If covenants are not balanced the system will fail: even Ion stated such in his interview with Slootbag.
What Blizzard hopes is that with many “knobs” to tweak, they will have many options to balance the system, but realistically the more the knobs, the more complex the system will be and the harder will be balancing it in the first place.
I don’t know what will happen either, but the track record doesn’t leave me optimistic.
I 100% agree with you on this, and Blizzard knows this, they have acknowledged it. But I don’t really see a fix for this. The main fix is for Blizzard to never make new systems and abilities. But is that gonna be fun, having no new systems and abilities? No.
Therefore we need to trust Blizzard to some extent that they’re doing the best they can to balance it for ALL scenarios in Shadowlands content.
When they say “knobs” they mean the Soulbinds and Conduits. It’s not actually knobs they’re turning to “balance” it internally. These Soulbinds and Conduits gives your Abilities and your class alot of different and exciting things which should balance out the difference of all the covenant abilities.
Ofcourse, that’s the dream, we need to see how it turns out in practice in the game. I don’t think we should immediately judge the system just by looking at what is datamined. Give Blizzard a chance. It’s still Alpha for god sake 
The problem I see with an absorb shield is that it will be balanced in PvP accordingly, so that absorb shield will not be that big of a deal as say a teleport ability. Why would you channel an absorb shield to tank damage, when you can just do a shorter channel to teleport to safe distance and not take damage at all?
Having a teleport and a speed increase is always useful. I do not blame people for not taking them, but knowing how the community works it will likely cause a big issue further down the line to the mid level players and casuals who want to do their daily/weekly M+s. Pathing and tactics will be most likely devised with this teleport ability in mind.
In raids a teleport ability or a blink ability has no equal. With the teleport you can minimize your downtime that you’d spend with pre-positioning to a stacking point, or you can use it to skip over mechanics that were designed to be handled by positioning to specific points/move a certain way. You cannot do that with an absorb shield because more often than not these abilities have negative modifiers like stuns, slows or DoTs attached to them, to make sure that you do not just brute force it.
Seeing Blizzard’s track record I cannot blame them to be wary, and these concerns should be voiced during alpha testing, otherwise we will end up with another Azerite armor problem again. They have a tendency to not listen to feedback, like all of the concerns people voiced during the Beta of BFA that were swept aside.
Hmmm I kind of suspect it’s the other way around… I mean, how many fire mages are out there and how many arcane/frost, for instance?
I’m afraid it kind of will, or atleast it will be much more difficult to join groups. But I do love the idea of Covenants! I will link you the last video from Preach, I think he summarizes pretty well what could happen with Covenant abilities, and it’s just 1 early example of what it could (and if you ask me, most likely will) happen:
I don’t want to make some kind of advertisement or whatever, it’s for the sake of discussion, but if it’s annoying I’ll remove the link.
I’ve decided already to give them a chance, especially since I’ve seen they do have improved feedback tremendously and the interviews gave me the impression they are much more invested in Shadowlands.
This doesn’t mean I’m blind to what happened in the past and not aware of the difficulty of their task though.
What I hope the most is that they take players’ feedback during development seriously and if things don’t look to be working for the Covenants system that they can put pride aside and accept they have to change direction early instead of stubbornly going live only to have to fix the system with patches months down the road.
I am not talking about minmaxing, but giving ones best. What is anyone’s best varies. If you knowingly underperform in a game with other players, maybe you should either stick to solo content or try one of those single player games.
And if you perform as you do, then do not come to complain, when someone does not take you to M+, we have those complains on forums here daily how “someone did not want to play with me.” - its your own call. Just dont complain later.
Thing is in BfA we have already seen it happen - have corruption X, no ? Ok, walk off. Have RIO score X, no ? Walk off. if covenant is good for either this PvP format or that PvE format then roleplay is last what people think about, when looking at covenants.
KNowing Blizzard they cannot ever balance it fairly. They fail balancing classes ever since 2004, and in 2020 they havent managed even remotely balance corruptions, let alone all specs, covenants and all content.
Also masses will always look at the top 5% and believe that this is only way to play, be it the fire mages hype, be it M+ comp, raid tactics and whatnot. Only daydreamer would believe that you can beat your own drum and have full liberty, when group content is on question.
The fact i personally can do funny things like survival hunters, and feral druids and even a warlock in M+, I want to see how many of those can PUG a M15. I mean they can, specs and classes are perfectly fine and not worse than anything else on numbers wise, but PUgs think that druid has to be resto, hunter BM and warlcoks should reroll.
