wow Shadowlands: All Covenant Class Abilities (Early Look)

[Stan 5,240]

Blizzard posted a preview of the new Covenant system coming in Shadowlands including an early look at all class-specific Covenant abilities.

What Are Covenants?

Covenants are ruling powers that control Shadowlands and you must earn their favor in exchange for various powers for your character.

Covenant Abilities

Each Covenant provides players with two abilities. The first one's generic available to all Covenant members (also known as Signature ability) whereas the other one is an active class-specific spell.

Blizzard (Source)

Four ruling powers control the Shadowlands, each of which is in desperate need of aid from the heroes of Azeroth. In exchange for your help, the Covenants are willing to share a piece of their power and access to the rewards and other blessings, boons, or temptations they have to offer.

As you level up on your initial journey through each of their domains, you’ll get to experience the abilities they have to offer firsthand—before you ultimately choose the Covenant you wish to dedicate yourself to.

• Kyrians: The denizens of Bastion, these angelic beings embrace humility and service to their order.
• Necrolords: Comprised of liches, warlords, and spies, the Necrolord Covenant calls Maldraxxus home. They make up the army that defends the Shadowlands.
• Night Fae: Guardians of nature, the Night Fae inhabit Ardenweald and shepherd beings through the cycle of life and death. It was through their aid that the demigod Cenarius was able to make his return to Azeroth during the events of the Cataclysm.
• Venthyr: Making their home in Revendreth, the vampiric Venthyr are the punishers of the unworthy, seeking to rehabilitate the sinful souls sent to them by the Arbiter.

When the time comes to ally with one of these four, you’ll want to carefully consider the abilities the Covenant will provide you. Each provides two abilities tailored to the theme of the Covenant. The first of these is the Covenant’s signature ability, which is available to all Covenant members regardless of class, race, or specialization. This ability helps you explore and engage with the world in new ways, and gives you a unique tool to help solve the problems you encounter in the Shadowlands. The second of these abilities is specific to your class, and gives you a new spell or power to use in combat.

To give you an idea of what to expect, we’ve put together a list with the Covenant signature abilities and class abilities. Please keep in mind that these are a work in progress and may have additional changes during the course of development and testing, so all abilities shown here are subject to change.

COVENANT SIGNATURE ABILITIES

Covenant	Signature Ability
Kyrian	Summon Steward Call your steward to bring you a Phial of Serenity that can be consumed to restore some of your health and remove all Curse, Disease, Poison, and Bleed Effects. Your Steward additionally offers access to a selection of useful amenities, each once per day.
Venthyr	Door of Shadows Wend through the shadows, appearing at the targeted location.
Necrolord	Fleshcraft Form a shield of flesh and bone that prevents damage equal to a portion of your maximum health. Standing near the corpse of a defeated enemy when the ability is cast will create a larger shield.
Night Fae	Soulshape Turn into a Vulpin, increasing movement speed. You may reactivate Soulshape to teleport a short distance forward. Additional cosmetic forms can be earned and collected through a variety of gameplay. While out in the world, this effect has a short duration before it wears off, but lasts indefinitely while in a rest area.

Aligning with a specific Covenant provides access to class abilities that provide additional combat-oriented gameplay options that are tailored to the theme of that Covenant. Every Covenant offers an ability for each class, but note that some Covenant class abilities are still in development and are not currently represented in the chart.

Bastion Covenant abilities shown for: Priest and Warrior.

