Because it’s breaking the mold, and it’s very controversial.
Then again, people, sometimes myself included, complain about most of the things Blizz are doing, so it’s quite refreshing seeing them trying something completely new for once.
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They won’t. Everything in 2020 is meta driven, even Classic. If a system tries to prevent that it fails. Every system in WoW that tried that FAILED. They ave 0% success rate with such systems.
It’s the opposite. You won’t be able to do what others can’t do.
You’ll be stuck in Covenant 2 while it’s only good for content A, you’ll be under par in other content.
Nope, they failed, they just added another Check mark for players to check that it’s checked when building a group for their content.
there is a lot wrong with that, they are adding new spells to the game that are designed in the exact same way that talents are and they are just arbitrarily deciding to lock it behind a decision that is essentially made for you if you care about your characters power in any way.
for dungeons that wouldnt matter as you can change anyway, but there should be a choice to take something like ST in primarily ST situations like raids, or AoE in dungeons, even for fortified vs tyranical in M+.
even simple things like being able to enjoy gameplay and have fun using the lesser used abilities in places like torghast, im just being told that having fun is agaisnt the rules now, which is where i have a bigger problem with how they are implementing this system.
but people are genrally putting themselves into situations where they are agreeing to play like that, things set like in M+ pugs where is an no brainer for the most part, and in guild raids, there are generally a set of raid rules, some guilds expect you to try and optimise somewhat and other guilds dont, so now its just going to cause chaos, because some people will be unwilling to swap and wonder why they are getting dropped.
but some players like playing this way and want to be able to, so why are they all of a sudden being told they are not allowed to? why should we not be able to play the game the way we want to? even in its current state you are able to swap, so people will still expect it, so this will not solve any problems at all.
this is another example of miss understanding, its not a matter of picking “less fun” picking what is best and getting everything out of your character that you can is what some players find fun. why is that wrong?
but if you pick for raids you will never be able to get into a pug dungeon because you are specced wrong, this is not the solution, allowing people to opt in or out would be better at least.
think of it through the eyes of someone who is putting their key and their time up to a group, why would you pick someone who is running suboptimal stuff over someone who is running the “correct” setup, they look like they care a lot more about what they are doing and are a lot less likely in most situations to be a burden on your group. expecting them to pick the worse people and potentially waste sometimes hours of their day setting up groups and failing is not acceptable.
its unnaceptable for a lot of people though, i would love to go venthyr, they seem to have a very cool story and a lot of chracters that i like from previous expansions. they have a nice looking mog and i quite like the headstone back mog things. but i wont be able to, i actually care about my characters power and as a warlock that means i basically have to go necrolord.
if they decoupled the class abilities from the rest of it i could go venthyr and still use the necrolord ability so i would be able to both make my choice as well as still being fully capable of being useful to a group.
the exact same people on forums and in youtube videos and reddit posts and such were telling them about the errors of azerite and blizz refused to listen, that lead to BFA which is quite commonly seen as a complete and utter failure of an expansion, some of the raid content was good sure, but the systems were a mess and terrible generally.
you would think they would learn from their mistakes and when the same people are telling them the exact same thing they would listen this time to try and make the expansion not end up as a turd, but no, they are sticking to their guns and being stubborn about it because even though they havnt managed to prove it once in the past 10 years or so i have been playing they think they are right about it, and they think that they can balance it, which is not the case at all, and all of the past 2 expansions can prove that,
azerite traits were never balanced properly, there have been 3 traits for aff lock that have never been specced once the entire expansion as they have been absolute garbage the entire time, the same goes for destro and demo as well, some of them have just been hot garbage and you only take them if you have no other options.
i hope they finally listen and #pulltheripcord, because its compeltely neccesary for this expansion to not end up as a waste of time and money for a lot of players.
The issue where I see the player demands is dungeon buffs primarily. Because they’re obvious “take X covenant for this dung for buff”, if you remove that, you remove at least one incentive to police covenants, albeit not all of them.
To be honest, I see the weight of the “it restricts our choice” and especially with regards to spec limitations on your soulbinds and conduits are the main problem. I like to multispec and within my specs I like to be able to play around. It seems in going to be forced to decide if I want each spec to have a working setup, or whether I want a single spec to have multiple setups and that’s not cool given how powerful conduits and binds are. The actives are just the tip. An ability I can use maybe once a minute pales in comparison to various generic buffs to my spec abilities such as ST buffs, cleave, survival etc.