Me too. I hope Blizzard doesn’t bend to ‘those-who-whine’.
Then you’re ‘playing games wrong’.
Games are for having fun. Not ‘be the best’ (because spoiler: you’ll never be the best anyway). And if ‘being the best’ is the only way you can have fun, you’re only setting yourself up for disappointment, honestly.
I have a problem with this part: “if they consistently missed the mark by a fair amount in the past”. That’s just not true. Yes, they sometimes missed the mark. But they got it right loads of times as well. You’re making it sound as if they always screw up… if that’s the case; how did WoW ever survive, huh?
You’re talking hyperbole. Because they missed the mark RECENTLY (but definitely not consistently), but that doesn’t mean they’ll do it again perse.
am i missing something? i thought people were really liking the whole covenant idea? im not really bothering with the state of BfA or Shadowlands atm, but has something happened to change peoples opinion on covenants?
true, but lets be honest, the way the game has been designed as of late, if you want to do some parts, you HAVE to conform or sit on the sidelines. just look at meta M+ or arena? even rbg almost. but it should be like you said. games for fun. another reason why blizzards direction should be scrutinized.
come now, lets face facts. they have had some MASSIVE “missteps” in the last 6-10 years. people really do have GENUINE reason to be worried about the future direction of the game. the fact that classic is still so popular shows that they’ve taken a wrong turn with retail.
while normally you would be right, missing the mark once or twice shouldn’t set your expectations in a certain direction, but blizzard are making a habit of it that any person with their eyes open, and their heart in the game will have warranted concerns.
Depends. Let’s say you have to make a choice between few options:
Those are the only choices.
Which one is the best ?
Well… It depends. Let’s say the content is:
Yea, but what if content was 33% AoE, 33% ST and 33% CC ?
Now, that’s the thing we never really saw.
Yea I know right, I’m with you in this (I used to main an arcane mage, then an arms warrior), but I already struggle to find groups as it is, realistically speaking I would have to spend hours to find the right setup while being MM right now… So I keep it as an off spec, sadly, and I play BM as main spec which isn’t bad, it’s not my favorite, but it’s not bad, just like survival.
That’s why I chose hunter in the end, cause even if I like MM more, I can respec without too much effort into the other 2 cause I like them (unlike mage where I only really liked arcane, or warrior where I absolutely hate fury) . I’m not saying you’re not right cause you are, but most of the time it ends up this way, and if you don’t you have to, keep in mind it’s gonna be more difficult for you - not impossible, but more difficult. I CBA to add that kind of difficulty on top of all the other ones, I’ve tried, and I’ve found that for myself it isn’t worth it.
The track record is there to see: from general class/spec balance, talents balance, Legion Legendaries, Azerite… and last but not least the total clown-fiesta which is Corruption balance.
So no, I don’t think it’s not true, nor that I’m talking hyperbole and I provided plenty of examples in support of this.
You claim they “got it right loads of times”: now it’s your turn to provide plenty of examples supporting your claim.
But you can still do this if we can switch, I can’t make the choice i want if we can’t switch (e.g. if one covenant is better for raiding and another is better for m+ what then? or even worse, if covenant 1 is good for raiding if I’m bm, but covenant 2 is the better one for MM what then?).
I personally prefer MM gameplay to BM’s, but you cannot deny that the toolkit BM has compared to MM is just more diverse. BM gets an extra stun on top of having pet specific abilities to use (slow, I think a root? or movespeed on the pet, or damage reduction on the pet.) On top of that they have a very reliable self heal on Spirit Beasts (which is BM exclusive.)
BM does not have to sacrifice much of anything to have a buff/enrage dispel, while MM has to sacrifice some of his damage in order to make that happen. MM’s AoE potential is in exchange capped to 5 targets, while BM’s output is not, albeit it is tied to the pet itself.
In exchange all MM is getting is a…melee range knockback? The spec’s damage is comparable to BM.
Mind you even if MM would do way more damage the problem wouldn’t be solved, because they are still limited in the amount of targets they can focus on.
On a casual level yes, this shouldn’t matter as much as for one to throw away a spec they like just for the more efficient option. If in the future one aims to delve into higher level content they will be disappointed because the spec they choose to play is limited by design compared to their other spec. The current raid tier is very AoE focused so the higher in difficulty you go, the more this AoE limitation starts to show.
And even then this wouldn’t be an issue. The issue will be the community perception associated with the spec they play.
The cap they put on AoE in shadowlands might solve some parts of this issue however.
