You will regret covenants

Community General Discussion
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Granted that it doesn’t change before release, i’m gonna make a prediction if it does.

Covenants go live, some power have about 40 to 50 % variance between them depending on the spec, problems swapping specs because the covenant you have is good for enhancement, but not elemental, and after a few months, blizzard statement will be something along the lines of “It didn’t work exactly as we wanted”.

It’s not gonna work, hasn’t worked up until now, every time you tried something similar.

That’s about it, some people really like this kind of stuff, because “meaningful choice” Yea, i don’t give a … about that, and it irrelevant anyway, it doesn;t matter if the choice is “meaningful” if at the end of the day it’s bad.

It’s like the people who want single minded fury or similar for their specs, but at the end of the day, it’s just visual, so why not make it possible with transmog, instead of creating problems for loot, in short for me that kind of thinking goes to: irrelevant, but causes a lot of problems, so why even bother.

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You can say the same about the current talent systems. Why bother with having talents when all characters can run the exact same spec? And why bother having different gear drops when we all go to blood mallet to look up our bis and everything else is trash? Why even bother with having different specs when there’s going to be 1 (one) that performs the best? Hell, why bother with different classes when we’re going to have flavor of the month classes anyway and we’re all going to play them…

I guess the answer to this is that we have different playstyles. And the way the game is played is a combination of your playstyle plus meta. Maybe warrior and dh are the best, but you want to play a ranged class, so you’ll play a ranged class and pick among those which one does the best. Or maybe you just want to play a clothie… there’s so many things that go into this.

I’m sorry but “people will go with whatever sims better” simply isn’t true. People will go with the best combination of fun and power.

The point of a game is to have choice, to have an element of challenge. When that choice is gone, the game might as well be a mobile MMO that plays itself.

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Choices are great, I agree. However, covenant choices would perfectly fit into a SINGLE PLAYER RPG. In a MMO however, I feel like there are more negative things that are coming out of this system. I mean, if two players executing the rotation perfectly, using the same spell on the same and one of them is simply doing twice his damages, well, feels bad. And that’s what going to happen with covenant.

Sadly, as a raider, I have to pick venthy because a 1 minute Teleport is just too op, compared to the other covenants counter part. Kyrian is just pathetic compared to venthyr. And I feel like that system was made with “RP choice” in mind, instead of what’s actually happening.

Blizzard claimed they don’t want to create “wrong” solutions, but Kyrian’s pathetic speed and heal potion is “wrong” compared to a true spring, a large shield or a teleport.

Also, according to some nerds who crunched the numbers, the difference between 2 different build performed the same way could reach 50% increase. Had that gap been limited to 2%, I would agree that’s not an issue. But we’re talking about a really large gap that can’t be fixed via tunning.

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Again…Forum experts that probably have no access to alpha know what will happen in shadowlands… :thinking:

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You’re missing one giant aspect of covenants - they will have their own legendaries, and I don’t think we’ve seen soulbinds. We know what legendaries can do and how they can alter gameplay. Blizzard said they’re designing covenants to be a complete package, not a choice you make based on only one axis. Who knows, maybe some legendary from the other covenants gives you matching mobility. Or maybe raids won’t be designed to benefit all that much from mobility (smaller arenas, or bosses and adds not requiring much running around). There’s many aspects to the choice of covenant.

We’ll see. Obviously I want Blizz to nail covenants and to make them interesting. But to me this straight up opposition to having a more complex choice tells me these people should go play Lineage 2 Mobile or Black Desert Mobile or Crusaders of Light. I want PC MMOs to be… you know, PC games. Not glorified mobile games, and WoW right now is moving very fast towards mobile territory. Hell, it almost has autocombat with the corruption system. I don’t like this trend at all, and it seems Blizz wants to revert it in Shadowlands and as long as they don’t mess it up, I support them.

And they’ve shown their willingless to just give us what we WANT. They’ll experiment, they’ll make mistakes, but they seem to be listening. So maybe they’ll listen for covenants too. But this hostility before they’re live simply doesn’t make sense, I’m sorry. Choice needs to exist in a PC game. There’s no ways around that. Otherwise, Blizz should just put autocombat in WoW and stop even trying.

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You know that you made a flawed argument, because different talents and gear actually change the rotation. And general gameplay.

Single minded fury does not, so what’s the point? As i said before it introduces problems for no real gain, if the point was aesthetics, just do somethijng with transmog, and i’m gonna go and expand a bit on this, i think people focus too much on irrelevant things, things that should be there because rpg basically, well that alone is not a good argument.

Do something with abilities like single minded fury or do nothing at all, that’s basically the argument, also they could make it so we could decide if we want 2 h only drops both or only 1 h. But as it is it’s just trouble for nothing.

And also to the one that said something as supremely narrow sighted as “Forum experts that probably have no access to alpha know what will happen in shadowlands” There is the data from testers out there, and also did we need to know until bfa dropped that azerite was not enough to replace what we lost, no we did not.

You don’t have to wait till something releases to know more or less if it will be good or bad, as long as you have something to base that argument on.

Anyway, having a choice is irrelevant when the choice you have to make, leads to bad outcomes. And as it is covenants are overall a bad thing. Cause a lot of troubles, because “muh vision of the game” basically.

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MMOs are about choices, especially choices that transcend mere button pressing. You had Lineage 2 back in the day, one of the most interesting MMOs I’ve played and the combat is just boring. It’s 90% autoattack and maybe you use one skill during battle. The game rocked. It’s not about pressing buttons. It is about making choices. Single-minded doubles the amount of weapons available to you, so it doubles your choice. It’s perfect, especially if they put 2h and 1h exclusive legendary crafts. Then having the mere option of making that choice is a huge benefit to fury, just like it is to DK.

