Shadowlands Conduits Update

#1 - July 29, 2020, 3 p.m.

Starting next week in the Shadowlands Beta, we will begin introducing a series of updates to the Soulbind system to add a persistent collection system for Conduits. Since the Soulbind system was unveiled in the Alpha and discussed in our Developer Update, we’ve heard consistent feedback about the shortcomings of an inventory-based destructible version of Conduits, and we agree entirely.

While we feel it’s important that there be some friction in moving Conduits around, the prospect of the having to re-earn a given Conduit, perhaps by chasing a specific dungeon or raid boss drop, was not particularly appealing to anyone. However, simply removing destructibility without making other changes would have created an inventory management nightmare, especially for players who enjoy playing multiple specializations.

Once this new system is in place, Conduits will work like this:

• Conduits will continue to be items that can be earned from a wide variety of endgame content (dungeons, PvP, raids, reputations, world quests, etc.)
• The power of their effects will increase with the Item Level of the Conduit.
• Instead of placing a Conduit directly into a given Soulbind tree, you’ll bring it back to your Sanctum where you can add it to a permanent collection.
• There will be more than one source for most Conduits, to increase flexibility in acquisition and accessibility across different playstyles.
• Earning a more powerful version of a Conduit you already have will simply upgrade that Conduit in your collection.

At its core, the Soulbind system aims to give you the freedom to essentially build your own talent tree for yourself. Each Soulbind offers a range of fixed universal traits closely themed to that Soulbind’s nature, and there are many open slots throughout the tree that effectively serve as wildcards, allowing you to insert Conduits to customize each Soulbind to suit your playstyle and preferences. A given Conduit can only be used once per Soulbind, though the same Conduit can be added into different Soulbinds’ trees without restriction. This does not require earning more than one copy of the Conduit – once it’s in your collection, you can place it as you wish.

If you want to rebuild your Soulbind trees, once per week you’ll be able to clear all of their Conduits, with a separate cooldown per Soulbind. But once you’ve decided on your desired Conduit placements, we want to ensure that the system offers as much flexibility as other existing talent systems, so you’ll be able to switch which Soulbind is active or redirect the flow of Anima through a Soulbind’s tree (essentially respeccing them) any time you visit your Sanctum. And if you have a different Soulbind per spec, or a different active trait path within a given Soulbind, that will be saved on a per-specialization basis, and will automatically change whenever and wherever you change specializations.

We’re hoping to have an initial version of this system active in next week’s Beta, with further updates and a polished user interface in the weeks to follow.

As always, thank you for your feedback! We’re looking forward to seeing everyone play with this new system and letting us know how it feels, and it’s your thoughtful feedback that has helped us make Shadowlands even better.

#59 - Sept. 29, 2020, 12:20 a.m.

We’ve recently seen a number of questions about how Conduits work in Shadowlands. Here’s a brief explainer:

Conduits are items, and they have item levels like other loot you’ll see in Shadowlands. Currently in the Beta, Heroic dungeon loot is item level 171 and Normal difficulty Castle Nathria is dropping iLvl 200 gear. Like other loot, the higher the Conduit’s item level, the more powerful its effect.

Conduits can come from many sources, including dungeon bosses, raid bosses, the PvP vendor, and World Quests and content (via Callings). Conduits go into a collection, making it unnecessary to repeatedly earn individual Conduits at a given item level.

Conduits drop as personal loot and are class-based, so they don’t differ based on your active spec or your loot spec. They’re also additive with other loot drops – a Conduit won’t replace an item that a boss might otherwise have dropped. Conduits are not tradeable.

Our goal is to offer one or more ways of targeting the specific Conduits that you might want ( such as PvP vendors and loot drops), in addition to those available via Callings and a catch-all Conduit sold by Ve’nari in the Maw.

• Specific to Ve’nari, we’re in the process of removing Stygia as a repeatable reward from Twisting Corridors. Our goal here is for the Eye of the Jailer in the Maw to be a limiting factor on Stygia gains.

As with other items, you can experience big upgrades when replacing Conduits. If you have an iLvl 171 version of a Conduit, and you obtain an iLvl 213 version of that Conduit from a Mythic Keystone dungeon, you’ll take it to the Forge of Bonds and enjoy your nice upgrade.

#123 - Oct. 7, 2020, 8:46 p.m.

In this week’s Shadowlands Beta build, Soulbinds have had their tree layouts changed in a small, but important, way. All Soulbinds now have access to 2 Potency Conduit sockets, whereas previously all trees had 3 Potency sockets. The goal of this change is to increase the flexibility of Soulbinds, and make it more viable to use one Soulbind for multiple specializations.

Due to Potency Conduits’ effects being mostly spec-specific, they are the Conduits most likely to make a Soulbind layout feel locked-in to one specialization. While we expect this to be a natural way for many players to engage with Soulbinds –- picking one Soulbind per spec, and building them out accordingly –- we want to make sure there is room to discover other setups that work for you, based on the content you prefer to participate in.

The removed Potency sockets have been replaced with either an Endurance or Finesse sockets which, by virtue of primarily being class-wide effects, are easier to justify using across multiple specializations.

We’re looking forward to seeing how you choose to build out your Soulbinds, and your continuing feedback on this system!