Of course. But my example is of 3 shaman players, who themselves felt that they cannot play class they enjoy. And that is for me more telling than some groups not wanting them. If class fans themselves feel that it doesn’t work, then …
I have not seen as many shaman rerolls among my friends as I have seen in BfA.
And what i see shaman players are not impressed by SL either.
People did not kick me for playing with 2 pvp trinkets that do nothing in PvE within raids and m+, I am very much doubtful they will kick me if i run the “wrong” covenant.
You as a player matter a lot more than you as a mash up of gear and talents, a player with mediocre optimization but good play style will outperform a Bis player that has no input.
Now, there are flat out dead picks for content and if you pick them you can’t expect people to be happy with your performance.
Indeed.
10 chars.
Just pull it already.
Assuming that people are not metaslave when it comes to their class and only top 1% cares about min-maxing is absurd. It’s not even min-maxing at this point, the core of the system is about a frustrating choice to make: choose between what’s flat out better; what’s fun or just go with your RP/transmog flow.
It is not even about trusting Blizzard to balance or not the abilities: the essence of the system is unbalanceable especially when you have so many variables (3 different types of content, multiplied by the number of specs, and two different abilities per convenant). Oh, and then you add conduits !
What’s even more absurd, is argumenting that all this situation is about RPG choice is laughable, when you have to choose a useless ability in some types of content whereas you just wanted to look cool and follow the story of covenant you like (ex. DK, night fae vs necrolord (lel)).
Being able to swap covenant abilities and soulbinds is what makes the game fun in my opinion, being able to try things out, try builds for different situations, try to optimize my character etc. And I’m not a top raider, I mostly do heroic raids, M+ and arenas (and having an ability useless in one of this situation is just frustrating).
You could even make the convenant unswappable for all I care, but please do not tie cov. abilities and soulbinds to that system, and make them freely swappable. I’m on team Bellular & Preach on this. Pulling that ripcord is in my opinion the only way to safely exit 6 months to 1year of community drama and gameplay frustrations (inside a same class, for a same spec!), before finally fixing the game in 9.3 (like they did for Legion, and then BfA). Doing it won’t even ruin the experience of anyone, it’ll just merely allow ppl that care about it, to play the game in different situations without feeling powerless/frustrated.
It looking like a talent does not make it a talent when the game designer explicitly says they are designed with class philosophy. It’s a difference of scale, not substance.
Dev: it’s like a class, you can’t just swap it
Players: it looks like a talent
Devs: yes, but it’s designed with class philosophy.
Players: why can’t I change it? Wtf
Devs: because it’s like a class
Players: no it’s not because classes are …
This is the fundemental issue here. If it’s about size, at what point does something become class like? What number of stuff does it have to give?
Respeccing isn’t changing class though is it? And the fact remains outlaw still deals balls damage compared to the fire mage
So I ask again, if the rogue wants to deal similar damage to the fire mage, what is the solution? Don’t change the premise of my question.
Bad example in my opinion, you should compare Fire mage to Boomkin or Lock, and the Rogue to Feral, as they fit the same role.
Now if we are talking no utility, no movement and free smacking at a target, the rogue would have no option but to reroll. However, the game is more then just smacking.
I think in communities and guilds people would actually care less about the covenant min-max, but where the stuff might start to fly into the fan is in PUGs and content where it wouldn’t matter as this is the PUG mentality. Ask Curve for the boss that gives the curve and ask ilevel for the content that drops same ilevel.
I do not think my guild would care even if I’d pick no Covenant at all. But it would be the PUGs that would complete go mental.
I just hope that the meta-hunt will not shoot people on the foot as hard.
Why can’t they be balanced? Because you said so?
So why do we expect extremely different classes to be relatively close in performance? Surely that’s an even more impossible task, yet we still expect blizz to try and do it even though we know they’re too fundementally different to achieve uniform balance. So we accept some differences exist and some will be a bit better at things than others and that’s fine.
Yet here, it’s not possible because they’re too different? Explain to me why then you and us as players expect a rogue and a mage to be somewhat close in DPS (and if they’re not we demand either nerf strong or buff weak) when those and their entire kits work on completely different mechanics , different systems, gear etc, but the difference between two abilities is too vast for us to believe it can be attempted?
Either we accept the differences and imbalances exist, or we don’t and demand changes so they’re closer. To apply one logic to one locked system (classes) but not the other (covenants) is inconsistent.
Just because it looks like a duck and walks like a duck but a developer calls it a hyena… doesn’t mean it’s a hyena. 
The point is due to a choice you made, you accept you cannot do some things unless you change that decision, or decide it’s not worth changing. The fact the classes are very different only strengthens the example.
On one hand people accept this, on the other they don’t. I’m trying to establish the point at which this is because it seems completely arbitrary and based on nothing more than “they feel like talents” despite the Devs saying they’re meant to feel like classes.
How do they feel like classes?
They feel like Essences and Azerite gear rolled into one abomination.
Devs said Azerite would be good.
Devs said corruption would be good.
Devs said Legion Legendary RNG would be good.
Why are you putting the developers sale pitch over the players interpretation?
Have you not heard the “customer is always right”?
If players perceive it as a talent, it is a talent. You can talk it up to be something different if you want, end of the day its a talent.
I don’t know, that’s another discussion to have.
But I assure you 1 class ability is not the break point.
Your problem, and it isn’t your fault, is that you’re held up and sold on the sale pitch and promise of what it could be. You’re not accepting the reality of what it feels like and actually plays out as.
If they’re the ones writing the animal encyclopedia, I’m afraid we have to accept that within the context of that, yes it does.
This isn’t like misidentify animals which is guided by common sense. A more fitting example would be a world where the authors of that book (the world) are the only ones empowered to define what exactly is what animal. So the rule of commonsense applies here.
After all blizzard said “oh btw draenei are Eredar”, there was resistance, but did anyone feel legitimately empowered to say “you’re wrong”? How can they be wrong? They set the rules.
Their rules can be dumb and we can argue that for sure for trying to argue that what they say is X isn’t actually X is a road to nowhere.
Agreed. My point is the Devs are doing them with a class philosophy. How they appear or feel is irrelevant.
Any class would feel like an essence of azerite armour if it was reduced to one active ability and a few passives, would it not? It’s a difference of scale.
No… i, you, anyone else don’t have to blindly accept anything that Blizzard tells us about the game, how they meant it to be and how it comes out are two different animals.
Did they intend azerite to suck? I think they intended it to be a fun system with various powers.
Did it come as a fun system with various powers? Nope… it was rng crap getting the azerite traits you wanted with a bad implementation for anyone wanting to change the traits in them… and also when getting a higher level one, you had to grind the heart more so you’d unlock… the powers that you already had unlocked.
Are we talking DH now? 
Look if they wanted this to matter, like really matter. They could have made us pledge loyalty and ascend to get traits such as the Kyrian, blue with wings and stuff.
That would have been a meaningful choice to my character… having powers that i can switch after a 2 day grind is rofl… not even supported by common sense.
So many children on here - ONE CHOICE - USE IT WISELY
It’s a choice per 2 days… get it straight!
Meaningless choice. xD