Suggestions on how to improve the covenant system while keeping the meaningful choice flavor

Community General Discussion
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The biggest flaw of covenant system is its lack of flexibilty and inability of players to play multiple types of content and/or offspecs.
I want to raid Mythic and play PvP. I play hunter and I can’t do both,

COVENANT DISPARITY IN MULTIPLE TYPES OF CONTENT
Not every covenant is good in every situation. Some are extremely situational.

Night Fae is by far the best option for PvE, Night Fae has 98 % presence in Castle Nathria mythic for hunters. It looks similar in m+, although Kyrian is moving up in priority for dungeons.

Venthyr is by far the best option for PvP, Venthyr has 86 % presence in 1800+ bracket. Any hunter I q into is casting Flayed shot, not Resonating Arrow. Not Wild spirits, which is laughably bad spell in PvP.

If I choose PvE, I’m intentionally griefing my team mates in PvP (many of them left when they saw I’m NF when I started queing for 3s) and I am much weaker than my opposition, that is a difference of Wild Spirits versus Flayed Shot.

Same happens in PvE, if I choose Venthyr with PvP in mind, I have to battle undergeared alts in overall in dungeons as 226 geared char, hunter class does absolutely nothing without Kyrian or Night Fae in PvE, our main strength is our AoE on demand burst, which is crippled by absence of Resonating Arrow/Wild Spirits.

BIGGEST PROBLEM

It’s time it takes to change your covenant.
Example: We had progress paused for 1 week. I went to Venthyr so I could PvP. It takes 2 weeks (1 reset) and approximately 8 dungeons to complete. If you already completed the covenant change quest this week, you can’t accept new one on that same week, which means you have to wait 3 weeks (2 resets) before you can make the switch again.

Now I’m stuck in Night Fae and I will be able to play PvP in 3 weeks. That’s because I already made the change switch back to Night Fae this week, I can’t accept the first quest to go back to Venthyr.

So when I changed to Night Fae I knew I’d be able to PvP in 3 weeks without griefing my team mates.

This makes me just not want to play. I was logging to do 1-4 Mythic dungeons with lower geared friends and weekly progress in raid.

SUGGESTIONS ON HOW TO FIX IT
Not the obvious “pull the ripcord” solution that many people ask for, or making talent tree like we have now but with covenant spells.

My suggestion isn’t that radical.
I also think that covenant system is good, but flawed, so I don’t want to get rid of the covenant powers in PvP.

It takes 2 weeks (1 reset) and approximately 8 dungeons (4 per quest) to complete. If you completed the covenant change quest this week, you can’t accept new one this week, which means you have to wait 3 weeks (2 resets).

Choosing covenant has to be a meaningful choice, I get that. But it’s just annoying to wait for 3 weeks, which is almost a month before I can play content I want.

Let’s make the quest completion harder. It currently takes approximately 8 dungeons. Make it 20 dungeons, or even 30. Or make it that you always lose 3 renown when you reroll.
Everything is better than current system, where the switch is timegated and you can do nothing about it but wait and watch how days on your subscription fall into the drain. Waiting 3 weeks, or 1 full reset, even if that “chore” takes 1 day of your time, it’s still better than having it timegated.

Another possibility is to make it just 1 quest with weekly reset, but that doesn’t solve the issue at start of the season and raid progress, because you can’t just allow yourself to “pause” for 1 week. If timegated, then 24 hours of waiting would be good I think, before you can change back to your former covenant.

Maybe the design philosophy is to make playing offspecs difficult to avoid burnout. But there is one obvious solution to my problem. Make another hunter, make another char. It’s time consuming to do everything I already did on my main (Torghast, conquest gearing) and farming conquests as a low geared character in arena… it’s rough.
I’m no AWC godmode player and I’m average at best, but it took me whole evening to farm 1 k of conquest on my 200 ilvl alt. Pvp gearing is an issue but that’s for a different time.