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COVENANT CLASS ABILITIES

	Kyrian	Venthyr	Necrolord	Night Fae
Death Knight	Shackle the Unworthy Admonish your target for their past transgressions, reducing the damage they deal to you and dealing Arcane damage over time. Shackle the Unworthy's cooldown is reduced when you damage the affected enemy with a Rune-spending attack.	Swarming Mist A heavy mist surrounds you, increasing your chance to dodge. Deals Shadow damage over time to enemies within range. Every time it deals damage you gain additional Runic Power, up to a maximum amount.	Abomination Limb Sprout an additional limb for a limited time,  dealing Shadow damage to nearby enemies. If an enemy is farther away from you, they are pulled to your location.	Death’s Due (Replaces Death and Decay) Corrupts the targeted ground, causing Shadow damage over a duration of time to targets within the area. Affected enemies deal reduced damage to you (up to a maximum amount) and their power is transferred to you as an equal amount of Strength. While you remain within the area, your Necrotic Strike and Heart Strike will hit additional targets. Scourge Strike and Clawing Shadows will hit all enemies near the target.
Demon Hunter	Elysian Decree Carve runes into the ground in front of you, which detonate to deal  Arcane damage and shatter Lesser Soul Fragments from enemies.	Sinful Brand Brand an enemy with the mark of the Venthyr, reducing their melee and casting speeds and inflicting Shadow damage over time. Activating Metamorphosis applies Sinful Brand to all nearby enemies.	(Work in Progress)	The Hunt Charge to an enemy, inflicting Nature damage and rooting them. The target is marked for a period of time, increasing your Fury from Demon's Bite andShear against them. You may reactivate The Hunt every 30 seconds to teleport behind the marked target and ignoring line of sight.
Druid	Kindred Spirits Form a bond with an ally. On a cooldown, you may empower the bond for a period of time, granting you an effect based on your partner’s role, and granting them an effect based on your role.	Ravenous Frenzy For a period of time, Druid spells you cast increase your damage, healing, and haste by a percentage, stacking. If you spend a period of time idle, the Frenzy overcomes you, consuming a percentage of your health per stack, stunning you, and then ending.	Adaptive Swarm Command a swarm that heals or deals Shadow damage to a target and increases the effectiveness of your periodic effects on them. Upon expiration, travels to a new target within range, alternating between friend and foe up to a set number of times.	Convoke the Spirits Call upon the Night Fae for an eruption of energy, channeling a rapid flurry of 16 Druid spells and abilities over 4 seconds. You will cast Moonfire, Wrath, Regrowth, Rejuvenation, Thrash, Rake, Shred, and Ironfur on appropriate nearby targets, favoring your current specialization.
Hunter	Resonating Arrow Fire a resonating arrow to the target location and fill the area with echoing anima. The effect causes your attacks to ignore line of sight to enemies in the area, and you have an increased critical strike chance against them.	Flayed Shot Fire a shot at your enemy, causing them to bleed Shadow damage over a period of time. Each time Flayed Shot deals damage, you have a  chance to gain Flayer's Mark, causing your next Kill Shot to be usable on any target, regardless of their current health.	Death Chakram Throw a deadly chakram at your current target which will rapidly deal additional Shadow damage. Each time the chakram damages a different target, its damage is increased, and you generate additional Focus.	(Work in Progress)
Mage	Radiant Spark Conjure a radiant spark that causes Arcane damage instantly and additional damage over time. The target takes a percentage of increased damage from your direct damage spells, stacking each time they are struck. This effect ends after a number of spells.	Mirrors of Torment Conjure mirrors to torment the enemy for a time. Whenever the target casts a spell or ability, a mirror is consumed to inflict  Shadow damage and their movement and cast speed are slowed. The final mirror will instead inflict Shadow damage to the enemy, Rooting and Silencing them for some time.	Deathborne Transform into a  powerful Skeletal Mage for a period of time. While in the form of a Skeletal Mage, your Frostbolt, Fireball, and Arcane Blast are greatly enhanced, and your spell damage is increased.	Shifting Power Draw from the ground beneath you for a period of time, dealing Nature damage over time to nearby enemies. While channeling, your ability cooldowns are reduced.