That’s the bit I’m afraid of. I think if the dungeon buffs are removed, I don’t honestly think you’d see that much insistence on covenant X for invite as people claim. Rather it’s just the internal pressure to pick your best one as opposed to trying out new ones.
I mean we all shared essences, and they were changeable, and I can’t remember the last time I saw a “have major essence X for inv” in groupfinder. People generally just expect you to pick what’s best for you when it comes to your own abilities and leave it at that. The “have Fae for skip” groups will be no more popular than “bring invis pots” and these kinds of groups did not blight the lower end of mythic at all so as to “force the meta downwards”, the only part of meta that was forced downwards was classes and I doubt that will change. I just don’t think covs will be in a way any more significant than invis pot demands were, and it would be inaccurate to say that such demands were thrust onto all players in mythic, even casuals, simply because they’re a staple of high meta play, because that simply wasn’t true. That expectation doesn’t appear until above weekly level generally.
No. The issue for me is the effect it has on the specs and the ability to swap between them. The focus on on other players is disproportionate to me and could be largely dealt with by removing the dungeon buffs. A dungeon telling you “having X covenant here gives y buff” forces the idea of being picky over covenants way more readily than something like "if we all have night Fae we can skip pack X " because that is nowhere near as obvious or necessary. But a buff, yeah that’s a big shiny “take this for easy life” right there.
And i don’t think other players will scrutinize your own class choices with stuff you pick any more than they do currently. It’s exceptionally rare people demand you have X talent or Y essence to join the group, so I don’t see them demanding you have z covenant class spell either. Most players don’t care about your choices in a PuG, they simply care about whether you perform and can play and expect you’re making sensible choices. So if you can pull off enough DPS as a night Fae lock as opposed to a necro one, I don’t think they’re going to stop you being invited to the group on that basis. Not unless there’s another incentive for them to demand you’re necro (like the dungeon buff). The pressure on that one is internal, which as I’ve said above, is an issue.
I mean I’m not exactly Mr high keys, but I’ve run up to and just above weekly in prior seasons and kinda started that this season but lost interest, mainly on my hunter. I have never had one person whom invited me when pugging ask my spec, talent setup or such prior to start, and I’ve only ever played marksman. Maybe I’m lucky. I expect this happens at higher keys, but I do think the whole “covenant policing will ruin pugging for even lowbies” is overexaggerating the extent to which it will be a problem and taking the focus off the main issues of covenants: which is damage to multispeccing and multiple builds within a single spec.
I loathed legion intro for this very reason, it forced you into one spec. I primarily play classes like monk, priest , shaman, warrior and DK for good reason, I like being able to do more than one thing and don’t like having “can tank if need, or heal” within a class in an expo that says “yeah pick one”. I don’t expect my specs to be as powerful as someone who focuses on one, no no no. But I expect them to be usable to a fair challenge if I invest in gearing them to that degree and I’d like to be able to tweak them as well rather than just run them a single way.
Having something like specs be flexible is pointless if you make the systems supporting them inflexible. It’s akin to preventing you equipping azerite armour optimised for each spec or playstyle despite allowing you to change specs!
I mean in BFA, prior to corruption fiasco, where did a bulk of our specs new primary power come from? Azerite armour traits or major essence active abilities (no passives)? It was the traits. Without traits intended for your spec, you would have issues performing your role properly even at lower keys. Conduits and Binds are the Azerite of SL, that’s where the power is and that’s where people’s attention should be.
Hahaha, I love the systems, I love corruption because it absolutely freaking ruin my combat and gameplay.
Subclass is a secondary class you attach to your main to gain some abilities. Some games tie subclasses to other classes. For example, a warrior can subclass into a rogue to get some of their abilities.
In general, I hate how garrisons, class halls and now covenants are temporary. I think all of those should carry on to new expansions. For example, we could’ve had the player build a garrison on the Broken Shore and get quests from it, or the quests in BFA, where you build bases on the enemy continent could’ve again been an extension of the garrison mechanic.
DPS meters are a thing in 14, the only way to get banned for using them is if one is stupid enough to vote kick someone else based on it. Basically the first rule of fight club.
This is just the classic example of Blizzard creating a problem out of thin air and then trying to make a solution to it.
The new problem: WoW has lost it’s core RPG elements.
Their solution: Covenants with player-power attached to them.
