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Artifact Power
Craig: So scythe in hand, you head out to the Broken Isles. In the Broken Isles, you start accruing artifacts power from a number of different sources.
So Artifact Power is a sort of resource that you eventually use to unlock new abilities within your weapon. It comes from many different sources that come from quest bosses, and rare spawns. It comes from special items that you find and break open, and release their power to absorb into your weapon.
It also comes from things like Arenas and Battlegrounds. So basically whatever type of activities you are participating in in Legion, you are going to be gathering artifact power along the way, and you are going to be growing your weapon alongside you.
Craig: So get enough artifact power and you can unlock a new trait into your artifact tree. This is kind of a glimpse into the Deadwind Harvester’s trait tree.
That first ability you are seeing there, that’s the one I was talking about. You don’t actually need to spend artifact power to unlock that. You start with that.
Craig: The first thing you are actually going to use artifact power to unlock is an active trait. An ability that you are going to put in your spell bar, and use to unleash the power of your weapon against your enemies.
So in the case of the Deadwind Harvester, that is this. You release the souls from the scythe, they swirl around your enemy, and do massively ramping damage over time. It is like a super-dot: long duration and long cooldown.
Craig: So you use it against quest bosses and raid bosses. After you unlock that first major active trait, your tree is going to open up to you; and you are going to start seeing options about which direction you want to pursue.
You are going to be making choices like the difference between increasing the critical strike chance on Unstable Affliction, or the burst damage on Seed of Corruption. A single target versus AOE.
Craig: These minor traits, they have multiple ranks, and you have to unlock typically all three ranks to progress further into the tree. There are some special one point traits within the tree as well that usually are more utility focused.
In the case of Deadwind Harvester, there is one that causes your Healthstone to become a full heal, and cause you to yield some health back whenever anyone in your party or raid uses a healthstone as well.
What is really going to be influencing where you go in these trees are major traits at the far extent of the trees. These are typically a bit more powerful. The modifier adds on to major class abilities within your kit, or sometimes to the core artifact ability itself.
So in the case of the Deadwind Harvester, one of those traits make every soul you reap explode in shadowflame damage hurting everything around it.
There is one for the Retribution Paladin, the Ashbringer, that causes your Divine Storm to unleash a whirlwind of Holy energy in front of you, creating some directionality to your primary AOE button.
So eventually you will be able to unlock every single trait within this tree, but it’s going to take a while. That first active trait? You will get it almost immediately. You unlock that shortly after obtaining the weapon.
You get to the first gold power probably shortly before max level.
Craig: The rest of the tree, it will likely take you about a month after the expansion to fully unfold all of these things; and even on top of that there are some incremental power increases that you can continue to pour artifact power into over time.
So your weapon will be growing with you for the entirety of Legion.
| Browse these pages: | Artifacts | Artifact Power | Relics | Upgrading Artifact | Class Halls |
| Class Champions | Demon Hunter | Class Changes | Professions | Itemization |
