Fix 9.1 - Covenants and Conduits

Community General Discussion
1

Hi,

This post is very short, sweet and simple. It calls for Blizzard to address issues with Shadowlands in 9.1.

The following issues should be fixed with the following methods:

  1. Covenant swapping.
    As indicated by Ion in his most recent interview with Preach, “Covenants are intended to be working together, and a player is aligning themselves with one of the covenants in the game”. This thematic idea is designed to lock players into a covenant choice.

Unfortunately, the impact this has on any player who cares about performance (and a large majority of players did pick based on performance, not thematic reasons) is that they feel locked into a covenant and are unable to try out other options.

Rather than locking into one covenant all that needs to be done here is simply allowing you to go through each of the covenants quests, and when you want to use the abilities of one, you go to their sanctum and align with the soulbinds there. No 2 week lockout, no requesting.

2/ Conduit energy
Conduit energy is bad. Again Ion’s explanation of Blizzard’s perspective on this topic is : We don’t want another thing for players to have to change between each boss, this system is supposed to be semi-permanent.

Firstly, the connotation that needing to swap conduits around is negative is based on false pretences. The idea that not all players want to be going back to their covenant sanctum to swap their conduits is true. But the problem with using it as an argument is the ONLY players who actually WANT to do that are the people who don’t care. The players who don’t want to do that are the ones who don’t care about the small performance increase.

Secondly, the impact this has on players of different classes is insane. For a player who wants to play one class one spec all the time, this has no impact at all. However, for a player who wants to try different specs, different roles or sometimes even simply different content (Raid vs M+) conduits restrict their ability to swap between these because they feel like they are making sub-optimal choices when doing so as they are locked into conduits.

Simply put, the pain of switching conduits only negatively affects the people who don’t care and actually want to go swap their conduits for different conduit. The restriction of conduit energy is completely pointless.

The solution - remove conduit energy.

2

Still don’t know what the point of conduit energy is. You either never notice it or you get bottlenecked by it, there doesn’t seem to be a middle of the road point where it effects everyone equally.

As a Rogue, I don’t really have a whole lot of play between conduits, they are either good for the spec or they aren’t, not much middle ground. Also, I’m not playing at a level that might need to squeeze out those extra fractions of damage. On the opposite side of the spectrum, if you are at a higher level or play a class that has more options, you might have problems with conduit energy running out.

Is the purpose just to punish people at the higher end or something? It seriously makes zero sense lol.

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3

In lieu of actual meaningful choices, these are the things Blizzard adds to their game to make choices matter. Being oblivious to the effect it has on players would be straight incompetent on their parts, or the other explanation is that they’re fully cognizant of how much players hate the idea, and still willfully implement it.

They’ll ease up on this in the final content patch, and proclaim that they’re doing it after receiving feedback, pretending that feedback hasn’t been offered since release.

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4

Since release? BETA Testers begged Blizzard to not restrict covenant swapping or that they de-couple power from covenant choice (i.e., make covenants a story/flavor/cosmetic thing without power). Fell on deaf ears, and likely will until that final content patch as you mention–too little, too late.

I get that they don’t want a free-for-all (min/maxers will hearth out before each Mythic Raid boss to adjust their powers) and that there needs to be “friction” but that’s what the conduit energy thing is about. You should be able to swap covenants as easily as you can swap a conduit within a soulbind.

5

Would you rather be expected to hearth to your sanctum and and switch soulbinds/conduits for each raid boss?

I personally just pick what I like overall and stick with it. Minor tweaks now and then, but I also know everyone plays differently.

Also, I have swapped covenants twice now. It is a minor inconvenience, but really not that big of a deal but it did feel bad to not be a max renown when I first switched.

Questioning why the limits for swapping/conduit energy are in the game is fair though.

6

I don’t get it. How do you not understand you’re not getting Covenant swapping? Lol. Blizzard doesn’t double-down on a feature unless they have analytics showing it is popular. You’re yelling into the void at this point. Maybe Blizzard experiments in 9.2 as they typically do wild experiments at the end of an expansion, but beyond that… lol.

7

Absolutely I would. I would love to be able to hearth back and change conduits whenever I feel like it. Certain bosses are better with different conduits and m+ has a different set of optimal conduits once again. The other soulbind trees are sub par when it comes to dps.

This difference between your perspective and my perspective is the entire reason why conduit energy is pointless.

Conduit energy has a massively restricting effect on how I would like to play the game, since I actively enjoy and want to make those changes and test different builds.

On the other hand, you sound like you barely notice the system and set it and forget it for the most part.

The system does not benefit either one of us and I believe most players fit into one of our two categories, rendering conduit energy completely and utterly pointless.

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8

Actually I am enjoying conduits quite a bit and I see no real issues with it, other than the fact some are better for pvp while others are better for pve, and some are more meta than others so they require balancing.