Just got the artifact.
Surprised that it’s stats are so much lower than the heirloom gun (6-12 DPS to heirloom 18-35 DPS, just to quote one).
Can I do anything to increase the stats, or just switch back to the heirloom?
Thanks.
you can add things that will increase its ilvl. or at least you used to be able too. I think it stays on par with the heirloom the entire time so I just used the heirloom
You can still add relics to it, yes. And quests throughout each zone in Legion give artifacts for boosting its itemlevel. I’m not sure how the level squish and Chromie time have affected that scaling, however.
Still, it’s not unusual for the heirloom weapons to work like that. Heirlooms are equivalent to a blue item that scales with your level, always roughly equaling the strength of a blue weapon received from a quest at your current level.
Artifact weapons, despite their color, weren’t supposed to be legendary-quality weapons. Their equivalent quality was based on their relics, and those were typically greens with some blues mixed in as you leveled. They also start with no relics at all in them.
Still, don’t be afraid to swap back to your heirloom if it makes sense. I’m pretty sure I used the heirloom bow throughout Legion when I was leveling my allied races (though that was pre-squish). Without the traits and extra ability from the artifact weapons, they’re basically just any other weapon, except with a unique itemlevel upgrade mechanism via relics.
Chromie Time adjusts the ilvl boost of the relics you put in the weapons. However, once you reach level 45 you are looking at +15 ilvl relics from quests. That is how it has worked on my warrior.
Thanks all. Appreciate it.