Shadowlands: A Look at Covenant Class and Signature Abilities *Updated 5/13

Community General Discussion
443

OK then in that case I’ll give you a hands on example about what happens when you do that.

At the end of Legion (before we gave up our artifacts and before the level squish), my heroic geared prot paladin was fully capable of running an m5 with no healer.

So when those two changes came into effect, said paladin with exactly the same gear was barely able to do a random heroic violet hold. I saw my health bar rapidly drop to below 50% on multiple occasions and it wasn’t because I was ignoring mechanics. It was so bad I could barely solo a rare mob on Argus.

So I decided to equip Prydaz (the legendary neck with the shield) and almost never saw the shield depleted. The lowest I saw my health at was 97%.

This is a great example with a big system with other systems interacting with the big anchoring system. Now please look at the end result and tell me that my paladin being barely able to function properly on world content with heroic gear from the final raid at the end of an expansion makes sense.

The best part is that I was forced to give up the thing that made it sort of work at the start of BFA because Magni showed up and gave me a necklace and said “here you go, you’re stuck with this now”.

From a gameplay perspective, please explain to me how this makes any sense.

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444

"We remain guided by the core philosophies that we articulated at BlizzCon: player agency and empowering choices."

True Player Agency implies that real choices await us, and yet right from the start, it already became evident that we’re being given a (false) sense of freedom.

We’ve been introduced to most Covenant Class specific abilities - yet another form of Borrowed Power that we all get to enjoy for some time but will eventually be taken away - with very visible mechanical and empowering disparities. Let’s be honest here, there isn’t really any tangible balance for these abilities, for any given Class across all four Covenants.

But why is this the case? Why can’t Covenants be all about flavourful Story decisions, Aesthetics, Perks and Utility skills? Why pigeonhole Players, forcing them to go with whatever Covenant best Empowers their Class/Spec of choice - or, like a huge majority will do, to simply “choose” what’s best according to Guides available everywhere?

No matter how Fun, Engaging or Empowering any of these abilities might seem, Players will mostly flock to the ones that are mathematically “the best choice”, completely avoiding everything in-between as it will always seem like deliberately choosing to go with a handicap by picking “the wrong one”.

But even picking X Covenant because Y ability is performing very well is a trap in itself, meaning there’ll always be this sense of insecurity in the air, with players praying so that no Balance adjustments or nerfs come their way, because then how terrible will that feel, right?

If you’re so keen on continuing with this scheme of Temporary Player Power with every new expansion, instead of actual meaningful and permanent Player Progression, then these Covenant Class specific abilities should really be addressed differently.

Why not make it a completely separate system, maybe tied to Story progression or something else entirely? Maybe functioning like a 2nd Tier of Talents that can also be easily swapped around? Right now, anything would feel better than this.

On a final note, I really hope that, for once, this isn’t the type of “set in stone” Alpha/Beta that we’ve seen before, with massive amounts of feedback being ignored or unattended.

Everyone here plays and cares for the game to an extent, and I’m sure we all want to see it grow, evolve and be better. So, take your time, listen, react and iterate. Otherwise, look what stubbornness and passiveness turned BFA into.

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445

Your example is bad.
Because that’s a NEW system taking over from a system from the previous expansion. And yes that felt bad.

I’m talking about systems DURING an expansion working together. Sort of complimenting each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

Not your weird ‘changing of the guards’ example.

446

I thought I made it clear in my last post that this is gonna boil down to a disagree, but if you want to do the whole “gotcha” because you’re making beef where none exists, okay.

You point out my 24 hr stuff is inconsistent. I’ll concede that. I’ll still argue my point. Why? Because it looks to me like you’re arguing that a function that allows you to change race and faction in a game where that is the USP being locked behind some time (Most players buy services with cash, 72 hour cooldown) is evidence of that game having a theme where it wants you to stick by your choices. Whereas I’m saying it’s evidence it isn’t, because the provision exists where it doesn’t even have to exist.

So I’ll hold my hands up and let you have your gotcha with your gravedigging commentary (no idea why you thought that necessary but whatever) but I don’t see it as harming what I’m claiming at all. A game franchise marketed as “red vs blue” allows you to swap which side of that debate you side with every 72 hours potentially. You’re arguing this is evidence the game wants you to stick by your decisions because some players take ages to fund such. You wouldn’t even be able to swap factions if that was the case- the faction divide is the CORE decision in this franchise after all.

Now I’m happy to discuss this further and even discover where necessary concessions might need to be made on my part as I did above, with stuff I missed. But drop the whole “episode of suits” rhetoric because I don’t know know about you I’m here to discuss and maybe learn something, not try and “one up” anyone.

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447

Is Ny’alotha a SL raid ? Statisticly EP was a ST raid with only Zaqul beeing a AoE fight, with Azhara and Orgonzoa more of a cleave.

448

How you get the currency is currently unknown tho, only thing they confirmed is that it would work like conquest/valor with a weekly cap but faster.

Based on the post is seems that they plan to give back a lot of abilities and then prune the excess stuff over the course of the beta. So hopefully there should be some good stuff coming for classes, much more than what you could expect from covenants abilities. Or maybe just useless abilities no one cares about, it’s also a possibility.

Anyway, just wait for the class design post they announced for later this week, it should’ve practical examples and the overall philosophy.

Yet you’ve barely seen the tip of said system… Don’t make up stuff to fit your narrative folks

449

Covenants did nothing wrong !

450

Read about conduit and check progression they’ve shown on Blizzcon. If covenant is a PvE progression that I as a PvP player I’ll be forced to play to get key spell I’m already against it.

