Covenents: Do daily's to unlock the ability to do more daily's.

Imagine having to be Night Fae as Warlock, the class about decay , destruction and demons.

If blizz wants us to stick with our decisions...then they should make the decisions worth keeping

Can we PLEASE have a “History of Languages in WoW”. There’s noooo other videos on KZfaq that explain the history of languages, how they were used, which races spoke what, etc. Came up with this idea when I was looking through my Mage’s spellbook (who I haven’t played in AGES) and saw the old “Arcane Linguist” ability, which lets mages understand other racial languages in game :)

Take all the really good covenant abilities, remove all the crappy ones, make them universal and based on your class or spec (like artifact weapons) and make them change appearance based on which covenant you join. That was covenant choice is solely tied to aesthetic and story, and has basically no gameplay differences.

One of my main gripes of the covenant system is the choice. I picked Venthyr for the aesthetics but my bis is Night Fae. My choice impacted my gameplay so bad to the point my friends won't invite me to their M+ groups because of my choice. And to top it all off if I wanted to change my covenant I would have to regrind Renown so I can get my stamina bonuses and soulbind upgrades. Making a choice should not be a punishment.

The problem is that Blizz, fomr some damned reason, keeps cutting content when the content they do put out is for a limited group of players. 1/4 of players get that brawlers guild for example. Aldor v Scryer was fine because it did not limit what you could do with your time. Order halls had the benefit of making you feel special within your class. Covenants are nothing more than 'which quarter of the game would you like to play?' Very theme park.

If I want to play M+, Raid and PvP. I'd preferably need three warriors.

Just imagine how much time and ressources they spent to create and balance all this skills, knowing that they will be all deleted in next expansion.

The fact it’s so tied to ability vs aesthetic has been KILLING me. I’m into the RP and aesthetics side of things, but I’m also a mythic+ and progression raider demon hunter with Sinful brand 😭

It's not min max mentality when one covenant increases your dps by 35% lul. That's just called common sense and screwing over your playerbase.

My problem with covenants? I don't like any of 'em... they don't fit my knowledge obsessed mage AT ALL. I'd rather go back and hang out in Dalaran than any of the covenants. Or Korthia, the whole keepers thing is TOTALLY my jam!

Conduit energy, incredibly minor, except when you try to play multiple specs and soulbinds are so badly tuned all 3 want the same.

Korthia gives a ton of anima. I’ve done more upgrades this past week than in the past six months. At least they got that right. As for conduit energy, it’s a massive pain if you switch covenants and want to set up soulbinds for more than one spec.

How to fix: all depositted anima is shared so you don't have to start over from scratch if you switch, you can use the main covenant armor you want, and choose the covenant you want to use abilities from. at least it'd be a start

There is no meaningful choice here Being 7% behind in power picking the second best covenant is not a meaningful choice is a punishment

Druids and DKs have it so good - they can go back to their class order halls whenever they want, from wherever they want. Lucky bastards

Your solutions are actually really good and would be nice to have it. I probably would a lot of fun actually swapping the covenent abilities.

I love that little animated skit that you did that was so freaking funny

Yep, i quit wow 2 weeks into expansion just because i wanted to play Nightfae and abilities for my mains dk/priest/pala were so shit and i refuse to play covenants i dont give a one flying fuck about. Like, everyone is shitting on Legion but i had so much fun playing that expansion, its insane when i think about it.

"Meaningful choises" is just another way to spell "More gametime" AKA "monthly sub"

"It is a headscratcher of a restriction nonetheless." It's a control issue. Ion has always had issues with controlling and interfering in how people play their game, and the idea of just leaving players alone and not mothering them is something he is vehemently against. Smarter people than me have criticized Blizzard's pride and ego many times in the past.

The reason these systems happened is because most developers at Blizzard don't play their own games. So of course things happen all the time that "look good on paper" that any player could tell them within 5 minutes wouldn't work. Ion is the only one that really plays, and well he's a raidlogger.

add a Ethereal Merchant that sells you the cosmetics of the other covenants once you unlocked everything from your covenant

Plot twist: Night fae is the best covenant for Shadow and Holy priest.

Making Anima tradeable between your alts (like Soul Ash) would solve some problems.

Been playing Enh shaman for years. At the start the Venthyr was the best overall, and now the Kyrian is after many buffs. However, I don't want to grind from Renown 1 to get to proper souldbinds. So yeah. Nice one, Blizz

Artifact weapons were so neat. I'd like it if they brought those back. Covenants are cute, though I did only choose Night Fae for aesthetic reasons.

