#PullTheRipcord

Community General Discussion
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but they have designed and implemented 4 class abilities that are essentially designed the exact same as talents, and then they are arbitrarily locking them behind something and claiming its meaningful when it isnt, because you dont get to choose, because some of them are just too powerful,

take mage, if you are an arcane mage main and you have played it for 15 years then you have to take necrolord because its way too much better than any other options, but its complete trash for both fire and frost, meaning you are set so far behind if you want to play the other specs.

warlock is the same for necrolord, deceimating bolt is too strong and leaves the other 3 in its dust.

its a reasonably well designed system, its just being poorly implemented, they should add the 4 class abilities to a talent row and allow them to swap in rested areas, and keep the signature abilities locked and soulbinds and then let us pick based on the story and aesthetics, its really simple

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There are so many skills and talents that are locked behind other classes that I wish I could use on my warrior. I’m not sure how that is an argument. Although, as I said - I think the active skills should be removed, as they are a source of confusion. Largely, these skills don’t matter that much and it is more about conduits and soulbinds.

This was a point of criticism which I agree with - while leveling you’ll only see the active skills, and make your choice based on them. But you won’t see the meat of any of the covenants, so you won’t be making an informed choice. Although it seems Blizz has balanced things in an interesting way, where different covenants excel in different aspects. So if a covenant’s main ability isn’t the best, you’ll find something worthwhile in the soulbinds.

If I were a mage, I’d probably pick venthyr. Mage mobility will be severely reduced in shadowlands, so picking a covenant for damage doesn’t really work for me. Both venthyr abilities are defensive and bear in mind - both demon hunters and hunters have ways of ignoring line of sight now.

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I say let’s keep the covenant signature abilities the way they are and have the class ones as sort of a talent we could pick in rested areas.

Seems like the fair thing to do.

From RP standpoint the covenants will give you their signature ability for allying with them, but they already infused you with your class one so it’s up to you to choose which one of those you manifest.

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there is no need to remove them just treat them like talents, its how they are designed.

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Except, you don’t get refused by picking your talents but you will get refused for picking given covenant and it’s because of power being bound to it.

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but that will happen regardless of if its locked or not, so unlocking it letting people swap to the one that might be better would be a better call, and makes the most sense.

there is a choice give people the option to swap them to avoid getting dropped from dungeons, and still allowing people to just pick one and stick with it if they want to, or force everyoen to be stuck and stop half the community from enjoying their gameplay in half the content they do because they are unable to play how they want

seems like an easy solution to me, unfortunately as of yet they havnt made the right call

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If you remove power from covenant you won’t be refused because of covenant you’ve chosen. Additional power should never be bound to something like covenant and be simply added as new row of abilities in the skill tree or something similar.

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I think some nuance is needed here.

Other players will insist on X Cov for dungeon bonus. That’s it. They won’t scrutinise you enough to insist “you must be a necrolord warlock” similar to how you don’t see groups demanding “you’re running High Tolerance on your brewmaster”, they just assume you’re picking what is best but they don’t scrutinise your talents unless problems arise.

Whilst we ourselves will feel pulled towards whatever active/soulbinds etc work best for us personally in most cases.

The issue is obviously when tension arises. The dungeon buffs are meant to offer mitigation, but for 3/4s of dungeons they don’t apply.

However you only need 1 member for the buff, so it’s largely “last slot syndrome” as far as I see it. If a group with tank and healer are doing a dungeon with Kyrian bonus and neither have it, they only need 1 DPS to have it technically, so it’s not like they’ll insist every DPS that applies has to have it. You just have to hope one of the others applying does if you don’t, so you have a chance to get in.

There will be a lot of theorycrafting I suspect about which specs tend to pick which covenants, so people can just default to insisting on specs. Ie affliction locks with a brain will pick nerco, so if you need necro bonus for your last slot, you look for an affliction warlock and so on.

