Pull the Ripcord / Don't pull the Ripcord in SL

Community General Discussion
101

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not held up on anything. I disagree with locks in covs because they undermine multi spec play and stuff like that, but locks between covs I’m more liberal on.

I just find the arguments inconsistent in their application of logic. “This thing is okay here but not here because I feel like it’s wrong here.” Okay, that’s a valid opinion but it’s not exactly an airtight critique of the proposal given classes and all their imbalance exists

I will have to break for some food now. I will be back. Thanks all discussing for keeping civil despite opposing positions. You’re swell. :slight_smile:

102

I am not supporting Blizz on the SL design decisions, make no mistake.

However, I see a lot of generalizing and missing the nuances.

No we are talking BM hunter.

103

I think you are right about the fact that most guilds won’t force you to play a covenant based on the abilities. PUGs however will start heading that direction when dungeon buffs perform too well, or asking for meta abilities for skips/specific interactions (even if you would perform absolutely fine in most 10-15 M+ dungeons without these abilities)… But I agree that it will not be THAT terrible in the overall course of the expansion.

However, what really bugs me off is more at an individual level, to not be able to play different contents and try different abilities that suit my playstyle. And, it’s even worse as I mostly play all 3 specs for my main class. Right now priest abilities are really tough to solve based on what I want to do in SL, and I won’t be able to test it properly without choosing my covenant first.

I also always liked the idea to choose what fits my character lorewise, but hey, at this point, I will not even consider getting the transmog’ I wanted in the first place when I saw that first trailer haha.

104

Circumstances matter.

A hammer is the right tool for a nail but the wrong tool for a screw. You’re essentially arguing that people are fine with using a hammer in one scenario so whats the issue with using it in another similar scenario.

Small details matter.

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105

because of the way they are designed, the only way to make them balanced would be to completely destroy the design of them in some capacity, like making the venthyr ability to comparible ST damage and have massaive fall off if it hits more than one target, or have decimating bolt leave a debuff on the target rather a buff on you meaning you can only use the damage increase agaisnt the target you use it on.

there is an acceptable margin for error though, no one expects everything to be perfectly balanced, that would make the game boring because everyone would be the same, but the fact that there are glaring issues with design on some things,

take the night fae for warlock, it makes use of drain life, which is an abilitiy that does minimal damage unless you have a talent as affliction, meaning that night fae will only ever be useful as an aff lock as the damage will be minor for the other 2 specs, unless they randomly decide to majorly buff drain life, they are designed in a way that makes them incredibly difficult to balance, some of them are primarily ST focused and others are purely AoE focused, which means you cant balance them agaisnt each other.

when you have classes that are loaded with multiple mechanics there are different tuning nobs that allow for better balancing than if you are comparing 1 ability to another, lets look at a talent row for affliction as an example here,

writhe in agony. absolute corruption and siphon life

writhe in agony is a clear choice for cleave fights because it allows your hardest hitting dot to hit a bit harder without causing problems of managing too many dots at the same time.

absolute corruption is the default choice for big AoE because it reduces the amount of redotting your need to do,

and siphon life is the default choice for ST because it gives an extra dot to make use of incresing damage and also applies more for other talents and synergies.

generally thats how talents would work, its difficult to balance siphon life in order for it to be as good as absolute corruption because you would have to be able to play like a robot to be able to manage all the dots correctly on an AoE fight.

this kind of thing means that within a class its a lot easier to balance things, because you have different options for different situations,

compared to being told that you have to take one of them like impending catastrphy for example as the venthyr ability, which is AoE focused, being stuck with that on ST would be a horrid feeling, because it would be a dead spell, that you never use, meaning that its balance is just all over the place.

balancing classes is generally going to be easier as there is an accepted variable of some classes being AoE focused and others being ST focused, like how the design of shadow on live makes it impossible to tune for ST because if they tuned it to be amazing ST they would be unbelievably broken and impossible to beat on AoE.

the problems with these systems that they are adding in over the top of the classes is that it just adds too much to be able to tune, we will have covenant abilities, soulbinds, conduits and legendaries. on top of classes, when they already have a difficult enough time with balancing the classes, and this causes even more issues on top of that, take corruption for example, its leading to the averages in the raids being huge, fire mage is averaging 192k dps across all fights in nyalotha atm, and sub rogue is averaging about 100k which is an unacceptable margin,

adding these as a talent row would make it easier, because people wouldnt have to worry about being stuck with a ST thing meaning a class that isnt necessarily tuned to AoE still has the chance to feel useful in AoE while as it stands now people who are focused on raids and dungeons would be stuck picking to be effective at one, which as players who like to min-max or be optimised no longer have that choice and are now being told that they are playing the game wrong and that they are now getitng punished for playing the game the way they like to

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106

This is a very good point.