These barrowed abilities are a nightmare for alts. Unlocking these conduit abilities and soul bonds takes forever to collect

Hey Hiru, I was a shadow priest main in Legion and I'd love if you could cover how insanely broken Surrender to Madness was at the start, and just how glitchy the insanity system was (sometimes randomly dying, raid bugs, legendary head bug where you could stay on 100 stacks with your insanity drain being very low etc)

hello Hiru, would you kindly make a video about comparative strength of legion artifact weapons lorewise?

Aesthetics definitely played a part in me choosing Venthyr for my DH. Too bad I got shunned by my guild because I didn't pick Kyrian.

They should take the objectively best covenant abilities and just make 3 recolors for them.

As a Fury Warrior I literally never have to switch conduits. But if I was someone who wanted to play multiple specs conduit energy exists just to stop me from doing that.

The problem with covenants and legenadaries is that there's a lot of costs the player sinks into it (time and effort for covenants, expensive materials and torghast time for legendaries) only to find that a patch changes what you need to have on a whim.

I totally agree with your solution. Specially now in 9.1 they keep telling us all the covenants came together to be stronger so it makes total sense to be able to pick whatever you want. Also I dont understand why soulbind don't change with your spe. If two of your spe need the same guy you have to pick a worse one for the spe you play less...

The biggest problem is that the covenant abilities that are fucking best for one spec of the same class can be fucking useless for another spec. So not only are you picking based on aesthetics and your class but also just wanting to just play a different spec might require a reroll in the future.

I'll just play necrolord because I like the aesthetics :D

I think I saw exact same video during beta and here we are today

My alts need anima bad, but my main is swimming in the stuff, it's filling up my bags

The soulbinds are very strong in some cases and do influence the pick (ie. Niya)

Well I gotta say, Blizzard told us we would make meaningful choices, and covenants are meaningful: -you miss 75% of the story when you pick a covenant -mathematically you will pick the wrong covenant 75% of the time

The problem Night Fae The solution Necrolord

There's another world boss in the maw but also it makes sense there'd be more anima around when we're assaulting the maw because that was what was causing the drought

"Cosmetics and buildings cost too much anima" honestly was quite a big problem for me in the beginning of the expansion, but now, when Korthia literally gives thousands of anima, I don't actually know what to do with it. In fact, I think there should be more buildings and more cosmetic items to buy with high amouns of anima.

Idea on how to fix conduit energy : Conduit pages. Just let people change conduits whenever they want. You use the conduit alter thingy to upgrade and put in place your conduits, but the conduit part of the covenant button on your map now has pages you can swap at any time. This ensures that players get to use ALL of the cool stuff they unlock, creates an incentive to experiment since you're no longer being charged conduit energy just to test things, and lets mythic raiders change their conduits mid raid rather than having to go back to their conduit altar to change them every boss (which if memory serves me right is the reason they added conduit energy in the first place.) I'd like to see a system similar for talents too, so if I find a combination of talents I like for specific content I can just make a "raid" page and a "dungeon" page etc etc

I liked the Venthyr, their zone is the best, their ability fits my playstyle best and it's the best one on sims. Soooo it was a nobrainer for me.

Here's how to fix covenants. Since we're all working together anyway, why not add an Ambassador of each covenant in each covenant sanctum that allows you to borrow their power IE your class and/or spec ability. BUT NOT the baseline covenant ability. So if you're Venthyr you will always have Door of Shadows but can never get Soul Shape. It is literally that easy.

See I liked your first suggestion. It is along the lines of what I was thinking. Pick a faction for cosmic or theme you want. But than pick main dps from another faction that you can be assigned to. As a way to boost covenants cooperation to retake the shadow lands. Not much different from other nations military having advisor working with each other.

After years of not playing; this expansion got me closest to getting back into it than any of the other expansions after Mists. But after I found out how much which Covenant you picked matters- and the fact that I’m a DK main who wanted to join the blue angel people- I almost immediately gave up on the idea of coming back. Now I’m just gonna wait and see what the next expansion is like so I can potentially blast through Shadowlands as an Angel DK without a care in the world.

Once i had a conversation with a friend who played wow (still plays in tbcc/wotlk private servers),and he said : You shouldn't be able to switch everything with just a few mouse clicks.I think he ment you shouldn't be optimal prot war and 5 min later to be optimal fury war (this is just an example),this is the "restriction" they gave us

honestly they shouldve just made it a visual choice meaning a night fay and venthyr player of the same class has the EXACT SAME SPELL just the visuals are different, since im a ret pally and venthyr lets go with their ability so in venthyr it looks like it is now, dark red evil, vile looking concencration, in night fay it might be blue and friendly etc

This had to be made b4 9.1 hit. The anima gains in korthia are INSANE. I had to buy the shitty cosmetics to ensure i don't cap on anima. And i've always been using the heal all button. I have all buildings unlocked for quite a while now. It was really easy to push out ember court once they added the +token per lvl of all buildings achievement. The anima shortage part is just simply wrong.

