World of Don't use your Main

[Amonet-stormrage]

We are not asking them to remove covenants, we just want to switch the abilities. How is spliting torghast into wings less difficult than splting covenats and power.

[Lynlia-silvermoon]

it still retains its core identity.

While covenants core idea is based that its a meaningful choice you make. Not just an extra set of “talents” you switch around.

*If you take both wheels off an bicycle" is it still a bicycle? Or just some random metal welded together?

[Amonet-stormrage]

@Lynlia-silvermoon

While covenants core idea is based that its a meaningful choice you make. Not just an extra set of “talents” you switch around.

Sooo they cant change due to “phycological perception”!!!? But they can redesign it technologicly. Are you kiding me ?

[Rayzens-stormscale]

@Thýri-doomhammer

I see that you don’t understand what I’m trying to explain.
Gear is something that prevents everyone from being optimal, that’s why I used that example.

I do not care about the level of gear that i am at.

There is nothing i can do about that, that’s up to RNG.

There is something i can do in regards to choosing the RIGHT abilities, for the RIGHT job.

I can do that in BFA, i can’t do it in Shadowlands.

@Thýri-doomhammer

But since that doesn’t work, let me give you another example.
You’re playing a retpal. From what I’ve heard, it’s the wheelchair spec in SL. So, you’re going to be very suboptimal if you stick with that character. In fact, from what I hear, it’s even possible that you’ll be the worst… So somehow optimally underperforming. Gratz!

And this is my decision to make. I made it. I’m fine as a ret pally.

@Thýri-doomhammer

And that’s kinda my point here.
When you choose a class, you cannot really switch unless you roll a new character. It’s a “definitive” choice (at least as far as that character is concerned). And you have advantages and disadvantages with each classes, and since all classes are different these characteristics are different. So one may be optimal for something another one may be optimal for another type of content.

I already chose a class, i don’t want to “permanently” chose a covenant as well. I have zero interest in this “meaningful choice”.

@Thýri-doomhammer

Sadly, Blizzard seem to have great difficulties in balancing classes properly against PvP and PvE, so sometimes, we end up in situations like the end of BFA where firemage is king.

Then what’s the point in keeping them locked? Just so that the discrepancies are more evident? The difference between the “try-hards” and “try-not’s” to grow bigger?
Setting themselves up for fail, 100%.

@Thýri-doomhammer

Now, regarding gear… When you choose to equip that trinket or this weapon or whatever when you begin a M+ instance, you cannot change your gear now (unless you leave the instance, but you won’t just to change gear). So it’s a “definitive” choice (at least as far as that M+ dungeon is concerned).
With that AoE trinket you’re going to be dealing tons of AoE damage but you’re going to underperform at single target. Or vice versa.
Or… If Blizzard did introduce some new mechanics, maybe DPS classes would not only be DPS, they could be something more and maybe you’d need some speed boost at some point or extra defensive CD, and these trinkets or other pieces of gear can give you that.
Same goes with talents.

And that’s fine with me, i really don’t care either way, i’m not interested in doing any switches of gear in M+. If you’re interested in that, go ahead and make your own thread.

@Thýri-doomhammer

Yea but what about raids ? In raids, you can switch gear between each fight ! Yes. But take a look at a fight like Wrathion, for example. It’s mainly a ST fight with one or two AoE phase. So what do you equip here ? AoE or ST ? Again, you’re suboptimal for at least one part of the fight.

You TEST out what is needed. You EXPERIMENT. Does the AOE part last longer? Are you killing that in time? Is your DPS in ST high enough? You change to what you want or what is needed.

@Thýri-doomhammer

At least, suboptimal compared to what could be if you were able to switch gear and talents whenever you wanted, even in combat.

So, what’s new with SL ? kinda -Locked covenants and whatelse.
You’re still suboptimal, as you always were. It’s just a new layer of suboptimality, a new “definitive” choice.

And now you arrive at the heart of the issue.
It’s just another “layer”. Well you may want it or be fine with it. But i am not and you and Blizz can’t expect me to be fine with it.
And i’m sure it’s not only me who will find the systems trash on Live.
But i guess we’ll see, no?

