For those on beta: how alt friendly are artifacts?

[Erolian]

Start your alt asap unless you're cool with never actually catching up

[Einsz]

Most of the people don't seem to understand how AP works at all. There is daily/weekly cap on all sources apart from random drop tokens that grinding 16h/day everyday will put you maybe 1 trait ahead max.

YOU CANT GRIND AP AT ALL OR WELL YOU CAN BUT LITERALLY GL DOING THAT, IT WILL GET YOU NOWHERE.

Apart from that you will be doing daily quests (called world quests but they are just shitty annoying dailies) everyday for half year to max your weapon and some other weekly activities like ap tokens from mythic dungeons once a week. You will need to do that crap on every alt everyday if you don't want to fall behind. Its pretty much the same scenario as with the ring upgrade if you level your alt later you will be screwed and left behind. Legion is not alt friendly at all.

[Valdhammer]

There is so much conflicting information in this thread. I am none the wiser on the subject having read each post.

[Djuntas]

So what is this artifacts crap...so we all use class weapon...and thoes weapons can be upgraded with better stats / proc or even abilities ?

[Statix]

I came to this thread with questions and I leave with even more...

[Goshko]

There is so much conflicting information in this thread. I am none the wiser on the subject having read each post.

The gist is this - Artifacts are not alt friendly at all.

If you intend to seriously play your alts start leveling them ASAP and they'll take as much work as your main.

If you don't really need them for the next 4-6 months leveling them to 110 (again done asap) and logging once a week for a few dailies and starting the next 2 work orders for knowledge is enough. Keep in mind that after those 4-6 months the grind will be lessened but still significant.

[Valdhammer]

The gist is this - Artifacts are not alt friendly at all.

If you intend to seriously play your alts start leveling them ASAP and they'll take as much work as your main.

If you don't really need them for the next 4-6 months leveling them to 110 (again done asap) and logging once a week for a few dailies and starting the next 2 work orders for knowledge is enough. Keep in mind that after those 4-6 months the grind will be lessened but still significant.

Thank you.

[Lillpapps]

Thank you.

Yet his information is not really correct. If you dont plan on playing an alt for 4-6 months then there is no point in leveling the character until a month before you start playing it. The catchup system means that for every 5 days you haven't played that character it will take one day to catch up.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Completing the artifact will take a while but you get artifact power from just playing the game so it really shouldn't be looked at as a grind. If you enjoyed playing alts in WoD with the ring the legendaries and artifacts of legion will be just a fun.

[Belmorn]

Getting multiple alts and or specs on them will be very time consuming.
You will have to dump your extra playtime outside of raids or w/e your main focus is in the game on getting the required order hall resources to keep the research rolling as others have said.
Also getting them 110 asap sure helps since you will be able to do the class quests by just logging once a day and send it on the next mission.
Getting all the things from the order hall that take 10k+ resources on alts ? Yeah good luck have fun with that ( considering world quests give like 300-500 OHR per quest and you need 500 per research level and about 200 ish for extra minion training / armaments - just speaking for warlocks now, dont know the other class'es equivalent ).

I may not have the most extensive knowledge of beta, but as others have said, it is imo very alt unfriendly as you are practically never done with your main unless you are a basement dweller.

[Ealyssa]

Start your alt asap unless you're cool with never actually catching up

That's actually the absolute opposite of truth. There is no point in rushing the alt. AK will increase faster and faster. What would take 1 week at the begining will take you 1 day one month into Legion. And that will continue after that. And Artifact Knowledge catchup will continue to "bank" as long as you actually are not playing your alt.

So outside reason where you would need an alt (high end guild with alt raids or whatever) no need to rush an alt at all. Actually casual shouldn't rush an alt, as they will "waste" time if the prefere to max their main character (for some raiding, or Mythic+)

[Kurve1776]

Yet his information is not really correct. If you dont plan on playing an alt for 4-6 months then there is no point in leveling the character until a month before you start playing it. The catchup system means that for every 5 days you haven't played that character it will take one day to catch up.

