Spec switching/content switching, they are just a boring tacked on system that doesn’t need to exsist.
The covenant specific ones can drop from the covenant rares in Korthia.
For instance, the Necrolord one can drop from Fleshwing.
Another problem I have with Conduits, is that they usually range from “OMG I NEED! WHY IS THIS NOT A PART OF MY CHARACTER ALREADY!?” to “… pfft? Why would I ever equip this?”
Stuff like “Blade Flurry Heals you over time” to “do 700 damage when you interrupt a spell”.
The balance is God Awful on some of these.
Also, having to choose between Potency/Finesse/Endurance and the actual Soulbind abilities you Actually want.
For example, on alts, I might want the gatherer abilities, but that locks me into a certain kind of Conduit on the node before/after it, when I really want the other kind of node. But because I want to get random crafting materials when killing a mob, I feel that I’m punished for that, because the type (usually Finesse) of conduit before/after it sucks and I have no good conduits to put there, but yet I DO have something nice I’d like to put in the other slot, but then I’d lose my crafting material soulbind ability…
You do realize that a fresh new character gets Renown 12 if they do Threads of Fate, just from doing the four “Aid the Covenant Quests”, and they get 2 Renown just for joining the Covenant, and then 3 per day, one from each Calling, and three per week (one from rescuing souls, one from getting 1,000 anima, and one for the Korthia weekly), until at least Renown 30-40, right?
If you did a Threads of Fate character up to 60 today, you’d have… what…
Renown 12 (3x from each zone’s % meter)
Renown 14 (Joining the Covenant)
Renown 17, First Day (3 Callings)
Renown 18, Second Day (1 Calling)
Renown 19, Third Day (1 Calling)
Renown 20, Fourth Day (1 Calling)
Renown 21, Fifth Day (1 Calling)
Renown 22, Sixth Day (1 Calling)
Renown 23, Seventh Day (1 Calling)
Renown 26 At Some Point During the Week (Souls Quest, Anima Quest, Korthia weekly)
And this isn’t even counting the +7 Renown you’d get if you did a Daily Heroic.
EDIT: Also, each chapter of the Covenant Questline also gives at least +1 renown, so there’s another +9 Renown.
Threads of Fate was the most agonizing leveling experience I have ever done in an mmorpg.
I have avoided that option like the plague.
How/why, exactly?
It’s faster than story mode, and it gives you plenty of options on what to do for XP.
I really don’t understand what people have against it. It lets you pick&mix the content you do, and it lets you start building Renown and Anima early, during the leveling process.
What exactly is so bad about it?
EDIT: Oh, and gear you get from quests is always relevant to your level, unlike Story Mode.
I find the opposite is true, since the story mode gives you a consistent chain diet of quests while in threads you’re left at the mercy of world quests that drip feeds you gear and xp.
Because it’s a pointless and, in most cases, non-interactive system whose only purpose is to be a time sink due to the incredibly long grind and rng elements of it.
It’s absolutely unnecessary, but it’s cheaper in terms of design budget to add another grind than to make actual content.
Because the RNG of it kinda takes the meaningful choice away from our characters.
The NPC you turn you 20 souls into each week should also be a vendor. It should sell conduits and the upgrade crescent for anima.
That change would at least give us the ability to get the ones we actually want and upgrade them when building an alt.
The conduit energy thing hasn’t effected me personally. I have the set it and forget it mentally.
However, this also hinders player choice. If we are to be locked to a single covenant, why can’t we switch our trees as much as we want? What harm could it pose if a player wants to switch their trees for each type of content? None that I can think of…
Gotta have that BiS for everything little tiny thing all the time.
(waves hello to Lilithia and gives her a cookie)
For me, the conduits seem a bit unbalanced which is a little off but okay. It’s the RNG and conduit energy that makes me dislike it.
You just haven’t discovered the way to optimize, yet.
Ardenweald has several HUGE side-quest chains that will bump you 3 levels fast, and a lot of times, World Quests and Bonus Objectives pop up in the same area.
Bastion lets you fill in its % meter insanely fast thanks to the fact there are several Rares that are always up, and Revendreth is also filled with Sidequests that overlap Bonus Objective areas.
Maldraxxus is the only one I particularly dislike, that zone sucks no matter how you do it.
Also, Fun Fact, if you’re Level 60 already (if you did dailies/pet battles/Archaeology etc outside of Shadowlands), ToF lets you jump into a covenant, Immediately without doing anything. You miss out on the % meter quests and the Renown they offer tho.
I’m not gana touch any of that crap anyway cause I’m sick of it.
All these power dynamics and stringy reward systems are all too drawn out.
I get more joy and satisfaction replaying a class story on swtor, no worries about chasing a power dynamic that doesn’t even let you feel powerful.
That’s exactly what it is. Power creep prevents brickwalling without resorting to Wrath-style awkward nerfs to the content itself, and pure timegating is the only way (that they’ve come up with so far) to keep people from grinding for more power and then complaining that they “had” to grind for more power. (Spoiler alert: you never actually had to grind for more AP in Legion or BFA. It was going to come to you anyway just by having more patience than a squirrel on crack. The fact that so many people didn’t have any patience is why we now have timegated hardcaps, because “earn more power at your own pace” is a system players proved we couldn’t be trusted with.)
No matter what they do, someone will complain, but the renown system actually solves a lot of the problems with similar past systems while also keeping its good points (primarily, players can get slightly stronger week to week even if they don’t get actual gear to drop).)
It has a few interesting ideas behind it, but I think the implementation is just a clunky. Another example of them wanting to make something elegantly complex, and it just turns out to be a convoluted mess.
I’m personally not a fan of unlocking class abilities after reaching max level. I think the class should be don’t when you get to max level and anything after that should be gear and fine tuning.
The upgrade/acquisition system is really the only thing people complain about, but with the latest hotfix it’s largely a moot point. Once you reach tier 6 you’ll have enough research to 252 all of your main specs conduits. Also, the Maw Assault and Korthia gives you most of your conduits while on an alt.
I don’t understand the complaints about conduit energy because I literally do not swap conduits on any of my 4 characters once they’re in place and I have the best ones available. 9.1 added in 1 more of each slot type to the trees.
The problem is, being rewarded with conduits for specs you will not play…ie, a shadow priest getting holy or disc conduits before maxing shadow conduits…
2nd- the absolutely fudged gating system in 9.1 where you are unable to obtain higher then 226 conduits unless you raid, or achieve tier 6 archivist rep which is a huge stupid grind…
RNG makes everything way more exciting!
They feel these systems add layers of complexity (perceived) that are unnecessary, particularly because everything eventually ends up being cookie-cutter due to an intense focus on performance data. There are no real choices in this game because we are min/maxing damage meter slaves, granted it is a self-inflicted problem. Most of the choices offered on these conduit systems are so minimally impactful that it’s not even worth worrying about, so what’s the point of them existing?