Artifact Knowledge Damage Delt Per Point Increase

What Are the Artifact Weapons?

Basically really badass weapons that you will keep for the whole of Legion. These weapons start with a base ilvl of 750 and can be upgraded as you level/gear. Each spec of each class gets a different weapon, for Demon Hunters we get the Twinblades of the Deceiver for Havoc and the Aldrachi Warblades for Vengeance.

What Do They Do?

Each artifact weapon gets a baseline skill, Soul Carver for Veng and Fury of the Illidari for Havoc. Both are very good skills and depending on the situation become part of your rotation. Past these baseline skills they are also upgradable, not only in terms of ilvl but also in passive and active skills they grant (99% of them are passive, rarely is there an active - none of the DH traits are active other than the first) These passives are called traits and work a lot like old school talent trees (think WotLK and earlier).

How Do I Upgrade it?

There are two ways to upgrade:

The first comes in Relics that add raw ilvl to the weapon and normally a minor passive gain of something, health, extra fire damage, damage dealt by X skill, etc. There is a total of three slots you will unlock in the weapon (you don't get all three to start) and each relic is locked to a type of relic (thus when a relic drops in a raid it isn't literally all 20-30 people rolling on it). Havoc uses two Fel Relics and one Shadow Relic. Vengeance uses one each of Fel, Iron, and Arcane Relics. Relics come from a number of sources, boss drops in dungeons and raids, quests, crafted, and world drops both boss and normal. They come in uncommon, rare, and epic quality.

The second method of upgrading is your traits, these are the old school talent trees...sort of.

This part gets kind of complicated but this is the simple version of it; you need Artifact Power to buy the traits on the weapon - you gain AP by doing quests, dungeons, raids, dailies, PvP, and more. Each trait gained cost more than the one before it, so the first rank is 100AP, the second is 300AP, 325, 350, etc. This number goes up very fast...here is a graph:

As you can see, the first 15 or so traits don't cost to much, but after that the AP cost per trait goes up FAST. Now, this is not as bad as it looks since the amount of AP you gain goes up as you level and unlock parts of the game, such as dailies, Class Hall, etc. Still it is worth noting that once you get to a point traits will come much slower than before.

Wow, Okay. What Do I Do With This Information?

It is HIGHLY recommended that you PLAN OUT what traits you are going to buy before you buy them...although you CAN reset your traits - it costs you one AP level. Resetting at <10 won't put you to far back, but the more you have the worse it gets. It is far better to not reset at all ever and just get it right the first time.

Before raids release you will have about 20-23 traits, the recommended paths for each spec are in the images below - image credit goes to Munkky of the Demon Hunter Discord for the Vengeance pic and Pawkets of the DH Discord for Havoc.

For Havoc:

For Vengance:

Awesome! I Want It All!

Well...you can get them all...but it takes a REALLY long time. We're talking something around 35 weeks in order to totally max out your weapon...so don't consider this a really pressing goal since it is unlikely that the first tier will LAST 35 weeks.

What If I Want To Duel Spec?

It is actually not as bad as you might think - AP is not locked to a weapon, so if you farm 3,000AP as Havoc you can turn around and spend that on your Vengeance weapon if you want and vice versa. But, since you're drawing from the one pool of AP you need to keep in mind that every AP you put on one weapon will take away AP from the other. I.E., you can spend 1 mil AP on one weapon or 250,000AP on one and 750,000 on the other.

The best way of describing this is with another picture, this one done by AskMrRobot based on math done by Kib

Based on this we can see that although your off-spec weapon will always be less powerful, there is a way that you can have your cake and...eat most of it too. Also note that this math does not take into consideration any RNG - there are drops that you can find that give you AP on top of what you get by doing dailies, raids, etc. This chart assumes you get one drop per mythic dungeons per week, when the statistical likely hood is actually a bit higher than just 1:1, but RNG is random so...ya.

Okay, Thanks For The Info...Nerd. But...The Weapons Look So...Basic...

You can unlock transmog for them! Well, you can transmog them right off the bat also to swords, 1h axes, and 1h maces. But you can also unlock wicked transmog for the weapon itself also. These can be unlocked a number of ways, achievements, quests, PvP, "hidden", and class halls.

If you want to look into this some more, check out these WoWHead links for Havoc and Vengeance, bottom of the calculator there is an Appearances tab.

What About...The Bonus Trait...

This trait is only unlocked after you have unlocked all 34 other traits, the bonus trait is a way of dumping the AP you gain after you've unlocked everything else and gives you a flat x% of health, damage, or healing done depending on your weapon. Havoc gets bonus damage, Vengeance gets bonus total health.

The bonus trait has 20 levels and costs a metic buttload of AP per level. End of the day getting all 20 levels will 1) take a loooong time but will 2) give 15% bonus damage or total health after all 20 traits are spent.

Basically, don't worry about these to much. It will be about 30 weeks before you even see them and that is assuming you max out your AP the whole way there.

Awesome! But um...How Do I Get My Weapon?

Log in after Legion launches, you'll get a quest, do it. You get to pick EITHER your Havoc or Vengeance weapon to start with and then at level 102 you will unlock a quest for the other weapon. DO THE QUEST WHEN YOU GET IT! It gives good exp...that is the only reason.

Can I Use My Havoc Weapon In Vengeance Spec (Or The Other Way)?

No. As soon as you respec the weapon is unequipped and you cannot re-equip. You can use other weapons but since there literally isn't any in Legion...you're using whatever you got in WoD until you do your artifact quest.

Leveling as Vengeance is not hard at all, so if you want to be able to que 5 mans while you do quests, I say get your Vengeance weapon first and Havoc at 102. Even though I'm going to main Havoc, I'm getting my Vengeance weapon first.

Thanks, Locky! You Da Man!

I know.

Feel free to ask questions or point out errors in the comments.

Artifact Knowledge Damage Delt Per Point Increase

Source: https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/22563-artifact-weapon-and-you-how-to-be-prepared/

Share this post