Shadowlands Conduits Update

[Lumy]

Shadowlands Conduits Update

Starting next week in the Shadowlands Beta, we will begin introducing a series of updates to the Soulbind system to add a persistent collection system for Conduits. Since the Soulbind system was unveiled in the Alpha and discussed in our Developer Update, we’ve heard consistent feedback about the shortcomings of an inventory-based destructible version of Conduits, and we agree entirely.

While we feel it’s important that there be some friction in moving Conduits around, the prospect of the having to re-earn a given Conduit, perhaps by chasing a specific dungeon or raid boss drop, was not particularly appealing to anyone. However, simply removing destructibility without making other changes would have created an inventory management nightmare, especially for players who enjoy playing multiple specializations.

Once this new system is in place, Conduits will work like this:

• Conduits will continue to be items that can be earned from a wide variety of endgame content (dungeons, PvP, raids, reputations, world quests, etc.)
• The power of their effects will increase with the Item Level of the Conduit.
• Instead of placing a Conduit directly into a given Soulbind tree, you’ll bring it back to your Sanctum where you can add it to a permanent collection.
• There will be more than one source for most Conduits, to increase flexibility in acquisition and accessibility across different playstyles.
• Earning a more powerful version of a Conduit you already have will simply upgrade that Conduit in your collection.

At its core, the Soulbind system aims to give you the freedom to essentially build your own talent tree for yourself. Each Soulbind offers a range of fixed universal traits closely themed to that Soulbind’s nature, and there are many open slots throughout the tree that effectively serve as wildcards, allowing you to insert Conduits to customize each Soulbind to suit your playstyle and preferences. A given Conduit can only be used once per Soulbind, though the same Conduit can be added into different Soulbinds’ trees without restriction. This does not require earning more than one copy of the Conduit – once it’s in your collection, you can place it as you wish.

If you want to rebuild your Soulbind trees, once per week you’ll be able to clear all of their Conduits, with a separate cooldown per Soulbind. But once you’ve decided on your desired Conduit placements, we want to ensure that the system offers as much flexibility as other existing talent systems, so you’ll be able to switch which Soulbind is active or redirect the flow of Anima through a Soulbind’s tree (essentially respeccing them) any time you visit your Sanctum. And if you have a different Soulbind per spec, or a different active trait path within a given Soulbind, that will be saved on a per-specialization basis, and will automatically change whenever and wherever you change specializations.

We’re hoping to have an initial version of this system active in next week’s Beta, with further updates and a polished user interface in the weeks to follow.

As always, thank you for your feedback! We’re looking forward to seeing everyone play with this new system and letting us know how it feels, and it’s your thoughtful feedback that has helped us make Shadowlands even better.

[trapmaster]

Sounds fucking lame to be honest...

[LordVargK]

So essentially the same as minor Essences?

[JMitchy96]

Sounds fucking lame to be honest...

In what possible way is this worse than the original system? At all?

[AnTwan]

"Why doesn't Blizzard listen to feedback from the players?"

*Blizzard listens to feedback from the players*

Sounds fucking lame to be honest...

[mantoof]

Thank you Blizzard for listening and reacting fast

[restomental]

"we want to ensure that the system offers as much flexibility as other existing talent systems"

Just stop with all the BS side talents. Put them all in one place. One talent tree modeled after the Legion artifact weapon where you can start wherever you want and progress toward big upgrades. Make the conduits sockets on your talent tree. No need to have people running around going back and forth through portals and such.

[Tamurello]

A good change

[Obelisk Kai]

So if I am reading this correctly, the price is time. We can resocket our soulbinds once a week, but once it's locked in it's locked for that week.

This is an acceptable solution. I imagine the number of people affected by being unable to alter the loadout of a given soulbind for a particular encounter will be very, very small.

And we get a new collection minigame. Those are always fun.

[Doffen]

A good change for sure. From what I read it will work like the essence tree system but with a little cd, while having it drops like relics from Legion. A bit rng to get, a bit of consistency. A good iteration of two systems combined.

As long as we don't have to regrind the conduits aka azerite traits, that's a fine system to me.

[bloodwulf]

The best possible change. Honestly this fixes a lot of the concern for Conduits. Only thing i still dislike is stuff like multiple ranks, but they say there will be multiple drop locations for Conduits so maybe that wont sting too much.

[Lulbalance]

Eh, sounds better? We'll see how it plays.

[Frolk]

Sounds fucking lame to be honest...

Did u want to refarm them every time u changed them?

[Tesshin83]

Sounds fucking lame to be honest...

The daily reminder why I should stay away from the comment section.

[BrintoSFJ]

Sounds fucking lame to be honest...

I bet this is exactly what they wanted to do from the start but since they knew how underwhelming the system would be, they created a controversy and then finally now, they unleashed their original design with excuse "look we listened to your feedback and gave you a better alternative! Don't complain anymore!"

[Unholyground]

Sounds fucking lame to be honest...

Well we don't expect mouth breathers to understand anything so that is ok.

[Clozer]

So essentially the same as minor Essences?

Not really.

More like Legion Artifact Relics. Stuff like "Your horse lasts for 50% longer" or "Ability X has 20% less Cooldown". So they basically empower your abilities and you can choose whichever you like/earned and place them in your soulbind tree.

[RobertMugabe]

"Why doesn't Blizzard listen to feedback from the players?"

*Blizzard listens to feedback from the players*

MMOC in a nutshell basically.

Whenever I read news like this where Blizz totally gets on the side of what most of the community saying, for some weird reason the comments on MMOC are even worse than usual (and yes it's the same people). Just proves that some people just want to complain.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I bet this is exactly what they wanted to do from the start but since they knew how underwhelming the system would be, they created a controversy and then finally now, they unleashed their original design with excuse "look we listened to your feedback and gave you a better alternative! Don't complain anymore!"

It might be hard to believe but blizzard Proabbly isn’t snidely whiplash thinking 5 steps ahead and twirling there mustache.

[Ilnez]

So... they think us having to re-earn them is bad... but we have to re-earn them every tier or every time we progress to a new highest M+ level?

*Burning room dog* This is fine.