[As Designed] When breaking down old Epics with a (L) you lose the item

This has been an issue for a very long time. Old artifacts have an (L). If you salvage them at the blacksmithing table, you get the item back with an updated durability. All but old Epics. Any Epic with an (L) that gets broken down just returns ancient essence and an imbued jewel. I would love to break down my Epic Gauntlets or Lead so that I can enchant them (the old Epic only has a 75 durability), but as a test I just broke down a Maple Band Epic (L) and I lost the item. Can we please get a fix for this? This issue has been around for more than a year. Thanks

 

I think the truth is we might have been given an accidental bonus. As I understand it the possible bug is that other Legacy artifacts accidentally break down to e.g. 50/50 (Max 150) durability instead of 50/50 (Max 50), but that may also be intended. Either way, it means we effectively get a second chance on MW/Enchanting them in certain situations, especially for pieces that don't hold or need much work, such as rings. The idea was never that we'd get a free 2nd pass on Epic artifacts after the legacy changes, though of course one does feel a bit left out if they combined to epic before the durability increases.

Legacy Epics salvaging to essences and gemstones is the intended behavior though, as per the tooltips and patch notes.

Spoiler: Epic vs Uncommon Tooltips (image blatantly stolen from Alley Oop

Spoiler: Excerpt from the R89 Patch Notes

• All existing artifacts that have tiers (Common through Legendary only) already present in player inventories and storage, are now considered “Legacy” artifacts. Their tooltip descriptions indicate instructions on how these items can be utilized going forward.
  • Legacy artifact tooltip descriptions are as follows: “This is a legacy version of this artifact, but it can still be equipped as is. To use this artifact in upgrade recipes, it must be salvaged to receive a low durability variant of the newer artifact version. That low durability variant can be used in upgrade recipes, and it can also be salvaged for Ancient Essences.”
  • The reason there are new versions of the same artifact (as well as all crafted gear items), is because if 50 durability was added to gear items already present in the game which had previously received an old exceptional bonus would receive an EXTRA 50 durability. And since artifacts are used in recipes to upgrade, to allow the crafting system to recognize matching artifacts for upgrade recipes, first the old Legacy artifacts must be converted to the new versions so the recipes can recognize that matching artifacts were in fact provided to the crafting table.
  • Old versions of Epic artifacts were not added to this Legacy salvage concept since they are not utilized in upgrade recipes. They will still salvage into essences as expected.

Clearly Epics are also now considered "Legacy" versions where appropriate, but overall this seems in keeping with the original intentions.

 

coswald is right. this is as designed. you cannot upgrade epics into a higher tier, so there is no valid reason to salvage them except for jewels/essence.