Artifact Knowledge EXPLOIT - Help Fix It

[Lucetia]

How is "consistently a few traits behind" any different from "maaaaybe 1-2 fewer ranks in the max artifact"? I just did the math using an artifact cost table (it was from June so may have been updated idk, and if you keep 2 artifacts you will, in fact, be consistently 2-3-4 traits behind someone who's just keeping 1.

Not sure if you saw, but here's an updated pick that is on the homepage. (Not saying you are wrong, just your info was in June and probably interested in newest data).

[Click for full size image]

[normiegonnanorm]

Stuff like this should be hidden and used only by a small amount of guilds.

[OrcsRLame]

Yeah that's consistent with what I saw, you're about 2.5 weeks behind getting to 34 traits if you have an offspec.

That chart is super casual fyi.

Anywho, what the charts don't tell you, is that the raw AP values matter very little/ When you grind your ass off for AP, you very quickly hit this point where sinking more AP into your main weapon is equivalent to throwing a glass of water into an ocean. The only way you ever get over that hurdle is with more artifact knowledge. If at that point you start throwing shit into your off spec weapon, it won't have a tangible difference on your main spec.

[Cheze]

the thing to take from that chart is less the weekly 'schedule' and more the relative value of nodes. Like, you'll eventually have 54 nodes on your main weapon... or 53 on your main weapon and 34 on an OS weapon. Early on, you don't even necessarily have to 'give up' any MS nodes to take an OS artifact to its first gold trait.

you can have a philosophical argument about whether or not there should be an 'offspec penalty' and/or what form it should take... but the actual 'penalty' in legion is slim to nonexistent.

Obviously for purpose of this discussion we're talking about only two specs as opposed to potentially playing all three, but even maintaining two relatively-contemporary OS artifacts won't be such a huge deal by the time you're 10-15 weeks in (hopefully anybody putting this much thought into it is able to choose two specs to focus on anyway.)

[Deleted]

the thing to take from that chart is less the weekly 'schedule' and more the relative value of nodes. Like, you'll eventually have 54 nodes on your main weapon... or 53 on your main weapon and 34 on an OS weapon. Early on, you don't even necessarily have to 'give up' any MS nodes to take an OS artifact to its first gold trait.

That's because the first 13 points or so are basically free for any spec. And this graphic is more about keeping an offspec (which is clearly behind many, many traits, not just a few) without a big impact on the main spec. Not really what we are talking about here. Such an offspec will be nowhere near competitive in challenging content.

you can have a philosophical argument about whether or not there should be an 'offspec penalty' and/or what form it should take... but the actual 'penalty' in legion is slim to nonexistent.

I'm not sure what makes you think that. It's a lot bigger than it has been for almost the entire lifespan of the game.

Obviously for purpose of this discussion we're talking about only two specs as opposed to potentially playing all three, but even maintaining two relatively-contemporary OS artifacts won't be such a huge deal by the time you're 10-15 weeks in (hopefully anybody putting this much thought into it is able to choose two specs to focus on anyway.)

Like the graphics shows, you'll be like 2.5 weeks behind in the middle of it, and quite a bit more in the end (that is not even shown in the graph, the biggest gap comes after you hit 25 artifact power research).

Too lazy to make a detailed calculation there, but extrapolating from the chart from the time the research stops coming you'll have to add ~10 weeks in the end of that chart to get both main and off spec maxed. And at the end of the chart there is a 15% damage difference between "main" and offspec, that is really massive.

[OrcsRLame]

That's because the first 13 points or so are basically free for any spec. And this graphic is more about keeping an offspec (which is clearly behind many, many traits, not just a few) without a big impact on the main spec. Not really what we are talking about here. Such an offspec will be nowhere near competitive in challenging content.




I'm not sure what makes you think that. It's a lot bigger than it has been for almost the entire lifespan of the game.



