9.0 General Discussion

[thilicen]

Uneducated guess...stop with the massive alt obession that wow seems to get more and more since Classic. Thats a out of my buttocks take so probably wrong. Conduits or whatever should still be friendly to the idea of someone swapping specs to fit the need of a group or raid.

Ironically SL is a ton more alt friendly than multi-spec friendly. Playing alts is a breeze compared to let's say BFA, playing multiple specs however.. Good luck. Blizzard wants you to make "an important choice" in that area.

[Kereberus]

Have they made Maw changes yet?

[thilicen]

Regarding leggo concerns:

We are currently in the process of tuning Legendary items, so in this latest Shadowlands Beta build, you may see many a number of Legendary effects have had their power reduced.

We’ve recently had internal discussions about our tuning targets for Legendaries and concluded that we were aiming too low with respect to their power. We’re working through another tuning pass on all of these items, and you should see further adjustments in an upcoming build.

[Grimbold21]

This class tuning....

[Toybox]

Regarding leggo concerns:

We are currently in the process of tuning Legendary items, so in this latest Shadowlands Beta build, you may see many a number of Legendary effects have had their power reduced.

We’ve recently had internal discussions about our tuning targets for Legendaries and concluded that we were aiming too low with respect to their power. We’re working through another tuning pass on all of these items, and you should see further adjustments in an upcoming build.

Phew, I glad they're going to buff legendaries. I guess the nerfs were already commited to the latest beta build before they had that chat, so fingers crossed for some decent buffs & gameplay improvements.

[Nyel]

From what I see it sounds like the problem is more with Blizzard adding less flightpoints and making travel between zones require a pitstop in Oribos, not really that the zones are not directly connected. It is linked, sure, but from what I hear the problem would be fixed if Blizzard added some teleport directly between zones or something.

It’s one of the issues, yes. The thread summarizes them really well. Being lost in Oribos is another one, while you get constantly dismounted. That place is beautiful but everything looks the same and it’s incredibly hard to tell a) where you are, b) where the NPC you’re looking for is. I really hope they improve these little issues because it’s just not up to their standards.

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I guess it puts more weight on the conduits being balanced though. With 3 potency conduits you would likely pick all the relevant ones anyways unless you were going for a soulbind specific ability. Now that there is one less potency conduit that makes the choice even more important.

Now you’re down to choosing 2/4 available Potency Conduits. I don’t really mind this change a lot if they eventually would rework Covenant abilities to better fit into specs.

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From Blizzard on Conduits:

In this week’s Shadowlands Beta build, Soulbinds have had their tree layouts changed in a small, but important, way. All Soulbinds now have access to 2 Potency Conduit sockets, whereas previously all trees had 3 Potency sockets. The goal of this change is to increase the flexibility of Soulbinds, and make it more viable to use one Soulbind for multiple specializations.

Due to Potency Conduits’ effects being mostly spec-specific, they are the Conduits most likely to make a Soulbind layout feel locked-in to one specialization. While we expect this to be a natural way for many players to engage with Soulbinds –- picking one Soulbind per spec, and building them out accordingly –- we want to make sure there is room to discover other setups that work for you, based on the content you prefer to participate in.

The removed Potency sockets have been replaced with either an Endurance or Finesse socket which, by virtue of primarily being class-wide effects, are easier to justify using across multiple specializations.

We’re looking forward to seeing how you choose to build out your Soulbinds, and your continuing feedback on this system!

This is so stupid, they literally say it themselves: Conduit layouts are likely to feel locked to one spec. Why in the fuck do they insist on keeping this up? At least just make it one layout per spec so people who like to swap between healer / dps / tank roles for various content even stand a chance..

I agree. They fix an issue that wouldn’t be an issue at all if Soulbinds were be spec-specific.

Instead of making Soulbinds spec-specific they reduce the amount of Potency conduits which doesn’t even tackle the fabricated issue.

Blizzard and their borrowed power systems, sorry, but they have no clue what they’re doing.

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Ironically SL is a ton more alt friendly than multi-spec friendly. Playing alts is a breeze compared to let's say BFA, playing multiple specs however.. Good luck. Blizzard wants you to make "an important choice" in that area.

Yeah this is mind-numbing. In BfA they punished you for playing more than one character and in Shadowlands they punish you for playing more than one spec.

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This comment from the official thread pretty much summarizes everything problematic about the Conduit change:

That’s actually so backwards and illogical it blows my mind. Instead of allowing people to freely swap like everyone has been asking, or making conduits/soulbinds spec-specific, you make this horrible “solution”? So now you wasted time adding in TWO new awful bandaid systems. First, by making a convoluted ‘respec’ currency, and now removing spec-specific conduit slots??? So classes that have a healer, tank and dps spec end up having to use awful finesse and or endurance conduits because you’re too lazy and incompetent to make a logical system? Not to mention how most classes already have horrible, boring conduits. Now they have even less choice. Just focus on class balance and things that matter, not solving problems you keep creating. Holy…

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...ate/596481/134

[Eurhetemec]

I don't have beta, I've only heard it's super easy and a joke once you actually get a few powers.

I mean, everyone's a critic right, but maybe you should like, think twice before saying a thing you've never played is "super easy and a joke"? And basically claiming you know it is because you "heard" this? Like this sort of shit right here is kind of what's wrong with a lot of discussions of MMOs.

