Because that’s what makes the game interesting, the choices and the weight they hold. Otherwise… you’re just a donkey pursuing some carrot on a stick and I don’t find that fun, especially when the carrot gets deleted as soon as you get close to it.
Nonsense.
As it is right now, you can be lucky and have BiS-Covenant-Ability and BiS-Soulbind on the same covenant or you can be unlucky and have to decide if you want the one or the other. I’ll ignore the problem caused by Hybrid classes. 
Could be fun but in the end you will not really be left with “meaningful choices” but rather an illusion of choices. Not very different from classic actually. Where even though you have tons of options as to how to play you will end up in a situation of “These abilities with these soulbinds and conduits dwarf absolutely every other choice” meaning that you will have no choice. With your system the difference between somebody playing the optimal build and someone playing for fun will be insanaly higher than the current covenants.
Limitations are needed to create actual choices. If you aren’t on the best covenant to run M+ you are unlikely to swap over just to do a few runs. Instead you need to adapt to what your covenant is good at.
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There are other ways to make the game interesting without also making it annoying to do very different types of end-game content or change specs. You can’t please everyone, but you don’t have to completely disregard half of the player base.
This is pure RP perspective, WoW has never been pure RP and in it’s current state, it holds so much more in it that makes it completely unreasonable to base a significant part of the game on a single RP choice. On TOP of the choice of a class, keep that in mind.
This will still happen. Covenants change nothing about this. Item level will still go up, M+ seasons will still be a thing, new raid tiers will come. Locked covenants fix none of this.
Sorry but that’s not an argument, as long as everyone get’s the same soulbinds on their covenants, while some speccs profit more from a specific one compared to others. They can also be lucky and have their BiS-soulbind on their BiS-covenant for every content, invalidating your argument again.
They could. But given that soulbinds are just numbers that is the easiest thing to fix. Besides it wouldn’t be out of Blizzards control to do things like “Kyrian arcane mages now do 5% increased dmg” should they be needed.
But they wont, BfA has proven this with the existing systems.
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All you need to make a different choice at a different time is different circumstances. The only limitation is the amount of options and that might as well be infinite and it will still be a choice. If anything, making the optimal choice for what you want to do is so much more meaningful than just slapping something in hoping that you won’t hate it in M+ and love it in raids.
Oh you mean like the illusion of choise i have now ? I have said that i like to focus on lore, cosmetics and endgame, so essentially on papper i should have a choise right? Exept from these 3 only 1 has actual consequences , the endgame/performance. So instead of me making my choise based on what covenant i want to go in this choise will be made for me by the blizzard balancing staff.
Yes i agree, there will alwayse be the cookie cutter build but atleast with an open covenant system there is atleast room for experimentation. While most likely i will be doing the cookie cutter one for proggresions or pushing keys i will also be free to experiment on farm nights and low keys.
Also by freeing up covenants i will be able to join the covenant i actually want, i will be able to play my other specs.
Soo if your covenant isnt good at raiding you shouldnt raid is what you are telling me ? And thats ok to you ?
Actually the soulbinds are the hardest thing to change. Soulbinds are the same for everyone across the board from the same covenants, so lets say warrior is getting more from a trait in the soulbind if you nerf it for warrior you nerf it for everyone, yet still the warrior is getting more benefit from it than everyone else.
Nope. Given how many options you would have with being able to mix and match things from all covenants you will end up with a bis setup for patchwork, another for cleave, another for pvp…
That system would be a true balancing nightmare. 144 classes? Nevermind that! Lets have over a 1000 different setup options for each spec!
No you just raid even if your covenant isn’t as good as another. Good example right now is mages. Fire is of course the fotm spec but there are plenty of people doing progress a frost. It’s not optimal but that’s what they like to play so that’s what they do.
If only half of the conduit system was class or even spec specific…
Why should they balance them? They didn’t balance essences/corruption/azerite traits, so why should they balance conduits as long as you can choose “the best” way to play.
Or I’m lucky and it doesn’t matter.
They aren’t you’ll always want red over yellow/blue so it doesn’t matter.
Which part if i am not playing my CLASS optimally i am not having fun dont you understand. Good on those people that like to play frost, i for example enjoy all 3 of my warlock spec and dont have an issue with switching to the FotM one, however i understand people who would like one spec but dislike the others and so it becomes i want to play my SPEC optimally. With covents it becomes i want to play my TALENT optimaly. Why should Jimmy the warlock who is not a better player than me do more DPS because i chose vampires and he is an angel ?
Because vampires suck.
Less so than trans angels tough.
Was a sucking blood pun. ;(
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Yeah i know, but i wanted to bring up the trans angels.
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Those red ones are spec specific mate. They are exactly what I’m talking about. Also it doesn’t matter which ones you want you can only get 3 red ones max.
Yes and next expansion that will have to change to wanting to play your covenant class optimally. If you that is truly the only way you have fun than either level multiple warlocks or work on your attitude towards playing a game.
Just play better and that shouldn’t happen. If it does than reroll. You have no problem switching to the FotM spec so that should be a breeze
Again IS/TD rank3 vs everything else. Are you sure that wont happen again ? Are you really sure that a warlock with an empowered double execute drain soul will not outperform a warlock with a regular drain soul ?
My attitude in playing the game has not changed ever since it started and i have never been punished for that. Why is that now i will be ? Also there is a Plan C- me and similar minded players might just make a very “meaningfull” choise about our subscriptions and we will see which group was right after all the hard way.
So what? As long as red is always output you’ll always want red over blue/yellow class/specc doesn’t matter (maybe excluding tanks).
Regarding current soulbinds 1-2 per covenant, per role, are viable while the others are just inferior compared to the other ones
And another for a short single target fight, long single target fight, strong single target with a bit of cleave, strong two target cleave, strong burst AoE, strong sustained AoE, strong agaisnt demon hunters, strong against affliction warlocks, strong against resto druids. And in PvP you would also have build to counter specific builds. It’s not simple AoE, single target and PvP. There’s too many variables.
And the thing is, players who want to min max this will min max. And those don’t, won’t. With covenants locked, if you go into PvP and you face an enemy player that has such a build that completely destroys you, you’re just screwed. You could have prevented it, but you weren’t even given the chance. PvP balance will be a nightmare with locked covenants.
And how will balancing work with locked covenants? Are raid bosses going to be extremely easy to the point where your choice doesn’t matter? Are they going to be balanced towards specific covenants so we are forced into them? One raid group will have an easier time on a boss than another group just because of the “random” combination of covenant abilities on top of their class setups. Based on the balancing, some guilds will inevitably end up being handicapped on almsot every single boss during progression.
The amount of systems is a nightmare to balance in itself. Covenants are almost a lose-lose situation, but unlocked covenants so far look like the lesser evil. PvP is probably already doomed and PvE will either have to be extremely easy so that is doesn’t matter what we pick, or extreme unbalanced for different choices.