are taking the Covenants to be either only the Class abilities or that there is only one Soulbind.

They did a very poor job explaining the system. It's only apparent if you make some personal research into them. I would assume the reason it went this way is cus of the lack of time.

[Bosen]

*laugh* "NO! You are not allowed to take the Covenant with the Highest Output, Also you are not allowed to play the Spec with the highest output anymore" ^^

I meant that they'll most likely have it so there's no one best covenant option.

[Cyanu]

Give them No choice players complain about lack of choice

Give them cosmetic only choice players complain it doesn't affect gameplay

Give them a mechanical choice players complain that they have to min Max....

[huth]

But there is choice;
you can always choose to be sub-par (which will be the case with 75% of all spec-convenant combo)!

Not if the combos are only strong in specific situations. Then you can only pick what situation you're strong in.

- - - Updated - - -

Give them No choice players complain about lack of choice

Give them cosmetic only choice players complain it doesn't affect gameplay

Give them a mechanical choice players complain that they have to min Max....

Long story short: Players complain. Just do whatever you want.

[Krille]

I meant that they'll most likely have it so there's no one best covenant option.

That is impossible to achieve. We already know that one of the soulbinds will give you more crit passively, that is already fitting some specs better than others.

[Xaviaton]

The thing I am really worried about is whether or not the covenant that fits the aesthetic I want will have an ability that is super boring while a different covenant has a spell that makes for a super fun playstyle. I wanna roll Venthyr on my hunter and mage but what if their abilities end up being barrage and rune of power and the other covenant spells are literally anything else. Then I'm in a pickle.

[Krille]

The thing I am really worried about is whether or not the covenant that fits the aesthetic I want will have an ability that is super boring while a different covenant has a spell that makes for a super fun playstyle. I wanna roll Venthyr on my hunter and mage but what if their abilities end up being barrage and rune of power and the other covenant spells are literally anything else. Then I'm in a pickle.

In current tuning, the Kyrian ability seems really good for Arcane. 25% dmg increased for every spell cast, stacking and ending at 100% (short CD). Seems to pair up really well with Arcane Blast, with the 4th buffed spell doing 100% more dmg.

[reauxmont]

It's the same with races, there's always "the best" racial for a given class, but I have never seen anyone being discriminated based on the race they chose. Not even in mythic raiding. That's maybe the case if you're in a top 100 guild, but irrelevant otherwise.

[therealbowser]

Specs aren't and will not ever be 100% balanced, but even a simple 1-2K more DPS people will go "Oh switch to Fire instead of Frost, it does more." That'll be the exact case here with these Covenants; "Why are you Covenant A? You'd do more switching to Covenant C."



One ability means a lot though. When we lost one ability with losing our Legion legendaries, people really went, "man this feels unsatisfying."

As for the "Only the best will talk about this." I disagree. As I said above, even things as simple as a small DPS increase will cause people to go, "Take this spec over this one." "Take this talent over this one." There's no reason to assume it's going to be different for Covenants.

I'm not trying to cry wolf either, just using all the examples of it in the past that haven't exactly been ideal to make a well educated guess that this is going to go the same way.

No I mean I know there will be the people who think a 0.01% damage increase is absolutely critical even though they are not even doing heroic raiding content, because they want to mimic mythic world first guilds. But they are going to do this kind of stuff regardless. Casual players who accept that they are, ultimately, not going to be pushing mythic raid content hard are probably not going to fret about the damage increase. I don't think this will be like, say, essences where the DPS differences is noticeable, because they are designed to be interchanged. The different will be much less for covenant abilities since you can't change casually.

This won't stop people from obsessing over the "best", but I really doubt it will make as huge of an impact as people are thinking it will. Especially in cases of "covenant X has a better healing ability, covenant Y has a better DPS ability, which do you choose?" Obviously, the super hardcore will go for the one that is for the spec they primarily play.

And I wasn't meaning to say that you are crying wolf here, I just mean that I myself am not going to do so unless/until we can see ingame (such as on the beta) that things are leading up to this kind of mess. I have faith... so far... that it will be relatively balanced. It's just one ability per covenant, so it can't be that hard.

[Xaviaton]

In current tuning, the Kyrian ability seems really good for Arcane. 25% dmg increased for every spell cast, stacking and ending at 100% (short CD). Seems to pair up really well with Arcane Blast, with the 4th buffed spell doing 100% more dmg.

The potential is certainly there (I play fire but your point stands). The power doesn't necessarily match a fun playstyle for me though. I am too casual to clearly envision how a spell will impact the fluidity of my gameplay until I actually try it out but to just straight up power up your rotation every now and then sounds pretty good. I'll pick a fun spell over the top throughput spell any day of the week though, as long as it is not gimping myself so thoroughly that I lose out on a good 10% dps.

[Bosen]

That is impossible to achieve. We already know that one of the soulbinds will give you more crit passively, that is already fitting some specs better than others.

They can balance that out. It's not impossible.

[Krille]

They can balance that out. It's not impossible.

We don't know if they even aim to balance it out yet. You're usually chasing a neverending carrot by trying to balance these things, it usually never is.

[Alroxas]

I dont get this argument.. Everything in the game is min/maxable, why are you focusing on this one feature?

Covenants are the main mechanic in Shadowlands. Similar to how in BFA it was the Azerite system and in Legion it was the Artifacts. We're focusing on Covenants now because that's the core system. If it ain't good (like Azerite initially) then we should be setting off alarm bells now instead of 2 months into the expansion.

They did a very poor job explaining the system.

Alternatively, it could be that the Covenant system isn't quite fleshed out completely. For instance, in one of the later slides, they showed how there is a progression tree for the "soulbind" aspect of Covenants. In addition, it looks like part of that progression tree also has relic slots? So beyond which Covenant gives you the best class specific ability, players will need to figure out the best "soulbind" candidate and then the best soulbind progression option with the best relics to slot in.

For min/maxers, what a dream come true to heap on so many systems and so many variables that you'll spend days in simcraft trying to figure out the best combination.

[Big Thanks]

They can balance that out. It's not impossible.

No, its literally impossible to balance different choices in damage. Impossiberu.

The only way to make customization balanced...is by ONLY having "utility" talents.
Talent trees exclusively for utility.

And even so...is very difficult to acomplish.

Soon as a "talent" does a damage increase...impossible to balance. IMO ofcourse.

[Alroxas]

They can balance that out. It's not impossible.

No it's impossible. Take for instance, profession combat bonuses - on paper they were balanced but in practice, engineering gloves were BiS because of stacking them with CDs provided more throughput than any other option. Especially in encounters that closely matched the CD timer.

[Steelcryo]

21 pages discussing this? Christ this forum really has run out of things to talk about.

Everything can be min maxed, but 95% of the playerbase won't care. I don't push Mythic raids anymore, so I have desire to min max, I'll take whatever ability seems most fun for me to use for the content I am doing. Like the essences, I know which one is best for my class and spec, but I don't use it, I use the big old AoE because it's fun.

What do people want? Blizz just to give us one ability and everyone use it? That sounds dull as fuck for nearly everyone except the min max people.