So is the issue that in the circumstances of character origins, this is okay? And at character finality, it is not? Other than scale, this is the primary difference, one occurs one creation, the other at the end.

If this is an objection, I see it as far more valid than “power locks dont belong in wow” because if one accepts the existence of classes, that statement is invalid without clarification and to why.

107

Perhaps a solution is to stop seeing them as needing to be equal?
In current state this is messy, necro for locks is “winner takes all”, but if the Cov from X is clearly tuned for aoe and another for ST, is that so different to accepting differences in those areas which classes bring? It’s only a problem if you insist they’re meant to be similar.

The issue then becomes making sure all covs have a use somewhere, and this is currently not the case, but I have never claimed it was. Several class abilities are very out of balance even across similar and different content with locks being a great example. That ideally should not be the case.

If blizz want to support the idea of picking a choice and accepting it, they should not try to make the abilities balanced, each one excels at something in particular. This doesn’t make you objectively worse at the one you don’t pick, it simply makes you better comparatively in the one you do (this is ignoring you can conduit to balance out these gaps).

A good example is the mistweaver monk covenant spells. Each one is a potentially decent pick depending on a circumstance or playstyle. It is possible to achieve some balance. Whether it can be done in time is the question.

108

Classes are so much more important than Covenants… they aren’t even on the same scale.
In 2 years we won’t care about them, they’ll just be a past expac grind for some mogs and mounts/pets.

We care about the classes we play, we’re invested in them emotionally.
Covenants? Not at all. Just like i don’t care for the Rajani or Uldum…aldor and scryer? yeah i just chose the one that i liked the stats more and tabard more. I’d visit the part with the bank to… use the bank, that’s it.

Just like i’ll chose a covenant and go to their sanctum to get q’w, wq’s or whatever grinds they give. I’ll probably set my hearthstone there and that’s it.
Hang out? No? Because i’ll be out there in some dungeon/raid/arena/bg/doing dailies.
I’ll give you that i’ll afk there once i finish something cause it’s a safe place.
The area may look cool… or not, that novelty wears off anyway after a week or so.
What matters is how the vendors/npc’s are placed.

Or maybe Oribos will be better to place my hearthstone in? idk… i’ll see in Shadowlands.

109

thats one of the main issues for warlock as it looks right now its basically necrolord for everything, the only way to do things properly would be pullingtheripcord, so people can just play as they want to

thats what started the problem in the first place though…

it does make you worse though, if you could have another choice that is better then not being able to take that makes you objectively worse at that other situation. thats just how it works.

but its incredibly difficult to actively check healers compared to DPS because healing numbers will change based on which other healers you are healing with, and depending on the healers in your team your choice might change, which is another problem.

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110

Temporary feature is a fault if permanence in choices in totally agree with you there.

I posited in an older thread like this that perhaps the covenant choices could stay with us after SL, would that change people’s opinions? So they become part of our character permanently.

Obviously the issues of having to go back to old content to change come up…a solution might be to bring along ways to nudge it along in future expos (in addition to adding to it by adding more renown tiers).

However…like you I suspect this is borrowed power and I accept that is a fatal flaw in the current hardish lock premise. It directs it towards timegating exploration of the system rather than being genuine design. Which is an issue.

I think if blizz supported the system further on the line, adding to the soulbinds etc…I think that’d be pretty cool. I highly doubt it’s their intention however :neutral_face:

111

It won’t happen, because Blizz is weary about giving abilities that stay with us each expac.

What could have been a meaningful choice is if we had gotten some character customization out of the covenant we supported, then yes… go ahead and make it permanent per char.

Nothing more meaningful than getting some extras… for example when dying, make our characters look like our chosen covenant version:

  • Kyrian - wings with blueish skin and those Greek god clothes!
  • Necrolords - undead-like look with cool armor and some gargoyle wings
  • Night Fae - just make our character have some of Dreamweavers characteristics and those pixie wings and some dust glittering behind us
  • Venthyr - my character looking like Dracula when dead… hell yeah! have it able to cast door of shadows while moving and without cooldown while dead

Stuff like this would be cool, flavor and meaningless in combat, but awesome in concept.
But separate the power from the covenants…
#PullTheRipcord

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112

developers learn, when player reacts with actions and not with words. And if people complain and do not do anything (i.e. don’t quit, when they say they quit) then there’s no reason for developer to learn as statistics show that their ideas are fine.

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113

Oh yes they do. I am in guild and there is plenty of players doing mythic+ with suboptimal classes.

114

Becouse of its desing? Problem with people like you is that you see interface where you pick covenant with skills and you instantly and wrongly assume ,oh its just like talents becouse covenant system ui looks same as talent ui".

