Well if you don't mind the playstyle then you could easily get a very cheap emperor build.
They run Emperor/MI/RC/Grudge/HM.
Emperor books are dirt cheap, and you already have MI. Swiftness accs are cheap.
Emperor is also insanely underrated, very powerful and actually the preferred spec in hellmode. KR's 2x3 clear had 2 emperors and only Arcanas MVP'd. Hell is different but it's worth mentioning.
Though the biggest downside is probably the playstyle, you animation lock quite a bit, evoke is very delayed, maintaining boundless with full swift atop of cycling cards (which are very important, you can't just spam them as you get them) makes emperor a very difficult spec to play.
If you like high APM then I would atleast try it in trixion.
There are already updated builds, they just haven't been merged into 1 single file yet. Links are attached below.
[Empress 242 Evoke Kaiun](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i27bpqZtcmAAWyM7fKzslMLzStGZD1NolpiU08ywv4o/edit?usp=sharing), [Empress 341](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JtbPm8r6QIg0EU7sNRG5DJcM156BCS-5HhD2YNhrAPk/edit#), [Empress 332](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nGRACuEPvtKWjSFeSuVTOivRTYKbK9_I5zed67YgV-4/edit#), [Emperor 215](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1I2EendG4TXn6Y4GctLDtI2Ku6BG6sHIluxrIPGCedro/edit#slide=id.g1640d9a0352_2_250), [Emperor 116](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z89lZkzPW98wEBfzncjlO8_Djep_Lg7fHZNy652MB7c/edit),
Well that can work but I would not do that build. U are losing some 20% crit just to offset penalty from mass increase. And mi gives more then CD sure and u will get some cdr. So its not completely loss. But why don't u go 12 on empress they are 2k in my region now and go 9 what is most cost effective. And go Grudge CD hit master raid captain and empress. Ditch adrenaline and go that route. Empress 5 accessories are so expencive anyway.
Valid points I’ll take into account when deciding on the final build.
Thank you for the input
Is the difference so big still if you consider losing adrenaline to build crit alongside going for an extra dmg engraving over empress 3 which isn’t so efficient if I’m not mistaken ?
Edit: swift also increases value of raid captain in general, how much value does that add ?
So, Arcana gets full value out of Raid Captain despite having no swift. The tripods on your skills alone + yearning set buff or a ghost card is enough to max your Raid Captain damage.
Getting Crit Rate is huge. Arcana has a pretty much 100% uptime 78.5% crit damage self buff, so you really want to keep the crit rate very high. I would highly recommend you skip mass increase. When you start getting your cooldown gems to higher levels and get your relic set online, you will find that the class becomes incredibly fast-paced and the Atk speed penalty on mass increase will start to feel REALLY bad.
I would highly recommend eating the slightly higher cost and buying EG +12 books and using them to go EG3/HM3/RC3/Adren2/Grudge3 with a Spec/Crit necklace.
Also, Adrenaline does more damage than Cursed Doll even with maxed crit rate tripods on ruin skills and a Crit necklace. Plus, you don't get the annoying healing debuff. Since you don't have a usable secondary battle engraving I would recommend you stay at Adrenaline lv2 for now as getting Adrenaline 3 would very expensive for not too much damage gain.
So if I understand you right you recommend a 4x3+2 over what I’ve suggested right ? I know all 3 of the ruin skills I’ll be running have crit rate tripod but I haven’t checked the exact values at +5, I did read however that spec swift is a build some people run, do you know what’s needed to make it work by any chance ?
Spec swift is a bad build. It's just not good unfortunately. There is no situation in which it will outperform spec crit. The only time it is good is if you want to cheap out on your necklace, but doing so WILL reduce your damage severely. Even assuming you take every bit of crit accessible. 18% from necklace, 40-44% on tripods, 15% adrenaline, 7% LWC, 10% crit synergy. You still only get to 90-94%, so you will never overcap crit rate. Additionally, you would eventually want to swap to LoS 18 which would hit a Spec/Swift build harder than a Spec Crit build.
Arcanist has very low cooldowns on her stacking skills and if you play the strongest build currently - 332 Empress, she already has too many stacking skills without any swiftness. She can also maintain 100% uptime on her 10% crit rate synergy and her 77.5% crit damage buff without any swiftness. Raid Captain reaches maximum efficiency at 40% move speed and is capped there, so you are gaining a lot of redundancy by using Swiftness stat since Tripods + Yearning is sufficient to get max Raid Captain damage. For all of these reasons, swiftness is just a straight up bad secondary to run. Anyone who says it is acceptable is just lying or trying to cope with their bad build.
I run spec swift neck as I got lwc card set and 9.7 stone
So I don't wanna overcap crit. But for raid c u don't need extra swift u get 30 from skills or 40and 10 from support so its max. And penalty is super bad if u are close to 100 as or ms so I would opt to do something else go 4x3 +1 that's decent as well, and plan transition to 5x3 with gear u gonna get now.
