wow Door of Shadows Teleport Covenant Ability Nerfed on the Shadowlands Beta

[Stan 5,021]

Door of Shadows, the Venthyr teleport (Covenant Ability), has been indirectly nerfed on the Shadowlands Beta.

Door of Shadows makes you teleport up to 35 yards forward and has a 60-second recharge and 1.5-second cast time.

The ability has been a hot topic of concern for a while now. The main issue brought up by the community was balance, mainly because the Soulbind Power Leisurely Gait made the Door of Shadows teleport instant cast and that would be a little too overpowered for a Covenant Ability, 

As a result, Blizzard has nerfed the Soulbind Power in the latest Beta Build 35256 Blizzard to grant another charge instead of being an instant cast.

Leisurely Gait - Door of Shadows is instant cast has 2 charges, but its cooldown is increased by 30 sec.

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[durdyenglish 298]

2 charges makes this even more of a M+ necessity for skips... unfortunately I don't think that's the solution for this one, too many people will require it for dungeon invites.

[Lawrenz 105]

anyone who expects me to choose the goth bois will get a big middlefinger from me.

i seriously agree with Ion here (from the discussion with Preach), that they include those abilities in the covenent choice, so that people won't be able to require from you, to make the optimal choice, because there is much more to this decision than just "teleport best for m+ duuuuuuh".
It could even be that the covenent class ability from venthyr is crap (lets look at mages mirror f. e.). I would never choose venthyr with a mage, just for the teleport's sake, because the mirror sucks in PVE. Even if they rebalance it, or whatever, its just an example.

[Senou 40]

With these changes and the info provided by Preach's testing from the videos I assume that covenants will break the neck of the upcoming expansion. It's hardly possible to balance everything out and just as @durdyenglish said, it seems to go down the path of a necessity. I do like the venthyr theme and the ability for my warrior but thinking about it as a must have is a huge let down against all other covenants and classes.

The best solution would be some sort of council which lets you choose your covenant and the spells without having one huge package. Maybe place some of each faction in the new main city where you can pledge your vow to them and then equip the covenant spells on some sort of table with a global CD so that you cannot port back to respecc all the time. This would counter the constant change due to raid encounters but opens the possibility to swap for the desired content. e.g. pvp, raids and M+ or even world content or just to mess with it in Torghast.

[Lawrenz 105]

34 minutes ago, Senou said:

Maybe place some of each faction in the new main city where you can pledge your vow to them and then equip the covenant spells on some sort of table with a global CD so that you cannot port back to respecc all the time. This would counter the constant change due to raid encounters but opens the possibility to swap for the desired content. e.g. pvp, raids and M+ or even world content or just to mess with it in Torghast.

But that's exactly what is wrong with players. Everyone is tryharding so much, that it becomes silly. If they make any abilities available to everyone, they will have to use teleport, and that's it. If you dont, you suck.

The only way to fight this demanding behavior of the players, is to put some power connected to many other things behind one big choice you have to make, and i like that. I understand it fully, and it will bring some "consequence" to the players, which is a word long forgotten by the "degenerate playstyle" of modern gamers.

[durdyenglish 298]

Maybe the solution is you pick your which covenant you want to champion each week. It locks you into the pick for 7 days, and you can only earn rewards and progress content for your active covenant. By putting in place a 7 day cooldown on the swap, you can make the choice feel important but not overly risky. No one wants buyers remorse on such a big decision.

This let's you choose which focus you want to have for the week while allowing you to experience a more full range of content and earn additional rewards on a single character throughout the expansion. 

Don't have a penalty for switching weekly and reduce (not eliminate) catch up mechanics to covenants you don't focus on so just so you don't progress all four equally without giving three of them the time of day.

Soul binds become talent/artifact weapon trees, conduits become essence/relic replacements. Nothing is ever destroyed, but choosing to keep a covenant, soul bind, or conduit inactive doesn't provide any imbalanced or unwarranted boosts to power. 

The choice that Blizzard wants comes from where you choose to focus most of your time. If you want to deep dive into a covenant's rewards and abilities, you'll need to focus on it and neglect the others. The other option is a "jack of all trades, master of none" approach, the equivalent of having more essence choices all at rank 1 instead of having a hyper-focused and much smaller set of essences all at rank 3.

Players that want to represent elite members of their covenant can choose to do so and their power within that covenant will reflect that choice. Players that want to spread their experience more loosely across the expansion can as well, but their overall power level at any one moment may (appropriately) suffer for it. 

