A Suggestion about the Covenant Choice

[@ottojacobi3059]

I approve of the current system. As you said everyone has responsibility, the responsibility of an actual meaningful choice in this case. Opportunity cost is something people have to come to grips with, we need to see how they are balancing and designing content, I don't see these as sub classes/ sub roles because covenants are more like the topping rather than the filling of a class, it gives you some extra tools help you deal with specific scenarios, that varies depending on covenant and class. It's up to blizzard to make sure those tools are all equally useful, even if one choice gives you 3% more DPS, maybe taking the higher survivability option would save your healer some mana, preventing a wipe over the course of a raid. Or, if you choose a mobility option, you can do fight mechanics faster, allowing you to resume DPS quicker. I can understand wanting to try the abilities out a bit more, But maybe what they're planning on doing is uniting the covenants one by one through the story, you can choose a secondary covenant you want to reach out to and team up with in patch 9.1 or 9.2, allowing you free switching between them or somesuch (your cosmetics, base of operations, dailies and such would still all be locked to your primary choice, however).

[@buffydaslaya]

You are completetly ignoring the people who only play one character and people who just like to collect stuff, we are getting fucked by the current system and I will not level up a duplicate cloth hero just to collect the mogs from the fourth covenant. Keep in mind that it's the collector type players that buy shit from the store so money will talk here.

[@ottojacobi3059]

@@buffydaslaya I didn't even mention alts. My logic applies for single characters. You have to make a choice.

[@buffydaslaya]

@@ottojacobi3059 This will be the first time the game will tell you that your character can't do something that others of the same class can do. If this goes live the non-hardcore players, who are the majority will lose their minds. Anyone who fails to see this are deluding themselves.

[@ottojacobi3059]

@@buffydaslaya ever heard of scryers and aldor?

[@buffydaslaya]

@@ottojacobi3059 Scryers and Aldor had shoulder enchants locked behind their rep, not a player ability.

[@LDaemontus]

Honestly, I see the choice as simple: its no different to how locked in people were when Legion dropped the Order Hall system. The moment you picked your class, your artefact weapon, that was it. You were locked in based on your class and what spec you chose and how you progressed was based around it. If you wanted a different choice, you *had* to make an alt, level/boost that alt and once again, progress through. The Covenants only difference is that this time, you have to pick one option out of 4 per character. You're not solely locked based on class, you're locked to whatever fits the character you have, what lore or aesthetic interests you most or mechanical abilities. Blizzard has gone out of their way in Alpha and now Beta to provide ways to make Retail more alt friendly and make levelling far quicker so, my theory with Covenants is is that, like Legion, it's meant to generate the idea of replayability where people will continue to sub and continue to relevel new alts because they want to experience the other questlines. Then again, I don't honestly care about the extra or lack of % per stat. I'm choosing based on what makes sense for my main/alts and the roles I prefer and sticking with it.

[@thedreadexpanse3817]

I honestly thought that about the alts and replayability as well unit l I head, and correct me if I'm wrong, (I honestly hope I'm wrong) but aren't they getting ride of the Xp boost on Heirloom gear? I get leveling has been significantly retrofitted and streamlined, but considering there are 4 abilities, as well as Soulbinds which encourage playing 4 of one class, to get the full range of game play in one class, the removal of heirloom exp boosts seems pretty significant. As for Legion, I would agree, if the only constraint was "What talent/abilities will I use today?" instead of "You must use these, Abilites/Soulbind for the expac." I mean yes at the start for a short time everyone was locked to and Artifact locked and on the practical side it was far from smart to change weapons unless you had the time to grind, however the ability to change was always there and easy to apply with literally no other repercussion other than the amount of time you as a player would have to spend investing in said weapon. The Covenant choice is designed to be more permanent and if the choice was just lore or aesthetic I would just level alts to get them, but locking this amount of class flexibility behind full leveled alts, makes me wish for Artifacts because at least I could play around with those when I wanted to. ( When I do dungeons personally prefer to experiment, % is nice but trying new and abstract builds is more fun.)