The comparison with the talents at around 8:40 kinda sums up what I think of Conduits in general: I don't care for them enough to go through the hassle to properly do them, they are unnecessary and we should have just finally gotten a new row of talents, which in my opinion, are some of the best source of class costumization

I pick my covenant because of class lore. Druid felt like nature..Ardenweald

Epic top 10 list, top 10 list man.

1) double all Anima gains 2) halve all Anima prices It's a start.

Tomes of Clear Mind should allow us to change the soul binds with your follower.

Funny thing about anima - if you spend enough time in Korthia, you'll start having the opposite problem thanks to the late Anima catchups in 9.0.5. You'll be too busy cringing at the slow drip of Archivist's Codex research and the flagrant assault on your bag space to notice the anima windfall!

The good news with 9.1 is that acquiring anima is now incredibly easy. It drops like candy! I've gotten about 18k total anima between the patches launch and this day which covers about 1/3rd of the total anima I got from 9.0 to just before 9.1. So I think that's one problem solved at least.

Shadow and NF is amazing….

Basically what im gathering is you want to make the cake and eat it.

4:10 i mean i went Deeply Rooted Elements bc i knew it'd be gross in Torghast, and play well with both resto and Elemental. Randomly bursting big heal and doubling my heal it's awesome. And infinite lavas in Torghast or even m+ is cool

You should be able to switch freely between covenants that you have achieved renown 40 in. It's silly that you have to "prove yourself" again after everything you have done for them.

You can choose any covenant you want.... Gets kicked from groups for not picking the 'right' covenant. Thanks blizzard

I really feel like an npc could be added in raids/dungeons/torghast that could let you change soulbinds I really enjoy playing a necrolord Vulpera with hearth kidneystone for 3 hearthstones but going into torg/m+ that tree kinda sucks

So I'm a Pally. I went Kyrian because it had the best ability for M+, unfortunately not so much for raiding (Venthyr). I wish I could be able to swap between the two since I do raid as much, if not more than I do M+. That being said, the Kyrian aesthetic is what I enjoy more so I can kinda live with it. But I do wish I could stay with the Kyrian but swap out the ability I use depending on what activities I am going to be taking part in On the note of Anima. I actually famed a ton for anima before the 9.0.5 patch to upgrade all my structures before the increased anima rewards were given. (And man do I regret that now that it's so much easier to get) My problem now is that I actually have too much anima. I have stopped doing world quests because of the anima cap (they should get rid of that like they did for Korthia research). Since i already have bought all the cosmetics from the vendor, I'd really like another way to spend the anima that I now get in spades from Korthia (seriously, you get thousands per day now).

I had a similar idea of having a separate choice for your covenant ability and your covenant story/cosmetic/aesthetics. I’d be fine with covenant utility abilities being tied to the chosen covenant campaign as well. I also think they should lower the cost of cosmetics (grinding daily for offerings is ridiculous early on) and have the campaign/renown cosmetics as the only covenant locked ones. If I work to unlock an extra Venthyr mount or cosmetic, in addition to the ones given to me, I want to be able to use them. Even if I change covenants. I thought that would be the case with the new mounts in Korthia, but sadly they are locked too. I just want to be able to ride the “Lord of the Corpseflies” when I want! Lol

Hiru, what's the name of the music at 16:41? please :D

thanks for this video

I do really wish you could have different soul binds builds with the same soul bind, one for pve, one for pvp, etc. Some trees are just a preferred playstyle and some conduits are very niche and imo should allow you to freely switch depending on the situation. For instance as a destruction warlock, I have single target and aoe conduits and now I have more potency conduits and given that the new raid is a mix of single and cleave it would be nice to switch depending on the boss fight instead of having to go back to my order hall or just sucking it up and using what I have on.

Thb my issue with them is that I want to try everything. I would love to try a death and decay setup with deaths due. Or thr kyrian dot with 2h obliteration build for frost dk raids. Its just so not doable that you end the xpac without having played with half the stuff in it.

16:00 look, talking about choices, apart from decreasing the cost of items purchasable with anima, Devs should simply add anima as a reward in more activities and let players choose whether they want to get gold, anima, Valor points or whatever other currency is useful to them.

