Don’t pull the ripcord, for two main reasons :
1 : It gives more value to the choice you make. If I have to make a long term decision, i’ll pay more attention to what i’m doing, balance the pro & cons and then make my choice based on what i like the most.
This is far more interesting imo than having access to everything on a whim : You no longer think and plan, you just roll with it and cherry pick whatever covenant is the most optimised for the situation.
When you have to make a decision, “pick everything” shouldn’t be one of the options.
Note that it only works if there’s no overall good or bad solutions, only options which are better in certain situations.
If you are severely weakened by your covenant choice then that’s a balance issue which should be solved, but it doesn’t mean that the covenant choice is inherently wrong : It’s just blizzard being blizzard and failing to properly balance their game.
2 : It will only solve a part of the issue and we’ll still be in the same mess :
There’s more to covenant than being able to cherry pick the ability you like on the spot. Even if you were to get Blizz to pull the ripcord, then what ? You’ll be able to cherry pick the ability, but the dungeon buffs and the soulbinds will still be a thing. The covenant specific conduits will also influence how you perform and you’ll still have to unlock your renown for each covenant.
Let’s say you get to freely swap on a whim and want to go to a m+ dungeon. Do you pick the covenant A for its ability, covenant B for its dungeon buff, covenant C for its soulbind or covenant D for its tmog and theme ? I’m sure there’s some lucky specs which get to have everything from one covenant (uh with fae iirc ?) but in most cases that’s an issue you would’ve with or without the ability to swap.
You may not have to grind anymore to swap them, but overall it’s still the same mess : They’ll still be unbalanced and while in some situations it may be all nice and perfect with one covenant to rule them all, in others we’re back to the original issue of not being able to play the way you want.
Because yes, Blizz mentioned the possibility of removing any requirement to swap covenants, but that’s about it.
The soulbind and renown will still be a thing, the covenant conduits will still be there to make the abilities more powerful and it does not seem like people understand what they meant by pulling the cord or whatever expression they used back then.
Afaik it has never been about removing player power from covenants, far from it.
