My Idea On How To Make Conduit Energy Meaningful While Maintaining it's Purpose

[Wavebossa]

I'll try to to cover all bases, but I think this makes sense.

As it stands now, Conduit Energy is a punitive mechanic stacked on top of an already restrictive mechanic to ensure that players don't minmax and shift conduits for every encounter. This is by design.

Current System
1. You must change conduits at Forge of Bonds
2. You consume conduit energy so you can only do this a limited amount of times per (insert time frame)


As someone who plays multiple specs and uses the same Soulbind for 2 of those specs, I actually have run out of conduit energy multiple times. Especially when healing Kael in CN. It may not impact you, but it does for some of us. However I think my solution would make it useful for everyone.


My Idea

1. Changing conduits at Forge of Bonds cost 0 conduit energy.
Reasoning - You already ported to your Covenant location. That is already restrictive and punitive enough. No need for it to cost anything else. The cost is the time and summoning resources it took for you to get there and change.

2. You have to ability to change conduits like you do talents, but it costs conduit energy
Reasoning - You still have to use a Tome, or go to a rested location. But you are not forced to go to your Forge. This way there is still a restriction, and blizzard still gets to artificially limit min-maxing. But the players themselves have the option of using something already in the game (tomes) to make an on the fly change.

Blizzard obviously wants us to change conduits less often than we change talents, so that is where the conduit energy would come into play. We use it when we swap conduits away from our Forge, but its free at our Forge. So if we run out of conduit energy for minmaxing, we always have an option to do it, we just need to port back to our forge and utilize a lock to summon us back (important). So there is your punitive restriction, but in order to get there, we need to exhaust all the conduit energy first, and we would need tomes for every change.



What do you guys think? My guild agrees, but that's a small sample size and i'm an officer so they might just be biased.

[Vampyrr]

Eh they just need to fully open Covenants up. If I want to be NF one day and Kyrian the next that option should be allowed. It gimps specs too hard in current state the 5% difference has been proven time and time again to be wrong.

[Wavebossa]

Eh they just need to fully open Covenants up. If I want to be NF one day and Kyrian the next that option should be allowed. It gimps specs too hard in current state the 5% difference has been proven time and time again to be wrong.

I agree. I actually have 4 shamans just because I did not want to have to deal with cov swapping.

However, I wanted to suggest a change that still keeps the intended purpose of the mechanic. Obviously Blizzard does not intend of Covs (or anything cov related) being as hot-swappable as specs or talents. So my suggested change keeps the spirit of Blizzards design in mind.

[Wavebossa]

What will happen is you will be waiting on people per boss to hearth and change conduits for no penalty.

Why?

If that doesn't happen for you now, it won't happen with this change.
My suggested change would not impact that whatsoever.

If players felt that hearthing to change conduits per boss wasn't worth their time before, they would still feel the same way.

[Malania]

It's a uniformly poor design to prevent hot swapping on bosses as the penalty is your entire raid team would need to HS to their forge anyway to swap it as there is no alternative place to do it. HS has a CD of 15m even with the enchant and it's rare a boss and the trash before them take that which means flights from Oribos after every boss. It would cut your raiding uptime by a quarter trying to minmax it.

Removing energy would cause no issues with the current game implementation as it's still spec locked and time gated between switches.

[Wavebossa]

It's a uniformly poor design to prevent hot swapping on bosses as the penalty is your entire raid team would need to HS to their forge anyway to swap it as there is no alternative place to do it. HS has a CD of 15m even with the enchant and it's rare a boss and the trash before them take that which means flights from Oribos after every boss. It would cut your raiding uptime by a quarter trying to minmax it.

Removing energy would cause no issues with the current game implementation as it's still spec locked and time gated between switches.

I dont think you read a single word in my post.

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Because you've provided players with a means to swap conduits with no penalty, and they will take it. The reason it doesn't happen now is because they would run out of conduit energy in a single raid night.

the penalty is hearthing back to your cov to change it. That takes time. Time is the penalty.

My way reduces that penaly to the same as using a tome. At least for the first 10 times

[Vampyrr]

I agree. I actually have 4 shamans just because I did not want to have to deal with cov swapping.

However, I wanted to suggest a change that still keeps the intended purpose of the mechanic. Obviously Blizzard does not intend of Covs (or anything cov related) being as hot-swappable as specs or talents. So my suggested change keeps the spirit of Blizzards design in mind.

Yeah its more their thought process is super toxic and bad for the game so they should get over it and change

[Devilyaki]

Honestly I forgot it even had energy. I have not used it past the unlock phase… Don’t change specs just characters so it doesn’t effect me but I still think it is stupid system

[hulkgor]

Why?

If that doesn't happen for you now, it won't happen with this change.

That already happens with swapping talents so people avoid using a tome, it would be the exact same thing, exacerbating the problem.

[BossManRoth]

I'll try to to cover all bases, but I think this makes sense.

As it stands now, Conduit Energy is a punitive mechanic stacked on top of an already restrictive mechanic to ensure that players don't minmax and shift conduits for every encounter. This is by design.

Current System
1. You must change conduits at Forge of Bonds
2. You consume conduit energy so you can only do this a limited amount of times per (insert time frame)


As someone who plays multiple specs and uses the same Soulbind for 2 of those specs, I actually have run out of conduit energy multiple times. Especially when healing Kael in CN. It may not impact you, but it does for some of us. However I think my solution would make it useful for everyone.


