Yep, this mentality of swapping between fights isn’t new. It already happens with talents, but Blizzard is seemingly okay with that as they’ve created items that allow you to swap talents freely outside of rested areas when you use them.
The same thing is happening with Conduits now, but to a lesser extent given the restrictions that Conduit energy put on the players. I’ve literally seen it happening. I guarantee you that if conduit energy was removed, you’d see that increasing. For example, an Arms Warrior might be expected to use the following conduits for a single target fight:
Crash the Ramparts
Ashen Juggernaut
Mortal Combo
But the moment a cleave fight starts, they’ll be expected to swap to these:
Merciless Grinder
Ravager (if talented)
Because those two conduits give strong enhancements to Arms Warrior AoE potential. Merciless Grinder can increase Whirlwind’s damage up to 50% and Ravager can increase Whirlwind’s damage by a maximum of 120%
And if you seriously don’t think that WoW raiders will nitpick for maximum optimization, then you haven’t been playing this game very long.
I don’t think it would be a horrible idea if talents had a cooldown on being switched. This would force players to actually think about what talents to use and what would be most beneficial to them over whatever timeframe.
Not all of us believe the game is bad and has “devolved”.
Removing trivial choice and adding meaningful choice isn’t anti-mmorpg at all. If anything it is much more rpg given that you must make impactful decisions for your character.
I am from a RP realm and I am the lone voice that is against the conduit energy shenanigans! RPers need to repent and come back to the light! WoW is a MMORPG which means player agency!
No player choice has been taken away. You can choose to slot whatever conduits you have unlocked. The limitation that conduit energy creates does not eliminate your ability to choose.
The sub 100 players that would maybe swap conduits between fights (if their conduits are even worth swapping out) can already do that right now, just not every week (Every other week).
Even if the “issue” were more prevalent, why do you care? How does this negatively impact your or others’ play experience?
It’s not up to you, nor Blizzard, to dictate what players find value in. When devs implement a system no one asked for under the guise of “We want conduit choice to be a meaningful one,” they are dictating what is and isn’t meaningful to a player. With this restriction, I and many others don’t feel any more rewarded or special for not being able to play another spec. Therefore, it’s an utter failure of a system.
Conduit energy doesn’t even make sense from a RPG perspective. Where is the conduit energy stored? If everyone and their mamas storing the conduit energy then what is the limit to storing conduit energy? Shouldn’t conduit energy decay if unused? Shouldn’t conduit energy require rebalancing once in a while?
