Woke up, no datamining yet. 
Introducing to WoW: Season/Battle pass for PvP! And xp boosters!
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I’ve said this since Legion…
Blizzard pruned the classes to rock paper scissors, which really only served to curb several specs because the truth is, the gameplay and encounter/pvp design gravitates to certain things, such as selfhealing, mobility and defensives and burst- And if your class is weak in one of those elements or god help if in more than one of those, they’re going to suck in that piece of content (looking at you, M+, arenas and raiding).
I personally think that if Blizzard wants to make (and seems to) WoW a quick mobile game, then all classes should have mobility options. The same goes for selfhealing and other stuff. Now, that doesn’t mean that classes need to be same, you can just differentiate abilities of classes for the same purpose (e.g. Storm bolt vs kidney shot, Leg sweep vs shockwave).
Preach actually talked about this in his latest video. If complexity moved from encounter design back to classes, then mayhabs we could loosen down on things like mobility etc.
I’ve advocated for the return of homogenized talent trees since Legion alpha. ALL classes should have:
- A mobility row
- A self healing/defensive row
- Utility row
- Aoe row
- Single target row
- Throughput/resource row
- Game changer row.
That way, every single class is guaranteed to have good presence in all the contents- While keeping the class interesting and unique.
Have you been watching the Q&A’s by any chance?
The corruption system, where people get upset on weeks on end not getting the “Best” corruption, and it’s the n.1 complaint they are getting.
The Azerite system, which was supposed to bring fun “choice” and reduce tier set agency, made it far worse for many specs. You are free to be a retard and not get 3x of BiS traits but you are also free not to do any content because you perform 50% sub-par to everybody else and then you get upset about not being able to perform like others.
The legendary item system, which had the exact same problem as Azerite system- With some being immensely powerful for your class, others less so. There wasn’t any real choice there.
Thankfully at least in this case Blizzard’s giving us crafted legendaries, so they have learned their lesson.
The myth about vocal minority is just a really contrarian and dishonest argument to make because every single Q&A in BFA and Legion alone touched at least once or more on these points. Player agency is key, and choices need to be meaningful- Not an illusion of choice, which covenants are. Function over form, gameplay comes first, aesthetics second. That’s good game design.
Equally even if this proposition was true, then it’d not matter at all if those choices didn’t exist for the casual- They will just pick whatever looks the coolest anyway, so it’s not really a solid argument.
How? You can still choose whatever covenant you want. If the gameplay truly doesn’t matter to you (as per your own words), then you haven’t lost any choice.
Yes, the same way Azerite armor was supposed to be, but we all saw how much of a disaster that was. They admitted as much 2 months into expansion launch, so we all saw the results of that.
I’m sorry I’m not confident in letting them do this after they have time and time again shown they can’t do it correctly.
It does matter, regardless of the approach you choose. Gameplay, or aesthetics. Not both.
This is such a dishonest argument. Yes, they are all viable if your spectrum is doing world quests and the occasional normal dungeon. Hey, you can even do normal and heroic raiding- Sub-par to others, of course.
As said, yes, you are free to make the wrong choice in terms of gameplay, but that doesn’t make it any less dumb. It’s kind of like saying that an underperforming spec is viable in the hands of the right person, when in actual fact it is underperforming in every single measurement available.
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i agree with this, that would be a lot of help.
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I remember before I changed my main to rogue, just when mechagon game out. I played demonology first, and just couldnt keep up with my premade group of friends and died to most bossfights. Because every other spell had like 5-6 second cast and not castable while moving. Swapped to Affliction & it went better.
But then now on the rogue, everything is a massive breeze.
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Yeah, exactly.
If you design a dungeon about having to move about all the time, and you also design a class that is inherently slow turret, it’s gonna be a sandpaper waterslide for them.
Worse, they are not even compensated for the hard casts. Demonology doesn’t even deal more damage than a more mobile class like a DH or a rogue does.
I don’t understand personally why call dreadstalkers isn’t instant cast for example or why isn’t demonic tyrant an instant summon. Hand o Gul’dan could also have a proc that made it instant cast and/or cost less soul shards, but that’s just me.
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There’s no need for this. You should probably cool off.
Comparing Azerite and Corruption to Covenants is disingenuous and you know it - one of those (Covenants) doesn’t have any RNG grinding attached to it. The other two…do.
It’s not a myth when blizz say it.
But you’re not choosing under your scheme. The graphs are choosing. You’re just following along. How is that meaningful?
