The concept of specializing your character for a type of content is far more palatable in a world where Blizzard isn't heavily nudging people to do all types of content on a single character.

A recurring argument in favor of covenant locking is that it allows you to select the thing you really want to do (raids, m+, or pvp) and make your character a specialist at that type of content. That's actually kind of a neat idea, but it has one enormous flaw. Blizzard has continued to promote immense incentives for players to do all types of content on a single character, and at the highest-level possible.Let's look at some recent examples for context, especially since they're likely to remain the case in SL. Let's say I'm a rogue (I am) and I want to specialize in mythic raiding, so I take the mythic raiding covenant. Sounds good, right? There's immediately a huge problem that stands out. At least 5 of my best items come from the mythic+ cache (lustrous plumage, mechagon rings, a cache'd belt, and a cache'd legs). This immediately makes it so that if I want to truly specialize and optimize myself for raiding, I'm already being nudged towards doing a healthy chunk of M+. In SL, this means doing as many as possible to get the most chances to get the items I need from my cache. In just this very simple example, I've already been pushed to do the content I'm not specializing for, and will be inarguably suboptimal in.What if I'm a mage? I need my mechagon bracers, a waycrest offhand, and a glad badge that's as high-ranking as possible. So I'm now meant to play a highly competitive mode, where my covenant choice will have a direct impact on my ability to climb to the necessary rating, so that I can do the content I'm selecting for?The cases for and against locking on the merits of doing multiple types of content based on desire and on offspecs have already been hashed out plenty of times here, but this is an additional wrinkle that's highly concerning. Even if I wanted to dedicate myself towards a particular content type, I'm now gimped to the point where it may be exceptionally difficult to do that content, just so I can get back to the content I'm specializing for.