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What is an Arcanist in Lost Ark?
The Arcanist is one of the newer mage classes in Lost Ark that utilizes magic-infused cards to provide DPS or support to her team when needed.
The Arcanist carries three different colored Skills in the form of cards: Yellow, Blue, and Red. Each type serves a different function:
Yellow cards consist of the Arcanist’s Normal Skills like crowd control and buffs, while her Blue cards deal damage and have the ability to mark enemies with Ruin which stacks up to four times.
After you have applied Ruin on your target, you can start using Red cards or Ruin Skills that will consume all Stacks you have applied on the target and deal damage depending on the number of Ruin Stacks applied on a target.
The Arcanist’s Identity Skill is her Deck Gauge – twelve unique cards that provide unique effects. Some of the cards provide effects such as damage buffs and cooldown reduction effects, while others, such as the Emperor card, can give the Arcanist insane burst damage. Each time the Arcanist fills up her Identity Gauge, she can draw a Card from the Deck and hold it for later use. You can hold up to two Deck Cards at any given time.
Is the Arcanist hard to play in Lost Ark?
The Arcanist is one of the more difficult classes to play in Lost Ark due to the class’ synergy-centric skills, timing-dependent synergies, and her Identity Skill’s randomness. This means that you need to have a deep knowledge of all her Card Skills and all 12 of her Deck Card effects if you want to be effective regardless of the set of cards you are dealt with at any given time.
Aside from the very technical gameplay, the Arcanist is also naturally squishy and is forced to play at close range because of her skills’ short cast range.
Despite her steep learning curve, the Arcanist has a very high skill ceiling for anyone willing to take the time to master all her quirks and tendencies. In the right hands, the Arcanist will be a force to be reckoned with thanks to her impressive DPS, good mobility, and a plethora of CC skills that can help a ton in PvP or PvE.
Best Build for the Arcanist in Lost Ark
You can build the Arcanist with the Empress’s Grace or the Emperor’s Edict Engraving.
Empress’s Grace
Empress’s Grace is arguably the most popular Engraving for the Arcanist in Lost Ark, which focuses on providing more damage to Ruin Stacks and improving mana regeneration so you can keep throwing Skills as frequently as possible in battle.
Empress’s Grace provides a 30% damage boost to all your Ruin Stacks and provides an instant 30% mana refund when Ruin hits.
Order of the Emperor
Order of the Emperor focuses on short-duration buffs that you need to take advantage of as quickly as possible. Order of the Emperor also brings out Emperor Card – a powerful Red Card that deals massive damage within a 14-meter radius.
Order of the Emperor provides 50% Deck Gauge regen and a 30% damage buff as well.
Best Stats for the Arcanist
If you go for Empress’s Grace, make sure you level up your Specialization stat followed by Crit to maximize your DPS output.
For Order of the Emperor, go for Swiftness to reduce cooldowns, which will allow you to cycle through your Deck cards more frequently. Crit is also recommended to increase DPS.
Best Skills for the Arcanist
For Empress’s Grace builds, go for Celestial Rain, Serendipity, and Secret Garden Red Skills. Use Call of Destiny or Return to build Ruin Stacks quickly before blasting enemies with any of the three Red Skills mentioned previously.
Order of the Emperor builds are focused on getting the vaunted Emperor Card as quickly as possible to deal massive damage to an area.
To deal even more damage with the Emperor card, you need to stack Ruin as quickly as possible. Using Spiral Edge, Scratch Dealer, Quadra Accelerate can quickly get you the four Ruin stacks you need to deal massive damage.
The Order of the Emperor build is less popular than the Empress’s Grace, because it relies so much on building Deck Gauge and taking advantage of powerful yet short buffs provided by some Deck Cards such as Mayhem Card and Corrosion Card.
How to play the Arcanist in Lost Ark
There’s one important thing to remember when playing the Arcanist in Lost Ark – ensure you have inflicted four Stacks of Ruin on the target of your choice before using Ruin Skills to deal as much damage as possible – regardless of the Engraving build you go for.
With that said, the skills you use and how you use them will depend greatly on the Engravings you go for.
For Empress’s Grace builds, building Stacks as quickly as possible with your Blue (Stacking) cards will allow you to get those Ruin Stacks built up quickly, and allow you to press the proverbial big red button (Ruin Skills) to deal massive damage.
You can do this by using Quadra Accelerate, Spiral Edge Leap, and other Stacking skills before blasting enemies for huge damage with Celestial Rain.
On the other hand, Order of the Emperor requires you to build your Deck Gauge quickly so you can cycle through your 12 Deck Cards and hopefully land the Emperor card to deal massive damage to an area.
Conclusion
The Arcanist is a difficult class to play in Lost Ark due to the randomness of her Identity Skill. Having 12 different cards to keep track of and constantly building Ruin Stacks already sounds tedious. Add that to the class’ squishiness and natural tendency to play in close range makes positioning and skill timing a very important aspect of her already complicated gameplay.
With that said, the Arcanist will reward players who take the time to learn her quirks with nuclear damage potential in a highly-mobile package.