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Sad thing is…it is in PvP T_T, if you spec it.
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Also follow-up, I really really agree with this. And one thing that also makes this weird, is that Demonlogy were kinda meant to have 1 compensation, being tanky. They were meant to be low mobility but be able to soak stuff. And they do kinda, during questing. But most bosses(Mechagon included) uses either semi or full on 1 shot mechanics so its all nulled.
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Tbh, that’s pretty much impossible.
What gives choices meaning are their consequences. If they all lead to the same outcome, i.e., are balanced, then they are meaningless, because your choice does not matter. If they can be reversed easily, then they don’t carry much consequence and thus are meaningless as well.
On the flipside, if they do not lead to the same outcome, then there are some outcomes that are more favorable than others depending on the metric you use for optimization. Cue illusion of choice argument.
Therefore, choices cannot be meaningful.
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…Azerite armor doesn’t have any RNG to it (if you wish so). You can farm specific pieces from specific content if you wish so (or target them in world quests), or spent points on specific azerite armor pieces via the vendor.
At least in the case of Azerite armor you can get rid of the obviously detrimental/wasteful thing, whereas with covenants, it’ll be difficult to do so. So as far as I’m concerned, covenants could be even worse than Azerite armor.
And then there’s also the wonderful thing that when everybody obviously picks the overperforming ability, it gets nerfed, and then people need to change again. Something something Legion artifact weapons (e.g. Fire mage), anyone?
Citation needed. Player perception is not a minority, it’s a majority, hence it affects contents like raiding, m+ and pvp.
To get this out as clearly as possible:
If you truly are, as per your own admission, an aesthetics only person, then it shouldn’t matter at all what covenant ability you get. Hence the choice is redundant to you because you will anyway make the choice based on covenant aesthetics and story, not gameplay.
If they make one covenant must-have for PvP, the other being necessary for m+ and the other for raiding, the xpac will very quickly become a disaster for competitive play.
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I was/is half expecting them to make the convenants based on class roles like the MoP celestials.
One good for tanking, one for heals, one for meele dps, one for ranged dps.
It’s not something I want but its such an obvious thing to do that they probably will.
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The nihilist in me wants to admit this, but I have also seen good choices available. The monk talent tree from Legion is a good example. You could pick any of the mobility choices, all of them had their ups and downs, but there wasn’t a clear “wrong” choice to make.
Wanted more overall mobility? Pick chi torpedo.
Wanted more burst mobility? Pick triple roll.
Wanted more utility based mobility? Take tiger’s lust.
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Given that the covenants have multiple people you can pair up with, I imagine all of them will offer something to each “role”, naturally there is going to be an optimal for each one. But let’s be honest, unless you’re actively engaged in high-end content it means jack all lol.
An extra 1% isn’t going to make no difference to Joe Bloggs t b q h.
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Even then, PvPers will probably want the tank or heal ones for extra survivability.
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Don’t you look forward to everybody and their mom picking the obvious pvp talents the 1st week only to have them nerfed the next week to the ground.
We’re not necessarily talking about extra 1%. Corruptions alone can be up to 20% of your performance. And there are lots, lots of completely useless corruptions, and there are sparse few really good ones every1 wants.
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Farming requires RNG for drops. Purchasing from vendor is only for top tier ilevel which is out of the price range for people not running it for the most part. The cheaper vendor options are all random, not specific.
So, yeah, it is RNG.
Do you think people use that term specifically for the wow forums randomly?
When did I say that? I specifically referred back to how I didn’t use “optimal” legendaries in Legion, but I was still running 15+ M+ with my Aggramar’s Stride (because I gotta go fast). One I saw on basically zero ‘optimal’ legendary lists for blood DK. It was a running* joke in my group. It made me like my character more than whatever throughput legendary there was and clearly it still worked.
*pun absolutely intended
I do not understand why you’re comparing Corruption to Covenants when they’re not the same system at all. Corruption being RNG is by design to keep people playing to get the ‘optimal’ choices. Covenants are targeting something else entirely from a design perspective.
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And it’s a flawed system that hasn’t really ben recieved well at all, just like its precursor Azerite. I don’t think people have been too fond of this expansions gimmicks.
But I don’t think you can assume that covenants are gunna work the same way yet, we haven’t even seen what the companion trees really look like yet.
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I honestly like the idea of corruption. High risk high reward mechanic stuff appeals to me. But the execution was done quite badly.
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