Before sharding and cross-realm play became a thing, there was a huge amount of roleplaying even in non-RP servers. And I don’t mean RPing as it is understood in RP servers. But because your character’s reputation mattered, you could partake in many different roles - you could be a scammer or not, you could be a complete blockhead, or not. You could act nice and pleasant, you could be petulant. And all of those are choices that you could make and they had their own social consequences. World of Warcraft felt like a world, with its own community, factions, etc.
Now it doesn’t feel that way. Your reputation doesn’t matter. You’re in a community with 3 million other players, all of whom feel like everyone else is expendable. It is pretty sad.
Yeah, WoW was never as advanced as ArcheAge, but it used to feel like a world, like a community. And these days, only guilds can replicate that.
That there is the essence of what feels worst in the game right now.
Almost every group leader out there is acting like a CEO trying to make an efficient and profitable venture (instead of adventure)
If I’m a Sub rogue, I have to use fangs of the devourer. Artifacts actually took away the option to even pick a weapon. You ended up with all traits in the end, so the choice was literally “which spec am I” (hardly new) and “what order will I buy skills in” which ended up being irrelevant some time into max level
Legion artifacts were the antithesis of genuine RPG choice. They were cool in a way, but they did not invite significant choice given you could anticipate exactly what traits and weapon a char would have based upon spec alone.
Yes, with covenants you end up with a lot of the same, people picking the same thing etc. Thing is legion even took the option of doing that away. There was no option to pick a different sub artifact, or different traits. You had no choice in the end whatsoever.
Netherlight Crucible added some back given it was somewhat RNG and could differ.
Legion was also the expo that threw in templates in PvP.
Legion was great for swathes of content, but it achieved by sheer volume (each class having campaign, unique leggo, traits, ) rather than the content having depth to it. It was a thousand railroads into one place, as opposed to a single path with a thousand turn offs and destinations. It was the expo that actually took away a lot of choice across the game in various areas and replaced it with a multitude of predetermined decisions.
Whether they are poorly balanced or not is another thing entirely. But the potential to divert was there. Going back to sub rogue I could be a Last Dance rogue with Vision of Perfection, or maybe Lucid major, or whatever.
Corruptions
I could go proc crazy with gushing or focus stat mods for insane haste. Up to me.
Yes some were meta, so obviously most pick one route. But the option was there.
In legion I had no choice as a sub rogue. You use X weapon, you get Y traits. The end. The choice ultimately came down to which of my predetermined traits I want to be slightly more potent, hardly significant.
So disagree. BFA literally had a ton of potential diversions, even if poor choices to make. Legion had barely any and those that existed were extremely insignificant.
Same argument applies. Conduits and covenants invite potential choice. Covenants are more ballsy as well as the abilities have a fairly significant impact on play, so they’re important choices.
The issue is balancing them, but there is no “one destination”.
What is meta the “best choice” is not the same as all paths leading to the same place because the potential to deviate is there, even if the playerbase discourages it.
My hunter is Necrolord. Some people would say “yeah but why would you do that”, well I did, I made the choice. That’s what it’s about. Allowing me to make the choice. So SL is still miles ahead of legion in RPG terms.
The biggest issue SL has is introducing mechanics that impart unique advantages that don’t work everywhere and aren’t the best in every situation and can’t be changed on a whim, intending this, stating this intention but fighting against a playerbase that (understandably due to prior growing by blizz) simply cannot fathom the idea that picking X will make you better in A but worse in B than if you had picked Y, and this being by design.
It’s clear above. People going “if I pick X for mythic but then my raid performance” yes, that’s exactly what blizzard stated they wanted from covenants if I recall? There isn’t meant to be this “good at everything” or “can pick the best tool each time” and that is by design, and people behave like the system not working like that means it is broken.
The principle thing broken is where some dominate all content types (convoke) but if X ability is better for raids and Y for PvP and Z for m+ then that’s how it is meant to work as far as I understood blizzards intentions.
Whether you enjoy all 3 is irrelevant, you have to pick one to have an edge in, because RPGs are about such choices. Like if I want to deal ranged damage, I don’t roll a warrior for example.
Well I picked Night fae purely for the theme and now I do not have an edge in anything as far as I know.
Except moving a bit faster inside the Maw
But Night elves and Tauren just gotta Night fae
Granted, some are underperforming, balance issue than idea issue.