Monk	Weapons of Order For a short duration, your Mastery is increased by a percentage. In addition: Windwalkers’ Rising Sun Kickcooldown is reset instantly, and your Rising Sun Kick reduces the cost of your Chi abilities. Brewmasters’ Keg Smashcooldown is reset, and enemies hit by Keg Smash take increased damage from you (stacks up to a set amount). Mistweavers’ Essence Font cooldown is reset instantly and heals nearby allies on channel start and end.	(Work in Progress)	(Work in Progress)	(Work in Progress)
Paladin	Divine Toll Instantly cast Holy Shock, Avenger's Shield, or Judgmenton several targets within range (based on your current specialization).	Ashen Hallow Hallow the target area, dealing Shadow damage split among enemies and restoring health split among injured allies over time. The land remains filled with anima, causing additional Shadow damage to all enemies. You gain the benefits of Consecration while within the area.	(Work in Progress)	(Work in Progress)
Priest	Boon of the Ascended Gain the Boon of the Ascended, granting access to Ascended Nova and Ascended Blast, and increasing your movement speed. Both abilities damage your enemies, heal your allies, and build power that will erupt in a powerful explosion of damage and healing at the end of Boon of the Ascended’s duration.	Mindgames Assault an enemy's mind, dealing Shadow damage and briefly reversing their perception of reality. For a period of time, the next damage they deal will heal their target, and the next healing they do will damage their target.	Unholy Nova An explosion of dark energy heals nearby allies and infects nearby enemies with Unholy Transfusion. Unholy Transfusion deals Shadow damage over time. Enemies who damage this target receive healing.	(Work in Progress)
Rogue	Echoing Reprimand Deal Arcane damage to an enemy, extracting their anima to Animacharge a combo point. Damaging finishing moves that consume the same number of your combo points as your Animacharge deal damage as if they consume 7 combo points.	Slaughter Slaughter the target, causing Physical damage. The target's anima mixes with your lethal poison, coating your weapons for the next 5 minutes. Slaughter Poison deals Shadow damage over time and steals a percentage of healing done to the target. This also awards combo points.	Serrated Bone Spike Embed a bone spike in the target, dealing Physical damage over time until they die. Attacking with Serrated Bone Spike causes all of your active bone spikes to fracture and strike your current target, increasing initial damage by a percentage per spike.	(Work in Progress)
Shaman	Vesper Totem Summon a totem at the target location for 30 seconds. Your next 3 damage spells or abilities will cause the totem to radiate Arcane damage to enemies near the totem and your next 3 healing spells will heal up to 6 allies near the totem. Casting this ability again while the totem is active will relocate the totem.	Chain Harvest Send a wave of anima at the target, which then jumps to additional nearby targets. Deals  Shadow damage to enemies and restores  health to allies. For each target critically struck, the cooldown of Chain Harvest is reduced.	(Work in Progress)	(Work in Progress)
Warlock	Scouring Tithe Deal Arcane damage instantly and additional Arcane damage over time. If the enemy dies while affected by Scouring Tithe, you generate additional Soul Shards. If they survive, Scouring Tithe's cooldown is refreshed.	Impending Catastrophe Call forth a cloud of chaotic anima that travels to the target enemy, dealing  Shadow damage to enemies within their path. When the anima reaches the target it explodes, inflicting a random Curse and dealing Shadow damage to all nearby enemies.	Decimating Bolt Hurl a bolt of shadow magic at your target, dealing Shadow damage and increasing the damage of your next Incinerates, Drain Souls, or Shadow Bolts. Decimation Bolt's damage, and the bonus to Incinerate, Drain Soul, or Shadow Bolt both increase as your target's health decreases.	(Work in Progress)
Warrior	Spear of Bastion Throw a Kyrian spear at the target location, dealing Arcane damage instantly, dealing additional damage over time, and generating Rage.   Enemies hit are tethered to Spear of Bastion's location for the duration.	Condemn (Replaces Execute) Condemn a foe to suffer for their sins, causing Shadow damage. Only usable on enemies who are above 80% health or below 20% health. The primary target is weakened, preventing a moderate amount of damage they would deal to you. If your foe survives, a portion of the Rage spent is refunded.	Conqueror’s Banner Brandish the banner of the Necrolords, increasing your movement speed and causing Mortal Strike, Raging Blow, and Shield Slam to grant you Glory. Killing an enemy grants additional stacks of Glory. Reactivating this ability plants the banner in the ground, granting an increased amount of maximum health and additional attack speed to you and your allies within range of the banner. Lasts additional time per Glory, up to a maximum amount.	(Work in Progress)

