Artifacts and Dual Specs - Now You Shall All Feel My Pain!

I play a Protection Paladin. He has a Retribution spec that I use quite frequently - either for soloing in Tanaan Jungle (or while leveling) or if I feel like letting someone else worry about boss positioning for a change. These are two specs for whom weapon choice is very clearly defined, and the weapons and off-hand equipment you use for the specs are, importantly, different.

That means that I cannot simply switch specs and play the other role. Technically one could, theoretically, play Retribution with a one-handed weapon and shield, but you'd be doing significantly lower damage. And trying to go Prot with a two-handed weapon just flat-out wouldn't work, as half your abilities wouldn't even be usable.

So I've always had to collect multiple sets of gear - this was made a lot less of a burden in Warlords, as I really only need one set of plate armor (and thankfully, last time I checked, Prot's second-best secondary stat is Ret's best one, and vice versa, so having a bunch of haste/mastery plate works out fine.)

But it occurs to me that for a lot of people, the upcoming spec-specific artifacts will impose a new challenge - maintaining alternate sets of gear.

This is going to feel the weirdest for pure DPS classes (other than Rogues who have a Combat spec and a non-Combat one.) If I wanted to switch to Arcane on my Frost Mage, it's as simple as... just switching specs. Sure, I might have more Multistrike than I need and not enough Mastery, but I'd have perfectly functional gear.

In Legion, however, a Frost/Fire Mage is going to have a Staff for one spec and a Sword (and presumably an off-hand item that goes with it) for the other. All of a sudden, classes like those - or Balance/Restoration Druids who can currently get by with the same Staff, or Marksmanship/Beast Mastery Hunters who can use the same Gun - are going to need to work on both pieces of gear.

Now, part of me says "haha, welcome to my world, motherf**kers!" But I also know that one of the great conveniences of playing, say, a pure DPS class is that you really only need to maintain one set of gear.

Granted, there's less of an incentive to switch specs when you're pure DPS. But Hybrids get hit by this too - my Monk is going to have to maintain his Brewmaster and Windwalker artifacts, whereas now he can pretty easily get by with just using the same pair of swords.

I think what it all comes down to is Relics.

Relics are going to be, essentially, the new weapon drops. You'll plug them into your artifacts, and the Relic will really determine the stats of the weapon. I imagine we'll probably see enchantments applied to the Relics rather than the weapons themselves, to keep Enchanters in business (unless they just don't do weapon enchants this expansion, which would... probably not be a good idea.)

We don't really know how specialized these Relics will be, though. Will artifacts use only one relic at a time, or will you have different relics for the weapon's DPS, spellpower, stamina, etc? Will you be able to swap these relics out - if you get a really good one, can you move it between your Assassination Daggers and your Subtlety ones (or whatever those specs wind up using?)

Also, how does this work for two-handed weapons versus single-handed weapons and off-hands? Am I going to need to get two relics to plug into my Frost swords but only need one for my Blood axe?

Likewise, aside from the stats, we know that artifacts will get their own kind of talent tree that you progress through using "Artifact Points." But if I level up as Retribution, only switching to Protection to run each level-up dungeon (which is almost certainly how I'll level from 100-110,) will I be really behind on my Protection artifact while Ashbringer is just gleaming with artifact points?

Artifacts are clearly going to be one of the core features of the expansion, and while I think they have a lot of potential to make the game far less frustrating (no more hoping for that one freaking dagger in the whole raid to drop for my Rogue,) we could definitely use some clarification on the way that the system is going to play out.