Demon Hunter Artifact Change Proposal

Classes Demon Hunter
1

With all the changes coming in Shadowlands, and what was just announced about Demon Hunters sharing the same resource, more skills, etc. in order to make the specs more common, can we PLEASE request the following:

Artifact skins to be used by either spec, and below are my reasons for it. I understand every class wants this (not arguing against that), but please hear me out.

  • Majority of Vengeance skins are terrible, no offense. I know some of them look good, but then in combat the way they are held makes them look bad. Meanwhile, even the most basic havoc skin looks better than Vengeance.
  • I mean no offense to the developers who thought of this, but they left one spec out from the most iconic weapon/look of the actual class?
  • One of the most popular and amazing skins is the Havoc mage tower skin. As a Demon Hunter who exclusively tanks, and does so much for others by playing a role most won’t, why should I not have access to a Havoc skin I also acquired from the mage tower, for content that is no longer relevant?
  • Being extremely new, we barely have glaive transmog options. Why not allow the class to use all skins, to add a variety of amazing transmog options for both specs?
  • It makes sense not to allow cross-spec for some classes, such as saying why would a Retribution Paladin using a 2H would have the 1h and shield of Holy, or even for animation issues. However, there is NO reason why this makes sense for a demon hunter that uses the same weapon for both specs and has the same exact animations.
  • Since we are going back to class identity, the argument that “why would X spec be using X artifact that has no connection to their lore/game-play” is no longer valid. Let’s unify the class as a whole, thematically!

Honestly just to sum it up, the truth is Havoc has some of the best, including THE best skin in the game (mage tower), but not everyone wants to play a DPS spec. Why punish those who decide to play the least played role, not to mention 99% of demon hunters are Havoc so how about more incentives to get people to play the other spec and help the community by being a tank?

Now I know many will argue that this should not be exclusive to Demon Hunters, and I agree. But the point for this post is, this is the perfect time with proper reason to at the very least allow Demon Hunters to have access to all artifact skins, the same way decisions like giving them the transmog from Black Temple, or giving legendary transmog option in 8.3 (to other classes) was made.

What are some of your thoughts on this? As you can see, I am posting from my main just to show I’m not being biased to my main class, and as much as I would love to have my Demonology floating skull when playing other specs, I’m looking out for the more reasonable request (for the time-being).

2

I tend to agree, for certain sets of artifacts. There’s little reason, imo, for Assassination and Sub artifacts to not be shared. Same for DH, mage, Aff and Destro and maybe Demo (summoning demons isn’t only a Demo thing, after all), Balance and Resto, Elemental and Resto, BM and MM (damnit I want my quiver as BM!), all 3 monk specs (especially with BM and WW getting both 2h and 1h in Shadowlands), DK, priest, and warrior.

So really, I guess the only ones that don’t make sense are where there’s significant weapon type differences. Ret and Holy sorta align, but a 2h sword on a Holy paladin is kinda odd (though the hammer from Holy would be perfectly fine for Ret, so I’d probably be fine with this). Prot pally wouldn’t make sense with either of the other two’s, though Holy should probably be able to use Prot’s sword-and-boards. Arms and Fury could possibly work, since all of the Fury skins are just dual versions of the same weapon anyway. Prot warrior obviously wouldn’t, nor would Enhancement, Survival, Frost (dual wield version, if they 2h, they should be able to use the Unholy and Blood appearances), Outlaw, Feral, and Guardian.

So maybe they could unlock them across the whole class but with the same existing weapon type restrictions as exist for normal weapon transmogs (ie. Outlaw can’t use Sin/Sub and vice versa, because daggers and other 1handers aren’t cross-transmoggable). Actually, they might have to have a bit special rules based on the types of weapons that spec is intended to equip, rather than what they have equipped (example, Holy can currently transmog a sword-and-board to their 2hander artifact, so I see no reason they shouldn’t be able to transmog a 2hander to a prot sword-and-board).

Given the class-rather-than-spec focus of Shadowlands, it’s a rather good time to do it. That said, Legion was gung-ho about spec fantasy over class fantasy, and I doubt Blizzard would put in the effort to expand these due to that.