I guess I must be one of those strange one who already switched covenant on some characters so that I can unlock every cosmetics... yeah I know it is useless but at some point covenant will be useless and it will only be about cosmetics so I am preparing
Percentage statistics don't necessarily capture the full picture here. Looking specifically at MM hunters (my main), for example, the trend over the last couple weeks since 9.0.5 has been a rather steady _decline_ in the total number of players. However, that decline has been captured almost entirely by Night Fae, with Venthyr seeing nearly exactly the same number of MM hunters playing it as two weeks ago and Necrolord and Kyrian seeing only a modest decline. For actual numbers, data from yesterday has a bit more than 10k fewer MM records relative to March 15 (and ~70% of those appear to have swapped to BM, which saw an increase of roughly 7k over that same period), which is a 2.3% drop. Over that same period, Venthyr increased from 15,444 to 15,515 (+0.46%), Necrolord decreased from 13,084 to 12,777 (-2.3%), Kyrian decreased from 84,927 to 82,478 (-2.9%), and Night Fae decreased from 326,587 to 319,114 (-2.3%). So the effective representation of Venthyr went up a bit, but only about 70 people swapped to Venthyr in that period. What happened was a bunch of people from the other covenants (roughly evenly distributed across them, since they all had similar percentage changes) swapped to BM, and a several thousand more simply stopped playing hunter entirely (up for debate whether they swapped to other classes, or stopped playing period). Venthyr didn't rise in popularity so much as the people playing it simply weren't as inclined to swap to other specs or classes.To some extent, this makes sense. You also see a substantial increase in Venthyr SV (even just over the last 2 weeks, it's +661 people, +14.8%), which is objectively the worst covenant for the worst of the 3 hunter specs for tuning. If you're already playing the worst of the specs, little reason to optimize the covenant, and vice versa. The people playing those covenant and spec pairings are clearing in it more for the story, aesthetic, etc. rather than the performance, so balancing changes are going to largely bounce off them without much impact.
Is the information out there to figure out how much of the change is due to people switching Covenants vs other (switching characters used, Decline in play - as mentioned above, etc.)?I have a Kyrian Druid because I chose 4 characters at the start assigning one to each. It is not important enough for me to switch to Night Fae but i could see that for others.
I'm guessing the pallies that went Necrolord just wanted to hang out with Mograine
yea. im glad i stopped wasting my time and money on blizzard.
I despise Ardenweald, I'd love to watch the whole place burn. I hate the NPCs, I hate the aesthetics, I hate the sanctum, I hate the look of the gear, all of it. But I'm a Resto Druid with a Balance off-spec, and Convoke is just too good. I'd much rather be Venthyr, which would fit my aesthetics much, much more, but I'd prefer not to gimp the rest of my raid group. So I just keep going along in Ardenweald, praying daily for the Jailer to extinguish the whole place from existence.
It would be interesting to see how many druids would be Night Fae even if it was the worst covenant for them.Pretty sure convoke is going to get nerfed in 9.1 :/
From the data for favorite covenant for the 36 specs:Night Fae - 15Kyrian - 8Venthyr - 7Necrolord - 6
Ppl "dont care" about their covenent choice ONLY if they don't care about rading, M+ and PVP. Ofc some ppl just do world quests and random bg. But this is MINORITY. Like 2%. Blizzard didnt see difference between 2% and 98%. And sometimes they are confuse between that percents. Sadly but they are completely do not hear their community like it was in first few expansions. They are "better know what we are wanting". And again and again we see them wrong.
I've leveled Warrior, Paladin, Hunter, Rogue, Demon Hunter, and Mage so far. When I finally leveled a Druid last week, I was going to choose a covenant based on fun zone/aesthetic - until I tried the Night Fae Convoke the Spirit spell. It's so spectacularly strong, I'm forced to be another damn Night Fae. So sick of that campaign/aesthetic.
Unless you're trying for top 100 or pushing very high keys, it doesn't matter what covenant you choose. Play what you want. But if you are trying for high end content (like CE), you're hurting yourself and people you play with by choosing the wrong covenant. Not saying it can't be done.
Kyrian fire mage and Necro aff lock checking in. Why? Because I like the aesthetics and RP backstory.
Cries in druid
You'd think that after ignoring playerbase concerns on Azerite Gear Blizzard might have learned to take vocal concerns over balancing issues more seriously.
I'll never understand why so many WoW players are happy to have the game play them, rather than them play the game they would otherwise.Whatever happened to making the best of the team of people you like playing with, and making it work?Many times, the more you stick to some data-driven meta, the more you will struggle to get your end-goal achieved... if for no other reason than you finding that the elusive RDPS you 'need' for your perfect team doesn't have the quantity of players happy to play the Class/Spec. combo you're looking for, and you're too impatient to wait for someone to get the requisite skill level... or you miss out on someone, because someone became available & joined another team, instead.When players play what they want, how they want, you'll usually find that the job gets done - very rarely you will have to concede that the "dream team" you're looking for isn't available & no amount of badgering players who are giving their best, to do better, will get you over a hill that you're team just doesn't have the skill to surmount.