Starting on your alt's Artifact Knowledge is a benefit if you don't want to spend more time later on doing world quests for order hall resources. The faster you progress it, the faster you consume resources.

Also another reason to level alts early: Order hall campaigns have 0 catch-up, start it late, finish it late. And there are some steps you can't just rush through, such as 5 12h follower missions that can only be done 1 at a time (only 1 is up at a time)

[Erolian]

That's actually the absolute opposite of truth. There is no point in rushing the alt. AK will increase faster and faster. What would take 1 week at the begining will take you 1 day one month into Legion. And that will continue after that. And Artifact Knowledge catchup will continue to "bank" as long as you actually are not playing your alt.

So outside reason where you would need an alt (high end guild with alt raids or whatever) no need to rush an alt at all. Actually casual shouldn't rush an alt, as they will "waste" time if the prefere to max their main character (for some raiding, or Mythic+)

The way they described the artifact knowledge catch up mechanic has nothing to do with how often you played the character but rather with how long the expansion has been running and which stage of it you're on. You don't actually gain anything as the expansion progresses other than the ability to almost catch up. I'm sure in later patches something will be done to equalize this, or people will simply finish the artifact and people will eventually catch up and do the same, but you simply won't be on equal footing with someone that has actually been actively playing the game unless you do the same. The catch up helps to shrink the gap to something that isn't completely insane but it doesn't replace actually playing the game. You're never given the months of Artifact Power that someone spent all that time gathering or the AP they acquire while you're doing your 24h daily Artifact Knowledge. That gap is forever however big or small it ends up being.

[Valdhammer]

Getting the artifact knowledge early on is a benefit, waiting to level will only make you have to do more. Yes, you'll get faster knowledge, BUT you will also have to do more world quests more often on that alt to keep it going on resources. Starting when the timer is ~5d makes you able to focus more on your main's progress, while logging in every now and then to maintain the alt.

Also another reason to level alts early: Order hall campaigns have 0 catch-up, start it late, finish it late. And there are some steps you can't just rush through, such as 5 12h follower missions that can only be done 1 at a time (only 1 is up at a time)

My play style has always been to hop back and forth between 2 or more characters. I don't intend to change that in Legion unless I have to, so I will probably be leveling two characters more or less simultaneously. One day I may play my Rogue and the next I'll play my Warrior, and so forth. I am not in an ultra competitive raiding guild, so maximizing everything in an optimal time is not a concern for me. My concern is that I will not be noticeably gimping all of my characters by not focusing solely on one. From what I can gather in this thread and elsewhere, spreading my time across say 2 characters is not optimal (naturally) but it shouldn't result in ending up with 2 characters that are dramatically off pace 3-4 months down the line. Do I have this right?

[Kurve1776]

My play style has always been to hop back and forth between 2 or more characters. I don't intend to change that in Legion unless I have to, so I will probably be leveling two characters more or less simultaneously. One day I may play my Rogue and the next I'll play my Warrior, and so forth. I am not in an ultra competitive raiding guild, so maximizing everything in an optimal time is not a concern for me. My concern is that I will not be noticeably gimping all of my characters by not focusing solely on one. From what I can gather in this thread and elsewhere, spreading my time across say 2 characters is not optimal (naturally) but it shouldn't result in ending up with 2 characters that are dramatically off pace 3-4 months down the line. Do I have this right?

The main road block you'll run into in that case is unlocking the third artifact slot. You have to complete your order hall campaign to unlock it, which opens the ability to add up to 40+ ilvls to your weapons.

As far as artifact traits go, you'll eventually, for the most part, catch up in traits, since the number of traits is finite. The only thing you'll be behind on is the "paragon" trait, which only the dedicated few will even have a chance of finishing off anyway.

The paragon trait unlocks after you have all other traits unlocked, and it uses a TON of artifact power to rank up, up to rank 20. What it does is improves your output as dps or heals and your health (I believe) as tank up to 15%. Rank 1 is 5%, the next 19 ranks add the other 10%. So really unless you're a min/maxer the paragon trait won't matter much to you.

