Please for the love of god, do not tie them to the covenants, let us switch between them, i don’t want to have 4 possible abilities and then be stuck with one for all of the expansion because it’s not Worth to switch covenants. It’s boring, I’ve had my feel of not changing my talents for an expansion already with how much balancing there has been in bfa, don’t do it again.
Got me there, if it looks cool that is.
At blizzcon they claimed that the talent trees would even out the lackluster abilities. Something about having so many options within a covenant than you wouldn’t need to pick your covenant based on the most optimised ability.
Too early to tell if it’ll work out as intended, but that’s the plan.
lol seriously how are you going to balance the utility on the hunt vs the other choices
its got a charge, a root and a tp
i like how the one next to it just says “work in progress” its like you are never going to think of something that can match that lol
clearly ones are going to best picks for pvp/pve, how is that going to work for players who want to do both?
we gonna have this issue were you’re forced to play a certain way all expansion - eg. making respeccing a pain in the bum all through BfA because of azerite pieces
why not make something thats fun rather than adding complexity through meaningless choices - just because you can
Is this expansion about player choice and agency or not?
That was the promise made to us at Blizzcon, and in the silence over the past five months I hoped this obvious mistake had been quietly rectified, but I am saddened to find it has not been.
Covenant choice will, for the many players if not most, be determined by what ability sims out to be the best choice for a given class or spec rather than what a person wants to play.
Covenant choice should be defined by the aesthetics of that Covenant, or whether the transmog and mount rewards are what you really want, or whether you are keen to spend the next two years hanging around in that Covenant Sanctum, or whether you have an affinity for that particular Covenant’s story. All of these are good, meaty reasons behind Covenant selection and each choice is valid.
These unique abilities ruin that. Top end raiders will be expected to select the best ability for what is the best spec for their class. Is it fair for them to be denied access to the Covenant they might wish for because they are compelled, out of duty to their guild, to go with the Covenant that will empower them the most?
And yes, while top end raiders are only a small fraction of the population, a lot of players take their cue from these top end raiders. What they define as the top end ability will become for many players the ‘correct’ ability that they have to have.
And this is before we bring up the absolute impossibility of Blizzard successfully balancing these four abilities. They’ve never managed to balance similar abilities in the past and there are any number of factors at play.
The Covenant ability could be nerfed OR, for classes with multiple dps specs, a previously dominant DPS spec for a class could be superseded by another and that new spec could require an entirely different Covenant ability to shine the brightest.
It is too easy for changing circumstances to lead players to conclude that they must either undertake the grind for a new Covenant to be optimal or to refuse doing another grind yet feel they are stuck, punished with the wrong outcome for making what they believed was the right choice to begin with.
There is still time to avert these outcomes. Saying all four abilities will be balanced and so each Covenant choice will be valid is nonsense, that will never happen. Instead, these ‘power abilities’ must be unshackled from the Covenants. There is plenty of meat for the Covenants to be a compelling gameplay feature, of that I am sure. But a system must be devised whereby you can change abilities without changing Covenant. The absence of such a system is going to be a brutal design flaw, one that is entirely avoidable.
Part of me is afraid that we are going to have one-rules-them-all approach where you just really have no option and everything is just around one single meta.
Mirrors of torment seems like a good answer to on the hunt DH
You tp to mage he dots you, slows you and silences you
And they even said swapping to different covenant will be really hard(not impossible but still-
so if they decide to give even better ability to different covenant for your class,or make ones youre currently using totally worthless,you might just be stuck with it for rest of expac or are better of lvling new toon/having 4 of your class, 1 for each covenant
The Hunt
Charge to an enemy, inflicting Nature damage and rooting them. The target is marked for a period of time, increasing your Fury from Demon’s Bite and Shear against them.
You may reactivate The Hunt every 30 seconds to teleport behind the marked target and ignoring line of sight.
LIKE THEY NEEDED MORE GAPCLOSERS FOR PVP XD
Like Dhs need any buffs… My favourite DH ability is (Work in Progress)
I plan to take bis for PvP mobility and play tank in m+ for the gear, to ignore the elitists demands
Tank spec is a bis answer to anything.
The pure dps classes will pick the highest solo dps trait I am sure
Guys. Its really easy:
Just play 4 alts of the same class and pick a different covenant with each of them. Thats the only way you can make sure you’re not getting pwned by blizz in the usual echoing void kinda way.
Blizz should fire the guy that came up with tying abilities to covenants.
How hard can it actually be to listen to the players?
… thank god I have dks … a lot of dks. Plenty of dks !
Guess people actualy enjoyed rerolling at the start of legion because they didn’t have the right legendaries /s
I was really talking about just the DH selection, but yea there could be equally good utility ones for other classes.
you’d still have to be a mage who’s picked that convenant - probably one who doesn’t play any pve (otherwise you’d probably be stuck with one of the more damage oriented ones instead).
and if you’re a DH you probably wouldn’t be able to take such a good utility ability either if you’re into PvE.
so does that make you not competitive in PvP or not? guess we’ll see!
I think method made a post about that that s what theyre planning to do for covenants.
I am looking forward to shadowlands a lot. But making these abilities be tied to covenants that are hard to swap just seems like a headache waiting to happen.
They may well end up being all balanced perfectly so just choosing based on personal preference may be possible. But based on the history of WoW, things never end up tuned that well and no matter how serious I am on raiding, mythic + or PVP i would feel bad if I am actively making the groups task harder because I chose the wrong covenant ability.
People give there view point on this because they want to play the most enjoyable game they can. It is important that people let the developers know if they disagree with an aspect of the game rather than staying quiet. No need to hate on others for their view point.
The most important part - the visual sets for each covenant are not out yet.
I know for sure 1 mail char goes to Kyrians, their set is OP
Maybe make it so when you reach Exalted with a covenant you have the class ability unlocked permanently . Then you can switch to another Covenant , grind the rep , and have another ability unlocked . After a while you will have access to all 4 abilities from each Covenant , but make it so you can have only one ability active at a time .
This way you don’t have to feel bad if the Covenant ability is nerfed or you need to do other content that requires one of the abilities from the other Covenants
If you only can play if a 3rd party website tells you how to, then i feel sorry for you.