Like the graphics shows, you'll be like 2.5 weeks behind in the middle of it, and quite a bit more in the end (that is not even shown in the graph, the biggest gap comes after you hit 25 artifact power research).

Too lazy to make a detailed calculation there, but extrapolating from the chart from the time the research stops coming you'll have to add ~10 weeks in the end of that chart to get both main and off spec maxed. And at the end of the chart there is a 15% damage difference between "main" and offspec, that is really massive.

As has been said 50 million times now, that shit chart on the front page is incredibly casual. That's like, playing 1 hour a day levels of casual, and the further ahead one weapon gets compared to the artifact knowledge curve, the more useless it becomes to put more AP into that weapon. Someone like me that's going, "I need a poop sock" levels of hog wild will have 3 maxed artifacts by about week 20.

[Deleted]

As has been said 50 million times now, that shit chart on the front page is incredibly casual. That's like, playing 1 hour a day levels of casual, and the further ahead one weapon gets compared to the artifact knowledge curve, the more useless it becomes to put more AP into that weapon. Someone like me that's going, "I need a poop sock" levels of hog wild will have 3 maxed artifacts by about week 20.

The way it works with both exponential cost gains and artifact power gains, it does not matter too much if you are casual or not in the difference of time taken. Grinding it out heavily only makes the difference between main and offspec smaller once artifact research caps out. And then the "base casual difference" or whatevr is 10 weeks, I guess it's quite reseaonable to grind that out in 2-3 weeks too if you set your mind to it. But it remains a big gap.

[OrcsRLame]

The way it works with both exponential cost gains and artifact power gains, it does not matter too much if you are casual or not in the difference of time taken. Grinding it out heavily only makes the difference between main and offspec smaller once artifact research caps out. And then the "base casual difference" or whatevr is 10 weeks, I guess it's quite reseaonable to grind that out in 2-3 weeks too if you set your mind to it. But it remains a big gap.

I'm not gonna argue this with you. All I will say is that you're wrong and I will prove it. On September 20th I'm going to make a thread on MMO-Champ asking people what their artifact progress is. I'm going to screenshot my artifact progression and post it in that thread. The results will speak for themselves.

[EternalBany]

People need to realize that for your main, what is important is your number of traits at any given point. Due to the scaling number of both artifact knowledge and quest rewards, saving them for later might work for alts but for your main who needs traits NOW and not in 4 months when knowledge caps, it makes little sense to not complete quests. The only thing I could suggest is that after leveling to 110 and starting artifact research you wait to get your first upgrade (day 5) before completing the zone end quests and suramar and again for day 10 for the next level of suramar.

What do you recommend me to do,
i main a holy priest and off a rogue, i dont want to go shadow and hoard and do fancy tricks.
Should i just quest with my priest as holy and take it all in and then on my rogue use the shenanigans people are talking about?

[Deleted]

I'm not gonna argue this with you. All I will say is that you're wrong and I will prove it. On September 20th I'm going to make a thread on MMO-Champ asking people what their artifact progress is. I'm going to screenshot my artifact progression and post it in that thread. The results will speak for themselves.

I'm not sure what you want to prove, the numbers are out and they don't really depend on your playtime. What do you want to prove and how? Dualbox 2 characters you play all the time with your twin doing the same quests and activies one of you dividing the artifact power the other not?
How would actually playing change a single thing in the mathematics?

But since this is getting silly, I actually just calculated the stuff myself, just so you can see how little difference playing more or less means in how much your 2nd spec is behind during the time artifact power still scales due to knowledge I just did a quick calculation:

If you are somewhat casual and get 2000 AP per day (without AP knowledge factored in). You play for a while and you reach
34 traits in your main spec. You ignore all other specs. Now you check and you see how long you'd have to play to get to the same power level to your 2nd spec. It's 15 days.


Now compare to a LOT MORE hardcore player getting 20000 AP per day (10x as much!). The same player gets 34 in his main spec, obviously sooner than the more casual player. Then he plays till he gets 34 traits on his 2nd spec. It takes...14 days.

