A result of experimentation being discouraged by the restrictions from launch, so looking up what’s the best was the safest option.
Most might care about performance, but that doesn’t mean they only care about performance. It’s just that we were not allowed to find the best balance of both performance and gameplay due to the restrictions, so we just picked the top performers form the get go.
I prefered it when you used to parrot everything Kevin Jordan says. Then at least some of the things you said sounded like a thinking human brain came up with it.
No disagreement. It just means that many people won’t even try different covenants and most of those who try will get back to the optimal one.
You know the #1 problem with covenants? That there is a perf discrepancy at all. The abilities should have been decoupled from them. The change that they are doing is nice, but it is a band-aid instead of a real fix. And it is a band-aid instead of a real fix because a real fix is more difficult to do.
That’s it, that’s the entirety of 9.1.5 - a collection of random fixes that take five minutes to implement each, they are fishing for whatever positivity they can get without breaking their necks, on the cheap.
Yes, covenants have fundamental issues in that there’s player power in them in the first place, or at least how much there is of it. That doesn’t mean it’s not somewhat of a good sign that Blizzard had finally decided to do the bare minimum now, instead of the x.3.5 patch.
I don’t think anyone here is arguing that covenants are a good system as a whole. It’s garbage, fundamentally. They’re just making it less garbage, and I’m still looking forward to at least trying out a whole lot of new stuff on new characters that I haven’t yet played, without all the hassle that exists now.
Good. Let them squirm until they realize they can’t just do whatever they like and ignore feedback.
Only a fraction of the population does pvp, and while it accounts for some change in the statistics, it’s like 2% necrolord, despite it being their best covenant. It’s just a covenant that buffs your party, and that’s why it’s underplayed. It doesn’t sim well, because it doesn’t buff you at all, but the party buff it provides is insane.
The figures for arms are: kyr 33 - nec 5 - nf 29 - ven 33. The best covenant for pve is nf, that’s why it is high. The best covenants for pvp are kyr and ven. The best covenant for offspec prot is kyr, by far. The varied distribution is not a counter-example here. It is merely a reflection of the fact that in the case of arms, PVE, PVP and offspec prot emphasize different covenants. Other specs / classes are different.
It’s not. The best is necrolord, but as I said - necolord buffs others. So it doesn’t sim as well for you. If you only check sims, you will be at a severe disadvantage compared to people who actually experiment.
And this experimentation which will be encouraged by 9.1.5’s changes will shift the meta.
Timing the necrolord buff with other people’s bursts and cooldowns outperforms literally any other covenant a warrior can pick. You can even stack some warriors in the raid to get more of that buff to more people and it can get crazy. Nightfae is good, but it’s not the best.
But that’s beside the point, like yes obv people will go for the path of least resistance, but having options is objectivelly better than not having them. So lets say I decide to do some stuff as Kyrian, then realize that Oh no its progression night, better go swap back to NF and after the raid is over pick up the Kyrians so I can continue to do the stuff I was doing before.
I agree It’s the simplest fix, however in the long run its the correct one, think about from a 10.0 perspective when the abilities/soulbinds no longer matter, would you prefer to able to unlock all the cosmetics to on one character and be able to use them on everything (from the same armor type) or would you rather having to use 16 characters ?
Again probably or maybe its a new direction, no argument that its not an easy fix, however time will tell.
Quoting myself just to show you that all your “statistical data” is uselees becuase you can’t even comprehend statistical terms, let alone that outside factors can influence statistical results significantly.
I’ve wanted timewalking M+ for a long time. As it is, timewalking is pretty meaningless for any character I play regularly. Legion M+ will give me the chance to do something different AND possibly get meaningful loot from it.
Being able to freely switch between covenants will be a huge QoL improvement for me. There won’t be any more having to slog through a key that’s made harder by my entire group of friends being NF. One of us can switch to whatever is needed for the zone. Or I can change to a different one for variety without having to think about the return to my usual one being timegated. Free switching also makes sense now from a story perspective. (It made sense from the final chapter in the 9.1 campaign when the covenants all came together to provide their sigils, but better late than never.)
I don’t agree with the people who say these changes are being made - finally - as a result of player demands and it should have been this way from the beginning. Player characters are always limited in options and power at the beginning of an expansion, and we gain power and flexibility as it goes on. This is nothing new, and it makes a lot of sense. If we got everything at once, the people who say they are bored within a couple of weeks of a new patch coming out would be bored 2 weeks into the expansion and have a whole 2 years to wait for another one.
Do you really think they will not do borrowed power together with a big grind to it in 10.0? Because they will. And I guess they will not do covenants exactly, but we’ll continue to have issues, just different ones. As in, right now we are talking about having to roll multiple characters if you are interested in PVE and PVP, and in 10.0 we might perhaps not have that particular issue, but we will have a different issue, eg, will have to farm every week for hours to keep current, or will have to roll a particular spec to be meta with significantly reduced possibility of playing as non-meta, etc.
Seriously, I have absolutely no doubt that 10.0 will also have several big player-unfriendly issues. Why? Because they don’t know how to design the game so that it both brings them money month to month and does not fight the player. They only know how to design the game in an abusive way. More abusive at the start, less after a year, etc. The issues that make us all go “damn, what the hell??? fix it!” are there by design.
I genuinely think they’re already scrambling to come up with ways to appease the players in the next expansion. They can’t afford a 3rd flop in a row and toning down on borrowed power, the single most complained about thing for a while now, is the most logical first step.
I expect a lot of caving in from now on, at least until they regain some trust from their customers. Meaning they can’t afford to ignore feedback during alpha and beta yet again.
I disagree. They are “caving” mid-expansion for three expansions now. This stopped seeming promising. Things will simply repeat - abusive design at the start with some strings removed later on because hey, this is a cheap feature and let’s try to get some freewill back. But let’s see.
Except this time they’re in deep crap to put it mildly. They have been doing this for a while, yes, but my point is that things are very different for them now and they can’t afford to continue the way they did in the last two expansions, unless they are either trying to kill the game, or genuinely clueless and stupid.
We also have new leadership and most likely huge changes within the WoW team, so there’s also that. Not only a lot of room for change, but also the need for change.
I have no reason to believe anything will happen in 10.0 until I see something about it. I can only hope that it is good, I have stated multiple times that I am indeed still sceptical when it comes to Blizzard and their designs or “visions”, however I am giving them the benefit of the doubt one last time.
I am fine with that as long as its atleast “different issues” and not the same “fun and exciting new system that we are doing for the 4rth time” and they are willing to listen and act accordingly when does issues are identified by the players. I am fine with Blizzard experimenting, I am not fine with them being stubborn and “making us like” something.
And I again I cannot see the future so I do not know if this will or won’t happen.
That is absolutely fair on your part.
People were telling me “Oh but you have not seen the whole system” or “Oh its not ready yet, it will be balanced at launch” when i was vocal about the covenants way back in 8.3, even people in my guild were saying “You are too negative, It will be fine”, only for those same people to quit shortly after launch, never the less my reply was “No, I have seen this countless times already, It’s was bad in alpha, it is bad in beta and it will be bad at launch”. I still stand by what I said back then and think that those people were wrong, however I have seen absolutely 0 things about 10.0 to have an opinion about it. And yes I had dopes at the end of Legion that blizzard learned from it, then I was hopeful that after BfA we could get something good, I can be wrong and I cannot guarantee you that 10.0 will be the long awaited good expansion, but unless I see something from it cannot do anything but speculate and hope that they have learned their lesson this time. And like Clerance said they no longer can afford to stay in their echo chamber and ignore what WE the players want.