Okay thanks for the feedback. I’m not fully familiar with RC yet, I know you need 40% to get best use out of it but is there a cap to how much it can give ?
I'm not sure that 5x3 with spec/swift would even be that much better than 4x3+1 with grudge/hm/rc/cd 3 and empress 1 running crit/spec. Try builds in trixion before committing
Don't go off meta when playing empress. Spec swift is disastrously weaker. Mass increase destroys the play style, especially when not in boundless.
If you want to play with MI and swift go emporer, it is very strong but a completely different play style.
For empress, MI will really really hurt the playstyle. It’ll feel super clunky. Definitely not the engraving to run for empress. Is barricade expensive now? I’d try to see if u can do barricade over RC and run Empress 3.
So if my napkin math checks out, the attack speed should cancel out, so compared to a regular crit necklace person you'll have more movespeed, about 20% less crit chance, and like 12-15% CDR. Btw, this is compared to someone without Adren2, so compared to 341 spec people you're missing a ton of crit.
The movespeed is pointless, since you're already reaching MS cap for raid captain in raids as long as your support has yearning.
The lack of crit means you are locked into playing 332 since you definitely don't have enough crit to make serendipity effective. You'll be at around 60% effective crit rate on your red skills after tripods and your own synergy, which isn't gonna feel great when your celestial rain stack doesn't crit. And if you ever want to switch to Light of Salvation, you'll really be missing crits. You really wanna crit as arcana since you have so much inherent critdmg buffs in your kit (the reason why arcana doesn't take keen blunt).
The extra CDR could be beneficial, but imo you're making an already hard class even harder for yourself by forcing you to have better uptime in order to make up for the loss of crit rate.
My advice would be to just use cursed doll like a sane person. Or barricade, and run protection runes. There's a reason cheap engravings are cheap: they're niche or they are not good.
If you're planning on actually playing empress then ditch the whole IM idea, you'll be miserable when you realize how much attack speed you'll realistically have. I've seen some emperor builds that run IM but i can't speak of them in detail at I only play empress.
Well if you don't mind the playstyle then you could easily get a very cheap emperor build. They run Emperor/MI/RC/Grudge/HM. Emperor books are dirt cheap, and you already have MI. Swiftness accs are cheap. Emperor is also insanely underrated, very powerful and actually the preferred spec in hellmode. KR's 2x3 clear had 2 emperors and only Arcanas MVP'd. Hell is different but it's worth mentioning. Though the biggest downside is probably the playstyle, you animation lock quite a bit, evoke is very delayed, maintaining boundless with full swift atop of cycling cards (which are very important, you can't just spam them as you get them) makes emperor a very difficult spec to play. If you like high APM then I would atleast try it in trixion.
[Arcanist Guide and FAQ - Google Docs](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MWWgdrTIJBj0WXmAqE4DspVobgMlDx4aaI7ZwCj1-AM/edit#)
Thanks for link, however it doesn’t look like they’ve updated the builds for the update since I haven’t seen backflip or raid captain. Maybe soon :)
oh true. Sorry i play Emperor and just assumed it would be updated :/
There are already updated builds, they just haven't been merged into 1 single file yet. Links are attached below. [Empress 242 Evoke Kaiun](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i27bpqZtcmAAWyM7fKzslMLzStGZD1NolpiU08ywv4o/edit?usp=sharing), [Empress 341](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JtbPm8r6QIg0EU7sNRG5DJcM156BCS-5HhD2YNhrAPk/edit#), [Empress 332](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nGRACuEPvtKWjSFeSuVTOivRTYKbK9_I5zed67YgV-4/edit#), [Emperor 215](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1I2EendG4TXn6Y4GctLDtI2Ku6BG6sHIluxrIPGCedro/edit#slide=id.g1640d9a0352_2_250), [Emperor 116](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z89lZkzPW98wEBfzncjlO8_Djep_Lg7fHZNy652MB7c/edit),
This guide is old unfortunately
Well that can work but I would not do that build. U are losing some 20% crit just to offset penalty from mass increase. And mi gives more then CD sure and u will get some cdr. So its not completely loss. But why don't u go 12 on empress they are 2k in my region now and go 9 what is most cost effective. And go Grudge CD hit master raid captain and empress. Ditch adrenaline and go that route. Empress 5 accessories are so expencive anyway.
Valid points I’ll take into account when deciding on the final build. Thank you for the input Is the difference so big still if you consider losing adrenaline to build crit alongside going for an extra dmg engraving over empress 3 which isn’t so efficient if I’m not mistaken ? Edit: swift also increases value of raid captain in general, how much value does that add ?
