The fact is, on the highest level of play you are forced to pick the ability that does the most DPS. If you only do normal raids and heroic dungeons you are free to pick whatever suboptimal ability you want, but those that push mythic progress, high M+ and top rank PvP have to pick the ability that is mathematically optimal for them, despite disliking everything else about the faction they’re forced into.
Edit: Typos.
I’m sorry but this is going to be disastrous. We’ll be swapping covenants every patch as they get balanced around.
The DPS increases these give will be far from insignificant if essences and corruption is anything to go by.
Make these abilities a new talent row instead and keep the Covenants purely cosmetic.
This can and will be screwed up. And it’s not just going to affect min/maxers. The differences will be far too substantial.
The new system is already under heavy criticism on reddit with many people calling it a “nightmare to balance”. Well, looks like that SL is heading into another BfA-disaster with things people don’t want to see.
I agree with that. And the important bit of what you said, imo, is ‘to some extend’.
They already have so much you can min max, why should this important choice be ruined just because of those kinds of players?
End of expansion, like 2-3 years from now… Come on.
Besides, they might ease up on restrictions and/or requirements by then, like they often do at the end of an expansion. No, I really don’t see the issue here.
Yeah, you’re right. And I’m completely fine with that.
If you want to play at the absolute highest level the game offers, well that’s going to take some sacrifices. That comes with the territory, so to speak.
If it was easy, everyone would do it. 
It’s not even about needing to or not, it’s just less fun to not expierience 3/4 of the abilities they give us for all of the expansion.
So you literally don’t care abou the ability, then why do you care if it’s tied to the covenant or if it works more like a talent?
But it’s already important whitout tying the power of a character to it, it’s literall unnecessary.
Seems interesting so far, there’s only one for monk but already seems pretty strong, and will be relevant throughout since it’s a cooldown reset however I can already see the issue of abilities being tied to covenants. Unless they’re easy to swap to then you’re going to have a bad time, the essence font reset + extra heal is great for raids but very weak for M+. I’m sure they’ll come up with something good for M+ but bad for raids.
Then again as far as I know these are long CD abilities so they’ll likely only be relevant for raid anyways.
You clearly haven’t had to spellsteal the little fear mobs in King’s rest.
Valid overall points though, +1.
that I aggree on, rng and pvp doesnt work at all, never has and never will.
And what when Blizzard butchers the balance in some patch or hotfix and nerfs the best ability useless? Should people level 4 copies of the same class for these situations so they can cope? Or do they need to do long snd ardous grind to switch the faction?
Either of those options will severely hurt the players.
Its funny how the devs almost seem to actively refuse to learn anything from their mistakes despite them saying basically every blizzcon that learning from mistakes is all they do.
That’s a silly argument.
If you only play 1 class, you’re only experiencing 1/12th the game has to offer. Do you now expect them to give every class ALL abilities? Because that is the equivalent of what you’re saying.
Because I like my choices to have meaning in the game. I. Like. That.
And it’s not been a thing in WoW for quite some time. So I’m glad it’s back.
Is it? Is it important without a gameplay/power impact?
I thought the reason why people like cosmetic rewards for certain activities is because then it doesn’t feel mandatory. Because… it’s less important … than power gain. 
It’s funny that you obviously haven’t read their alpha statements then.
They are changing so much about how they conduct testing and such. They’re adding pvp vendors etc etc. Your statement is pure hyperbole.
Hurr durr wait for beta, release and on and on.
Hi, new here?
Oh its Tahra. Nvm
After BFA, people need to be as heavy handed with their feedback as possible as early as is possible.
No more ‘Its only alpha’. Same thing happened with Azerite gear.
What? There’s a clear difference between a different class and different abilities on the same class. Or what we can consider that with shadowlands we’ll have 48 total classes because of the abilities?
It’s not important it’s restrictive, if it’s perfectly balanced it literally doesn’t matter from a power standpoint, only a cosmetic one, if everything in the game is doable with every ability then that ability choice is not an important one. This makes tying abilities to them only restrictive and meaningless, Unique stories and transmog/toys is mor then enough.
that depends on what you value in the game i guess, i value my character power (I am a dps i want to do as much dps as i can, even without sims or similar things if i see that an ability can do aoe damage I would want to pick it in an aoe situation). It makes them non mandatory for people that care about damage which probably makes them less important for them, not overall. You know my favourite rep of bfa? the bee one, because it’s not a mandatory power gain, or tied to one, i like it literally because i was not forced to do it to enjoy the game in the way i play it. so let’s keep power progression and rp choices separate please.
Thats kinda your choice. Majority wont do that and will be absolutly fine.
Exactly. Currently we are steering into a new BfA-disaster but we have not every detail yet. Let’s wait until weekend.
Don’t forget to visit icy-veins for your BiS covenant before you make the wrong choice.
I’ve taken to calling mana the Spellsteal Charge-bar.
You might as well remove it entirely and give Spellsteal 6 charges on an 8 second recharge timer. It’s the only spell that uses mana. Get it over with. 