[@LDaemontus]

@@thedreadexpanse3817 Well, from what I understand it, with the exception of the socketing we get from doing content for our soulbinds, they seem to be adding in system changes that allow people to play around with specs, meaning they can have different soulbind trees/soulbinds for changing their specs. I haven't checked how much control players will actually have but I do know its been said maybe on Wowhead that those options are there for those who wish to experiment. And yes, the xp boost is being removed from heirlooms in favour of putting different traits/abilities on them. According to Nobbel and others, the levelling time has been cut down to around 6 or so hours, maybe a day or two at most depending on what levelling method people use (dungeons, questing, doing each zone vs doing zones until they met the cap then moved on). When they say it been cut down, they truly mean it's been cut. That's without the final, pre-release fine-tuning for balance. So, personally, not needing to grind for heirlooms or having a reason to get them on my alt accounts (roleplay reasons) feels like a relief and even more so if levelling doesn't feel exceptionally long when Shadowlands comes. When we were sold SL, we were sold the idea that on our first run-through, we would be introduced to each zone in a linear story as a "try before you buy" before reaching max and end game content when you finally locked in your Covenant choice. So, while I understand people don't want to be locked in, it's not like we weren't being given a chance to test try the Covenants while levelling, either. But perhaps that's me and I'm able to make a choice and stick to it based on what I like. Seems Blizzard least made Covenants changeable with the use of a simple quest, so a the end of the day, everyone comes out of it happy (hopefully).

[@Lucatzz]

yo TDE, the wow youtube career is a hard fought one especially if you don't wanna sell yourself out for subscribers. thank you for keep making content with well thought theories. youtube careers start slow, but with your hard work we will see your channel bloom, peace!

[@thedreadexpanse3817]

Thank you. It means a lot.

[@catrinastars]

I think the Signature Abilitys should remain exclusive to each Covenant but the class abilitys should be swap able. I love how they are expressing lore with each ability though. Take the Kyrian hunter ability, resonating arrow, is a reference the how important bells are to the Kyrian. To the point that their hunters can use them to enable the use of echo location to never miss lol. As for people running strait Door of Shadows groups just to skip trash? I say embrace it blizz, people are going to do this any ways. So why not make the Signature Abilitys work differently in group content. For example: one person uses Door of Shadows and the whole group gets ported to the selected location. The Fleshcraft ability works as a shield for the whole group if their standing behind the player who casts it. Night fae everyone in the party shape shifts. you get the idea.

[@kent4833]

The significance of covenant abilities have been overblown. Mythic raiding and 2400+ pvp may be more selective of covenant choice, but I hardly foresee it being a problem for those doing heroic raids or m+15. With that said, restricting choice, especially in an MMO, never _feels_ good. It might just be better to add a row to the talent tree that revolves around covenant abilities, allowing players to pick and choose as their needs change.

[@RichardJamesStayAtHomeDad]

What do you think of the first ones?

[@thedreadexpanse3817]

I think they're a very very intriguing concept, that have a lot of lore potential and hint at something very intriguing about the Cosmology map and Chronicle.

[@HavocHounds1988]

I have to disagree. Thing is you can switch covenants if you so wish, it will take a little work to rejoin one you left, but nothing insane. And any progress you have with your soulbinds and renown will not be lost. I think if they make it so that any soulbind and any covenant ability being able to be used will dilute the system completely. They are already looking into changing soulbind traits to make them all closer in power level. It bothers me how so many people claim they want more choices, and choices that matter, but in the end all they really want is for someone that has done all the work for them to just tell them what to choose. No sense of discovery anymore. Top end players are probably going to be bouncing between covenants a lot, but I don't see the need for average players. I really have lost faith in the community when it comes to this kind of thing. I for one have already decided which covenant I'm going to go with on several of my toons. I raid heroic content and do M+, and I don't think that my choices are going to hold back my raid team or anything of the sort. I think the fear is being over inflated by content creators, and top 1% players. How many people that are so worried about the system have even tested it? Not every spec is meant to be good at everything, and that is a good thing. It would dull the game so much. And allowing access to any soulbind or any covenant ability would just make deciding on a covenant feel less impact full since you get all the abilities no matter what. To me it feels like someone asking for spells and abilities that other classes have because they are better at certain things. Why can't all classes have a vanish, and a stealth? How about all classes have an immunity etc. That's the way I see the argument to allow using any soulbind and covenant ability regardless of what covenant you are a part of. And it appears there are conduits that will augment the abilities as well, so single target ones will have possibility to actually cleave, and so on. Like an example that Preach gave, the DK ability from the Kyrian Shackle the Unworthy normally is a single target attack and how no DK would go Kyrian because of this. However there is a conduit that was found in the data that would make it so it's effect can spread to other targets near your main target. And I imagine more conduits to enhance the covenant abilities will be added.

