I decided to make this post to raise awareness about upcoming issue and I hope players will see it and Blizzard might respond to it or at least acknowledge the concern and provide some clear solution to so far unaddressed issue that might cause a lot of concerns to players.
how legendaries work in 9.2
you’ll be able to equip two legendaries instead of one
one of the legendaries needs to be covenant specific
special “legendary belt” will be added that switches covenant legendary effect to match current covenant
what is the issue
fun
gaining one new effect isn’t very fun, if you can’t really influence the effect (you can’t choose it)
you actually LOSE options… before you chose legendary out of all legendaries… now you choose out of all but one, because the one is mandatory
you’re possibly stuck with effect you don’t enjoy
no new effects are introduced, just some of previous effects are now mandatory… that’s not more fun… it’s actually less fun
Note: I understand fun is subjective. But I’m going off of what I think and what seems reasonable, as well as what I gathered from people I spoke with about this topic. Which are mostly casual players that don’t play much and players that do play much, but not on very high level.
balance
being locked into one legendary without a choice has flaws, legendaries have specific effects - and their usability - is different in different content
legendary that gives you AoE effect might be great for M+, but absolutely useless with no advantage whatsoever in single target fights (in Raid)
some Covenant-specific legendaries are so bad, that you’d probably prefer playing without legendary than having this one in content you’re doing…
example
Necrolord Druid (Feral) in PvP. They already go single target build and if Adaptive Swarm splits to affect nearby target, it won’t do any effective damage. It’ll just do minimum damage and break CC. That minimum damage won’t have effect and will be covered by passive healing, meaning nothing. But that breaking CC might lose you game.
Currently there are 2-3 playable Feral covenants in PvP (Necrolord, Night Fae, and maybe Kyrian). After this change Night Fae and Kyrian will be better, and Necrolord will be basically playing without new legendary. That feels very bad and players have no control over the legendary they must be playing. You’re supposed to gain something, but instead, what you gain has no value.
The effect can’t be buffed to have value. If adaptive swarm swapped at 100% chance instead of 60% and it split into 3 instead of 2 it would still be bad and worse than nothing. That effect might be good for M+ (I don’t know) But it’s bad for PvP. But required in ALL form of content.
!!! KEY POINT !!!: I don’t expect it to be good in all form content. That’s an impossible goal. Instead I should be free to pick different legendary and not be stuck with one mandatory.
how it affects players
players are required to have at least decent covenant right now… this will just make things worse and less covenants are going to be playable
already players are stuck with some covenants and we have data that players in vast majority choose covenant based on player power and not aesthetics
it doesn’t have any potential to make some weaker covenants better… if they were good with already existing legendaries, they’d start to be used already… so they already were made playable thanks to covenant legendary or stayed still bad
this change will only remove playable covenants, it won’t add any new ones
This effectively means that players will be affected only negatively in vast majority. Sure, there are players that don’t care about player power, but those are still not affected positively, those just don’t care.
why “balancing” it will NOT work
you can’t balance a thing to be great in all form of content… by buffing it you may make it too good in one content, but it still will be useless in other content
for it to be okay in all form of content, the effect would need to change in different forms of content (different effect for PvP, different effect for M+, different effect for M+)
possible solution
what comes to my mind as actual solution are two possible things
A) add new effects
the issue comes from not having choice… which is bad for fun and bad for balance… if you’re stuck with something and you have no options to affect it, it’s not fun… and if you have to use it for all content, where content requires contradicting things (which it does, PvP and M+ do require completely different things that contradict themselves)…
so ONE SOLUTION might be to REQUIRE covenant specific legendary, but actually have multiple covenant specific legendaries (E.G. 2 or more Night Fae legendaries for Priest out of which Priest has to choose one… but at least Priest would choose, instead of being mandated one)
however I understand this might be a lot of work
B) lift covenant-specific legendary requirement
I understand the concern of some legendaries pairing too well together. But that is still the issue even with covenant legendary being required. Like Necrolord Demonology Warlock will have way too powerfull Demonbolt since they’re buffed by both Necrolord Legendary and one specific Warlock Legendary. So by requiring mandatory covenant-specific legendary, this issue is still NOT addressed.
It’d be way more fun and wouldn’t remove some specs that are good.
Outliers might be handled specifically (some combos being too broken)
It’d be preferable as players wouldn’t be stuck with legendaries they don’t like and that simply DON’T work for the content they enjoy
You probably missed my explanation of what the issue is.
They can change the effect, problem will still exist however.
Because I don’t address concerns about specific effects, but about not having a choice.
I don’t see this as contradiction. It might be boost to covenant system, while still being overall player choice loss.
