Really glad that they are standing by their design to make decisions relevant. Player agency is all about player choice and a choice is a commitment. If conduits were not destroyed and easily swapped out, they’d just become one more part of the meta that people would simply use an addon to configure and it would be brainless and stupid just like our current talent trees have been. I truly hope that their experience with soulbinds will make its way into new talent trees for whatever expansion comes after shadowlands.
It IS in Blizzard’s power to return some elements of an rpg to wow, make it less of a meta slave and if some people cant deal with that so be it but it will be healthier for the game.
Proud of them that the opinion of some salty “Hear me for I represent the 1%” streamer isnt fazing them.
Not being able to swap them easily makes them more likely to be used in a “meta” build. Like, you do realize that right? Why on earth would someone want to try something different if right when they swap it out, they are forced to farm their main conduit all over again?
Not only that, you might as well kiss various spec swaps goodbye. All you people that whine about not seeing any tanks in PuGs, well this is going to make it even worse. Have fun.
Agreed, OP.
+1
They will be easily swapped out if they drop like legion thingies for artifacts where you had soo many of them for no reason , at least this time , when you get a 2-3-4-5-6th drop of the same , it will serve a purpose .
So if someone picks the wrong conduit and ends up gimped they have to reroll grind or they’re screwed?
Fantastic.
Not being able to swap Conduits = bags and bags and bags full of conduits for when you need to swap them out or change spec.
Great game design.
This ain’t it. What’s going to happen is that people will just stockpile conduits so they can switch freely. It’s a pointless decision by Blizzard and you lot are eating it up because of this “hard choices” nonsense.
I disagree, Ion.
Well if it so happens that it will get optimized by meta addicts and determined that you can get 0,5% dps by switching per boss, knock yourself out and farm them to your hearts content. At least it shows blizzard is looking after the more common player that will just swap soulbinds situationally and not delve into that deep of a min maxing. The fact that I cant swap conduits per fight luckly means I wont have to.
After much thought, I feel like they should do the following:
-
Conduits should be swappable without losing the Conduit. Whatever your highest ilvl Conduit you’ve ever acquired is the ilvl of the Conduit in your library.
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Covenants should remain relatively locked as they are.
Reasoning is the following -
Conduits feel like a “tinkering” bit of gameplay. You really want to be able to tinker with the thing to figure out if it is good or not. It’s also a “math” thing, many of the Conduits just making numbers go up. Conduits are already sorted by color (red, yellow, blue) so UI bloat should be relatively under control to allow for such a change - you shouldn’t end up with the problem with the essence system where all slots are interchangeable and therefore overwhelming. I feel like making Conduits swappable (with only a minor cost at most) retains most of what they are and they will both avoid the pitfalls of essences (ilvl on Conduits avoids you having to grind old patch content) while also avoiding the pitfalls of relics (feeling unable to experiment).
Covenants, by contrast, are the “complete package”. Flavor, lore, game mechanics, and game systems. The closest analogy to anything that currently exists in WoW to a Covenant is a class. They are not talents. They are closest to a class. Are they a full class? No. But aside from the Legion class revamps, I can’t think of any other expansion that has added more “stuff” that changes your core class identity. This is something that feels relatively immutable. As much as the fringe of gamers want WoW to become FFXIV and have full class swapping, that is not the fantasy of WoW.
Let me just say I respect Ion’s vision and I think it’s cool that he wants to push RPG elements, but Conduits feel like they’re forcing it a bit too hard. If you really want to make a cost to swapping, instead of destroying the Conduits, force us to consume Anima. If the cost is balanced correctly, most people will stay in place but the hardcore will be willing to acquire the Anima to experiment, but without feeling crushed that they had to throw out a piece of raid loot just to try a different build.
Oh please. The “more common player” will be affected just as deeply. This is a bad idea and you white knights need to stop defending Blizzard every time they make a mistake.
Except Blizzard is piss poor about consistency. I mean, even from one expansion to the next, you have no guarantee your favorite spec ability will stay intact. When they’re constantly tweaking numbers and have bungled it numerous times in regards to balancing things … the last thing any sane person wants is permanency.
Also, tabletop RPGs understand that things change and many of them have methods by which you can CHANGE things. There are prices, but you’re not locked 100% into stone. You have OPTIONS if things just aren’t working out.
Permanency, when an ability may get upwards of a 50% nerf (that has happened) is a terrifying thing.
At the same time, people need to stop bashing Blizzard for literally everything simply because they don’t like BFA. It’s not productive at all. You just get tuned out. For the most part, the haterraid doesn’t help you. You stay subbed to the game and you always whine, it’s like static off a TV left on, your brain tunes it out. You are nothing if you don’t back up your words with your wallet and you do nothing but whine.
If I had it my way, id be even more radical. Id make it so conduits can only be replaced by a conduit of a higher ilvl, so that you could only replace them once per patch.
Players are still going to farm conduits, it just makes it more annoying. I mean they didn’t expect people to change azerite as much as they did and they still do. It’s just another treadmill and should not be this way unless you can buy or craft it like glyphs.
I agree, just don’t lock the covenant abilities behind them as well.
The covenants can be a perma choice all it wants, locking the abilities behind them as well, is just bad design and I would’ve hoped Blizzard would see that. 
Because hard gating people playing different specs is so fun.
I’m convicned Blizz creates random characters and pays people to post with them on the wow forums about how awesome these dumbest decisions by Blizz are and how cool they are.
This is blizz’s way to make it appear that some people think their stupid ideas are good.
Either that or Blizz makes their employees post a certain amount of comments and praise Blizz on how awesome these crappy systems are going to be before they can go home for the night.
Or, it’s Ion and all of the Devs on their alts.
These are the only answers that makes sense.
Covenants and Covenant abilities go hand in hand.
You don’t get to say “Well, I want to play a Death Knight, but I want Fel Rush”.
Right now you’re playing a class-based RPG. If you want to be immune to classes being nerfed, FFXIV allows you to change class at any time. WoW is a game where class is a core part of who you are.
You have 3 soulbinds. You have 3 specs. The idea is swapping soulbinds not individual conduits.
Exactly. I am going night fae for my dk. Reason being I prefer the night fae active ability over all others, both general and class specific, for my dk. And to me, a button that I press is more important than passives. Plus since i have 12 chars, i will get to experience the history of all covenants anyway. So yeah, the dk fairy man? that will be me.