[@thedreadexpanse3817]

Its funny you mention discovery because that's part of the reason I made this suggestion, I'll mix and match talents, Azerite traits all the time and essences not to be optimal, but for the hell of it, just to see what happens, I know what the optimal stuff is, but frankly it usually gets boring. I find the way Covenants are currently designed to be strangling my ability to do so. I mean in relation to game play I didn't like legion artifact weapons for the same reason but in comparison to Covenants they are god send. Artifacts may have taken forever to complete but at least I could experiments with them on the fly. Covenants are designed to be permanent and where I do appreciate the fact you can switch them, why there needs to be a bigger lock than legion is restricting and off putting to say the least. As for all classes being the same, I know precisely what your talking about and its why I made this suggestion. If Covenants didn't encompass the main role and have such varying utility with in one Covenant. (E.g An Immunity that effects surviveability and a teleport that effects Movement. ) (Those were just general examples by the way) and instead focused on specific sub roles (E.g. movement)(Once again another general example.) It gives the Devs the chance to create abilities that are highly distinct, allow for choice, and where Ok I won't have access to everything, at least I'll be able to full experiment with the abilities given to with my chosen role instead of. (Eg. Dps, Movement) instead of being stuck , with 3 other abilities that will effect my dps and or movement locked in other covenants. The idea being to meld both distinction and practical gameplay into one.

[@HavocHounds1988]

@@thedreadexpanse3817 I can understand all that. I still feel it would dilute the system. But, I also feel I seem to be in the minority that feel this way. I just don't agree with the wanting everything available mentality that a lot of people do.

[@LDaemontus]

This comment here sums up what my point was. It's not going to overly matter unless someone hyper focuses on it and as it's been stated, abilities can be improved upon by how people level their soul binds and what conduits people use, which has also been changed to a library system (I think) so people won't have them destroyed, not that I cared about conduits because to me, they're no different to the relics we got in Legion and the ability to sell them was a good way for quick gold (30 to 50 gold per relics. Still sell them now just for the extra coin). At the end of the day, once the actual average player gets their hands on SL, most people worried about this will find that the general population won't even be worried, too busy having fun with how flashy the abilities look both spell effect wise and power-wise. Which was the whole point of class abilities in the first place. Not to simply "Just" do better, but to give players unique (ish) feeling of granting some new toys to play around with *if* they wished. The biggest problem I still see for classes as a whole is the GCD because that's the one change BFA brought in that hasn't seen any call to be changed yet that still dominates a good deal of abilities and quite frankly, it was felt by almost everyone who played WoW and completely killed some class builds. It's not fun and its the one change that doesn't feel good that Blizzard should be reverting/changing on. You can have more tools in the workshop but if your essential tools don't work when they should be working, then there's a problem that needs fixing.

[@Ordo1980]

I think if they make the conduits swappable + the acquisition less random it's more than enough. If they want to change anything, then make the covenant choice and conduit change even harder.If you make it doable but grindy and annoying --> the min-maxing crowd will do it anyway and then whine on the forums and on YT that they were "forced" to do it :P So make it permanent or use a long CD like 1-2 weeks on changes what you want to use as "identity".

[@thedreadexpanse3817]

If you liked the content leave a like, comment and share. Also for those who are regulars I'm trying out a new recording program so feedback on the audio would be appreciated.

