Legion artifact weapons

Community General Discussion
1

Forgive me if this has already been discussed.

Having decided to level up classes that I have neglected for several expansions through the legion xpac for the transmpgs and mounts, I’ve noticed that the artifact weapon item levels aren’t increasing as my character progresses.

I first noticed when I began hitting like a wet noodle and saw that my artifact weapon was still ilvl 20 when all other gear dropping was around ilvl 40.

Has blizzard announced anywhere that artifact weapons won’t scale or is this an unintended side affect of the squish/scaling in pre patch?

2

Since Legion doesn’t reward weapons due to the artifact, many quests in Legion reward relics that go into the slots of your artifact weapon and increase its item level.

With the right relics, your artifact weapon can be over ilvl 70 by level 50.

When I was testing the squish and Chromie Time, I got a warlock up to 32 and her artifact weapon was at an ilvl comparable to quest gear, and that was with the 3rd relic slot still locked. The advancement of the artifact’s ilvl worked exactly the same way pre-squish.

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3

Ah ok,
Kinda cool they made relics somewhat necessary again.

Thank you.

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4

Yup. And there are also boe relics that can drop from mobs or be crafted so you can look for those on the AH as well!

5

I noticed that as well. I could have sworn it got better as you leveled in addition to adding relics to it.

6

Oh something I like! Finally they did it.

7

I think the highest relics can get with titanforging (which still happens in legion content) is +22 ilvls so assuming that’s the max, then an artifact weapon could conceivably reach ilvl 86. If relics can get even higher than 22 with super lucky titanforges, the potential max would obviously be higher.

You’d need to do mythic Antorus to get the best base ilvl relics (ilvl 18) and beg for titanforge rng to love you long time, to get relics at +22 or higher I think.

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8

Putting relics was ALWAYS necessary to increase it’s ilvl (thus it’s stats), even in BfA when leveling in Legion content. Although, I guess it’s more noticeable now that you can level from 10 to 50 on the Broken Isles. Though, I’ll probably just stick with my heirloom weapon because I don’t want to deal with relics. lol

9

That’s perfectly fine and probably the right choice for efficiency of time. With that said, at 50 an heirloom weapon can, at best, be ilvl 60 if you have a Garrosh heirloom. You could then go solo some LFR Legion raids easily and quickly for relics to get your artifact to at least 68-80 (base LFR relics are +16 and I’ve seen them titanforge up to +20).

Why might you care about this? Simply to get a higher ilvl weapon for the purpose of using until you get better, and to push your average ilvl up to improve WQ/Emissary rewards early on. This use will become obsolete when Shadowlands actually launches and relic of the past V pushes crafted gear to ilvl 87 instead of the 54 it is right now in pre-patch.

10

It didn’t on its own, no.

What they did mess with is the fact that an artifact without relics was still far and away higher ilvl than say, an heirloom weapon. So post-legion/pre-squish, it was better to use the artifacts even as stat sticks, even without relics, over heirlooms.

Now I think the heirlooms will probably fare off better. You can enchant them, for one.

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11

Enchantability is definitely a big pro in favor of heirlooms.

12

I’d just use heirloom weapons and not worry about it

13

Sounds like the potential for overpowered twinks sub-50 with artifact weapons.

14

Pre-SL enchants only work up to iLvl 50 (roughly level 45 on heirlooms).

15

At what level does the third relic slot open? 45 (out of Chromie time) or 50 (Chromie time)?

16

This is incorrect.

Pre-BFA enchants might only be placed on ilvl 50 or lower items, but if placed on an heirloom before the heirloom has gone past ilvl 50, they continue to work past ilvl 50. They do not continue to scale past their stated performance though. So if you put a +2 intellect cloak enchant on your heirloom cloak, and send it to a level 1 alt, that enchant scales down to +1. Eventually as you level the enchant will go back up to +2, but never higher than that.

The same goes for weapon proc enchants. Their damage scales down if below the level of the enchant, but the damage never goes higher than stated in the enchant’s description, even if your heirloom’s ilvl far exceeds that enchant, but you won’t lose that +2 either.

BFA enchants have no ilvl limitations on live as far as I can tell.

This all changes somewhat once Shadowlands actually launches however!

In beta, BFA and Legion enchants are unable to be applied to items higher than ilvl60. Shadowlands enchants seem to have no limitations as I was able to apply a Shadowlands enchant to an heirloom and send it to an alt.

One odd thing to note, which is probably a bug. Currently on beta, some (but not all) Draenor enchants are limited to ilvl 47 or 48 and some have no ilvl limitations at all. I’m guessing that all Draenor enchants should be capped at 50 and probably will be by the time launch occurs. In beta, all pre-Draenor enchants continue to cap at being applied to ilvl 50.

17

Legion LFR can be soloed? By anyone or only certain classes or specs?

18

I’ve soloed legion lfr Xavius on every class (to get the nightmare enchant illusion).

I’ve also soloed Trial of Valor on Mage, Hunter and Warrior (for mogs - havent tried other classes yet).

It doesn’t seem difficult on anyone. Your damage really seems to shred the bosses and trash and they don’t seem to do too much damage to cause concern, even if you have little to no self healing.

If you have any amount of leech at all, you’re probably going to laugh at everything in LFR, barring weird mechanics like Eonar.

EDIT: Just to add, the characters I did the soloing with were in a mix of ilvl 80-100 gear, with more pieces than not being ilvl 100.

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