Shadowlands covenants

Community General Discussion
1

So There is still no much informations about covenants but most propably you will pick covenant, grind it and get your covenant ability propably upgrade it with grind etc.
I see problem with covenants. If they keep same gearing system as in bfa and if you can only have 1 covenant and cant switch or you will need to grind it on every switch. For sure one covenant faction ability will be good for pvp and other covenant faction ability for pve. So how should i gear for pvp if most efficient way to gear is PVE and i will propably downgrade myself for mythic raid or higher m+ key if i will play with PvP covenant ability. Same goes for pve players if they decide to try pvp. Either make PvP gear bis for PvP so i dont need to do pve or make covenant abilities easy to switch.

Also i dont like to be dragged to some covenant i dont find fancy only because i want to min max.

2

From what I recall at Blizzcon, as you level through each zone (which you have to do in order for your first character) you will get the covenant abilities and get to try them out while playing that zone. That means you will get to try all four sets of abilities and see all four covenants so can make an informed choice about what works best for you. However, it is not intended that you can switch covenants like you switch talents - you will be able to change but it will be difficult to grind progress again. So yes, for min-maxers who want every little % of edge, this isn’t an ideal system. You can choose a covenant based on aesthetics, abilities, followers… Any and all of those. I think the idea is that there is no “wrong” option as every option will appeal to someone. Hopefully the abilities won’t have so much of an impact that you’ll be forced to choose a certain one or be useless.

3

Life~ You can’t be best at everything.
I love Shadowlands already.

3 Likes
4

Seems stressful to worry about this already. It’s 6 months or more until we go there and info in advance will come when the ptr is up and running. (Glad I’m not a minmaxer, I’ll just play the game and pick what I like best…)

1 Like
5

Depending on how severe the problem is i might not play shadowlands at all.

I think what should change between covenants should be cosmetic, and you can only get 1 cosmetic per character, so if you use alts you could get them all, but performance difference with no real way to change? Not a chance.

There are a couple of reason why i am worried about shadowlands, but this is one of them.

6

I’m the same - I’ve already picked the covenants for most of my characters based purely on aesthetics! I did try the Shadowlands demo at Blizzcon as both priest and druid and I’d be lying if I said that I remembered what the covenant class-specific abilities were (the all-class one turns you into a ball of light that moves fast, and that’s all I can remember!) so I’m not expecting them to have a huge impact on gameplay. But then I’m useless at knowing how to work something new into my rotation so maybe I missed that they were epically OP abilities…? :crazy_face: I think the priest one let you cast stuff instantly for 10 seconds or something, so I just went oom real quick!

2 Likes
7

I dunno, I like the idea of making choices which matter and cannot be easily changed. However I can understand that this type of system does not appeal to everyone so I hope that there will be enough balance between abilities so that it isn’t too off-putting and frustrating to people who like to min-max.

8

Actually for pvp the first covenant ability for war they introduce is pretty big deal and no i dont want to be best aĹĄ everything i just dont wanna need to hardcore pve for pvp especially when i will need to do it with scuffed covenant ability because my main focus is pvp. So they should make pvp gear better than pve gear for pvp.
And when i see something like essences, azerite, corrupt which is pretty big deal already and make your character crap without it i dont believe covenants abilities Will be weak.

9

The problem is that realistically what is there to gain from it?

You make a choice and then? So what? Is it really that important? Compared to the annoyance you might feel by knowing that the other covenant is like 30 % more damage, because let’s be real, look at corruption essences etc, it does happen.

So what are the option, either you balance them so well that it does not matter, but that rarely happens, you make them cosmetic and the effects are shared between covenants, and that’s it. I do not trust blizzard to balance them perfectly, so that will probably not happen.

The choice should be cosmetics, that’s it.

I’m also worried about what kind of abilities they are going to bring back, that is the second worry i have about shadowlands.

The worst case scenario is the covenants are not balanced, they do not allow you to change it, and they try to balance it later, but fail, leaving you with a really bad covenant, and then good luck.

What is there to gain from it? Nothing.

And let’s say that they manage to balance them perfectly, what if there is an ability that you really would like to try on your character but can’t? We also have to consider that.

All for a meager, i made a choice thing, not worth it in my opinion.

1 Like
10

Everyone plays this game for different reason. I play this game because of pvp. And covenants looks already frustrating for me. Especially if nothing will change about pvp gear.

1 Like
11

At the moment we don’t really have enough information to judge this. I would certainly hope that the differences won’t be as large as 30%, but after corruption anything is possible… From the ability descriptions I’ve seen so far, the all-class abilities all seem to do similar things (reduced threat, extra movement) but in different ways, whereas the class-specific abilities seem to add a little more flavour - and I hope that it is flavour rather than power. But until we get an alpha/beta, we’re unfortunately left to speculate and just hope for the best or fear for the worst.

1 Like
12

I heard this too many times its only announced, its only alpha, its only beta, its only ptr and things go live broken.

1 Like
13

PvP gearing needs to be changed for sure, but I’m not sure if that is or will be at all connected to covenants? Unless we get some kind of covenant Vs covenant PvP mode, which might actually be more fun and balanced than alliance Vs horde? Would be a fun alternative way to gain covenant rep so it wouldn’t be pve or nothing

14

Yep, you can usually tell if an expansion will go bad by it’s beta and alpha. Preach made a very clever comment about this in my opinion.

The problem is that when you have already spent time to create the structure of the expansion, and it’s not good or well received, what can you do? You have to redo the job, meaning that it takes time out of making new better content, because you either slacked or your vision was not well received, this is what happened with bfa.

The alpha, beta cycle was abysmal, and the expansion is showing it.

Although i honestly do not understand the reasoning behind the dev at times, it just seems really dumb to me.

1 Like
15

Everyone will never be happy. You want meaningless choice that does not affect gameplay~ I want live-changing choices that are affecting everything (Its MMORPG afterall).

D&D FTW

1 Like
16

If pvp gearing Will change im ok with it i just pick covenant which is bis for pvp and i dont need to do pve. But if gearing Will be same, covenants can turn to be pretty frustrating. Also the covenant ability you described for instant casts sounds already pretty op.

17

You are absolutely wrong.

I want something that makes the gameplay better, but i am not forced into it either if i want to change later on.

I just do not see the value in this “choice”, there’s nothing to gain from it.

1 Like
18

So much worry… I can see the problem from minmax point of view and finding it stressful making the wrong choise. Back in TBC it took ages to decide if I wanted Aldor or Scryer, felt disastrous to maybe pick the wrong one even if you could swap.

Now I’d say it’s the other way round, playing through the zones and then make a choise , !!that’s it!!! is less stressing. I haven’t looked into what the perks are, but I’ll probably choose what I feel most comfortable with and what matches my easy going playstyle. And then we have the alts, that will choose something else.

I don’t agree it should be purely cosmetic, it’s more fantasy flavour like this and WoW is a MMO.

1 Like
19

They can make different abilities as long as you can change between covenants easily, and on the fly, i am fine with it.

It’s not about stressful, it’s about annoyance, and i will not be a part of it depending on how big the problem is, that’s for sure.

1 Like
20

I raided in tbc from kara to black temple and didnt even farm those reps to exalted…like this choice dont even matter compared to covenant