On the story side, during Legion our class order halls were something special for our classes. In Shadowlands covenants are about people we really don't care about and didn't even know they existed until now. We care about our class and specs since vanilla, Blizzard wants us to care about covenants as a meaningful choice and based a lot of the systems and stories in Shadowlands on them.

I have an idea! Top ___ Lore That Hasn't Changed Since Vanilla. Could be entire zones, individual questlines, plot elements, character designs. There's a lot of cool potential here for nostalgia, and nostalgia equals clicks! Just pointing out all the most fascinating lore that hasn't been recontextualized, even with all the new lore.

also as long as they make all the covenant cosmetics free for all (as in, after the next expansion you can transmog venthyr and nightfae stuff without being in that covenant) after this expansion im happy

Let me try to repost the deleted comments: The harder it is to change something the more thought and emotional connections you will invest into it. I really like the covenant system. It motivates me to level alts. I changed covenants few times too. Not a big deal once in a while. Never heard of anyone choose a covenant based on Soulbinds. Conduit energy? I hardly ever change conduits.

Conduit energy has never been a big deal to me. You can still swap your conduit paths freely, it’s actually changing out the conduits that’s restricted.

Oh no hiru they finally got to you

The anima cost for things is so absurdly high, I became absolutely completely and utterly uninterested in anything to do with it or my covenant. The only investment with anima I have anymore is to deposit it so I can remove it from my inventory. Utter failure in design there.

The common thread with Shadowlands: "They don't want you to..." do this and do that, like no mounting in the Maw. And thus we didn't want to do anything. It's the "they don't want you to" thinking behind the decisions. To be fair, they're not entirely wrong. Thematically it makes sense, we're not supposed to swashbuckling through Shadowlands and treating Torghast like a hotel for a staycation, but it won't work as a game. We don't want to be shut out and be suppressed by the systems. It's about the positive sense of adventure. It's about.. fun. The systems are supposed to be liberating, to give us different flavours of powers that we've never tasted in previous expansions. I don't mind all these systems if they were just simply less frustrating to gain and play with.

Just as a aside, when did WoW get so damn complex! I just used to be exploring the world and to do cool quests like the “Linked” or the whole “Indiana”in Cata? Unique quests, not daily quests or grinding?

HERE WE GO

Picking an allied covenant would also be fine. You main Night Fae with the buildings but have access to the Venthyr ability too. Like the old dual specs.

I had the same fillings as a druid. Everyone expect me to be night fay, but after I played with them for a couple weeks, I started realizing that they are not for me. Ability is cool, but characters, transmog and the city was off. So I came to Venthyr and I enjoy everything with the exception that my ability is almost useless

honestly I just choose covenants based on my characters aesthetic because numbers can change at any time and you can't do anything about it

For the "Problem" with Anima i'd like to say some things: 1. Blizzard stated from the beginning on of Shadowlands, that the Cosmetics and so will be a Feature for the whole expansion... If people REALY want to have all cosmetics fast, they can grind their buts of in Dungeons and so on to get more Anima. But the System was intendet from the Beginning for a long term side-system. 2. Whenever I log in and only do my daylie Korthia-Routine... i go out of it with like 2-3k Anima... aditionaly Raiding, M+, Command-Table and so on... If i would do all the World-Quests too I think I would go out of the ID with like 15k Anima every weak... even without hardcore grinding or so... And I really don't play WoW 24/7 or so... just casually collecting Anima as a sideeffect ^^ To the Covernant-Problem all together: Jeah, I wish the Class-Ability wasn't tied to the covenant like it is... As Havoc-DH it was at the beginning best to play Venthyr for Raiding (espacially in Single Target) cause Nightfae was bugged... than they fixed it and nightfae became best covernant for Havoc... if I really wanted to min-max i should have to Change to the Nightfae... even though i don't like the Nightfae as covenant (To much druidism, to less Demonthings like i like it as DH ^^) I realy like the Style and so on of "The Hunt" (Nightfae Class-Ability)... but Blizzard fixed the Ability at a point I didn't want to change anymore cause I already build some of my Covenent-Things, trained many of my Fellos on Command-Table and so on... I wish the Would give us a extra-Talent-Row like you said in Video, where we could Change the Class-Ability depending of content we do or what we like... it also would help with the balancing-Problem, cause the didn't HAVE to Balance everything this hard, cause you could CHOOSE what you want without the Change of the Covenant... if they want us to restrict it a bit they could make it (like you said in video), that you only can Change the Classability if you go to the Covenent of which you want the ability from and ask to get it... so if you want Venthyr for Raiding... then go to Revendreth and ask Renathal to get the Class-Ability... if you want to go M+ after this and want e.g. the Nighfae-Ability, first make a way to the Winter-Queen and ask her for her ability... and so on... also in this they could make it, so each Specc has the Ability tied to them... so if i ALWAYS use e.g. the Kyrian-Ability as Vengeance-DH I get it in the moment i Specc from Havoc to Vengeance... even though I had the Nightfae-Ability as Havoc... This would be SUCH conveniant and also didn't "force" people to play a spezific covenant depenting on which is best in which content (they play most)....