[arandomuser]

so they are scaling down your conduits to 2 from 3
hopefully they buff the unused conduits to compensate, maybe make them more like minor essences instead of just flat buffs

[Baconeggcheese]

Only two conduit slots per soulbind now. Not sure whether I find this a good or bad change, but my gut feeling says it is probably a good change as the soulbinds were pretty dominated by the fact that you usually wanted just the potency conduits anyways.

Assuming it was the mandatory potency slot that was changed since that was the only thing that makes sense... then its sort of good.. but pretty much meaningless in a lot of trees without significant changes. For instance in a lot of trees the very first choice is 2 non throughput choices coupled with a potency conduit or one of the other 2 conduits. This change does nothing for those trees unless they add throughput to the non-conduit part of that choice.

They really ought to make the soulbinds spec specific, they're trying really hard to make the issues a non-issue by doing everything except actually solving the problem.

[Revamp Man]

Regarding leggo concerns:

We are currently in the process of tuning Legendary items, so in this latest Shadowlands Beta build, you may see many a number of Legendary effects have had their power reduced.

We’ve recently had internal discussions about our tuning targets for Legendaries and concluded that we were aiming too low with respect to their power. We’re working through another tuning pass on all of these items, and you should see further adjustments in an upcoming build.

FIX MY CHI EXPLOSION!!!!

also the healing leggo on monks is insane

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Assuming it was the mandatory potency slot that was changed since that was the only thing that makes sense... then its sort of good.. but pretty much meaningless in a lot of trees without significant changes. For instance in a lot of trees the very first choice is 2 non throughput choices coupled with a potency conduit or one of the other 2 conduits. This change does nothing for those trees unless they add throughput to the non-conduit part of that choice.


They really ought to make the soulbinds spec specific, they're trying really hard to make the issues a non-issue by doing everything except actually solving the problem.

is it fair to say that they are stubborn now??
like these changes are literally just because they dont wanna do something easy

and all they are doing with this is making the conduits MORE important and MORE boring. You have two potency conduits and they are still down parts of the tree where you need to sacrifice passives and with this change its not longer a top 3 conduit choice but a top 2 which is more restrictive and the defensive or finesse choices arent interesting

monks have 2 tank specific defensive conduits and 3 generic which consists of
an absorb when you pop a 3 minute defensive CD
a healing boost when cast on yourself
a healing boost for the dps defensive

and now we cant use them in old content

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Ironically SL is a ton more alt friendly than multi-spec friendly. Playing alts is a breeze compared to let's say BFA, playing multiple specs however.. Good luck. Blizzard wants you to make "an important choice" in that area.

Yeah I was going to say, the way Soulbinds & Conduits (and Azerite before it) is set up right now it's more enforcing you having alts than preventing it. If they wanted to tamp down on people needing 5 alts for raiding, they need to break down these incredibly stiff walls between specs they keep building. The game's moving more toward 32 distinct classes with stuff like this.

[Syegfryed]

Something i was completely ignorant about, the pre-patch event will give you stuff? like the bfa-event gave you the mount? i remember vaguely something about mogs that you can drop in the city events but im not sure

[idunnowatdo]

So what’s the current system /currency count?

[Cosmic Janitor]

I don't mind the conduit changes that much, though it will obviously mean you will be even more locked into AoE/ST than before. I hope the potency conduit that they sacrifice will be a finesse conduit for kyrian instead. I kinda hate that all 3 of them force you to take a def conduit while keeping the finesse ones behind underwhelming throughput talents.

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So what’s the current system /currency count?

Anima, Souls, Renown, Stygia, Soul Ash, Conduit Poins + what ever PvP has now. So 6+x, I don't think I missed one.

[Harbour]

Now you cant use Covenant abilities outside Shadowlands.
What is the point of bringing up Covenants, going into the new lows of limitation of player's choice, if the result you end up with is watered down, generic, sterile set of shitty passives and couple active abilities you cant even use outside endgame? What a joke.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Now you cant use Covenant abilities outside Shadowlands.
What is the point of bringing up Covenants, going into the new lows of limitation of player's choice, if the result you end up with is watered down, generic, sterile set of shitty passives and couple active abilities you cant even use outside endgame? What a joke.

I mean do I even need to say the R-word? Because that's the point. Influencers whined.

[therumblings]

Hmmmmmmmm

https://twitter.com/TheRedShirtGuy/s...81053166927872

[Harbour]

I mean do I even need to say the R-word? Because that's the point. Influencers whined.

Problems isnt in the influencers. The key problem lies in the very nature of Covenants design. Blizzard put themselves into the burning oven introducing 40 abilities, 4 shared across 3 class specs with locking players behind covenant. They cant balance it without turning it into irrelevant shit. Influencers just pointed at obvious flaws.

[Sondrelk]

Something i was completely ignorant about, the pre-patch event will give you stuff? like the bfa-event gave you the mount? i remember vaguely something about mogs that you can drop in the city events but im not sure

From what I remember there is an unused tint of the aspirant armor and a pet that is unique to the event so far. And also a 34 slot bag I guess.

On the whole there isnt a whole lot of rewards from the event, but I guess we will just have to wait and see.

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Well, rather there are rewards, technically more than there was from the BfA one but there still isnt really a commemorative one that is easy to display like the mount from BfA or title from WoD.

[therumblings]

Red shirt guy is still posting pics. Looks like a concept art for a potential CGI/High Quality Denathrius.