So I’m not sure it destroys theory, technically it can work in practice but only if the docs have equal representation across classes and specs which I doubt they will be, which may have the knock on effect of making certain specs outright preferred for certain dungs if everyone assumes meta is being followed.

For those who don’t follow it, they may eek out a USP by being that “one frost dk with necro” who can then compete with locks for that spot (because people are essentially going to prio the buff at the level where they care about it).

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and you shouldnt be, thats the main problem here, people shouldnt be locked out of content based on a choice that is mostly aesthetic. so pulling the rip cord is the only logical solution

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Except Covenants aren’t sub-classes, specs are sub-classes in wow.
Also you can’t have temporary sub-classes… there’s no point to them otherwise.

If they were permanent in-game then maybe it would have had another flavor.
But they’re not and there’s no use in making it harder to switch between them, it’s just extra time-gating sucking out the joy from the game.

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And that’s the problem.

People will be refused because of what covenant you’ve chosen which wouldn’t happen if covenants were purely lore/aesthetic thing and power was give from outside as e.g. additional row of talents.

People are already being refused because of class or even ilvl so adding one more reason to why someone will be rejected is just dumb.

I know that doh

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Totally disagree, and it’s absolutely up for discussion =)

The whole point of covenants is that they aren’t supposed to be balanced for every situation, or swappable whenever you so desire. You simply shouldn’t be able to be the best in every situation, and some people will be better than you at things at times due to their choices, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

You took something that’s good in PvP? Awesome! You might have a slightly harder time in Raiding tho, but that’s fine.
I won’t just be another Mistweaver Monk. I’ll be a [insert covenant X here] Mistweaver Monk!

People seem really hung up on the “I won’t be picked because I have the wrong covenant” part, and I really don’t see why.
Since you only need one person with the correct covenant for each dungeon, it’ll probably be more of “Last spot, need covenant Y for dungeon bonuses”.
Basically, there’s a 4/5 chance that your covenant doesn’t matter to the group whatsoever, and if that 20% chance happens, and you actually have the aligning covenant, you’ll probably even get picked over others!

The harder and more inconvenient it is to min-max, not to mention straight up impossible at times, the more lenient people will be towards those who choose not to do so, and I really don’t think that’s a bad thing.
Sure, the top 0.001% will find it a pain, because it limits their Cutting Edge progress to not being able to always have the best of the best in the best situation for everything, unless they make at least 4 equally geared characters for each class. And some might actually end up doing that.

But for the average player, it’s probably going to be awesome being able to do things that others can’t!
In terms of the M+ bonuses, I like it as well. They simply took away a small bit of the skill factor, and put it into the “choices matter” factor.
It won’t make a bad team beat a good team, but it might make a good team beat a good team.

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#dontpulltheripcord

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absolutely #pulltheripcord

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I’m going to paraphase my favorite WoW content creator here, Preach.
That is the promise you have been sold on, but not at all how it is playing out.

There are certain class and covenant combinations that are simply better in all situations. And I am not simply talking numbers that can be easily hotfixed and tuned, I am talking insane mobility vs absolute useless garbage.

This give and take thing is the same thing they said with corruption.
The reality is everyone is fully corrupted and each class has a right corruption to stack and a list of bad ones.

I think people pro covenant are hung up on that arguement because it is easy to refute or at least to argue.
The “correct” argument against Covenants is that it simply wont be fun to have these four new shiny abilities and you’re only allowed to play with one.
You will be a DK, you’ll pick the Night Fae covenant and then you’ll see a DK in a random dungeon or BG doing something funny / cool / OP with the necro lord ability and you will simply not be able to enjoy that same “toy”. Not without costing you an arm and a leg.
People will come to resent the system.

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Literally watching Preach as you wrote this, haha.