GS are meant to be quite good for holy I believe? Also potentially Disc to some degree so long as you optimise their use and pair them with the Conduit that has the effect stick around on an ally after the spirit moves on. Being able to boost CDR, DR on allies is potentially massive if used correctly.
Mindgames is great in PvP but freaking overexaggerated for non shadow specs elsewhere dmg/heal conversion is capped, so uses limited in PvE for a healer.
When it comes to covenants I think priests are pretty well serviced honestly.
Disc - Mindgames is potentially big in PvP, GS, Ascended Blast and Unholy Nova are reasonably as competitive with each other in PvE depending on content. Kyrian and GS better for 5 man’s, UN for raids.
Holy, same largely, though GS moves up and Kyrian down for PvE due to shifting focus in DPS.
Shadow, Mindgames is generic pick for all, but UN is a potentially big boost for raid dmg, GS can work with certain builds if u optimise well and play to support team as well (5 mans).
Priests are far from cut and dry compared to other classes, ie Druids.
They have a choice, because I have a choice and I’m not special. They choose the path of least immediate resistance, even if that path is much higher resistance in the long term.
Before I got in my guild, I would make dungeon groups and if I liked someone, I would add them either on discord or on battle net. Then we’d run more dungeons together, at some point, I’d actually make a team. It is a bit more resistance initially, as you actually need to talk with people to find out how pleasant they are, but in about a week, you will have a dungeon team and from that point on, there’s literally zero resistance.
The game has conditioned players to think only in immediate terms, everything is about instant gratification and if it’s not granted, they come here to complain.
GS might shine more in the future with a much higher ilvl Fae fermata. They might end up being a late bloomer in the lifetime of the expansion.
Now imagine if I could go grab the skills of another covenant and test them in actual content to get rid of the itch that I am getting the short end of the stick…
So …Uhh Breaking noobs news alert! You actually get to keep your renown it seems if you rejoin a covenant you previously left. First time i tried going back to a covenant I had previously left, Have up to now been jumping from one new to the next. Going back to the Necrolords just now. And My renown was right where I left off at 10 renown. I was thought that only the campaign where at where you left, but renown would reset. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.
So if your feeling super hardcore about it, I suppose you can actually grind up all 160 renown totall for each 4 covenant. And change them depending on content you wish to do. With a timegate penality of some 2 days. Depending on when your ‘‘Earning our trust’’ quests becomes available in Oribos.
I for one. Think if your that sadistic on your self enough to grind trough 160 renown levels for each covenant. You’ve earned the right to change between content you wish to covenant into. In my opinion… Happy grinding you all
I do not know how to put it into words but it frustrates me how they made the narrative about the switch being a betrayal when all the covenants need the players help to make any progress at all and all the covenants are supposed to need to power up in order to face the common threat…
You covenant cheated with someone else, And thought you could save the Shadowlands better by helping another covenant help the Shadowlands we’re all trying to help save? For some cheap conduits and abilities?! Feel the shame! How dare you save the afterlife with someone else! behind your covenants back?!
No but seriously tho… Didn’t blizzard say they where going to add more renowns to gain as well? Wonder how many times they will be adding more renowns troughout the expansion in totall. If you want an easier time switching covenant in the future, Without like… 80 renown or something for each covenant to grind.
You best get ahead and start switching up rather sooner than later come to think of it.
Yeah, a test period would be cool agree. Something like a toggle “test mode” which is active for like 6 hours, after that it doesn’t refresh for another week or two to prevent people using it to game things.
Or Blizzard could just let players play the way they want to play and let us able to borrow other covenant powers by talking to the npc’s in Oribos.
It’s that simple…
It all depends how viable you are in any area when not fully min-maxed for that content. If being built for Raiding and you dabble in PvP but get roflstomped in seconds will lead to you no longer dabbling in PvP. The game will end up with players siloed into the type of gameplay they have choosen to specialise in. Only way around this is to have alts for each specialism. Of course the purists who think players shouldn’t be talent swapping would like to see the end of alts too as this is also not choosing one spec and sticking with it, it’s just a more involved way of talent swapping requiring a lot more effort.
I do think that in an ideal world we should be making more RPG choices but they need to be fairly balanced to be true choices. I would like to see discussions on whether stacking Haste and going dual weilding vs stacking Mastery with a two-hander is best and the answer being too close to call.
I think the current systems are too complicated and too short lived to be balanced. They add them each expac and by the end of the expac they’ve probably been balanced enough for most but then a new expac launches and we’re straight back into a new borrowed power system which is not balanced.