The RPG element that Blizzard is trying to reintroduce has literally not existed in this game for as long as I remember. Perhaps it never existed to begin with. The only example I can think of is the Shaman/Paladin split in classic. Besides that, there is the class/spec choice and of course your faction choice.
But a Warrior has always had access to all that another player on a Warrior had access to. Never has a player of a class looked at another player of the same class and not been able to copy/mimic the other player. So please Blizz, don’t patronize us and say you’re adding in the Covenants to reintroduce what was lost from the game, because what you’re introducing in SL was never a part of the game to begin with.
I personally am almost certain that there are monetary motivations behind this move. Which makes sense, because all this does is make it more difficult for players to find the meta. But the meta will still exist and it will be found. And best believe that everyone is going to flock to it like they always do. This time they’ll just have a tedious, poorly thought out covenant system that they’ll be complaining about.
#PullTheRipcord
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Well that’s why specs are sub-classes of the class itself with tendencies to other class types, or made-up classes which don’t exist in wow:
Ex. Outlaw is like a cowboy as opposed to subtlety which is closer to ninjas.
Or an ex. closer to wow it’s:
A retribution paladin is closer to a warrior in its role and how it deals with issues.
As opposed to a holy paladin which is closer to a priest in theme and day to day job.
Covenants are some passives(soulbinds) and 2 actives, nothing to write home about, as opposed to specs which have a lot of meat to them.
As such Covenants are closer to Essences(actives) and Azerite traits(Soulbind passives).
A retribution paladin is a retribution paladin. The subclass is Venthyr Retribution Paladin. What I mean is that a subclass is something where you have a choice. Maybe subclass doesn’t communicate it properly and I should call it a secondary class. Even if every other game calls it sublcassing.
Did you really have to copy this hastag crap from yanks?
I’ll also add that, philosophically I LOVE the idea of the covenants. Putting my Paladin into the Kyrian would be so cool and I love the synergy there. This druid will go straight into Night Fae. My undead rogue? probably Venthyr.
BUT… because player power is tied to these covenants, I want my choice to be the optimal choice. Which means that, as much as I’d love my Kyrian Pala to be a reality, if Necrolord ends up being the better performer then you best believe my Pala will be Necrolord.
And the player power is not just the abilities. It’s the soul-binds and the conduits as well! And these don’t even matter until way after you’ve hit max level and chosen your covenant. The average player may not even know of these systems and might choose to go Venthyr for example. Then later might find out that there’s a Kyrian conduit that is just so good for their spec, and they find out because they come across another player of the same spec in a different covenant that is just flat-out better than they are. What a pity though, because in the past when you could select the same talent/glyph/essence that the other player was using, but now you’re locked in coz of a choice you made previously with no way of knowing the implications.
To players that don’t really care to much about their performance? This covenant choice makes no difference, and they can simply pick the covenant they like the most. So the player power being tied to the covenants makes no difference whatsoever. So why have the power tied to the covenants in the first place? it’s NOT a meaningful choice! To players that DO care about their performance, this entire system becomes a nightmare. I likely won’t even be able to choose the covenant I like the most, because it likely won’t be the best choice for my performance.
And so, my choice has become more of a punishment than anything else.
#PullTheRipcord
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Why are you using your alts to promote your agenda? It’s embarrassing.
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Even more than that. You have to level up your renown to unlock the soulbind slots.
You’re contributing nicely to the discussion, I see!
Truth hurts, eh?
Oh dear…oh dearie dearie dear. Whenever people tend to do that it always makes me think that one should not take their opinion with a shred of seriousness, also this whole ‘Pull the Ripcord’ with its Streamer backing (Because they are -always- examples of common sense and logic/Sarcasm ) is a bit cultish.
Why can’t people just acknowledge that we’re the problem?
We’re the ones who can and will make this Covenant nonsense a big deal, if we didn’t have so many maniacs who instead of playing the game, tried to Min-Max everything, this discussion wouldn’t even have arisen.
You, Brigante & Madblade, seem to be the type of players that won’t be too affected by the Covenant choices. And that is perfectly fine. But the fact of the matter is that this entire #PullTheRipcord is a very important discussion to be had, because it severely affects a lot of players that like to play at a higher level.
It is a very relevant discussion about a system that, if implemented as it currently stands, will be the worst aspect about an expansion that has so much potential.
I, and other players, want the game to be as great as it can be. And this covenant system, as it stands, does nothing good for me. So I won’t just sit back and pretend to be happy with it.
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