And as soon as you slot in some Relics, that Artifact will become much higher level than even some BfA weapons, really quickly.
3 level 49 quest rewards relics puts it to be about on par with old ilvl 415 WQ rewards.
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While I get what you’re saying, it’s a bit dismissive. The point the original poster is making is that this system is so backwards that it screams ‘bug’ more than anything else. I was level 100, and got switched to level 40 (I wanted to wrap up Draneor before dealing with the Legion). I just got an artifact weapon at level 40. The artifact is 20 levels lower than everything else. That’s like if the Heart of Azeroth was scaled down to level 10 if you got it at 110.
Saying ‘oh, just unlock relics’ is being way too dismissive. You get relics from quest chains, and lucky dungeon or mob drops. For an expansion that was touted as ‘leveling how you want it’, this is unbelievably strange; more so given how much of the Legion storyline revolves around this artifact of power. This thing that people fight and die for, and it’s weaker than, for example, Blight.
Saying ‘just get this’ still means that a player is expected to spend extra money (or whatever you use for heirlooms, I’m one of those people who don’t really have any) in order to play the game because they chose their favorite expansion. It’s a penalty for making a choice that doesn’t exist if you do the current content, or any of the other past content.
It’s jarring as all hell. It is literally so jarring that I looked this up to see if it was happening to anyone else.
Also, yes, the fact that you can’t buy alternate weapons from the quartermaster if you’re level 40 (which corresponds to 100, the level I had been) is equally bizarre…especially in an expansion that does not drop weapons.
Like…you know those “Relics of the Past” that you can use to upgrade the strength of old items, to make them on par with your expansion? I don’t need those. The crafted items are…oh, hell.
The crafted Thorium rifle is as strong as Titanstrike.
Yes, there are definitely ways to work around this. But it’s like…why? This shouldn’t be an issue.
It feels like a bug; though that’s the optimist in me hoping they don’t think this makes sense. If you level in an expansion where a significant portion of it, story-wise, is devoted to how powerful your weapon is, it should be, at the very least, serviceable. Especially if the expansion doesn’t drop other weapons. Especially if the quartermasters who sell replacement style weapons only sell things you can’t use for the totality of that expansion.
It just…feels weird, from both a mechanical and gameplay perspective. The answer is “use a different weapon”, or “keep playing with this crappy weapon, and eventually, it won’t suck, if you get lucky.”
Just…bizarre.
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Not saying it isn’t wierd, but that is how it is. The artifact weapon design was never really that great. But since it is an “evolving” weapon it can’t afford to scale.
If it did the default answer to levelling would ve to not to Legion until level 50 then get your artifact scaled to your level, and then add 3 level 50 relics to it so that it has an ilvl of around 120 and is stronger than most weapons available in the game .
Essentially speaking the artifact weapon is simply set at a level that would be appropriate when picked up at level 10 and chosen as the players levelling expansion.
What’s the conclusion? Should we head over to legion asap and grab the artifact and invest time into it - or just skip it?
Or just scale the artiface and relics to what is appropriate to your level, as is done for every other piece of gear you receive. Frankly, the relics are over-tuned while the artifact is undertuned.
At level 50, the quickest way to have an amazing weapon is to pick up the artifact, then solo some dungeons and world quests, pick up three +20 relics, to quickly have a level 80 weapon.
Which would make the whole thing and relics redundant defeating the purpose of the artifact weapon.
Which is the point, because the artifact weapon is a base level 10ish weapon and the relics scale with level to form the item scaling of the artifact.
Which is why having the base artifact scale up with level ridiculous, it’s already strong as it is, adding another 40+ ilvls would be insane, it would bring it almost to mythic quality.
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I was able to use Ebonchill all the way through BFA content. It was item level 70 when I started BFA on my mage. I did get lucky with some relics though that forged up to purple quality level while leveling through Legion. None of the quest weapon rewards in BFA went above 60 lol, so never had to swap out. The item level scaling is really wonky currently it seems.
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Grab some relics and a Legion artifact will be ilevel 70 (even higher if any of the relics forge), which is higher than the trash ilevel 60 weapon given to characters completing the level-cap catch-up quest chain through Naz.
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With each class at max,I stopped leveling new toons a long time ago. I decided to replace my demon Hunter and reroll on new realm. First thing I did was get artifact weapons, assuming they would be a good thing to have. Couldn’t even use them. Odd. Not a big deal, since crappy weapons were fine, but still?
Here is something to consider. There are also BoE relics requiring level 45+.
They’re squished because players can get them at level 10 now.
This.
And if you enter Chromie Time in a Legion zone at lvl 49 (probably should turn xp gains off so you do not lvl to 50 and get kicked out of Chromie Time) and do the zones quest line, you can get relics that add +19 to +20 ilvl to the Artifact so that the Artifact would be useful at current endgame until you can get something better.