Yes, but some players will have 2 BiS legendaries in a content, while other players will have 1 BiS legendary and one legendary without effect in the content. Resulting into pressuring player to play different covenant JUST BECAUSE THE LEGENDARY was mandatory. If it wasn’t then he wouldn’t need to.
No, you’re wrong. And I already explained why.
Either address my explanation or don’t negate my statements.
I literally added this part, so I don’t have to re-explain again and again why it can’t be balanced after somebody points it out. Yet you skip it anyway and proceed to refer to it having possibility of being balanced.
Please take your own advice and read what I write and address it before responding I’m wrong.
You cannot balance legendaries, because there’s not only one form of content. At the moment, there’s not “BEST Feral legendary”. There is a BiS legendary for a Boss, there is a BiS legendary for M+ and there is a BiS legendary for PvP.
nowhere do I complain about legendary item’s slot, so this is perfectly irrelevant
So please go forth and elaborate why I’m wrong. For just claiming that I am without addressing any of my concerns is worthless in my opinion.
And that does not change with adding the covenant one.
Nothing changes there.
Show PROOF of this.
Here is mine: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/28
11% difference from top to bottom (when i did the math 6days ago) that is the lowest it has EVER BEEN.)
There is literally evidence of you not being right here.
(we know that blizzard uses logs as one of many tools to balance the game because they have told us they uses it.)
How is it a loss?
How is it a loss to player choice? you have THE EXACT same choices as you have RIGHT NOW in the game other than that you are losing the covenant legendary choice however you are not losing it as you have it with another legendary.
If you used the covenant legendary now in this patch you GAIN the ability to use another legendary.
JUST LIKE COVENANTS ARE RIGHT NOW.
The ONLY change is that you might actually want to play more than 1 covenant to get the best overall performance and in 9.1.5 we gained the ability to do just this.
And if one spec has several good legendaries for a specific content you can balance around it by assuming the bis legendaries will be used for that content and balance the damage that way.
And that is the EXACT reason why it was a SIDE NOTE i can not believe i have to explain that to you.
It is irrelevant but it is relevant to what you are writing as you are implying that it can only be on the belt slot.
I’d be careful with this wording. Because then people like Ayellin will have issues with grasping what the problem is.
It’s not just BiS… it’s BiS for a content.
Some legendary might be BiS for PvP and absolutely useless for M+.
THAT is the issue.
If there was let’s say only PvP, then it wouldn’t be issue and they’d just tune up all covenant legendaries. But now there is issue, because let’s say tunning it for it to be usable for PvP would cause it to be enormously broken in M+. And for it to be balanced in M+ might cause it to be absolutely worthless in PvP.
That’s why I wrote the whole paragraph for Why “balancing” it will not work
And this is where you are wrong. Yes it’s complex, but it’s less luck based with any two legendaries.
If you have any two legendaries and you do -let’s say- PvP, you simply pick two best. And everybody else will also have two best.
But if you have covenant mandatory, some will have two best, while other will have one best and one useless.
Sure, you can still be unlucky and your two best might not be strong enough. But that not only is less probable, it also feels bad much less, because you at least have two legendaries that work, rather than having only one and one dysfunctional.
And I already explained why there will be bad legendaries. They might not be overall bad, they might be actually great in some content… but they can’t be great in all content.
THAT is the issue. That it is mandatory in all content, but different content requires different things. So it can’t be good in all content. And solution is for it NOT to be mandatory in all content.
So you can pick those, that fit the content, you’re playing.
Does it maybe now make more sense?
If I get back to your statement about luck, then having one mandatory legendary is a coin flip. You win or you lose. Being able to choose between (let’s say) 10 (I didn’t count them, a guess) is 10 coin flips, in which you choose which result you want to have.
That’s the best analogy I can give that perfectly depicts the issue.
Well if they made new covenant one, they could make one that is good for AoE and one that is good for single target, and at least you’d pick what you need for the content you do. Now you may be forced into covenant legendary that is AoE in single target fight effectively meaning it does NOTHING.
I gave explanation, you didn’t address it.
What is it supposed to prove?
Oh so you’re going with that they’re going to balance it?
But shouldn’t your proof be containing also all form of content, not just raiding and also all covenants? Because this doesn’t actually prove anything and is red herring.
No you don’t.
Assume there are 15 legendaries (I’m not going to count them).
Right now, you can make choices out of 15 legendaries, which to pick.
After this, you’ll choose from 14.
So you lose choices. Before you had 15 possible outcomes, now 14.
And they pulled the ripcords. Thanks god.
Now they should pull the ripcord on covenant mandatory legendary.
The same way covenants killed some classes, legendaries might kill some covenants.
You can’t. And I already gave reasoning why.
So please address those points, because your “logs” don’t invalidate what I am saying.
