Here’s a small trick on how to get more character customization by utilizing transmogrification and artifact weapons. Recently in Shadowlands, I’ve been seeing players running around with weapons transmogrifications not designed for their classes. And I wanted to figure out how people do this. I’ve seen Protection Warriors with the artifact weapon of Arms Warrior in the main hand while wielding a shield offhand. I’ve seen Windwalker Monks running around with two staffs from Brewmasters and even Subtlety Rogues with the Outlaw daggers. There’s a bug and I will discuss here how it works. And hopefully Blizzard does not change this because the customizations you can get out of your tunes is actually kind of cool.
I found a reddit post that talked about how you can change the appearance of one weapon for one spec to be that of an artifact weapon of another spec altogether. And that is primarily what this video is all about.
1:38 To get this to work, I would suggest doing this at a transmogrification vendor. Not on a yak mount, a lot of you probably have one, but doing this on the transmogrification vendor sometimes causes this not to work or at least it did not work for me. So I would rather do this in Dalaran, Ogrimmar, Stormwind or in Oribos.
If you are someone with a bunch of different mods for different specs, for example your Ret Paladin, Prot Paladin and Holy Paladin look different you might have to disable that unique transmog for all the different specs for this to work. When I had my Frost DK and Holy DK looking differently in their mock set ups then this trick did not work. So you have to make sure your characters are wearing exactly the same gear with exactly the same appearance transmogrified for this to work properly.
If you have different gear sets for different characters, for example my Rogue has an Outlaw set, Subtlety set and Assassination set with different trinkets and items used for PVE combat, it might be a good idea for this trick to work to disable the automatic switching of the equipment manager. Without that this trick will not work properly.
2:45 To set up exactly how you want to switch a character basically have two different specs, example a Ret Paladin and a Prot Paladin set wearing exactly the same transmog gear. Make sure to interact with the transmog vendor as a Ret Paladin and make sure that the weapon you will be using for your Prot Paladin (the one-hander) is in your main hand. Blizzard made it, that after Legion, if you are trying to transmog weapons to be an artifact weapon, they will override whatever weapon you’re currently wearing and give you the appearance of your artifact weapon. So let’s say you are a Mage and you get a sword and an offhand but you are more preferable to using staffs for your transmog, it will override that one hander and the offhand to look like a staff as long as it’s an artifact appearance. While you are in the transmogrification menu you will want to use a macro that runs a script to change your spec, you can either change your spec by going into the character panel and going into the talents panel and there will be a specialization tab and you can change the spec like that. Or you can run a script that changes your spec automatically.
3:48 The script will change your specs to spec 1, spec 2 and spec 3. For most classes, spec 1 is one on the top, spec 2 is the one in the middle and spec 3 is one at the bottom. However that does not work for every single character. So all you have to do is a little bit of experimentation with your characters to find out which spec these macros switch your character to. So utilizing this I will have my character Paladin, have the window for transmogrification open ready to transmog my one hander into the artifact weapon. Then I’ll use a macro to change my spec from Ret Paladin to Prot Paladin. As the bar fills and it is almost full, I will press apply in the transmogrification menu screen. It will have a bit of a delay, it will make me change to Prot spec using the exact same gear since I do not have the auto equip manager assigning me a different set if I am going from Ret to Prot. And it will also apply with a bit of delay the artifact appearance from my Ret Paladin. Because of the apply button having a bit of a delay, it will be delayed but will still process. So as you are switching to a different spec, it will apply that Retribution Paladin’s artifact appearance. Normally if you are a Prot Paladin you can only use the Prot Paladin artifact appearance that will override whatever you are currently wearing in using the artifact appearance of your Prot. This way you are overriding whatever weapon you equip in your main hand to that of a whole other spec, this one being Retribution. So as I am running around on my Prot Paladin, I look like a Ret Paladin. I still have the abilities and functionality and my character still has a main hand and a shield equipped in my offhand. So I still have the functionality to tank things and block things so all looks fine but I have the appearance as if I’m like a Death Knight for this example, wielding a massive two-hander but tanking for my group.
Afterwards I wanted to test out what are the limits of this transmogrification feature with some of the interesting examples:
5:54 Is it possible to equip a shield on a one-hander as a Fury Warrior? And it turns out you can. So if you remember the warlord’s generally play style of Gladiator Protection warriors who in gladstance literally at the time did more damage than Arms and Fury and was a legitimately good DPS build for a while until Blizzard nerfed it and then removed it afterwards. If you want to relive that same glory of being like this brawler that just likes the aesthetics of the shield and sword but wants to do damage, you definitely can. Basically you will be playing Fury and Arms warrior exactly the same way but you will have an offhand and a one-hander as your appearance. It does not change the play style at all but just gives you a little bit extra cool aesthetic and in a sense a little more transmogrification and customization for your character.
This also works for Rogues, if for example you play Assassination and you are kind of tired of using those little daggers and you would rather go with a more extravagant, much bigger looking weapon. Because imagine that mutilate animation and syncing together with some powerful swords to kind of like stab the enemy. So as an Assassination Rogue you can have the weapons of an Outlaw, kind of piercing the enemy in this mutilate fashion and still being able to use all the same poison abilities while wielding swords because it’s only a cosmetic appearance.
7:14 The only limitation I found so far is that Hunters cannot use bows or guns in melee. So if you are trying to have a Survival Hunter that kind of beats the enemy with a gun or bow, but it does not look like this functionality and interaction properly works on a Hunter as it does not even let you transmog a staff or a polearm into a bow if you switch to Marksman or Beast Mastery. This would not work in the future since this is a bug that we are using in order to get a different appearance for our characters.
Aesthetically this works for any melee classes because you will see them swinging their weapons. And for a lot of the casters, in most cases you already can transmog. You can do little things like have a one-hander and an offhand as a Shadow Priest and you can still have that Discipline Priest artifact skin with this method. However you can already do that as long as you are using a staff in your main hand.
I really hope Blizzard does not fix this. It is a small thing that kind of slipped by, a small bug but this is more fun than anything.