We look forward to sharing more information as development continues, and we hope this preview helps you find the Covenant that’s right for you.

Which Covenant is your current choice? Join the discussion on the forums.

Latest Shadowlands News

• Shadowlands Developer Update
• PvP Vendors Return in Shadowlands

[Arcling 898]

This looks like bad idea overall. Not to mention the balance, it might lock many players into "bad" choices, while switching factions is supposed to be hard. Even if they will make "correct" choice, some patches might screw them later on, forcing to switch. It should have been purely aesthetic choice, rather than another gimmicky system, that will get abandoned like Azerite gear and several others.

[fxlm387 20]

I see some interesting abilities there but a lot of them are broken , a hunter who can shot out of line of sight? a DH who can teleport to you? another grip for DK ? , It smell like salt in the pvp zone.

[Halock 156]

3 hours ago, Arcling said:

Not to mention the balance, it might lock many players into "bad" choices, while switching factions is supposed to be hard. 

Depends how hard it is, I'd say. 

If it's something along the lines of a week's worth of dailies, then nobody'd do it trivially, nor swap just for content, but you could do it without pain. They look like fun, impactful abilities, so your choice'd feel like a relevant choice.

The way they fudged Azerite traits and Essences doesn't make me wonderfully hopeful, though.

I kinda wish we had artifacts back. They weren't perfect, but I felt they worked. All this just seems like it's trying to be artifacts, but needlessly different.

Just give us another whopping sword. 

[breck 29]

Changing covenants has been compared by the devs as similar to the change between aldor and scryer.

 

 

[Lith 52]

10 hours ago, Arcling said:

This looks like bad idea overall. Not to mention the balance, it might lock many players into "bad" choices, while switching factions is supposed to be hard. Even if they will make "correct" choice, some patches might screw them later on, forcing to switch. It should have been purely aesthetic choice, rather than another gimmicky system, that will get abandoned like Azerite gear and several others.

It all depends on numbers if the difference between them is just a few %, what im sure it'll be, then there is not really a bad choice especially for most of the playerbase(ppl will complain about stuff that dont really affect them anyways as always) 

[Bobbis 208]

Well these look... interesting. Want to see them in practice, when they say on CD, do they mean 10s, 30s, 2m? 4m even? Could be a useful one off for fights, or in the case of dk grip / dh portal (cos they are so rubbish at getting around already right?) just broken. 

Purely looking for my main, as a druid, they look good, though 1st is just symbiosis mk 2, and possibly a horrible way of doing it. 

[SidonisAntares 290]

3 hours ago, Lith said:

It all depends on numbers if the difference between them is just a few %, what im sure it'll be, then there is not really a bad choice especially for most of the playerbase(ppl will complain about stuff that dont really affect them anyways as always) 

Depends on how literal the devs mean about it being like swapping between Aldor and Scryer. That was a lot of farming/gold to make the swap during TBC.

[Lith 52]

1 hour ago, SidonisAntares said:

Depends on how literal the devs mean about it being like swapping between Aldor and Scryer. That was a lot of farming/gold to make the swap during TBC.

If they are close eough in perfromance there is no need for swap anyways.

[Ragingwolf 310]

Some of these are rather interesting and can be very beneficial per class per specialization from PvE (Tanking or DPS'ing) to PvP.  However pending on the series of buffs and nerfs that these will endure throughout the expansion can be problematic.  To meet the playerbase in the the middle they may have to result to something similar to the Zandalari Troll Racial with the Loa Blessing.  Pick a Loa for a passive stat gain/dmg/heals to picking a Covenant/Ability and can't switch or change for 5-7 days.  This way people can sample/select to what they desire for their playstyle and not feel restricted when it comes to playing different aspects of content in the expansion.

As for Blizzard wanting to lock in players for main Covenant representation/rewards they can still do that per say.  But make it where the player can not collect the reward or unlock the skill tree for other Covenants except the one they truly want to represent but make the primary Covenant skill available after unlocking each zone and storyline through one play through on one character.

 

 

[Arcling 898]

5 hours ago, Lith said:

It all depends on numbers if the difference between them is just a few %, what im sure it'll be, then there is not really a bad choice especially for most of the playerbase(ppl will complain about stuff that dont really affect them anyways as always) 

Well, min-maxing for raids won't affect that many people, but if some of these make someone harder to kill or make soloing some stuff easier, then they will affect much of player base. But let's see how the whole switching process is going to look, since we don't know much yet, other than that comparison to BC factions from Shattrath.