[-aiko-]

There really is a lot of misinformation on this subject. Here are the facts (as they stand now):

Raising your artifact power is, by design, a long grind. You will not be able to gear up alts as quickly as you can now in live. Period.

A catch-up mechanic exists, however, in the form of Artifact Research Notes. This item takes 500 work order resources to create and will increase the amount of artifact power any artifact-increasing item gives you. This bonus goes up multiplicatively the more Artifact Research Notes you use, up to 24,900% more artifact power. This bonus is not account bound. It also does not work retroactively. Meaning that as soon as you loot an item that gives you artifact power, that artifact power amount is locked. You cannot stockpile artifact items and use them later to gain more artifact power as you use more Artifact Research Notes.

The catch-up mechanic works like this: the first Artifact Research Notes you create on any character will take 5 days to complete. Any new Artifact Research Notes you create will take less time to make depending on how far along the expansion is. The further we are into the expansion the less time they will take to make. So, in theory, you can level up an alt's artifact much more quickly than your main as the expansion progresses.

However, you do not get any passive artifact power. You still need to take your alt out into the world and do dailies etc to get your artifact power increasing items. They will just give you much more artifact power. The end result is that yes, technically your artifact is alt-friendly in the sense that alts will have an easier time gaining artifact power than mains. However, it is still not an alt-friendly expansion and you can expect a grind.

[Aphrel]

Due to the artifact reserach id say it at least as unaltfriendly as hfc and possibly even more unfriendly.
However gearing your alts will be alot easier since you can gear up in mythic+ with ur alts.

So maintaining several chars wont be so hard. The catchup however if you level a new one mid expansion is gonna be slow.

[therealbowser]

It seems like it will be nightmarishly awful.

I personally feel like the core problem is the ludicrous amount of grinding you need for the 0.5% bonuses that stack up to something like 20%. This functionality feels like it's grinding for the sake of grinding, which is awful design in general. And forget multiple specs...

For all the good ideas Blizzard had for Legion, I have no idea why they would make a backwards decision like this, going back to archaic vanilla-like grinding for absolutely no reason or purpose at all.

[Deleted]

So maintaining several chars wont be so hard. The catchup however if you level a new one mid expansion is gonna be slow.

I`m prety sure that will get nerfed
Foor alts just depend how close you want they to be to your main.
Overall
at 110 lv is fairly easy to get your alt to 810 for hour por 2
Leveling to 110 is fast too (tooks several hours gameplay)
Getting first artefact gold trait also is fast
I have done class halls on several toons and all of them tooks no more than 3 weeks to be done and job there isnt much most of the time you just wait for champions to complete these 12 hours missions

[Nize]

The way I have it planned, it doesn't really seem all that alt-unfriendly, at least in comparison to legendary cape/ring from MoP/WoD.

At the start of the xpac, you can level up all your alts to 110 and park 'em while leveling up AK. Every once in a while, you go out and get more order hall resources as you running out, but really, it's minimal time, and while yes, it'll take a while to really rake in the AK, a few months out when you feel like playing my alts more, you'll be gathering artifact power in great amount. At max level AK, you net 100,000 artifact power per heroic daily dungeon you do (400 base * 250 (24900 multiplier)). Input that into any artifact calculator you may have and you'll see just how far into the artifact you'll go. Now look at a week, 700k. Not a bad deal whatsoever for just doing daily heroic dungeons and popping in a few days for 5 mins to keep up the AK.

Compare that to WoD. About 2 months or so of doing LFRs to get the ring up to base legendary level. Your 735 ring doesn't compete with 795 so enjoy the next few months gathering valor or killing Archimonde. That's all more work you have to put in compared to popping in every once in a while to make sure AK is up and going. Not only that, you're reaping the benefits quickly.

Just prepare ahead of time and don't try so hard as soon as you hit 110 for your alts. Wait it out and bit and you'll be golden. It'll turn out much better than WoD/MoP at least.