What is the Conduit archetype?
This archetype is a complex one to first grasp, but once you’ve got the basics down it is doable.
Every Conduit character has an personal Energy deck, which draws you Energy cards of theirs into your Spelldock. Instead of casting Incantations from hand, they are displayed right under the AP Area, and at the start of the round you can pick (per character) what Incantation they’ll be casting.
These Conduit Incantations usually have an Energy cost. You cast the Energy cards from your hand and when those have resolved, your gathered Energy for the turn (if sufficient) will trigger the chosen Incantations. So long as you have enough Energy, Conduit Incantations can trigger multiple times.
Energy you gather has an Afflatus, so you have separate pools for Mineral Energy, Star, Beast etc. Some Incantations may require specific types of Energy to cast.
Your unused Energy resets at the start of each round.
Some Incantations have [Interval], meaning that after they trigger once they stop casting even if you have enough Energy to trigger them twice.
Conduit characters also do not have any Moxie, and instead generate Harmonization through various means. At maximum Harmonization, their Ultimate becomes available to cast via their Conduit.
In Depth: Most Conduit characters have Energy cards with unique effects that can be important for their specific bit of strategy. Such as the Twins having Energy cards that boost the power of their Set A and Set B Incantations respectively.
There is also Chaotic Energy, currently generated only by Everecho, which acts as a type of ‘neutral Energy’ that can be used to cast any Conduit Incantation.
How to play conduit?
Beyond the initial complexity of understanding exactly how it wants to cast there isn’t a convoluted way to actually play it.
The archetype excels at having a high amount of active casts, since Conduit Incantations do not count as Follow-Ups but can trigger multiple times a round depending on the amount of Energy gathered.
What you as the pilot have to be aware of is mostly just counting how much Energy you can generate with the cards in your hand and how much Energy your team can generate off-hand from things like Insights or even Conduit Incantations.
Every turn you should see what you have available and how to best allocate your Energy distribution. Cards such as timing Hedone’s [Forged in Radiant Light] into burst turns to hit high Mineral Energy breakpoints like that of the Twins’ Ultimate.
What are your Energy breakpoints? Considering when to save your Energy, such as making sure that you have 12 Energy available going into a round where the Twins can cast their Ultimate, lies at the core of the team’s gameplan. It is also important to keep in mind the unique Energy cards in your team. For example, Everecho’s healing output is reduced significantly if you’re not casting her [Light’s Might] Energy card when it appears in your hand.
In Depth: Being aware of what Conduit Incantations in your team have [Interval] to prevent one character from ‘stealing’ Energy away from characters that you want to cast often can help you guide your team to optimizing their damage output per round. The main difficulty with this archetype is ensuring that your Energy goes to the sources you want it to, as you have very little control over what is actually being cast due to the specific way in which it sequences.
For example, you’ll want to avoid casting Coppelia's Ultimate in the same turn as that of the Twins as the Twins will eat most of your Mineral Energy, leaving your Coppelia hanging dry for her Conduit S1 Spam. If you still want the Twins to deal damage during a sequence where you cast Coppelia's Ultimate, you can switch them to their Star Set so they can utilize any Star Energy that might be in your hand.
But what are the benefits to playing Conduit over other Archetypes, and what may make you reconsider?
Removes a lot of card-draw RNG (in a full Conduit team) by design and allows multiple hard-casts of your Incantations per round. This also makes it a good contender for when you need to trigger Afflatus Break.
Incredibly high damage potential per turn through repeating casts, limited only by the optimizing of your Energy economy to feed into certain specific Conduit casts.
It feels genuinely atrocious to play when non-Conduit characters are included in a team due to their standard cards clogging your hand and artificially lowering your possible Energy income per turn. This also makes teambuilding extremely strict even if they can technically make use of things like Dynamo Wheelchair, the difference between a full Conduit team and having even 1 non-Conduit character is very noticeable.
Despite feeling auto-friendly, due to having to count for Energy breakpoints and having an overreliance on Tuning it isn’t actually a good idea to auto with this team.
Teambuilding
At the time of writing this, Conduit is probably the strictest archetype when it comes to teambuilding. Being on the newer side of archetypes, it hasn’t had much time to establish a very flexible roster and through the nature of how it works it is difficult to recommend off-archetype teammates, so this section will hopefully be updated to be more expansive in the future.
Currently, your BIS will be:
Coppélia / 
The Twins / 
Rhiannon / 
EverechoBy the time this releases, Hedone will have been released on CN, so expect a possible update to the BIS and Teambuilding.
Make sure that Coppelia is placed IN FRONT of The Twins, her important buffs target the character directly behind her.
You’re not really going to find a different team that functions on a similar level to this with the characters we have currently available. Some people claim that Regulus with her second Euphoria can be used here, but it is genuinely extremely awful and not worth your precious Euphoria materials. Even should the Twins fall off in the next few months, Regulus is not comparable to them and she will be in a even worse state.
The only reason Rhiannon is allowed in the team is because her [Universal Fit] allows her to count towards archetype-specific buffs and her going completely AP-free after her initial Ultimate causes her to not impede your Spelldock as much with standard Incantations.
When looking at future releases for this archetype, make sure you are looking for the following things:
Are they generating or benefitting from the types of Energy that you can generate with your team?
Are they able to manipulate where Energy gets funneled, for example, through strategic use of [Interval] effects or by being able to consume types of Energy that other allies can’t?
What are their Energy breakpoints and how difficult are they to hit? Can you reasonably meet these requirements without intruding on your other characters?
Are they able to aid in Energy generation outside of hard-casts such as AP+ buffs, auto casts, Energy generation though Conduit Incantations or Energy cards with no AP cost.
Unit ranking
What follows are two tables, one displaying only characters that adhere specifically to the Conduit Archetype. The other is a table of Generalist options, also ranked. Take note of the following:
Core — Integral to the functionality of the archetype.
Common — Most often seen in this position alongside the Core. Can be BiS.
Flex — Either good in specific situations or potentially good in a Common slot.
Cope — Only really used if nothing else is available. And even then, lmao.
Conduit Unit Spread
Damage Dealer | Support | Sustain | |
|---|---|---|---|
Core |
|
| |
Common |
| ||
Flex |
| ||
Cope |
|
Core:
Coppelia – Integral Mineral Energy supplier with important offensive buffs.
Everecho – General (Chaotic) Energy supplier with AFK healing and offensive buffs.
Common:
The Twins – Generically good DPS with extremely high Mass output.
Hedone – ASSUMED. Mineral Energy supplier with offensive buffs and Energy cheats.
Flex:
Coppelia – Great DPS with decent potential Mineral spam.
Cope:
Regulus (E2) – Mediocre output DPS that can supply Star Energy.
Generalist Unit Spread
Damage Dealer | Support | Sustain | |
|---|---|---|---|
Core | |||
Common |
| ||
Flex | |||
Cope |
|
|
Core:
N/A
Common:
Rhiannon – Versatile buffer that can keep your hand clean for Energy cards.
Flex:
N/A
Cope:
Charon – Fantastic (de)buffer that can get rid of his own cards. Only with Enigma.
Enigma – Great sustain and [Dynamo] funneler. Only with Charon.