How conduits work in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands

Shadowlands is set to bring many changes to World of Warcraft: new story, new dungeons, raids, an overhauled leveling system, and more.

One of the new mechanics you will be getting your hands on are Conduits. While introduced in the expansion’s beta earlier, the mechanic was met with some criticism, so Blizzard has gone in and redone how it works. To keep you up-to-date, we have a description of just what this mechanic will entail right here.

What Are Conduits?

Shadowlands is introducing Soulbinding to the game, a mechanic that allows players who have joined a Covenant to bind themselves to one of its members. Each Covenant offers three different Soulbind paths, with each one offering different bonuses. You can add a Conduit to different Sockets in your Soulbind path instead of the usual progression of the Covenant.

Conduits serve to add another layer of customization to your Soulbind, giving bonuses to your class or spec. There are three different kinds of Conduits to choose from:

Potency Conduits

These improve the power of your spells and are specific to your spec or Covenant. There are four for each DPS and Heals, two for Tanks, and four Covenant-specific Conduits.

Endurance Conduits

Conduits that give your character more defensive value through damage mitigation or increased healing. There are three available to all specs and two that are only for Tanks.

Finesse Conduits

Provide additional utility to your class. Each class comes with four that are available to all specs.

A Conduit is only allowed for us one time per Soulbind, so if you use a Conduit for one of the sockets in a Soulbind path, you can’t use in another socket. You can, though, use it in another Soulbind.

Where Can You Get Conduits?

You can acquire Conduits through mission rewards from max level content like Dungeons, PvP, Raids, Reputations, World Quests, and more. Conduits will drop as personal loot and outside of the Loot Table. So if you are going to get a Conduit, it will drop in addition to the other loot that will drop. You cannot trade Conduits, either.

You can also buy a Manifest Aethershunt from Ve’nari, the Broker in the Maw, and use this to add Conduits that you do not already own. You will have to have reached Cordial Reputation with Ve’nari, and it will cost 2500 Stygia.

All Conduits use a persistent collections system, meaning that if you have a Conduit and later get an upgraded version of that Conduit, it will automatically update it in your collection.

Upgrading Conduits

All Conduits have 15 possible Item Levels that can be upgraded through the Manifest Aethershunt. When upgrading, the upgraded Conduit will be randomly selected from your lowest-ranked Conduits.

Replacing Conduits

You can only re-select and reset your Conduits once a week at the Forge of Bonds in your Covenant Sanctum. Don’t worry, though: replacing a Conduit will not destroy it, and it will go back into your collection for later use.