Now a cheating player finds an exploit and gets 200000 AP per day (before artifact power)... it somehow does not get fixed, so he plays till get he gets 34 traits in his main spec. This is obviously much faster than even the most hardcore player can ever dream of and checks how long it takes to get 34 in his off spec too... it takes 10 days.

- - - Updated - - -

What do you recommend me to do,
i main a holy priest and off a rogue, i dont want to go shadow and hoard and do fancy tricks.
Should i just quest with my priest as holy and take it all in and then on my rogue use the shenanigans people are talking about?

If you don't want to do fancy stuff there is still 1 thing that is by far the most important thing you have to do. Get your artifact knowledge research going ASAP. For both characters. Nothing else comes even close to having an advantage there.

If you start it like 4-5 days later you have to permanently earn 30% more artifact power than another player who plays exactly as much as you do to get the same results. And that is true for many, many months. I can't stress this enough, this "exploit" or whatever, even in its original form is a joke compared to what you can mess up with a delayed artifact power research.


*edit* sorry had some typos there in the number of days, it's 15,14,10

[Cheze]

That's because the first 13 points or so are basically free for any spec. And this graphic is more about keeping an offspec (which is clearly behind many, many traits, not just a few) without a big impact on the main spec. Not really what we are talking about here. Such an offspec will be nowhere near competitive in challenging content.




I'm not sure what makes you think that. It's a lot bigger than it has been for almost the entire lifespan of the game.



Like the graphics shows, you'll be like 2.5 weeks behind in the middle of it, and quite a bit more in the end (that is not even shown in the graph, the biggest gap comes after you hit 25 artifact power research).

Too lazy to make a detailed calculation there, but extrapolating from the chart from the time the research stops coming you'll have to add ~10 weeks in the end of that chart to get both main and off spec maxed. And at the end of the chart there is a 15% damage difference between "main" and offspec, that is really massive.

you're fixated on the idea that you'll be 'two weeks behind' or whatever... but that doesn't actually matter. As we see in week 14 on the chart, you'll have 34 nodes in your MS artifact whether or not you invest in OS artifacts at all. At some indeterminate point between week fourteen and week 27 you'll fall a total of one node behind on your MS artifact if you invest significantly in an OS artifact. There is not a meaningful difference in MS effectiveness between somebody who invests in their OS arti approximately as described and somebody who saves all their points for their MS; even if you do happen to be in a guild that's pushing for top 50 ranks you're unlikely to ever notice the difference in actual gameplay.

- - - Updated - - -

What do you recommend me to do,
i main a holy priest and off a rogue, i dont want to go shadow and hoard and do fancy tricks.
Should i just quest with my priest as holy and take it all in and then on my rogue use the shenanigans people are talking about?

you don't need to quest as holy if you don't want to. Just pick your shadow artifact first (if that's what you want to quest as) but don't spend any artifact power on it. When you get your holy artifact at level 104 or whenever it is you can pick up the rest of them, do that class quest and dump your AP into the holy spec.

like others have said, the primary thing you'll want to do with your rogue is level and get your artifact knowledge increases going. You'll need to hit 110 to do that, but once you've hit 110 you don't need to play very much at all to get the 500 order resources you'll need for the AK work order (500 every five days, which is pretty trivial to get.)

[Deleted]

you're fixated on the idea that you'll be 'two weeks behind' or whatever...

Because that was what I was talking about all the time? Of course you can put a couple of points in your offspec artifact if you want to, but you'll be significantly behind with it. That's not what I have talked about though, I talked about having 2 specs of similiar power levels compared to 1. Reread the thread and what I was arguing about, I said you'll be several artifact traits behind if you chose to have a 2nd spec IN THAT 2ND SPEC. Nowhere did I even argue anything around what that linked graph was about which is how many points you can put in your 2ND SPEC without hurting your FIRST SPEC too much. That's a completely different question.