There is an argument that a good player can make even a bad covenant work. There are 12 Venthyr hunters who killed Denathrius Mythic. 2 of them have 45 and 200 dps, so they either died at start, lagged, or got boosted. And all of those parses are green percentiles.

5 % of all hunters above 2100 play Night Fae.

Performance of spec with bad covenant choice is so bad in some types of content, that even the worse end of Cutting Edge guilds will have trouble justifying your place in raid if you play something like Venthyr hunter.

That wouldn’t be bad if we were able to switch covenants more freely.

Please, Blizzard. Let me play the game.

3 Likes
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Wrong. Just plain wrong.

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How so? :slight_smile: If I take Venthyr for Denathrius mythic as MM or BM hunter I get insta benched, not only in top 100, but in top 10 000, it’s just laughably bad.

From my point of view, I can’t play the game. I want to play and improve on my main in PvP and I also want to raid.

If I q for arena and I’m still NF, people just run out of my AoE. Venthyr provides constant pressure. When enemy has correct covenant choice and I have the troll one, it feels like he is playing new expansion. It’s just not fair.

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Whilst I agree they could make some of the spells less “hard lock” in terms of “this clearly is pvp only, this pve only” I disagree that having the “wrong covenant” makes things impossible to do, you simply need to maybe work on a different strategy/build.

This holy pala was Venthyr long before the meta stumbled upon the idea that “Venthyr = bis m+”. Back in those days people questioned why on earth I wasn’t Kyrian, why would I give up the aoe holy shock? By doing what people do now with Holy Pala, I focused on bringing big dps to the group instead. Same for PvP. Rather than play a “slow and steady” game I focused my 2s games on trying to nuke people quickly and me and my (then) partner built around that strategy and it largely worked extremely well in most equal matchups we had (including pure mirror matches).

But as said in the beginning, in cases where some abilities offer NO or next to no utility in a form of content, that needs looking at. A good example of this is Priest. Now Venthyr is frequently touted as “the pick” for Priest, but Venthyr cov ability is the only priest ability that has precisely zero aoe applications, which makes it extremely limited in use in certain M+ situations. Same for Guardian Fae offering no pure DPS increase whereas the others do. This means picking one of these covs can set you up poorly for other content depending on your spec, whereas something like Unholy Nova is at the very least always yielding some benefit depending upon your content, but excels in some more than others.

I don’t mind the idea that we have to pick one type of content to be “slightly better in” but the reality is it’s the numbers that prevent that rather than the philosophy itself. For example going with Hunter as you said, the main reason Venthyr is such dead wieght in most M+ is it has zero aoe applications and the numbers even single target are laughable compared to what wild spirits can put out in an aoe situation. There’s no no comparison here. Maybe if flayed shot offered insane single target damage so instead of a “nuke the group” approach it offers a burn on a single target, but as it stands it doesn’t even do that, wild spirits is just far too powerful comparatively in an aoe situation, whilst being shockingly poor in a single target one.

For myself i’ve just taken the stance of “screw it”, i’ll pick the covenant I pick and if it ends up being meta, happy days, if not, i’ll make it work the best I can. I’m not going to set any pve or pvp records anytime soon so it’s hardly like my covenant choice is what’s going to make the difference.
Also blizzard may well change things so I don’t see the point in swapping all the time.

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I’m not saying covenant system is good or healthy for the game but those “I can’t play the game” stuff just makes your whole post seem like qqing instead of reasonable feedback.

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You simply need to maybe work on a different strategy/build.

Not possible in mythic raiding and pvp on 2 k+. Even if you make that unusual strategy “viable”, the same person would still be better if used correct strategy.

I’m sure it’s possible to play both Venthyr and Necro Unholy DK in pve, but in Hunter’s case… I’m not sure if I’m just unlucky, but the difference is way too big.
In dampening games, my kill shot (which is reset thanks to my covenant ability) is first to second in damage. Wild Spirits are placed on the ground and everyone runs out of them, healer dispells binding shot, pally gets freedom, druids shapeshift etc.

