How your Covenant choice could help you in dungeons

We’ve seen all the different spells and endgame activities for the different Covenants, but did you know that all of the dungeons in Shadowlands will have a little bonus effect in them for one of the Covenants? If you have at least one player in your dungeon group of the correct Covenant you’ll be able to get extra buffs, convince enemies to fight for you, and even add extra checkpoints to your run.

Each Covenant’s extra buffs will be able to affect things in the dungeons that are found in their zone.

• Kyrians
  • Necrotic Wake – Use your Steward to fix broken Anima Goliaths to give your group the Anima Exhaust buff.
  • Spires of Ascension – Throw abandoned Kyrian spears to stun everything at the target location.
• Necrolords
  • Theater of Pain – Use Necrolord banners to buff your Versatility and move speed.
  • Plaguefall – Get a variety of buffs(Haste, Damage Resist, Area damage) by using Fleshcraft on the different slimes found in the dungeon.
• Night Fae
  • Mists of Tirna Scithe – Remove roots that are blocking your path to skip enemies and collect buff mushrooms, also activate checkpoints after bosses.
  • De Other Side – Channel the Haunted Urns found throughout the dungeon to stun everything nearby.
• Venthyr
  • Halls of Atonement – Get Stoneborn Gargoyles to help you fight for a short time.
  • Sanguine Depths – Kill Enemies near an Anima cage to get a buff.

These are all a fun little bit of flavor that rewards you for having one of the Covenant members in your group. Since the dungeons are in their areas it makes more sense that you’d be able to exert the power you’ve been cultivating with your Covenant to making your run easier. Nobody has raised any serious concerns about these buffs in regards to the regular Mythic dungeons, but the inclusion of these buffs in Mythic Keystone has been a sore subject from the moment they started showing up on the beta.

Why Mythic+ players aren’t happy

None of these buffs would be something that totally makes or breaks your dungeon run, but they can definitely help smooth things out, especially when you start looking at the higher keystone levels. There’s a reason that the highest keystone dungeon that’s been completed in Battle for Azeroth is the Junkyard section of Mechagon — it’s the buffs you can get by finding the little scrap bots that have been scattered around the dungeon.

Imagine if the only players who could get the different buffs were Engineers. We’d see groups only looking for players who had that profession because of how strong those buffs can be.

The inclusion of these different dungeon buffs means that we’ll probably see some discrimination based on your Covenant choice. If you’ve got a group of five players who play through dungeons together consistently it’s possible that you won’t have representation between all of the different Covenants. Then rather than trying just to find a ranged damage player to fill your group out, you’ll need a specifically a ranged DPS Night Fae character.

What I’d really like to see is more sources of those buffs throughout the dungeon for other Covenants. Look at Necrotic Wake, for instance. Yeah it makes sense that Kyrians can use their Stewards to get a buff, but the whole thing is under assault from a force of Necrolords. Couldn’t there be a Necrolord weapon nearby the malfunctioning goliath that lets you break it open and get the Anima out that way? I could see that really helping to ensure that no matter what you had the Covenants necessary to get all of the buffs in your groups with minimal trying.

I really like the idea behind these buffs, I just know that their inclusion in the Mythic Keystones has the potential to lead to some unhappiness. I also wonder about the future. If we get another mega-dungeon like the Return to Karazhan and Operation: Mechagon, will there be multiple buffs found throughout that means you need all four Covenants in your group to take full advantage? Hopefully, there’s an elegant solution that means we still get cool things and fun ideas like these.