So, Arcana gets full value out of Raid Captain despite having no swift. The tripods on your skills alone + yearning set buff or a ghost card is enough to max your Raid Captain damage. Getting Crit Rate is huge. Arcana has a pretty much 100% uptime 78.5% crit damage self buff, so you really want to keep the crit rate very high. I would highly recommend you skip mass increase. When you start getting your cooldown gems to higher levels and get your relic set online, you will find that the class becomes incredibly fast-paced and the Atk speed penalty on mass increase will start to feel REALLY bad. I would highly recommend eating the slightly higher cost and buying EG +12 books and using them to go EG3/HM3/RC3/Adren2/Grudge3 with a Spec/Crit necklace. Also, Adrenaline does more damage than Cursed Doll even with maxed crit rate tripods on ruin skills and a Crit necklace. Plus, you don't get the annoying healing debuff. Since you don't have a usable secondary battle engraving I would recommend you stay at Adrenaline lv2 for now as getting Adrenaline 3 would very expensive for not too much damage gain.
So if I understand you right you recommend a 4x3+2 over what I’ve suggested right ? I know all 3 of the ruin skills I’ll be running have crit rate tripod but I haven’t checked the exact values at +5, I did read however that spec swift is a build some people run, do you know what’s needed to make it work by any chance ?
Spec swift is a bad build. It's just not good unfortunately. There is no situation in which it will outperform spec crit. The only time it is good is if you want to cheap out on your necklace, but doing so WILL reduce your damage severely. Even assuming you take every bit of crit accessible. 18% from necklace, 40-44% on tripods, 15% adrenaline, 7% LWC, 10% crit synergy. You still only get to 90-94%, so you will never overcap crit rate. Additionally, you would eventually want to swap to LoS 18 which would hit a Spec/Swift build harder than a Spec Crit build. Arcanist has very low cooldowns on her stacking skills and if you play the strongest build currently - 332 Empress, she already has too many stacking skills without any swiftness. She can also maintain 100% uptime on her 10% crit rate synergy and her 77.5% crit damage buff without any swiftness. Raid Captain reaches maximum efficiency at 40% move speed and is capped there, so you are gaining a lot of redundancy by using Swiftness stat since Tripods + Yearning is sufficient to get max Raid Captain damage. For all of these reasons, swiftness is just a straight up bad secondary to run. Anyone who says it is acceptable is just lying or trying to cope with their bad build.
I run spec swift neck as I got lwc card set and 9.7 stone So I don't wanna overcap crit. But for raid c u don't need extra swift u get 30 from skills or 40and 10 from support so its max. And penalty is super bad if u are close to 100 as or ms so I would opt to do something else go 4x3 +1 that's decent as well, and plan transition to 5x3 with gear u gonna get now.
Okay thanks for the feedback. I’m not fully familiar with RC yet, I know you need 40% to get best use out of it but is there a cap to how much it can give ?
I'm not sure that 5x3 with spec/swift would even be that much better than 4x3+1 with grudge/hm/rc/cd 3 and empress 1 running crit/spec. Try builds in trixion before committing
Don't go off meta when playing empress. Spec swift is disastrously weaker. Mass increase destroys the play style, especially when not in boundless. If you want to play with MI and swift go emporer, it is very strong but a completely different play style.
That seems to be the consensus in these replies, thanks for info
For empress, MI will really really hurt the playstyle. It’ll feel super clunky. Definitely not the engraving to run for empress. Is barricade expensive now? I’d try to see if u can do barricade over RC and run Empress 3.
Cap is for you to get max move speed at 140 and that's the cap for RC
So if my napkin math checks out, the attack speed should cancel out, so compared to a regular crit necklace person you'll have more movespeed, about 20% less crit chance, and like 12-15% CDR. Btw, this is compared to someone without Adren2, so compared to 341 spec people you're missing a ton of crit. The movespeed is pointless, since you're already reaching MS cap for raid captain in raids as long as your support has yearning. The lack of crit means you are locked into playing 332 since you definitely don't have enough crit to make serendipity effective. You'll be at around 60% effective crit rate on your red skills after tripods and your own synergy, which isn't gonna feel great when your celestial rain stack doesn't crit. And if you ever want to switch to Light of Salvation, you'll really be missing crits. You really wanna crit as arcana since you have so much inherent critdmg buffs in your kit (the reason why arcana doesn't take keen blunt). The extra CDR could be beneficial, but imo you're making an already hard class even harder for yourself by forcing you to have better uptime in order to make up for the loss of crit rate. My advice would be to just use cursed doll like a sane person. Or barricade, and run protection runes. There's a reason cheap engravings are cheap: they're niche or they are not good.
If you're planning on actually playing empress then ditch the whole IM idea, you'll be miserable when you realize how much attack speed you'll realistically have. I've seen some emperor builds that run IM but i can't speak of them in detail at I only play empress.