But as said in the beginning, in cases where some abilities offer NO or next to no utility in a form of content, that needs looking at.

I’m glad we agree on this.

I don’t mind the idea that we have to pick one type of content to be “slightly better in” but the reality is it’s the numbers that prevent that rather than the philosophy itself.

Yeah, but some classes are literally useless without correct covenant choice in some types of content. It’s insanely hard to play Non-venthyr priest in PvP when every holy, shadow and disc you meet plays Mind Games.

For myself i’ve just taken the stance of “screw it”, i’ll pick the covenant I pick and if it ends up being meta, happy days

I wish this was my mindset but when I play, I want to play with best tools possible. I’m no no-lifer minmaxer, I don’t even have gems because I hate Maw. But I check correct talent, legendary and gear setups and try to be as competitive as possible and improve at the game, because winning is fun and it doesn’t matter what tier of gameplay you are at, you can be very competitive person at 1400 and you can be very competitive person at 3k. I can’t do that as Night Fae hunter in PvP. I can’t do that as Venthyr hunter in PvE. I really wanted to push 2.1 k because this is my first season of playing pvp, I managed to do it in 2s and almost cracked the 2 k threshold in 3s, but now I can’t play for 2 resets, because I can’t go back to Venthyr, I had to go back to NF so I would be able to progress Denathrius.

Also blizzard may well change things so I don’t see the point in swapping all the time.

See above.

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I have an even better solution: calculate so each covenant is within 1% of dps for raids to any other. That way, you can choose your pvp covenant without gimping yourself for raiding, unless you’re in a top 100 guild.

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The easiest solution would be to be able to swap between covenants without time delay for some cost, like people swapped talents in classic or TBC.
Lets say you pay 10 anima that goes up to 1000 (or something) and you can immidiately swap your covenant without issues.
Then there is no reason to balance them or anything. Just make it that you dont lose progress of the previous covenants when you swap it.

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Yes, that would be the easiest solution. But they probably won’t do it, they want covenant choice to have the status of “meaningful choice” that has consequences. My suggestion is still annoying for playerbase, sure, but there is still consequence and punishment for traitors who betray their covenant and they want to go back.

I have an even better solution: calculate so each covenant is within 1% of dps for raids to any other. That way, you can choose your pvp covenant without gimping yourself for raiding, unless you’re in a top 100 guild.

This is possible, there are covenants (Venthyr vs NF for priest, Venthyr vs Necro for UDK) where pve boosts are negligible and you can play both. But that’s not the case for hunter, unfortunately.

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The thing is is that this is just a poor compromise. There is some sort of justifiable realism in having a drawback when you’re changing what is essentially a specialization, which historically used to be a 50g cost, but as soon as you paid up, you were free to redistribute your stuff on the spot.

The Covenants in the lore are allied and there is constant collusion between them - it makes no sense to be called a betrayer when you literally complete their world quests on the daily - the other covenant just happened to offer you a better boon. It’s not fun gameplay, and it’s a plot hole. The only acceptable way to change this - from my perspective - is to pay the covenant in gold (or even Anima) to cover the logistical problems of changing your covenant power, and relocating you to a different sanctum.

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there are no way , blizzard will do something like this , its too much dungeons for the average casual player :clown_face: and losing 3 renom is a joke , should be atleast 20 renoms .

Just swapping every weeks could be already good , 1 reset , and covenant would be fine but its too hard for Blizzard

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But we have nothing but poor compromises, see corruption vendor on BFA. That’s why I made that suggestion. There must be a drawback and for blizzard, the justifiable drawback is that I won’t play what I want and what I pay for for 2 weeks.

Paying gold would be best I think, though. Like we paid for Azerite change, for some people, it could be some absurd cost (like hundreds of thousands), for most few hundreds.