The issue with covenant System, is that Blizzard is not in touch with the way we’re playing the game. I mean min maxing took so much important that it’s plaguing Classic. In an ideal world, Convenant should be RP based, not performance based. It’s like factions, faction choice should be driven by RP and love for said faction, not the fact that Horde has more players, thus making the game way easier and smoother.
If they say “Meaningfull choice” then cosmetics are already a meaningfull choice, more especially in a game that is so much focused on collecting appareances, mounts, and so on and on.
My only problem with the Covenants is that I need 16 alts to collect all of the mog sets.
And it is easier to have 4 for Leather than 4 for Mail… ^^
Now where did I hear this one before…? 
On topic though, I’ll remain optimistic about the covenants. I think the idea behind them is awesome, but it remains to be seen whether they can be balanced or not.
The problem really isn’t here if X or Y would be better or not, or even almost balanced, but it starts mattering what community thinks is best for given content.
Some posters that have said covenants are ok are not ones doing much party content either. I respect their opinion, but I believe same time they cannot see why some others do not like covenants - even they are perfect RPG mechanic and very cool on paper (I am 1st to say that I like the idea, but other hand I know this community too well, too bloody well… ).
Yeah, and for the wrong reasons.
Based on what is currently available in the Alpha ppl won’t pick a covenant based on their class ability in raids, they’ll pick Venthyr for the teleport just because it allows you to ignore mechanics.
Based on what was datamined, some Soulbinds are much more impacting than any covenant ability. For instance the necrolord Enemy Soulbind turns your signature shield ability into what should be the absolute strongest AOE spell in the game (690% AP/SP uncapped AOE) altho it’s barely usable in pvp.
Some abilities may be more fun or have a much better synergy with your spec and that’s an issue, but the balance concerns shouldn’t come from the class abilities. In Legion some lego turned specs from trash to broken, with Blizz track record i wouldn’t be surprised if it happened once again.
It is a funny argument to say that character power should never be tied to asthetics. I made it myself as well, because it seems like such an obvious thing to say, but actually there are some major exceptions this this: Glyphs, talents, classes, trinkets (the appearance of effects they pop)
In fact an appearance should be tied to a power so that it’s obvious to see what the enemy is doing when fighting them.
So yeah… covenants are just another layer on top of this.
Now, what’s supposed to have happen when classes are imbalanced? They get changed.
What’s supposed to happen if the covenants are imbalanced? They get changed.
Treat the covenants like classes. It’s gonna be complex to create, but I think it’s gonna be a lot of fun.
That’s not design. That’s players being ‘stupid’, to be honest.
No, they’ve done great things to the game since vanilla.
Yeah, not everything was great, but a LOT of it was.
I just don’t agree. Yeah they made big mistakes in BfA, but Legion was frickin’ awesome imo. It ranks number 1 as far as the expansions go, for me.
Well, that’s down to everyone individual’s taste.
I am fine with class/spec balance and talents balance.
I loved the Legion Legendaries!
Azerite and corruption, yeah I agree… but that’s not a string of long-term problems. They are BfA and yes BfA was a failure for the most part. That doesn’t take away all their previous successes.
Like I said; some people seem to be blinded by these recent mistakes.
Alright, some examples of things that they did well: LFG, LFR, moving away from the raid-or-die scheme, monumental improvement when it comes to customization (transmog for instance) and choice of what you want to play, vastly improved ways of telling the story of WoW, a plethora of awesome dungeons and raids, artifact weapons, focus on specs, incredible improvement of questing, titanforging, Legion Legendaries, mission tables in Legion, cutscenes, phasing, WQs, daily quests and lastly the vast number of QoL features that were put into the game over the years.
Yeah, I know; just like your ‘bad’ features, a lot of these are also down to personal preference, but that’s inevitable with a game. Certainly one which offers so many different things to do as WoW does.
There, you said it yourself; this is a people problem. Not a system problem.
People need to relax and chill the f out. You don’t need 1% more dps to finish a dungeon. You don’t need to have the absolutely BiS ability to do an heroic raid.
It’s time those people changed. Blizzard should stick to their guns imo…
Once people change, things will be better. And if people don’t change; force them. Take away ways to see what other players have done. Take away creating groups; everyone will be grouped by the game. Equality. Bam.
Of course that last part is very tongue-in-cheek, but there is a basis of truth there; giving players power over other players ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS ends up going wrong. 99% of players cannot be trusted with power (hell, make that; 99% of people cannot be trusted with power).