Update 4/8 After progressing through ZM a lot of these issues have been fixed. Right now until you hit 2.4k in PVP the best path to get conduits is running +15 keys, which drop 265s. Until then the only other fast upgrade is hitting revered with the “enlightened” for a 239 upgrade for ALL for conduits. But also hitting 3k IO isn’t terrible this season, which also rewards 278 conduits. I was able to do this in 4 weeks of pugging keys. So the path for the fastest conduit upgrades for PVP’ers appears to be ZM > M+ or hit 2.4k with lower lvl conduits and get the upgrade item from the vender. Sadly, there isn’t any middle ground for PVP to progress 265 conduits at duelist. So, M+ is basically a great option for conduits until PVP’ers have a clearer path.
I tried posting this topic in general forums but it doesn’t seem to get any attention, to what I believe is a significant issue.
PVP’ers and M+ players need paths to gain max level conduits. Gating the 278 mass conduit upgrade behind elite, m+ and mythic raiding, just creates further barriers to climbing to those levels.
Many people don’t view conduits as impactful to gameplay because we are mainly looking at negligible differences in potency conduits, but the big scaling from 200-252 is in defensive conduits.
As an example, for a restoration shaman, the vital accretion conduit is the difference of having 11% more overall HP from a lvl 145 conduit to 252 (20% increase HP to 31%). Just from one conduit. As your ilvls increase on your gear this 11% is more impactful, naturally. I can go over many of the defensive conduits and their scaling and the impact they have on PVP game play as well as pushing high keys.
The defensive conduits scale much more significantly, and thus play a bigger role than we imagine.
If we give all elite PVP’ers 278 conduits, this will create an even bigger barrier for those pushing from 2.1 to 2.4.
If we are going to tie conduits to a PVP achieve to unlock. it should be 2.1.
But I still don’t think either of this is wise.
If we also gate the 278 conduit unlock behind hero achieve for m+, then the community will create a conduit lvl requirement in order to join their push team.
Having high lvl defensive conduits is the difference in surviving many mechanics in m+ as well as many go’s in PVP.
This isn’t a tiny issue, and it’s created more problems and toxicity between players than blizzard realizes. “Why you die man” vs. “Wow, you’re a pro gamer and you survived that go… I’ll add you.” Because the later player took the time to farm Korthia and they had the hp or the defensives to handle it.
I see a lot of people between 1.8 and 2.1 who have lvl 200 conduits, some with green. They just go flop.
If we don’t have a farmable path to max conduits for players who don’t raid than we have massive issues, as well as the issues this creates for solo players and pugging.
Venruki also talked about this problem. Watch his video on solo play.
These are the layers we’ve created in this game today, barriers of entry, that prevent some good gamers from progressing because they simply don’t know how to get these conduits maxed.
Bottom line: We need a better path for PVP conduits and for those pushing keys.
(edited for 2 tiny typos, no significant content changes)
(updated 2/24 - after running ZM, I can say that the friendly conduit upgrade that unlocks all conduits to 226 is not account wide, it is also character specific. So I had to grind it on my horde character and another to get the 226 upgrade for PVP use. And grinding friendly on a 2nd character isn’t easy if you skip the storyline, fyi. I assume the 239 conduit upgrade on revered isn’t account wide either, so PVP’ers we are going to be farming a lot of ZM on alts. My only hope is that when our main character is exalted the friendly and revered upgrades will be able to be bought on alts, it is probably gated by exalted. I’ll be there every day, wished faction HKs in war mode gave rep in ZM haha).