I fully agree with second part of your post and I’m ashamed I didn’t think of it this way.

there are no way , blizzard will do something like this , its too much for the average casual player :clown_face: and losing 3 renom is a joke , should be atleast 20 renoms

yeah it’s too much but it’s quality of life improvement over the 2 weeks of waiting

Just swapping every weeks could be already good , 1 reset , and covenant would be fine but its too hard for Blizzard

still wouldn’t be fine for someone who wants to play multiple types of content in 1 week, some people have progression that takes many months to finish

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Sad, but true.

Although I’d like to avoid the absurd costs. That was not fun - but at least you could farm out multiple Azerites to avoid that. Everything in moderation.

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Although I’d like to avoid the absurd costs.

Yeah, me too, but it’s there to keep high end players in check, there were people in Method that paid gold cap or similar cost so they could change azerite on their gear during BoD mythic progress. Blizzard’s philosophy is that they need to use those safety brakes against high end players, same happened with introduction of forced personal loot and loot ilvl restriction, it was so Limit/Method and others couldn’t just do splits and give gear to characters. I’m not saying it’s good, it’s just how it is.

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Which is acid, and shows how out of touch the developers are. Literally nobody cares that someone uses Zeal instead of Execution Sentence on some random boss that gives garbage mainstat1 mainstat2 secondarystat1 secondarystat2 loot with an ilvl that I can get by doing 1 m+ or sitting 2.1k in a 16 year old dead video game. Other than Blizzard apparently.

I know, and it’s a sad state. Don’t mind my rant.

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“I can’t enjoy the game the way I always have anymore” is more fitting I guess.

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Yea, my point is it should be, I know right now it’s not. Thing is, numbers balancing for raids is just an excel spreadsheet, it’s the easier way to go about it, while pvp / m+ balancing is harder because you need to account for utility.

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Yeah lol just balance it lol it’s that easy lol

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In PvE I agree the “best strategy” may be hard to compete with, but PvP is a different game because there’s too many variations. Obviously some things work better than others and have different amounts of upkeep, but I refuse to believe that “all things being equal, being Kyrian would just be better all the time” because that only works if I assume most games are the same for example, which they’re not.
I did struggle initially, because I played an imitation game of Kyrian Hpalas, in that situation then yes, I would never match up. Once me and my partner reviewed our game plan and began to work with a totally different approach, we had much higher success (at least until we lost interest in pvp anyway) and whilst it may not have worked every game, there were some games where what we did would have been literally impossible for a Kyrian Hpala to pull off, because they just do not have access to the same burst damage. It’s dependent on too many things. I’ve referred to a game in other posts where it was me and WW versus WW and disc priest, and we won the game very quickly because after some initial chipping damage, when the monk “went for me” and my monk “went for the priest” where the priest started to engage “turtle and self heal mode” I went burst mode and ended up killing the WW Monk before they killed me, not something a Kyrian would have been able to do (as Kyrians can’t throw out HoWs that crit for 17k, which at the time and game, was over half of the Monk’s health).

I’m mixed on Venthyr priest in PvP. On shadow I can see it, absolutely. On healers I think it’s a bit over emphasised, as it’s very easy to counter with a single dispel, and you’ll always face an enemy healer who can dispel it, which makes the cd totally worthless. I’d argue argue that the flexibility of being able to give a partner or you 20% DR for 20 seconds with guardian fae plus the “big cooldown” haste is more useful than forcing an opponent to dispel themselves once every 45 sec.

Mindgames has a very distinctive sound when being cast, and at least on my paladin, i’ve never found mindgames to be a huge issue, i’ve always had dispel ready for it and I find a lot of priests in PvP use it very badly (too early), it should be used to secure a kill (when you force a choice between the clutch or dispel) but way too many will open with it as part of a burst which is wrong.

I’m raising a tauren Hpriest and i’m inclined to try her in pvp and she is running gaurdian fae as her cov choice. I can see potential with it for sure.

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If you’re good you won’t get benched from an average CE guild. All these fights requires really good execution and only decent DPS. You can make the DPS checks with any spec.