I wanted some of kyrian mogs for my holy priest. so I went with them, I tried the fae but the ability is just irritating micro managing to me

What application do you use for D&D? That looks awesome

I went venthyr originally planning to PvP has disc priest but ended up raiding and doing keys as holy priest. I know night fae is technically better for priest but the covenant ability just seems like a pain in the ass to deal with and I can’t be bothered trying to get back all my renown or anima after months of playing every day. As someone who likes collecting as well, the amount of anima/offerings needed to collect everything from each covenant is absolute insanity and whoever decided on the values at blizzard was apparently dropped on their head too many times

How to fix: Make covenant Abilities and soulbinds the same for all classes with cosmetic differences. Make covenant Armors available for every armor class once you unlock it once. Then covenants are only chosen by Story and Cosmetics and you only need to play it once to unlock all the stuff and you can choose the covenant you want even if you want to play high end Meta. During Legion, I only had a Mage lvl 110 but I grinded all the other Classes and did the Artefact Challenges in the Mage Tower, even thought I was a new player and no clue how to play WoW. But grinding the covenants for Armors and those Cosmetics is just beyond ridiculous imo because you do 4 times the exact same stuff if you are a completist.

When your little ghost guy said he was going out into the community to ask people how they felt about conduit energy, I 100% expected you to splice in Taliesin or Evitel going "It was a shitshow...obviously" Because...yeah, that pretty much sums it up, tbh.

What also sucks is that if you're in the min/max section of the player base whether it is pvp, raiding, or m+ your bis covenant can change any day. Some people switched because of a covenant legendary being bis and then it gets nerfed or another is buffed to be the new bis.

what's the music at the beginning? I always wanted to know he uses it a lot

What is that piano music that is heard throughout the video, e.g. 11:30 ?

So I recently swapped convents and didn't have all the buildings maxed [2225] but close to it... now I have none. I also had my new covenants buildings about half complete [3223] on another toon. Account wide covenant progress AND 1 class unlocking that covenant's transmog unlocks it for all armour types or otherwise I'm gonna have to grind all 4 convents on all armour types. OK, I probably won't but I will max all on my druid/perma-main, but there are somepeople who will. Everything else, couldn't care less about.

I would like to go Necrolord for Raid DPS (actually I wouldn't like to because I enjoy my current signature ability and flavor), but I can't because then we would have no Venthyr left to play SD and HoA :')

It's kinda strange. As an Assa Rogue the best Covernant are the Venthyrs. But as an Outlaw i had to pick the Necrolords. But i am very happy with the Nighfae and i guess i stay a NF till the End of SL. Cause i am to lazy to get the reown till 45+

Does he still DM dnd sessions? I would definitely like to see how he does them.

The conduit energy system is something that could be taken out, yes, but at the same time I have not seen anyone actually running out of it myself. So it bothers nobody either way. As for covenant choices. There are two issues here that cannot really be solved. Firstly, you can't have a meaningful choice if you are allowed to swap around whenever you feel like it. Secondly, players don't know what they want. There is a clear choice between aesthetic reasons and min-maxing reasons. I feel that players should be able to make their decisions themselves, like we do now. Only you know what is more important to you, performance or cosmetics. And then again, the performance difference is minimal if you don't do high end content. If you already do high-end content then you don't even question yourself just go to the best performing one. High-end content is not +15 / HC raiding anyway. You can basically pick anything for that. I personally chose my covenant for aesthetic reasons but I am still able to Mythic raid up to a point. But that's okay for me because I know I don't want 10/10M clears anyways, I don't have that kind of time. This is something that others need to understand as well. You are very minimally limited by your choice unless you are actually going for 20+ keys or full mythic raid clears. And even then, some classes get away with it. As for anima, I currently have a fully unlocked covenant hall and I am sitting on like 32k anima. The Korthia dailies/rares alone give me like 3k every day. I have yet to purchase any cosmetics tho because I don't care but I feel like anima stops being an issue as soon as you unlock whatever building you want (that was the oribos teleporter for me, ever since I have that I just don't care and earn anima passively).