One month in, how are we feeling about Blizzard’s decision not to “pull the ripcord”?

For a long while before Shadowlands released, there was an ever-growing concern that Covenants would be too hard to balance — an understandable concern, given how some Covenant abilities were shaping up during beta. In response to this concern, Blizzard mentioned that they had a system in place that would allow them to turn Covenant choice into something purely focused on cosmetics and fantasy rather than one with power implications involved. If they felt Covenants were becoming too hard to balance, they would “pull the ripcord” and decouple any sort of player power from Covenant choice.

Blizzard did not end up doing this, going so far as to say they disagreed that doing so would be an improvement. And now that we’ve had a month — and a bit of time in the raid — to play the expansion and get a feel for Covenants, I’m curious to know what everyone thinks about that decision.

For my part — and with the caveat that we don’t fully know what a ripcord-pulled system would have actually looked like — I’m pleasantly content with how the Covenant system is working out. Granted, this is coming from a more casual standpoint, but I haven’t felt like any of Shadow’s Covenant abilities were too far from another in term of usefulness and throughput. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on damage, I’m happy with how the Necrolords’ two abilities fit into my gameplay, and I know I wouldn’t have been able to handle any more abilities if Blizz had ever decided to give us all of them. And while I don’t think pulling the ripcord would have meant we got all the Covenant Campaigns on one character, I am still grateful to not be overwhelmed by multiple campaigns.

So yeah. I’m pleasantly surprised with how well the decision to not decouple player power from Covenant choice has been… but I’m also only one person, with one playstyle. How are you all feeling? Did you change your mind after playing the expansion for a bit? I’d also love to know what type of player you are — I have a feeling hardcore min/maxers may feel differently than I do, but I’d also be happy to be proven wrong there. In any case, sound off below!