Bellular Interview with Ion Hazzikostas on Soulbinds and Conduit Design Philosophy

Posted 2020/07/12 at 12:18 AM by Squishei

SummaryBellular's YouTube channelBasic Information

Conduits are earned from dungeons, raid bosses, PvP and vendors

Conduits will not drop like relics and will be a bonus drop.

They're talking about adding passive stats on them, possibly stamina to offset throughput benefits.

What was the design intention behind Conduits being consumable instead of being swappable or a library-like system?

If Conduits were swappable, the right way to play would be an inventory management nightmare -- you'd have a collection of conduits that you'd be hoarding and swapping in and out.

A bigger philosophical reason is choice and what customizing your character means.
There are already a lot of systems that you make on a micro level like changing your spec or gear.
This is similar to things you can do in Soulbinds -- swap Soulbind NPCs or Soulbind paths.

Nadjia's Soulbind tree

We're loathe to add like an extra extra layer of micro changes that you feel like you have to make and that really, given the way that theorycrafting and guides work, that you're supposed to make before you enter a given situation where it's not just, "Hey I'm gonna just pick my AoE Soulbind to go do this dungeon", it's "I'm going to replace and resocket these 5 Conduits" and then re-redo them for this other dungeon because of whatever reason.

When players are looking to addons to automate or streaming something, there may be too many simultaneous decisions that aren't actually interesting. It might just be something that you're copying.

You may gravitate towards a different Soulbind build because of the Conduits that you got, that has different strengths and weaknesses

A core of RPG customization lies in those strengths and weaknesses, otherwise players are identical -- where this is a right path or you're doing it wrong.

Would each spec use a different Soulbind for your Conduit choices?

It seems likely but how you split up your specs depends on multiple factors like the content you're doing or whether you're a hybrid versus a pure.

With a Soulbind with more utility/survival options, you might want to use that for Prot instead of Ret.

Then put synergistic Prot Conduits in and that loadout and path are saved and associated with the spec.

If you set up your Soulbinds per spec, you can then respec in the field and you have your Soulbind pre-slotted and ready to go quickly.

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Comment by ThorWowHeadSuch horrid restrictions. First covenants, and now conduits. Just more grinding. More greed for hoarding loot.

If only they'd let us have fun and play the game freely. :(Comment by VarusEURemovedComment by MetalchicUmm what? Making it a permanent choice means you need to be ABSOLUTELY sure of what you are doing before you screw yourself.

This means WAY MORE simming before socketing not less.It means more copying what people know works and less experimentation with what can work.Comment by ItacolomiSuch horrid restrictions. First covenants, and now conduits. Just more grinding. More greed for hoarding loot.

If only they'd let us have fun and play the game freely. :(Comment by JandariRemovedComment by KaptainKrunkSuch horrid restrictions. First covenants, and now conduits. Just more grinding. More greed for hoarding loot.

If only they'd let us have fun and play the game freely. :(Comment by JimbrooksWhen he says bonus drop...so it's RNG on top of RNG from a boss.

Right? Am I missing something here? So it's not enough to not get boss loot, you have to be luckier to get the conduit you want from the boss you want?Comment by ItacolomiSuch horrid restrictions. First covenants, and now conduits. Just more grinding. More greed for hoarding loot.

If only they'd let us have fun and play the game freely. :(Comment by VarusEUIf Conduits were swappable, the right way to play would be an inventory management nightmareComment by SomeNerdWoWThey want players to swap Soulbinds or Soulbind paths whenever they want and not worry about swapping Conduits.Comment by Ralph2449RemovedComment by arjay2813right before the 'quick quote' it says they want to let players change soulbinds whenever they want and not switch conduits. i doubt that'll apply to m+ since they only let us change weapons in shadowlands, according to the roundup of all the announcements. it would be really nice though if you could change from say Nadjia's st tree to more of an aoe tree with one of the other soulbinds, but for the sake of not changing every trashpull maybe be restricted to 1 path per soulbind.Comment by KaptainKrunkRemovedComment by JandariSuch horrid restrictions. First covenants, and now conduits. Just more grinding. More greed for hoarding loot.

If only they'd let us have fun and play the game freely. :(Comment by JimbrooksRENTED POWER 3 - SHADOWLANDS coming soon to a cinema near you.Comment by QuesenekI don't understand the logic behind them thinking it would be an inventory management nightmare...
They literally have the system in place right now in retail with Essences that allows a player to swap the traits out at will in a rest area and the essences don't go into your inventory, they go into a list.

Directly copy and paste the code that stores the Essences, change it to store conduits and make the conduits be consumed into the list just like the Essences were and there is zero inventory management nightmare involved in the system.Comment by NirosuSuch a weird choice to make conduits consumable and drop from content.
Like the conduits being a consumable angle, having all of them be tradable and craftable would be the most logical path. And the profession system could use more stuff to craft.
Personally I don't think the consumable aspect is even a good idea, especially the way in which it is implemented. If blizzard wants players to have to use them and for it to have a cost to switch them, the drop from boss method is one of the worse implementations. Could make them temp unlocks for the week like contracts or vantus runes.
Or a glyph like system where it unlocks and you can swap between the ones you have unlocked for some gold or generic resource cost.

I understand that the customization of the conduits is supposed to be super fire and forget until you get an upgraded version of one in a later patch essentially. But seriously if the go to best conduit for single target, raid aoe, raid trash, mythic+, etc are all different the high-end will be pissed. And the avg player won't care as the system will be garbage to engage with.
If the conduit system is meant to be a one and done type system per patch, design it as such, I don't understand the difficult part of that just seems Blizzard doesn't seem to understand thatComment by th3scourgeFor the love of god just bake these into classes and be done with borrowed power bull!@#$.

No wonder why classic is so popularComment by angeleyedGrinding for conduits is fine. It’s a reasonable grind that I am willing to do, unlike artifact power. Wow without grind isn’t fun.Comment by ekidnaWhen he says bonus drop...so it's RNG on top of RNG from a boss.

Right? Am I missing something here? So it's not enough to not get boss loot, you have to be luckier to get the conduit you want from the boss you want?

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