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Ok, so basically the argument is because rpg. Ok. Again, focusing too much on irrelevant stuff compared to the actual problems it brings, i am not against rpg aspects in a game, but not if they make the game considerably worse on other things.

So if that’s your whole argument, then i’m just gonna stop here, because frankly i do not care.

If blizzard decides to do this, they will regret it, because it’s what always happened. They will in a few months say something like “we were wrong, or too hopeful”.

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I literally gave you a gameplay example - 1h and 2h exclusive legendaries, that will have a gameplay impact, and you’re like “ok, you want RPG”.

Bruh, please. As I said - if you take out all irrelevant choice from the game, you take away all choice from the game. It’s that simple.

In raids, if you do them with a guild, as a fury now you have much more weapons available to you - not just the ones that drop for you, but the ones that drop for your guild mates, which will help you get geared up faster. There’s so many gameplay benefits to having this choice.

Why not have fury warrior choice restricted to just axes? All other weapons don’t matter, swords don’t change your rotation. What do you mean both bis are 2h swords and the type of gear actually matters? In fact, why would fury warriors need to be able to wear axes, if all their bis is swords?

See how silly your logic is?

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They’ve already said that they’re ready to completely scrap all covenant character power stuff if it turns out to not be able to be tuned.

So if stuff is still unbalanced by the end of beta i would assume there will be no covenant powers/soulbinds/whatever and covenants will be purely cosmetic

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For the last time, no matter how you color it the argument at the end of the day is because rpg.

You made some supremely flawed arguments here, for one you are not really helping anyone else with the fact that now you can get 2 types of weapons instead of 1, at the end of the day, it’s still a single drop, which you could use or another person could.

Second, cutting out irrelevant choices does not mean that you have no longer any choice, you can still choose the abilities you want to run for the specific type of gameplay you want or content, which is a far more important choice, than, i choose this i stick with this.

There are no benefits to having the ability to choose between 2 h or 1h, for fury at the moment, and it certainly not a choice, it’s rng drops, and then you choose what you wanna use, but at the end of the day, people will go with what does the most damage, and it does not change the gameplay in any way, you just have bigger or smaller weapons, and you swing faster or slower, talk about a MEANINGFUL choice.

Also, weapon type like axe or sword doesn’t matter, what matters is if it’s a 1h or 2 h weapon, that’;s what actually matters.

So either do something with things like single minded fury or just do not bother.

All 3 of your points were flawed.

About legendaries since i do not have enough info about them i will not comment about it. If they actually make legendaries tied to a specific type of weapon id say that’s a mistake.

Also, dream, i don’t know what to make of that to be honest, because i don’t think it’s the best solution, like at all, it’s the kind of thought like “since i can’t have it no one can” or in this case it’s more like “my vision did not work so we are just gonna erase everything”. I think the best solution would be to allow us to have some way to use abilities outside of the covenant we have chosen for the transmong stuff, it’s possible, they could even make some lore to support this choice.

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if you NEED access to shadowlands, just get an MySql bible, and do some precious experiments with an account that dont involve your main. mine 2 cents

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Except of fact that WoW is nowdays more of single player game than actual mmo.

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Game was always unbalanced, even without covenants and soulbind.

Remove them, you still gonna cry why the game is unbalanced, why x or y or z class /spec op.

You still need other people for actual end-game contents.

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Simple question - what is the benefit to be able to choose between a sword and an axe. I’ll wait… because there’s literally zero reason to have that distinction. Where having the choice between 1h and 2h can open up different builds, especially when you start bring in legendary weapons.

Everything else is your own horse blinders that you’ve put on yourself. All choices exist for RPG. There’s literally zero other reason to have them. Take talents - why have the choice at all? Everyone is going to build for the best option (this is your logic for not having covenants). Why have azerite trait choices? All gear should just come with the best ones and not let you choose. Why have stats? You’re going to balance them the same way anyway, and so you should have one stat which is raw power.

All choices exist for RPG only and exclusively.

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Actual end game content is nothing different from baseline content. Most people do not bother to even touch it.

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Wrong, and plenty of people are playing it. So many in fact, that it’s hard to find tanks for the majority of parties. Raid population is also healthy, even if many are just buying boosts. Don’t confuse your lack of interest in the endgame with a general lack of interest. Because that’s simply not the case.

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So noone goes to dungeons, m+, raids, bgs and arena? Ok fam! We probably play different games.

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And some people don’t give a … about your precious ‘BiS’ nonsense. :blush:

So what makes your opinion more important? Exactly… Nothing.
It would be great if different minded people could both get what they want, but unfortunately games (or life in general) usually don’t work that way.

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I think the main issue I see here is that your performance is made to be more important than the level of fun you have.
you can’t really experiment or play in a way that is fun, if it means people will exclude you from activities because your dps isn’t high enough of if you can’t hold aggro.
There’s a fundamental issue at the core of the game, where the grouping system is so restrictive. in freeform fights like world bosses, your stats don’t matter because you are free to join or leave a fight and nobody can boot you or exclude you.

I don’t really worry about grouping up or doing dungeons or raids except when i solo, and my talents and gear and all that is setup how i like it, in a way that makes the game fun for me.
player choice, for me, is true choice.

I’m looking forward to covenenants. I feel sorry for those people who will struggle to get a group because they made a mistake.

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