My Mechagnome Warrior has a ilvl 79 Artifact because he did Highmount at lvl 49 to get op relics. XD
Their ilevel goes up with relics you get from questing. Before pre-patch I took my rogue through legion and the artifacts were better than heirlooms as I continued to get relics and upgraded it.
I just checked my 45 rogue and the artifact is still 1 ilevel better than my daggers, but if during legion leveling the artifacts don’t compete at all that isn’t how that worked before the patch.
They’re fine. As soon as you have 2 relics, they’re competitive.
The purpose of the artifact weapon? We are no longer playing Legion, all the effects have been deactivated. The only thing we are talking about is scaling a stats stick so players can actually use it regardless of whether they start at level 10 or 40. It’s far worse creating a system that is only ideal for people starting at level 10 when all other expansions allow gear to scale with level.
Your next two comments basically make the same point, so I’ll just repeat my point. Keeping an old system, that was relevant during an expansion, while disactivating everything else related to the expansion, making it act differently from how all other expansion gear works while levelling is cumbersome and outdated. Make it scale with player level and replace relics with other rewards. The current system is a bad one and can be replaced with something much better.
I swear, you seem to be difficult for the sake of being difficult. You simply have it stop scaling at level and make the cap be level 50 or level 60 even if desired.
That’s precisely what happens when you quest in BFA at level 50, whereas as it stands now, you are better off returning to Legion at level 50, grabbing your artifact, sologing some dungeons, and obtaining a much stronger weapon.
You are endorsing a system that only works at level 10, when the artifact is strong enough for the content, or at level 50, when it promotes going back to collect the artifact to have a super strong weapon quickly.
In contrast, you could remove relics, just have the artifact scale, and place a level cap at level 50, which then makes it works for players at all levels.
I actually do expect Blizzard to change this because I doubt they love a system where the optimal path at level 50 is returning to Legion to obtain a weapon that is better than the weapon when you can obtain at level 50 via BFA for quite some time.
In short, the current system doesn’t make the expansions equal for anyone starting an expansion beyond level 30, and it actually persuades you to leave BFA at level 50 and return to Legion. That last point will probably lead to Blizzard changing it.
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This is, I think, particularly relevant. That’s what has me (and probably others) suspecting this a bug. There is a push by Blizzard to have everyone do the Battle for Azeroth content. After you finish Exile’s Reach, you are sent there. Anyone, from what-was-once (‘WWO’, if you’re hip) level 20 to 110 now has Battle for Azeroth dungeons as their default in the dungeon finder. It’s supposed to be Kul Tiras-Zuldazar-Sylvanas for everyone.
But the way the item mechanics are set up is to have you leave that story line, then go back to deal with a old content in order to be competitive. Why bother with Nazjatar, Mechagon (which can go to–ahem), or the War Campaign? You get better things dealing with the Broken Shore and Argus and world quests. And you also get to see storylines that you maybe didn’t. Which, as it’s new, might keep people doing it.
This system discourages what they’re trying to do.
And that’s if we ignore the fact that, again, crafted classic weapons (not even rare ones) are on par with those artifacts, which is weird and feels wrong. And unnecessary. And counter-intuitive. And silly.
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I’m not endorsing anything, I’m simply stating how it works.
As you said we are no longer playing Legion, so why would they go back and replace hundreds or relics with all new quest rewards? You are asking for a ridiculous amount of work to be done to fix something that isn’t really an issue.
Is the system great? No. But does it suffice without wasting countless man hours on something largely irrelevant? Yes.
You are complaining about something that is essentially a non-issue. Just get the relics and get over it.
You are spending more time complaining about it here than you would have had to do to rectify the issue
They are the ones that implemented chromie time and worked to make the different expansions balanced for levelling up. If one of the expansions is failing in that regard, then it’s fine to report it - and lots of work?
Like removing azerite gear, or effects from gear, or adding restrictions to the weapons you can obtain? Changing how various items behave?
The work, plenty of work, is done, it’s just titled towards making things more difficult and adding restrictions rather than improving things.
Yeah work. You literally just asked for the removal of all relics, so that’s quests, dungeons, raids, drops etc, as well as them to be replaced by new rewards so that’s hundreds of newly added items.
The relic slots on artifact weapons to be locked, artifact weapons to scale on acquisition, but not only that, they can’t just scale on acquisition because you only get one per expansion so if you get it early it would be permanently ilvl 20, so instead it would have to be able to not only scale on acquisition and then on level up.
So yeah, funnily enough, that takes actual hours that actual people have to put in away from their actual work on making the actual expansion release possible.
“Failing”, my current artifact on my Warlock is ilvl 76, I’m level 48. Weapon quest rewards are ilvl 52 in other expansions.
What a “failure”. 
The artifact weapon is the best leveling weapon there is.
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