@Thýri-doomhammer

• me: Why is it bad ?
• you: Because you’re suboptimal !
• me: Yes, ok, but why being suboptimal is bad ?
• you: Because if I’m suboptimal I won’t be taken for X or Y content !
• me: Ok, but that largely depends on how players will behave with that new thing. But more importantly, let’s imagine a situation where we would all be 100% optimal. We can even imagine two situations:
  – we’re 100% optimal all the time, regardless of gear. Hence gear is useless, hence remove gear alltogether, except for transmog. Why not. That’s what MOBA are.
  – we would all be 100% optimal once we have BiS gear. So that game remains a RPG.
  What happens now ? How do you achieve that. It can only be done by having 3 classes and no specs, no talents. 1 tank, 1 healer and 1 dps. I guess noone wants that. So, you are going to be suboptimal, always.
  So, again, why is it bad that covenants and whatelse are locked ?
• you: Because I want to be the best.
• me: you’re not. The best is and always will be asian. Ok, joke aside, I just mean it’s very unlikely you’ll be the best. There’s only 1 place.
• you: But I want to be the best given what I can do. I want to give the best of myself !
• me: Yes. That’s admirable. But you’ve said it : the best given what you can do . You can’t switch covenants. So, you’re not going to be as good as if you were able to switch covenants, but you still can do your best given that you can’t switch covenants.

This assumes that i don’t care about doing the best that i can under my Class and SPEC that i chose at the character creation screen. I have ZERO interest in another choice with covenants, i really don’t.
You also assume i am afraid of players not taking me, cause i’m a ret pally, guess what, i’ve played ret since TBC and i have no issues finding groups. I queue up when i do other stuff. I don’t care if I look for 5 minutes or 30 minutes.

@Thýri-doomhammer

Now, I’d like to add, what are the benefits of this covenant-locked feature ?
Imo, right now, the game is dominated by some kind of meta-gameplay. You’re not playing class, spec, talent, gear, trinkets, corruptions, whatever… Well to say it simply: you’re not building your character because you enjoy it like that, you’re building it because it’s more efficient that way.
Ultimately, some players are switching main characters not because they want to try new things and enjoy multiple classes, they do it because their favored class is no longer the FOTM.

I think Blizzard may have introduced that covenant thing so that everyone is suboptimal in a way or another, rendering the concept of a FOTM class/spec meaningless.
If they succeed, congratulations to them. Seriously, that would be the best thing to happen to the game since its initial release in 2004.

And covenants won’t change this either, it’s wishful and naive thinking. I’m sorry, but locking players to play in a certain way will backfire on them.

[Lynlia-silvermoon]

Isn’t that whats many things are pretty much based? A lot of classes abilities are similair to each other. Heck all stuns are pretty much the same. Yet people will still think that “hammer of judgement”(the paladin stun. What ever its called. Haven’t played paladins for a loong time) is still “different” than a rogue’s kidney shot.

Yet the mechanic is the same. it…stuns?

[Rayzens-stormscale]

Nah it’s worse in some ways, better in others.

[Amonet-stormrage]

Aaam nope. There is range, duration of stun, is it really a stun, CD, is it ST or AoE. Also there is the thing who has the stun and what it can do with that stun, for instance warlocks have chaos bolts and fire mages have pyroblasts essentially 2 really hard hiting abilities but they diferentate of how its integratess into the class, i can go on.

[Lynlia-silvermoon]

The core mechanic is the same. Its not a root, its not a silence, its not a disorient.
The stun removal trinket…er pvp talent. Works the same on both of those.

[Amonet-stormrage]

Well then your perception is very bassic, sry.

[Lynlia-silvermoon]

And you are going into deep details. Of course I there is a tone of differences and etc.

Same with covenants. Kyrans are obviously different than Necrolords and etc.
Yet the covenant core… basic idea is that its a choice. Not a talent row.

So to edit it it up. Removing the “choice” part from covenants is the same as removing the “stun” part from kidney shot or hammer of justice.

its not the matter of tuning and changing the little details. Whose CD is longer, shorter, resource costs and etc. We are changing the core fundamental part…

[Rayzens-stormscale]

Yeah but it has different downsides and upsides to the rogue one.

Hammer of Justice

Upsides:

• Like longer range
• No resource cost
• Can’t be dodged

Downsides

• Magic in nature so it can be dispelled
• Longer cooldown
• Can be resisted by cloak of shadows

There might be a few more, these are just from the top of my head.

