All into one artifact before raid, or try for two?

[Jondar]

Is it worth it to try and pump points into two artifacts, or just go all into one until it's maxed?

I've got Destro going right now but have been relatively unhappy with it's.. erm.. potential. I'm much more intrigued by aff/demo, but would only realistically be able to catch one of them up in the near future.

What are you guys doing? Primarily those of you with progression raiding goals

[zox2]

depending on how much you play and owing to the exponential curve of AP needed for the next trait to unlock, you can pretty much do 2 at the same pace as 1... The difference would be a couple of days at most for the main one.

[Deleted]

Pumping into all 3 until I hit 16/16/16 and then going back to put points into destro and demo.

[Koloss]

I also started with Destro as i saw it doesn't struggle in most situation while Demo and Aff have their "problems". Now i see that on DPS rankings Demo is a bit better currently, though i know there will be encounters where Demos will suck ballz. So i'm also wondering.

I saw an infographic of AskMrRobot that if you do 2 specs at the same time your second spec will only be behind some traits (1 or 2). But i do not have any idea how they meant it or with what algorythm should i use my AP items to do that as the only thing i see is i get AP stuff from all things regardless of how many specs do i want to play and i can only decide which spec i'm funneling it into.

But i guess that if you reach to a point where 1 artifact trait is so expensive that the same would do 20 traits on another spec it worth it to increase the other spec's damage by ~20% than increasing the main one's with ~1% (just pulling numbers out of nowhere). Because you are going with a path that chooses the most valuable traits first then it also means that the additional ones at that point in the main spec will be weaker most likely.

And don't go Aff, as i see they're really struggling, in its current form i think it will only be really good for PvP. Hope to get some buffs.

[XDurionX]

The first 13 levels are dirt cheap, so you can get your first golden perk easily. Ramps up a lot after that, though.

[dakalro]

One other question related to this. Eventually you're going to be able to handle the AP well enough but how do you handle keeping at least 1 other artifact relevant in ilvl (relics)?
I have not managed to play too much but I didn't see relics dropping everywhere so once raids come in ... 20 ilvls due to bad relics may make a spec unusable in some fights.

[Jessicka]

One other question related to this. Eventually you're going to be able to handle the AP well enough but how do you handle keeping at least 1 other artifact relevant in ilvl (relics)?
I have not managed to play too much but I didn't see relics dropping everywhere so once raids come in ... 20 ilvls due to bad relics may make a spec unusable in some fights.

You can still I think get WF and stuff to bring them up to speed and I don't think they're that rare drops in dungeons and raids, no more or less than weapons ever were.

They're attuned by type (Blood, Shadow, Arcane etc.) so many are useful for multiples of your artifacts anyway; so you can get and use dupes this way too without necessarily switching to the spec that needs it.

[dakalro]

You can still I think get WF and stuff to bring them up to speed and I don't think they're that rare drops in dungeons and raids, no more or less than weapons ever were.

They're attuned by type (Blood, Shadow, Arcane etc.) so many are useful for multiples of your artifacts anyway; so you can get and use dupes this way too without necessarily switching to the spec that needs it.

True but before even if a weapon had so so secondary stats for a spec it was not a big loss due to ilvl. It would be enough that spec strengths outweighed secondary stats plus usually at least one of the secondary stats was good. Not sure about you but I almost never had 2 relevant weapons at once in a tier so if the drop rate is similar to weapons.... Maybe in those really long tiers when you could get it after it was D/E-able.

My concern now is mostly related to being flexible with my specs and I just wanted to swap to Destro from Affli and what do you know, 60ilvl difference that will need a lot of dungeons to fix, dungeons where I'll run Affli with Destro as loot spec.

It's doable but it feels really weird. And last I raided I swapped specs on almost every boss fight (ToT heroic was a different spec and talents every boss pretty much).

[Koloss]

It's doable but it feels really weird. And last I raided I swapped specs on almost every boss fight (ToT heroic was a different spec and talents every boss pretty much).