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451

Sorry but argument from ignorance is not an argument.

Anything can be awesome if done right so what you are saying doesn’t really mean anything.

The point is that throwing a lot of complex systems together is usually not the way to go and the same goals can be achieved in other more simple yet diverse and balanced ways.

452

Could you be any less selective in your replies?

Okay lets tackle EP. Arguably bigger concentration of single target encounters, Sivarra, Behemoth, Ashvane(ignoring bubble cleave) but that is it. Radiance had burst and cleave in the intermission, Orgozoa had a lot of things going on, Zaqul goes into the same basket, Azshara had a lot of split spawns and Court was a split multitarget fight. Heck unlike the Nyalotha single target fights, EP ones were extra disruptive that favoured certain classes over others(Sivarra side switching, Behemoth being underwater, Ashvane with burst windows). If you wanna argue Radiance, it was also a fight that highly disrupted classes that generally prefer less movement. Arguing that Raids are just an overall single target experience where not having a single target Covenant Ability will deny you a spot is unfounded.

453

I was talking in general.

454

And you would know that because you’re a game designer, right?

You only know what you like.
You haven’t got the feintest idea of how to implement this to serve a very wide audience such as WoW’s.

So kindly stop acting like you do.

455

Yup, i should be fairly up to date with that kind of thing.

Now that they confirmed PvP vendors i wouldn’t worry too much about conduits, if they sell you gear for conquest then i don’t see why conduits would become a random drop like the legion relics altho there’s a perfectly fine vendor in the capital.

If i’m wrong then just add conduit acquisition to the list below

If i were you i’d worry about two things tho :

  • Legendaries (Acquisition in Thorgast or whether they are active in pvp)
  • Will there be something similar to Corruption in shadowlands and will it apply to pvp ? (Still unknown, back at blizzcon they said they wanted to see how corruption would be received before working on shadowlands gearing)

For all we know you could very well get your weekly anima cap by doing your weekly conquest cap and then maybe a few unranked BG or WPVP. And even if it was a pure WQ fest grind i wouldn’t rank it higher in importance than these two things.

456

You’re missing the point - the point is that I needed 2 systems to make my character playable. PLAYABLE.

Having Shadowlands add something unique to your class/character is something both expected and desired. The point is that if it is yet another system, then the start and the end will end up feeling just as bad. For the most part the things we got from the artifact weapons in Legion were talents from pre-cata.

To me personally as well as to a lot of the people I’ve played with this came across a bit like “hey, look what we removed from your class and see how it doesn’t function without it - now you can clear Antorus heroic easily today and you won’t be able to kill a rare tomorrow”

Don’t tie character power to the systems - tie it to the character and make it proportionate to the time and effort you’ve spent on your character, not the system. The legendaries should feel strong, the soul links should have an impact but don’t make it baseline!

Give the abilities impacts outside core gameplay content. Do what reps have been doing for the past few expansions - make trivial content faster i.e. Pathfinder - everything with flying is MUCH easier and MUCH faster and has no impact on PvP, M+, Raiding or RP. Make it affect zones and world mobs - make the world feel different based on your choice. Make world events based on the different covenants.

You want to play the game differently? - fine. You don’t see me coming to ruin your RP events on Earthern Ring. So why do you want something that would ruin M+ and raiding for me and many others?

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457

Disruptive fights dont disprove my argument, i never said anything about disruptive fights im talking about AoE vs ST talets\essenses and people where not running AoE builds for EP. We are streghing away for the actual topic, sure there are some AoE fights in raids but for the majority (and BfA has admitedly strayed from this path) been ST we have no idea if Sl will more traditional or try to brake the mold like BfA is doing. We can only judge by previous iterations. With that into acoount we can assume rightfully that for raid you might need a more ST build, and again judging by previous iterations we can assume that blizzard might not end up keeping their promise of making things balanced. We are not arguing about Muh RpG we are arguing about player choise and making it an actual choise , because if things are grim as we believe them to be and blizzard not having a quick and easy backup for this some of us will get benched because we picked muh RpG over performance.

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458

The fact there is PvP vendor doesn’t mean there will be gear distinction. It might mean I still need to play M+ and raids but also that PvE player will need to play PvP for more gear.

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459

No, I would know that because I’m not being oblivious to the fundamentals of engineering like you are.

You are literally talking nonsense just to deflect while acting like you know better simply because you said so.

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460

You are making assumptions , carefull Tahra doesnt like assumptions unless she is making them herself.

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461

No I’m not missing the point.
You’re talking about AFTER the systems had done what they were supposed to do. When stuff was being deactivated. That’s not AT ALL what I was talking about.

Except it won’t. Is my belief.
And that’s my whole entire point. You say things like “that would ruin M+ and raiding”, but you simply don’t know this. You don’t.

And no I don’t actually RP in WoW. Not with other people anyway.
I have Dungeons and Dragons for that. :blush:

462

You are ignoring the argument still, and the simple proof that just picking a single target Covenant Ability will not do anything for Raid viability. You can tack that onto the current Enhancement Shaman which as I said is great at hitting those target dummies, yet by all arguments it’d not do squat. Same prospect for every single class, their overall already existing toolkit, and the additional Soulbind talent tree will be 97% of what decides viability. Essences are not comparable because they had no checks and balances, they are purely designed to have some good in AoE, some good in Single etc, there isn’t an entire talent tree tied to each to balance the choice out and make them viable regardless of content.

Again the nature of Artifact Active Abilities in Legion did not determine the viability of specs in various types of content, so without seeing both the Soulbinds and the unpruning in action we cannot judge the impact Covenant choice will have on performace.