Legion Artifact Empowerment Question

[Pretolkos]

I’ve read some blogs about the pros and cons of healers trying to level as healers in Legion due to how it affects our artifact. (As a resto shaman raider, that’s a big concern for me.)

If you happened to level in Legion: if I leveled as ele and empowered my ele weapon while doing so, would I be able to make up for the loss to my resto weapon before raiding starts? (As a quick side note, I know that I can level as ele while empowering my resto artifact, but the blogs I've seen say that leveling in a spec in which you're not empowering your weapon is just as slow if not worse than leveling as a healer.)

For those of you who have played around at max level, how do we continue empowering our weapon in Legion once we’re at max-level? Is it by questing, doing dungeons, raiding, or some combination until we hit some daily or weekly cap? And (here’s the real question for me) if it isn’t only doing dungeons and raiding, does it force me to do dailies in a healer spec in order to empower that artifact?

Please be spoiler-free in terms of story/lore in your response!

Thanks for any insight you can provide!

[Numerical]

Having levelled as resto in beta. I will be doing the same Again on live. It took me around 16 hours to level to 110 and I didn't rush. Levelling with other would be the quicker way ( I didn't )

You will empower by all methods and that will reward you "tokens " which will be of varying artifact power as you increase your research power. You can allocate this to whichever spec you are in.

In my view, you will NOT want to level as ele and put your points there at the beginning. You can only get your secondary weapon at level 102.

Whatever happens though you can quest as ele and switch specs to "use" those tokens as resto. It's just a nuisance. After asking around, I do not think it took me any longer levelling as resto than it would have as moonkin. I never died either of course so never had to worry if I over pulled or messed up.

[Numerical]

Oh and yes. I did try levelling as moonkin without empowering that artifact. It was painful and took me all if 25 mins to say screw this... And switched back to resto levelling. It was far too underpowered with no points in the tree.

[Shaank]

good to know

[Willow]

good to know

Holy pallys do more dmg then Ret for starting quests into Legion.

Leveling as a healer is no longer a nuisance!

[Kermit]

I haven't dove too far into leveling as resto, but the artifact quest was kind of a pain to kill some of those mobs.

[Pretolkos]

Thank you for the in-depth info, Numerical! Was it the same when you were max-level, in that whatever you did, it awarded tokens that you used on the artifact of your choice?

To give some context, I know that I *can* level as a healer, but apparently Blizzard's fantasy for resto shaman is that we get 3 damaging spells, with only one small interaction. If I'm facing numerous mobs at the same time, I swap one of the 3 spells with a different one (chain lightning for lightning bolt). We have no offensive cooldowns (except heroism of course), no totems other than for healing . . . in other words, I fear it's incredibly boring. I know we all tease each other about 3 button rotations, but that's a cheeky joke that we all know really isn't true. Except now it is if you're a resto shaman. When I'm questing in ele spec, I'm rotating offensive and healing cd's, have multiple utility options, a couple rotations, AND the same 3 buttons that resto shaman get. It's hard to give that up for 1, 2, 3 . . . 3 . . . 3 . . . and loot. Unless it's an elite, in which case I get to press 2 again before spamming 3 until it dies or I fall asleep, whichever happens first.

[Pretolkos]

I heard that some healers are quite powerful, Willow. From what you're saying, Kermit, it sounds like resto shaman aren't necessarily that way. I found a blog from a guy who leveled multiple times as a shaman and timed himself while doing it. He realized it didn't take that much longer to level as a healer; it just felt like it.