Locking these passives and abilities behind a hard to change faction/cosmetic choice is dumb.Just make a talent type system where we can experiment and adapt ALL of the covenant abilities to our current situation.If people want to pick the one that sims the highest then let them, there is still nothing holding you back from going off meta and just gives you a lot more gameplay options on the fly.This new system is an illusion of what a choice should be in this game, you should be able to adapt your character to your situation (be that pvp or a cleave boss encounter) and not locked inside a prison of small passives based on your covenant.Not to mention this kills multi speccing, if you want to dps raids but tank and heal m+, you are already behind someone that just picked a different covenant.There is no way that in game power should be tied with cosmetics, all the while you are being locked away from other gameplay options and REAL CHOICES.Not only will it be fundamentally unbalanced, it is an unfun system and toxic gameplay by locking you away from other styles of your class.
Current information we have that is few Druid Conduits is simply not enough to get clear view. Unfortunately effects of these conduits indicates more number differences and not much TRUE playstyle change options.What would be great if there was option to make choice of for example highly mobile VS mostly stationary ranged dps for any given ranged spec with roughly same overall results with gear with balanced stats. And then with further choices one of these options would need crit+haste gear to shine and other mastery heavy. If gear availability would be similar for either then it would be REAL choice. Each of these would likely use different set of skills so when one would became too much stronger then other it would be easier to just slightly buff/nerf most/least used of each playstyle skills to balance those better.As long as differences would be mostly numerical it will always go to mostly min-maxing, but make big differences in playstyle and min-maxing won't hold ALL answers.
Well, that sounds like Glyphs with extra steps.
Oh look, another linear, no relevant options at all system coming up - who could ever expect that?
The situation is not even about covenant abilities and covenant class skill in general. The problem is that people misunderstand optimization. There will ALWAYS be META. The thing is, META shouldn't be the rule, that dictates the way that you should play. META should be a tool to optimize your playestyle and make your life easier and funnier. Pushing optimization/maximization, for yourself and for others, in every single aspect of the game just make people stress out and demotivates them to play. With this, you end up making choices you don't even like or think it's fun, just for the sake of it, when, in most cases, you don't even have to, because you are probably not pushing for world/server/street first. Players REALLY need to stop looking to guides/simulations/professional builds/etc as a set of rules and start use them as a guidance to min-max out your own fun in the game.
Removed
The system isn't even fully implemented on alpha so it can't kill the game yet.Mark my words if it goes through in this state the game will die.