Picking covenant is more like picking class becouse talents can be swap instanly and class dont.

115

Yes, but WoW forums are like “If I scream too loud, they’ll change it”.

116

Cannot blame them thinking like that since it works in twitter though. If people there scream long enough everything gets changed according to the amount likes - which no one discusses how like farms are actually very cheap and have also yearly plans to offer 10k+ likes per each post just for couple of dollars a month to get to algorithms to show the posts on random feeds.

But this is another topic .

117

Ahahaha, that’s just a amateurish way of assuming it’s something other than what it actually is.

They have nothing on looking like a class, they’re essences and azerite all the way.
I’ll show you what a class looks like, with all its specs:

Retribution: Avenging Wrath , Blade of Justice, Blessing of Freedom , Blessing of Protection , Cleanse Toxins, Contemplation , Crusader Strike, Divine Shield , Divine Steed , Divine Storm, Flash of Light , Greater Blessing of Kings, Greater Blessing of Wisdom, Hammer of Justice , Hand of Hindrance, Hand of Reckoning , Judgment , Lay on Hands , Rebuke, Redemption , Shield of Vengeance, Templar’s Verdict, Art of War(passive), Heart of the Crusader (passive) , Mastery: Hand of Light (passive

- 25 total Retribution abilities

Holy: Absolution, Aura Mastery, Avenging Wrath , Beacon of Light, Blessing of Freedom , Blessing of Protection , Blessing of Sacrifice, Cleanse, Consecration, Contemplation , Crusader Strike, Divine Protection, Divine Shield , Divine Steed , Flash of Light , Hammer of Justice , Hand of Reckoning , Holy Light, Holy Shock, Judgment , Lay on Hands , Light of Dawn, Light of the Martyr, Redemption , Heart of the Crusader (passive) , Infusion of Light (passive), Mastery: Lightbringer

- 27 total Holy abilities

Protection: Ardent Defender, Avenger’s Shield, Avenging Wrath , Blessing of Freedom , Blessing of Protection , Blessing of Sacrifice, Cleanse Toxins, Consecration, Contemplation , Divine Shield , Divine Steed , Flash of Light , Guardian of Ancient Kings, Hammer of Justice , Hammer of the Righteous, Hand of Reckoning , Judgment , Lay on Hands , Light of the Protector, Rebuke, Redemption , Shield of the Righteous, Grand Crusader (passive), Heart of the Crusader (passive) , Mastery: Divine Bulwark (passive)

- 25 total Protection abilities

The abilities shared between all 3 specs are: Avenging Wrath, Blessing of Freedom, Blessing of Protection, Contemplation, Divine Shield, Divine Steed, Flash of Light, Hammer of Justice, Hand of Reckoning, Judgment, Lay on Hands, Redemption, Heart of the Crusader (passive)

- 13 abilities shared between all 3 specs

Abilities shared between Ret and Holy: Crusader Strike.

Abilities shared between Ret and Prot: Cleanse Toxins, Rebuke

Abilities shared between Holy and Prot: Blessing of Sacrifice, Consecration, Divine Protection

Also in Shadowlands there will be even more baseline abilities: Word of Glory, Hammer of Wrath, Turn Evil, Sense Undead, Consecration, Shield of the Righteous, Blessing of Protection, Retribution Aura, Crusader Aura, Devotion Aura, Concentration Aura.

This is what makes a class.

And this is all without taking into accounts talents.

How can something as insignificant as 2 covenant actives and a few passives compare?

118

To be honest in an expo screaming character customisation, I’m really surprised they didn’t give some that’s locked to each covenant. Even if it’s just jewellery or tattoos/markings. There if you want it kinda thing.

A “whole hog” appearence thing for each covenant, including ability apoearences (again, optional) would have been amazing! Even beyond the covenants. Imagine being able to make your shadowpriest utilise the glowing tones of kyrians on a lightforged, or a night elf mage getting celestial style nukes for their night Fae membership? Throw that kinda stuff in and drop the covs into glorified talents because that stuff will be much more visually distinctive to communicate your membership than an ability you use every so often and a mog set you may not use.

119

Yeah… a tattoo with the covenant marker or something pointing to it would have been so cool.
Ability colors/effects tailored to what covenant you chose for extra flavor would have hit the nail on the head.

120

I mean ultimately that’s a big part of it for me at current, looks. Pax will be necro, because it allows me to mog alchemical vials to my back, which is perfect for the “alchemical techmaurgist whom enhances their physique” individual he is. I’m just lucky necro is “alright” for each spec. Can’t say the same for all my chars, but I’ll make their Cov abilities work as well as I can irrespective. I won’t kid myself that I’m hitting top end beyond tryharding torghast.