This blog posts answers two big artifact questions: Can I level my offspec artifact and not fall behind? What is the best artifact path?

Let’s start with the first question.

How fast can I get traits in my weapon? Will the offspec put me behind?

If you level fast and do your dailies every day, you’ll have at least 20 traits when raids open. (That’s assuming raids open 3 weeks after launch). And the good news, placing some points in the offspec barely sacrifices anything… at most 1 day, all the way to your full 54 point artifact. Yeah, really!

You can take a look at the data yourself, thanks to the work the Kib did on his spreadsheet. Note that this data is the minimum you’ll have if you do all activities, as it doesn’t account for drops from mobs or rares that give Artifact Power.

Here’s a timeline I put together based on his data (click for full size).

What is the best Artifact path?

If you want the best path, you’d have to look through 100 or even 1000 possible paths. So clearly this isn’t easily done by a human, so we set Mr. Robot to the task.

He will take your given setup, including all of your gear and talents, then run through every single combination and recommend an Artifact path customized to you.



Backing up a step: let’s take a quick look at Artifact Power (AP)

Here is the super-fast, really basic overview:

When you hit level 110: You don’t get Artifact Power from quests, but everything you kill has a chance to drop items that reward you with AP. From what I’ve seen, you might acquire a few thousand Artifact Power from these drops while leveling.

Each day you can gain at least 2,380 Artifact Power. There is also a weekly Mythic dungeon quest reward for 3,500. And every mob has a chance to drop AP rewards.

You get over 10,000 Artifact Power for each faction rank with Suramar.

You can increase the rate at which you gain Artifact Power by increasing your Artifact Knowledge. The Knowledge level acts as a multiplier on AP gained by most sources. This is done with a quest in the class hall, and can increase your Knowledge every 5 days (or sooner if you don’t play often as a catch-up mechanism).

You can reset your artifact weapon, for the cost of the NEXT trait.

How fast can I get traits in my weapon?

Once you hit level 110, you can get 4,680 Artifact Power from the end zone quests (Suramar) and the first set of dailies. The first 11 Artifact Traits cost 4,625 AP. Which is why you can get 11 traits when you hit 110.

The 12th and 13th Artifact Traits aren’t very expensive and you get get those 1 day after you hit 110.

Once you hit 13 Traits, it will take you about 2-3 days to earn enough Artifact Power to go up 1 rank.

to earn enough Artifact Power to go up 1 rank. Once you hit 19 Artifact Traits, it will take you about 4-5 days to earn enough Artifact Power to go up 1 rank. This holds true all the way to maxing out your artifact, assuming you are diligently doing all of your dailies and increasing your Artifact Knowledge ranks too.

Want to see the data for yourself, check out Kib’s spreadsheet.

Questions or Feedback?

If you’re still new to the simulator, never fear, we are here to help. First, check out this crash-course video. Full a full list of simulator resources, visit our simulator page which has super short videos like the 1-minute-guide to customizing your character, as well as super in-depth guides like how to compare two different rotations to make an even better rotation.

Hit us up on our forums or on Discord.