[durdyenglish 298]

2 minutes ago, Lawrenz said:

I understand it fully, and it will bring some "consequence" to the players, which is a word long forgotten by the "degenerate playstyle" of modern gamers.

Agreed - I think the necessity to choose something like the blood gate might be reduced by people's unwillingness to commit to it for the entire expansion. 

[KDF 26]

3 hours ago, durdyenglish said:

Maybe the solution is you pick your which covenant you want to champion each week. It locks you into the pick for 7 days, and you can only earn rewards and progress content for your active covenant. By putting in place a 7 day cooldown on the swap, you can make the choice feel important but not overly risky. No one wants buyers remorse on such a big decision.

Isn't that very close to the currently advertised plan, though? Not a weekly selection per se, but to prevent buyer's remorse, as Ion has said, we will be able to switch freely to a covenant we haven't been with yet. He said going back to an old one would be a bit tougher to avoid flippant switching, but that it wouldn't be prohibitive, and that it progress would be saved so we could pick up where we left off. That sounds potentially more flexible than even a 7-day cool down, with everything you are suggesting basically included.

[durdyenglish 298]

1 hour ago, KDF said:

Isn't that very close to the currently advertised plan, though? Not a weekly selection per se, but to prevent buyer's remorse, as Ion has said, we will be able to switch freely to a covenant we haven't been with yet. He said going back to an old one would be a bit tougher to avoid flippant switching, but that it wouldn't be prohibitive, and that it progress would be saved so we could pick up where we left off. That sounds potentially more flexible than even a 7-day cool down, with everything you are suggesting basically included.

Yea I suppose so, I think the ambiguity surrounding the switch penalty is fueling people's fears. I more hoping that they can give us a clear answer if only to throw water on the fire.

[Ragingwolf 286]

Or they could just make the those Covenant abilities for open world content only and prohibit the use for Dungeons or Raid.  Excluding the Class/Covenant ability that are designed to work with select class skills.

Eg)  Door of Shadows~Can only be used in the outdoors of the Shadowlands Realm

        Demon Hunter: Sinful Brand~reduces melee and casting speeds of enemies and inflicts Shadow damage over time in all gameplay settings.

[Lawrenz 105]

3 hours ago, Ragingwolf said:

Or they could just make the those Covenant abilities for open world content only and prohibit the use for Dungeons or Raid.  Excluding the Class/Covenant ability that are designed to work with select class skills.

Eg)  Door of Shadows~Can only be used in the outdoors of the Shadowlands Realm

        Demon Hunter: Sinful Brand~reduces melee and casting speeds of enemies and inflicts Shadow damage over time in all gameplay settings.

that won't solve the problem with the tryhards ? When you have just the cov. class ability for the dugeons and raids, people will base of their judgement just from this one ability, whereas now it is at least 2 things to consider. See my mage example in my earlier comment.

If anything, they should add another big relevant gameplay and skill choice to the covenent. Oh wait ? they have

With the soulbinds they muddy the waters even more. There is some significant gameplay impacting stuff in those trees. And if it turns out like "AnY tAnK nOt TaKiNg NeXuSl0RdS iS a PlEb!!!!!11" because of their souldbind XY... it's perfect, because you maybe like the class ability more, or the teleport of the venthyr, or this and that.

[Mohawkward 1]

Just make the covenant choice, a cosmetic, on top of choice. Like the little event + mount + equipement transmog + super exclusive questline.

That is way enough to bring some fresh air to the game.

The abilities and choices that have performance impacts on your character should be something outside in an ad-hoc system.

For instance, a new talent row, a new talent tree that is exclusive to shadowlands and not convenants.

If you link the choice of covenant with the talent tree and specific movement and performance ability, you will get hordes of players going for the best and have classes locked to specific choices due to return from guides and theorycrafters.

I mean, we are on IcyVeins, if I go read the guide for Hunters from Thyminde or Azortharion and it says: "Venthyr has the best soulbind and the best hunter ability". I will not Necrolord just for the sake of crafting fleshlings.

Those recommendations will come for PvP (Arena and Battleground) and PvE (multi-targets, solo-target, raid and Mythic+) and force the hand on every players. I do not think that people will get rejected for convenant choices but they will surely select what is best for them.

Given the fact that the covenant system is complex, the room of exploits or over-powering a specialisation will be big. Someone, at some point will find the perfect soulbind - covenant combination that will explode the power of a class and this class/spec will be meta for the shadowland content.