[@mrtianflo7728]

Can you do a lore speculation from info weve found for Shadowlands? ^_^

[@sophiejones7727]

None of you get it. Your covenant choice has jack shit to do with your performance. The covenant abilities are either functionally identical to abilities your spec already possesses OR replicate the effects of an ability your spec already possesses but with a slight twist. Go look at them on WoWhead. It is a single ability, when you have upwards of twenty on your bars. It cannot possibly have any meaningful influence on your throughput: but hey, might be useful. Your CLASS, the way the game is right now, already restricts the contexts in which your character can perform optimally. It is already impossible to build optimally for all types of content. That has been the case since Legion. BUT, this is balanced by the fact that group leaders want content done today rather than next week. They do not have time to wait for the optimal player to show up. So will everyone please quit worrying about that? Thanks. The examples for sub roles given in this video do not correlate with the covenants. Those are your soulbinds. Which you can swap as easily as you swap your talents. Survivability, support and movement. Those are basically your soulbinds (though they also have some throughput options). Survivability, support and movement are also what the conduits are about. Again, conduits are as easily swapped as gems. The only improvement I would make to this system is to make conduits craftable (the same way gems are, so people don't have to grind as much). Those sub roles already exist in the game and have always existed to some extent, talent tiers have often offered the choice between these three roles. What Shadowlands is clearly doing is making them more important and making speccing for them easier. It is adding depth to something that has always been in the game, but largely ignored by most players. So...a sub role system? yes, but without a sub class system. Why? because that fixes the problem with classes the game has faced since it's beginning: one class has always been optimal for each given role in any given type of content. They have tried for the past fifteen years to solve this by changing the classes. That has not worked. So what are they doing? adding more roles. They've been doing it subtly since WoD. The legendary rings were their first baby steps towards this. Some of that worked... and some of it didn't. The universal Legion legendaries were a bit more fleshed out. The conduits are the logical extension of this: they offer speccing for survivability, movement, support or throughput. Speccing for throughput leaves you vulnerable and unable to create synergy with your teammates. Sometimes that's okay, when you're Pugging for example. But when you're in a team, you'll want to spec for the other things sometimes. After all, what matters is that the boss dies and you don't (you may have noted that dying in a raid feels a lot worse than it used to), not whether you were top dps. Sometimes, sacrificing a chance at glory for your team IS going to be the right call: and if you have a good guild, they'll recognize you for doing that. If they don't, maybe time for a new guild: because that is not a game design problem, it's an attitude problem and life is too short to waste on trash people like that. Making support, survivability and movement into proper sub roles turns the problem into the solution. One class will always be optimal for each given role, and that's okay because each class has it's role. Just the kind of elegant solution you would expect from the guy who made his name by proving C'Thun was impossible.

[@thedreadexpanse3817]