Imho speccing in raids will actually be a thing. There have always been bossfights where a single spec overperformed, so did like 1,5 times as much damage as the other ones. I think being some traits behind is not that much that you would only do 66% of the potential damage of the spec. Relics really come slowly, but i see that for example World Q relics are not tied to spec but class (which could've been obvious if i thought about it :P) i saw a Blood relic for example while i only have Dest artifact yet. And there are still 2/3 weeks until raids come, there will be many world Qs and dungeons until then.

[Halwyn]

Imho speccing in raids will actually be a thing. There have always been bossfights where a single spec overperformed, so did like 1,5 times as much damage as the other ones. I think being some traits behind is not that much that you would only do 66% of the potential damage of the spec. Relics really come slowly, but i see that for example World Q relics are not tied to spec but class (which could've been obvious if i thought about it :P) i saw a Blood relic for example while i only have Dest artifact yet. And there are still 2/3 weeks until raids come, there will be many world Qs and dungeons until then.

I wouldn't hope on those for relics... Those keep pumping Blood and Fire all the way from the start of the expac, not a single Shadow or Fel...

[Sheevah24]

One other question related to this. Eventually you're going to be able to handle the AP well enough but how do you handle keeping at least 1 other artifact relevant in ilvl (relics)?
I have not managed to play too much but I didn't see relics dropping everywhere so once raids come in ... 20 ilvls due to bad relics may make a spec unusable in some fights.

Just change your loot specialization priority when running dungeons.
I'm affliction but I did run some instances with destro loot priority just for the fire relics. Rest of the loot should be the same no matter the spec,it's all caster dps anyway.

[Calfredd]

I wouldn't hope on those for relics... Those keep pumping Blood and Fire all the way from the start of the expac, not a single Shadow or Fel...

I've had the opposite problem; no fire or shadow but a few fel. Was lucky to get a fire relic from a world quest and it was titanforged.

[muto]

The first 13 levels are dirt cheap, so you can get your first golden perk easily. Ramps up a lot after that, though.

Yeah I went and got Dimensional Ripper so I could play Destro on the single target fights instead of feeling useless as Affliction. It only costed me 1/2 of an Affliction Power up. It's also nice that Affliction and Destruction don't share Relics. Both are sitting near the same item level because of that.

[Deleted]

One other question related to this. Eventually you're going to be able to handle the AP well enough but how do you handle keeping at least 1 other artifact relevant in ilvl (relics)?
I have not managed to play too much but I didn't see relics dropping everywhere so once raids come in ... 20 ilvls due to bad relics may make a spec unusable in some fights.

In my experience, you don't.

Haven't done this weeks mythic clears since the groups waiting for our AK research this week to get maximum yields, but last week I got a grand total of zero relics from a full mythic dungeon clear. Managed to get my affliction and destruction artifacts in half-decent level with 3 fully heroic relics (or close to, I think my affliction has an 805).

Demo has two leveling relics and an empty third slot.

[Greenthy]

16 in both demo and destro at the moment, working on affliction (atleast till 13/14)

On one hand it's a bit sad if you compare it to other classes that only need to maintain one artifact.
On the other hand, you're only behind 1-2 traits going in with two artifacts with somebody doing the exact same effort.

My advice would be to diversify before raids/mythic+ go live and the first set of balances come through.
Then see how things are settling down.
It could be that one spec becomes the go-to spec. It could be that blizz does a fine job at keeping every spec relevant on every fight. We'll have to see.

[Deleted]

upping both aff and destro to have a good aoe spec and a good 1 target/cleave spec

[Count Zero]

Got Destro to 13 and pumped a few points into Afflic. At 16 in Destro now and gonna start pumping a few more into Afflic (probably until 13 before I start working on Demo).

Of course with every Warlock doing this (or most) means the pre-raid balance patch buffs the hell out of Demo, but whatever.

[Deleted]

Affliction for trash mobs, and destruction for boss fights.