[Amonet-stormrage]

I have a very simple question, which covenant are you picking ?

[Lynlia-silvermoon]

For rogue it was I think necrolords or something. Like the theme.

For my arcane/frost mage. Bitey boys(ventyr) or those nature guys.

I am very bad with remembering names. Tolerate me please.

[Amonet-stormrage]

@Lynlia-silvermoon

For rogue it was I think necrolords or something. Like the theme.

So essentially you are picking the best one and are one of the few that they like their covenant. Guess what im not.

@Lynlia-silvermoon

I am very bad with remembering names. Tolerate me please.

No worries i misspell and missname things all the time.

[Lynlia-silvermoon]

@Amonet-stormrage

So essentially you are picking the best one and are one of the few that they like their covenant. Guess what im not.

Didn’t knew it was best. I have very very limited knowledge whats best and worst for each class. I had already chosen the necrolords for rogue waay ahead before that recent topic which Anna posted(build the ripcord or something?) which said that its also a good choice.

I chose purely on what I like

[Grigory-burning-legion]

@Thýri-doomhammer

Acti-horrific-vision

That’s good one.

@Thýri-doomhammer

They also seem to be pretty slow at addressing fondamental issues with the game that pretty much everyone have talked about since years… Except when some dude create a youtube video that goes viral about it.

@Thýri-doomhammer

It may be that Activision is trying to give a good image of the game, that would be why they’re quicker when blatant issues that are known for ages by the players get public.

But… That kind of behavior (only taking action when your image is at stakes) is somehow sociopathic (at least if we would talk about a person and not a company).

That’s the corporation culture for you: You can do whatever you can get away with, as long as stock prices are good. Keep smiling and feeding people BS so they keep paying for the crap they get. Talk in Legalese doublespeak whenever you can, not many people will dare call you out on that, and even if they do, you can ignore it. Until the fire under your butt gets too big to ignore, then you send PR monkeys at them.

And it just so happens when you’re a rich USA corp, you can buy the best lawyers in town to BS your way out of pretty much any legal trouble short of failed coup.

And yes, it is the very definition of psycho/sociopathic behavior. Read “Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work” if you’re interested in how corporations reward & promote this.

@Amonet-stormrage

@Lynlia-silvermoon

For rogue it was I think necrolords or something. Like the theme.

So essentially you are picking the best one and are one of the few that they like their covenant. Guess what im not.

That’s 2nd pro-Covenant locking rogue of 2 outspoken rogues I’ve noticed in the last few threads that, by pure happenstance, goes Maldraxxus. Pressing X to doubt right now.

[Praetorian-sylvanas (Praetorian)]

@Clairesse-twisting-nether

You mean locking the current talent “tree” that is basically just pruned abilities that used to be baseline slapped into talents?

I mean crate talent friction to normal talents, first respec 100g…second 200g,third 400…fourth 800, fift 1600, sixth 3200… seventh 6400 and so on (decays over time)

Whats purpose of talent if players can swap them to be “perfect” for anything, why just not disable talents completly than?, it looks to me entire procedure to swap talents in that case is unecessary step. Why talents if they are so easy swapable? How noobs cannot understand that its unrealistic to be “perfectly” speced to anyhting you encounter? Dear people you cannot have sheeps and money in same time, l2 deal with pros and cons of your specs.

[Amonet-stormrage]

Thats the problem, the people defending this system have not done almost any research of how detramental this system is. Almost no one is against the covenant lock if it was just lore or cosmetics, but we are looking at huge differentials in troughput, utility and type of ability (Aoe, ST, CC, futa).

[Amonet-stormrage]

@Grigory-burning-legion

That’s 2nd pro-Covenant locking rogue of 2 outspoken rogues I’ve noticed in the last few threads that, by pure happenstance , goes Maldraxxus. Pressing X to doubt right now.

Yeah thats also the point, people that are defending this are either RP-ers or people that are coincidentally picking the best one.

[Praetorian-sylvanas (Praetorian)]

If player dont know how to value utility vs number…then this player is not worth any respect… its just common pleb who copy / pasted his spec from some random guide site… numbers = only idiots can think numbers is only good in this game… l2 value utility