[SidonisAntares 290]

40 minutes ago, Lith said:

If they are close eough in perfromance there is no need for swap anyways.

[Seksi 208]

These are awesome and, essentially, a new talent row set if you can swap between without much trouble (aka blizz going back on what they said about it before).

If this is not possible, they will either be homogenized to boredom or broken. Seems like there are better ones for PvE / PvP / Tank / Healer / DPS as well, ensuring that someone will be unhappy no matter what. But I do like the diversity a lot, the main critical thing here is to allow for people to change at will, and then its all good!

[Wildwitch 108]

I'm in the positive mindset. I look forward to these new changes that keep the game fresh!

[Lith 52]

8 hours ago, SidonisAntares said:

No, not firs time... they can balace stuff, but ppl like you will complain about 1-2% difference.

[TheCatWithAhat 3]

Slightly upset that  my skill and fantasy choices need to colide with each other and yes we have been doing this for some time in WoW now, but this is just turning it up a tad and by tad i mean a whole system around it.

Personaly i will choose the skills and talants and whatnot to suit the content i am doing  of course, but  that leaves my ''cosmetic'' and fantasy choices in the gutter which makes me wonder why would you tie that  in this system to begin with. ( On a side note i do more than just one thing so the part of it being  hard to change covenants ( or it will be, but i assume based on how it was put out for us) leaves me with a slight bad taste in my mouth

Yes we know that blizzard wants us to ''make choices that matter and are impactful'' but sacrificing the fantasy part of it is '' meh'' at best ( at least for me )

I love the new skills and ideas , they seem really entertaining to say the least. There will be a huge balance issue though but that will be part of the fun that the chaos will bring ( for some fun for some just pain in the *filtered* since it will be tied in with their choices and all )

Some of the new ''skills'' or ''Talants'' will have interesting interactions with the skills they are reviving which i hope i am wrong about but also hope i am not because that will just make this game a LOT more fun... And unbalanced

[SidonisAntares 290]

On 4/7/2020 at 5:39 PM, Lith said:

No, not firs time... they can balace stuff, but ppl like you will complain about 1-2% difference.

People like me? I'm just pointing at their history of making one thing be fun but overall useless, versus something that gets considered mandatory for pvp/pve

[Shrine 0]

Hello,

I do not really make a good opening here at first,,but I want to try to say what is wrong with world of warcraft how it is right now. Retail world of warcraft.

The game has just way too much information a brain can handle. I want to play a good game with nice gameplay elements and a game which feels good you want to play every day and has a unique look and also challenging gameplay , every moment you play it.

It does not necessarily means you have to make a "difficult to play" game, pve can be how it always has been since the last 3-4 expansions...like a really easy to play game where you absolutely can not die at all and you can just take on a lot of monsters without dying or losing health or mana...this is how world of warcraft has been the last 3-4 expansions. Some people like it. Others do not like it and play classic world of warcraft.

Though I think that This retail game of wow, different then classic, is just too much to learn for a human brain. If it can maybe slightly go back the way it was, hopefully, I think more people will play the game again. Maybe have some elements of retail wow and an overal total gameplay feeling like "classic wow". I think world of warcraft can become a good and perfect game again, instead of finetuning every detail of the game...

I just want to play a nice game and have a nice gameplay experience instead of have to know so much about everything.

Narrow information down.

There is too much my brain need to read about just some "small and tiny" part of the game.

Give me a quick overal look of the game instead of all this "new" "too much" information about such details in a game.

All this new things they try to put in the game does not make the game necessarily better right.

I think this is kind of the problem with retail and current world of warcraft.

They want to make such diverse game with many diverse gameplay ability...that it loses it's overal , total picture, completion of the game.

The game as a whole product need to be good, not constantly "tune or finetune" all these "small" details in game

I think this is were it went wrong for world of warcraft.

Classes need to be in  balance too.

Like someone else said in this forum...he is right....all these new spells for these classes (like DH, DK..abilities)...they ruin the PVP element of the game, which is such a nice part of the game....

Yf,

 

Steeben