With all due respect, I understood most what your saying before making this content, I cut most of it because I would of been reiterating points already stated by others time and time again. But before I continue I know those examples don't represent covenants, the idea was to show possible examples of what I was talking about, I'll try to make that clearer next time. Now, I have to ask how often have you pugged? Because yeah your right there is definitely those who want content done today, but there are an equal amount who will wait for hours until they get what they want, and I feel like your forgetting to factor in there are such things as bad groups, that can arguable make an experience worse, than waiting until that one DH turns. (I know this is the point at which people say get a guild if you want good groups. And to a large extent I agree, its one of the reason they exist however at the same time its not always viable to find or play with ones guild.) As for there being always being an optimal class over the others, obviously, even with my suggestion, I was under no delusion that was ever going away. "Sacrificing a chance at glory for your team IS going to be the right call"... I wasn't joking about being an Ele shaman for a long time, when your specs dps is seen to be barley mid tier but you have the lowest cd interrupt in the game, you learn to interrupt (as one example)or get kicked for being dead weight. (Or stay and just feel bad because you aren't contributing.) I didn't mention conduit acquisition and longevity because A: The problem people have with them has been reiterated time and time again and B: I know its being worked on and nothing has been solidified yet. I have looked at the covenant abilities both universal and class specific as well as the soulbinds and conduits. I know the 3 examples, display properties of each spec/class and how unofficially certain abilities have been placed into certain "sub roles"/categories." The question I asked knowing all though is, "If all of this is already there why do players accept Classes but not Covenant?" I could say its because their entitled and just don't get it, but then I wouldn't be giving credit to the myriad of players, at all levels, who are currently playing the game and have probably noticed everything I just mentioned because its honestly not that hard to notice. The answer I came to, which you might disagree with, is that Classes have a lot of fantasy attached to them, which the covenants check off, however the difference is a formalized game play roles. When you pick a Class you ether get opportunity to play One of 2 roles or One of 3. These formalized roles are balance around each other and players know what their getting into when they pick these roles. Covenants don't have that structure, in the slightest, the class ability adds to the main role, the universal adds to utility(insert whatever unofficially sub role you wish), and the Soulbinds depending on which you pick and what conduits you pick will influence both. Now if covenants only influenced utility in a minor way, there current form wouldn't have been noticed or could have been tweaked, hence the Venthyr Nerf, however when you look over the abilities that just influence utility and some of the combinations. Unless some abilities are turned into re-skins the difference between them is going to be on par with Class differences. This isn't mention though covenants also influence the main role, creating this awkward situation where players are practically picking another spec for the expansion, unless they want re-level from 30 to 60 again.(Slight hyperbolic). Imagine creating a Warrior picking Prot and only being able to play Fury if you spend X hours re-leveling, likely by yourself. I can't imagine you or any player would find that really fun. Now the easiest option, ironically, is to just re-balance things, however doing so for the most part defeats the purpose of adding these ability choices to begin with, where is the variety, where is fantasy, were is the impact? It slow disappears in the name of balance, creates dead abilities and makes the choice feel bad. This is where the suggestion comes in, because they are already out there (unofficial sub roles) and have been built upon over expansions, formalizes the sub roles and build covenant like concepts around these roles, similar to classes. Say if Bastion was just the support covenant, and the game-play of Bastion was focused around support abilities, similar to how Ret paladin and or Enhance Shaman, in their own unique ways are meant for Dps. The situation created is now the Devs can focus on making unique impactful abilities (Universal, class or spec specific) for classes that pick Bastion that don't need to be re-balanced into oblivion in relation to other sub roles. Furthermore and the thing I mentioned in the content, is if Blizzard goes down this path, it opens the avenue of creating expansion based mechanics designed around these sub roles per-expansion. Just as an example, next expac, certain types of damage like fire or frost damage make a return, in a sub role fashion. So as mechanics go they are not going to out right wipe groups, but the will add difficult, as in maybe a healing cool down is recommended in the dungeon journal however instead, someone who picked the Frost sub class actives their spec specific sub class ability and mitigates the effect. I hope this response has clarified a large portion of the reasoning behind my suggestion.

[@sophiejones7727]

@@thedreadexpanse3817 this has clarified a great deal, and I'm sorry I made you feel you needed to write an essay. I should have made it clearer that I was less talking to you, and more to others. I almost always pug. If I get a bad group, I find a better one. If I can't find a good group, I make my own. I've never gotten kicked from a group simply for my build, nor do I think I ever would. Granted, I have enough game sense to know what my build is good for and what it's not. I don't seek a group for content where my build would be a hindrance. But there is a massive gulf between "optimal" and "detrimental to your group". Most builds fall somewhere in the middle. As for your point about classes that's just now how classes currently work: and I'm talking about post-Legion here. Classes have become what specs once were. They lock you out of ever being optimal for certain types of content. Granted this effect is larger for the multi-role classes than for those with only one role. However it is true of everyone. If you're going to be kicked for being non-optimal, it will be for your class not your covenant. On the flip side, every class is optimal for something nowadays. To your point about warriors. That simply would not happen. How many abilities does a class have? 25? 30? one ability is merely flavor. And, having looked over the covenant abilities let me reiterate: they are either functionally identical to your current abilities OR very similar to your current abilities. To use two examples: Death's Due (unholy DK, night fae) is functionally identical to Death and Decay, while Blessing of Seasons (paladin, night fae) is very similar to the other Blessings. These are, I would consider the extreme ends of the spectrum, but neither of these abilities substantially changes how your class plays. Thus it is your class which will determine what you can and cannot be optimized for, not your covenant. And when I say "you" here, I'm talking to and about us normal players. For the top 1% of players, perhaps covenant will matter. They will also make all the alts required because that's what they signed up for. You or I won't do that, and we also wouldn't be doing content that would require it. The game that the likes of Preach play, is a completely different game from what we play. That is very important and worth remembering. The game's design has to work for you and me, Preach can play all day every day if he has to.