Raid/PvE Empress Arcanist - Lost Ark Build Guide (2024)

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Awakening

Deathbound

Build Details & Information

Hello! I am Brother Chris and I have been playing Lost Ark since its western release in February 2022. This is meant to be an introductory guide to quickly get you up to speed for a raid/pve Empress Arcanist so you can run around throwing cards at people like gambit with a dueldisk on your wrist.

Class Introduction

Empress's Grace Arcanist is a very fast paced, melee ranged, builder spender playstyle. You primarily play by stacking up 4 "Ruin" stacks which you then detonate with your spender skills. It also features a deck chock full of a ton of different cards that all have different effects that you can "draw" upon using skills and building your meter. If you want a class that is a bit more involved then Arcanist may be for you.

Rotation

Empress's Grace has a very sort of basic rule of build 4 ruin stacks, use your damage amp skill, use your ruin spender. This is a very oversimplified way of looking at Arcanist which this guide aims to be. Call of Destiny and Return are your two damage amping abilities with Dark Destiny and Exposed Darkness respectively.

A basic rotation for Arcanist would look something like this

1. Scratch Dealer
2. Quadra Accelerate
3. Return
4. Celestial Rain
5. Spiral Edge
6. Spiral Edge
7. Secret Garden
8. Call of Destiny
9. Scratch Dealer
10. Four of a Kind

Four of a Kind is your lowest damage ruin skill and one of your best card generating skills - feel free to use at 2/3 ruin stacks if it means staying in boundless MP which is what you ideally want to be in as much as possible playing this setup. You'll learn when and where to weave in cards you draw to combo with your rotation, generally speaking you don't want to hold cards for too long and the most basic card usages is stuff like cull+judgement = big burst, cull/twisted fate before using your Celestial Rain and Secret Garden combo.

Card Deck

Arcanist has their identity skill giving them access to a card deck which has a variety of differing cards with differing uses. I am going to try to simplify this as much as I possibly can as you will learn more specifics as you go and play the class more indepth. This is meant to be a basic starter to get you going.

That being said, the image I have made highlights what I consider to be "dump instantly" cards when you're first learning arcanist. I also highlight the next cards you want to try and incorporate into your gameplay as they're important to your overall damage but not make or break the class.

Green = you should focus on learning these and when to use these properly first - these typically contribute the biggest potential damage to your skills
Yellow = you should focus on these once you're comfortable with all the green cards and their uses as these cards are a bit more niche but still have a good impact on your output
Red = you can use these as soon as you draw them and don't need to think twice.

It is important to note that Wheel of fortune can reset the cooldown on your awakening, so you can do some burst awakening resets if you so desire. The other preferred use for Wheel is on Celestial Rain as it's your hardest hitting ruin skill.

Cull and Twisted fate are two cards that essentially do the same thing and that is MORE DAMAGE so they're applied in identical ways - that being you want to save them for right before you're going to do a Celestial Rain and Secret Garden combo OR you can pair it with something like a judgment card for a big stream of burst

Judgment lets you use your ruin skills as if they had maximum stacks regardless of if the boss does or not, which allows you to shoot out enormous amounts of damage in a very short time, especially when combined with other cards like Cull or Twisted fate

Clown will draw whatever card you last used, so it can be useful for anything but its good to note what card you last used so you can note if you should use your clown card now or hold it for another draw to see if you get something better to copy.

Royal draws 2 new cards. That's it. Optimal usage is to use it when you only have this in your hand as, again, you want it to draw 2 cards rather than just 1.

Star is a bit more advanced to use but still good to understand where you should be using it - you want to try to hold it until you're naturally in magick addiction as this will take you out of boundless mp very quickly

Joy can mostly be used as you draw it until you're very familiar with the class and can use it more optimally such as after using Celestial Rain or Secret Garden to reduce their cooldowns by a bit. Overall not super important starting out but definitely something to learn and optimize on down the road.

Engravings

There are a few different meta setups for Empress's Grace, this is one of the common ones that most people use

Engraving priority would be something like Empress's Grace > Barricade > Adrenaline > Grudge > Hit Master

Stats

For this setup we're running primarily spec with secondary being crit.

Specialization: 1600
Crit: 550

This is with relic accessories and a bracelet and all potions unlocked from horizontal content.

Relic Set

For this Empress's Grace setup we use Nightmare set as it provides us with massive amounts of cooldown reduction when in boundless mp which fuels the card machine gun.

Tripods

It is important to note that damage tripods are very very important on Arcanist, more so than some other classes as you gain a LOT of your damage from tripod levels. Focus on your ruin skill tripods and damage buffing tripods ASAP.

Skills

The main skill swap is quadra accelerate] for [[backflush. If you dislike Quadra Accelerate feel free to try backflush.

Runes

Protection runes are mandatory to proc barricade bonus on your damage - otherwise Call of Destiny and Return and complete flex spots and you can slot whatever you need in either of those skills very easily.

Card Sets

As always with most damage dealing classes, Empress's Grace can utilize Lostwind Cliff very well as a temporary gate to the promised land of Light of Salvation at 18 or more awakening which is the ultimate goal.