Tbh, I really enjoy watching Preach’s videos, such as the Torghast VS runs, etc, but out of all the people doing videos about SL, he is by far one of the most biased, which has kinda made it really “meh” lately. Like he’s said himself, he doesn’t care about the RPG elements at all. He is a min-maxing Mythic raider through and through ^^

Exactly. And that’s the choice you’ve made. You’ve always been able to both eat the cake and still have it, but in SL it seems that you won’t be able to, and there’s nothing wrong with that :smiley:

You chose something that gave X% more dps on 3/4 bosses, but on the last one, the person with the same class but different covenant outdps you and it annoys you that you can’t beat them on every boss?

In fact, maybe their covenant ability is really quirky, and far behind the others in every aspect of performance, but it might be super fun! If they want to choose that covenant, then I don’t see the point in not letting them!

If you want to min-max to the best of your ability, go ahead! The thing is, however, that since you’ve always been able to min-max for every situation before, no matter the circumstances (e.g. tomes to swap talents in raid, respeccing…) you have never had a reason not to. And since you’ve never had a reason not to min-max, the problem is created that you’re always expected to do so.

Playing Sub Rogue because it’s more fun? Lol, go respecc or kick.
Wanna fly around on your favourite mount with your matching transmog? Sure idc, as long as your performance is 100% with that Font of Power Fire Mage.

Now, however, the dilemma is that you aren’t able to always min-max anymore, and maybe the top performing skills are tied to a covenant that doesn’t sit right with you at all. Ofc, the top % of players will always choose the highest performing one, even at the cost of some of the “fun” part, but that won’t apply to the majority. Most people will probably choose their covenant based on what feels best, both in terms of aesthetics, as well as gameplay wise, and not what gives you the most dps. This will most likely muddy the “right way to play” waters quite a lot, since you can’t be expected to always be the best at everything. That, in turn, will leave some breathing room for the “Sub Rogues” in question, and I can’t see why that is a bad thing. Like I said:

The pressure on the majority of players to be the best in every situation is eased up at the slight cost of the top % of players progressing more slowly.
I can see why that annoys some people, but I’m not one of them =)

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It doesn’t matter what it supposed to be because Blizzard’s design for covenants is fundamentally broken and only breads unnecessary problems when there are other better solutions.

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Which will be equal to limited M+ PUG access due to covenant choice.

I don’t care what’s the covenant name, what’s their story, what’s their cosmetics progression, what’s their mount. All I want to choose is good set of soulbinds, conduit types and the covenant ability. Dungeon features also could play a role.

Because it’s dumb stupid. Mid BfA MW wasn’t invited that often because “rdruid” meta. Even though you can heal a key just fine, you have RIO and long run history you are denied due to an artificial player power gate. One azerite trait in BfA and covenants in Shadowlands.

This isn’t 0.001% problem and the 0.001% will have exact copy of a toon in every covenant too if needed. Even “LFR Andy” may be rejected from M0 for his quest due to a covenant (because meta gaming is often dumb) and that creates bad experience. Bad experience then makes a bad expansion and players leaving.

Covenants aren’t chosen at random so there may be a stack of some and disparity of others. Even so it won’t be that common to see the last spot covenant restricted but just the fact it happening once in a while is highly annoying and people will have bad experience in the game and can stop playing like what happened during BfA… and there will be other game launching.

It’s not what you can do, but what other can do and you can’t. People will blame not their own error/lack of skill/whatever but others having an advantage.

LF1M Kyrian DPS.

In MDI every team will have all the benefits while your average M+ runs if they can’t clear without those effects then they won’t be with them as well, yet when you want an in-time run or better RIO score those buffs will matter a lot and people will be chosen based on covenant and dungeon requirements.

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It seems like their goal was to break the mold with a system that differentiates players with the same class and specc, as well as making it harder to min-max for every situation, all while tying it together with a sense of belonging to a certain faction relevant in the lore, forcing players to sometimes make a choice between player power and preference. In that regard, I think they have succeeded, albeit in a quite controversial manner :stuck_out_tongue:

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That’s not how the game is played and they will face the backlash of it. The expansion isn’t out yet and forums, reddit, twitter, youtube is all talking about it. Legion Legendaries or BfA Azerite armor didn’t have so much feedback and negative comments as this thing.