My Idea

1. Changing conduits at Forge of Bonds cost 0 conduit energy.
Reasoning - You already ported to your Covenant location. That is already restrictive and punitive enough. No need for it to cost anything else. The cost is the time and summoning resources it took for you to get there and change.

2. You have to ability to change conduits like you do talents, but it costs conduit energy
Reasoning - You still have to use a Tome, or go to a rested location. But you are not forced to go to your Forge. This way there is still a restriction, and blizzard still gets to artificially limit min-maxing. But the players themselves have the option of using something already in the game (tomes) to make an on the fly change.

Blizzard obviously wants us to change conduits less often than we change talents, so that is where the conduit energy would come into play. We use it when we swap conduits away from our Forge, but its free at our Forge. So if we run out of conduit energy for minmaxing, we always have an option to do it, we just need to port back to our forge and utilize a lock to summon us back (important). So there is your punitive restriction, but in order to get there, we need to exhaust all the conduit energy first, and we would need tomes for every change.



What do you guys think? My guild agrees, but that's a small sample size and i'm an officer so they might just be biased.

ive been saying this since day 1. make the forge the free spot and energy the open world cost

[Revamp Man]

Why not just remove it?
Micromanaging it isn’t fun
It’s not engaging
It doesn’t add anything to the game

Removing it just makes it easier for players who enjoy diversity in play style

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That already happens with swapping talents so people avoid using a tome, it would be the exact same thing, exacerbating the problem.

What problem?
Besides the problem that is energy itself
Tomes are beyond plentiful heck there’s aoe

[Malania]

I dont think you read a single word in my post.

No I read what you stated their reasons are. Which are for stopping 'hot swapping' on boss fights. I just pointed out it didn't makes sense as even if they removed energy because it would be a logistical nightmare to hot swap anyway. Beyond that I didn't read the rest I have no horse in the race, as conduit energy doesn't bother me.

[Jujudrood]

I would prefer it just use its own consumable, similar to the tomes.
Talent tomes can do talents, conduit tomes can do conduits.
Remove the energy in general as it's silly to prevent people form playing their toons in different content.
A consumable makes them "restricted" in that you need a consumable, and if you run out, you are out of luck until you get more.
You get one per day, so if you change 5 of them out, you can do that exactly once more then you are screwed for what, 5 days (you get 1 per day, right?).
Because of this ridiculous nonsense, I've just accepted subpar conduit builds because it's not worth trying to use better ones when you run out of energy and get forced into poor builds anyway.

Some people, like the leadership at Blizz, forget this is a game, not a job or something "more" than that.
It should be fun, and these levels of restrictions, from using conduit energy to restricting torghast currency to everything else gated and preventative, only take away from the capacity to have fun, relegating you to "guess I'll have to wait for <timeframe> to play again".
WoW isn't some shitty "free to play" phone game where you should have to wait for energy to play, is my point, but sometimes it sure feels that way.

[Soon-TM]

Conduit energy serves no useful purpose (hue hue hue) and it should be just scrapped. If the hardcore crowd wants to switch their conduits on a per-boss basis, then let them.

[I HATE CHAOS]

It should just be stripped out. The concept of designing systems solely to inconvenience or limit players should never of been tolerated.

[rrayy]

I'll try to to cover all bases, but I think this makes sense.

As it stands now, Conduit Energy is a punitive mechanic stacked on top of an already restrictive mechanic to ensure that players don't minmax and shift conduits for every encounter. This is by design.

Current System
1. You must change conduits at Forge of Bonds
2. You consume conduit energy so you can only do this a limited amount of times per (insert time frame)


As someone who plays multiple specs and uses the same Soulbind for 2 of those specs, I actually have run out of conduit energy multiple times. Especially when healing Kael in CN. It may not impact you, but it does for some of us. However I think my solution would make it useful for everyone.


My Idea

1. Changing conduits at Forge of Bonds cost 0 conduit energy.
Reasoning - You already ported to your Covenant location. That is already restrictive and punitive enough. No need for it to cost anything else. The cost is the time and summoning resources it took for you to get there and change.

2. You have to ability to change conduits like you do talents, but it costs conduit energy
Reasoning - You still have to use a Tome, or go to a rested location. But you are not forced to go to your Forge. This way there is still a restriction, and blizzard still gets to artificially limit min-maxing. But the players themselves have the option of using something already in the game (tomes) to make an on the fly change.

Blizzard obviously wants us to change conduits less often than we change talents, so that is where the conduit energy would come into play. We use it when we swap conduits away from our Forge, but its free at our Forge. So if we run out of conduit energy for minmaxing, we always have an option to do it, we just need to port back to our forge and utilize a lock to summon us back (important). So there is your punitive restriction, but in order to get there, we need to exhaust all the conduit energy first, and we would need tomes for every change.



What do you guys think? My guild agrees, but that's a small sample size and i'm an officer so they might just be biased.

System works fine as is. How dare there actually be some restriction? You don't have to have the ability to do things unlimitedly on everyuthing.

- - - Updated - - -

the penalty is hearthing back to your cov to change it. That takes time. Time is the penalty.

My way reduces that penaly to the same as using a tome. At least for the first 10 times

That is in no way a penalty. This whole idea is all about your own entitlement. The restrictions are fine. You can play the game just fine without having everything available to you all the time.