Emperor FAQs

(scroll to bottom for sources, videos, interviews, etc!)

There’s not too much info about Emperor under the pinned, for more of it’s in depth and
variations that it has so I wanted to compile them. Here are just some of those notes
and commonly asked questions for the class:

1) What is the difference between emperor and

empress?
Emperor is a swift/crit class while Empress is a spec/crit class. Emperor plays with
higher APM and is focused more on the yellow skills, which draw cards. Emperor needs to pay
attention to combos the same way that Empress does, but generally is drawing 2-3x more cards
in any rotation. Additionally, Emperor plays at mid-range, while Empress plays at close range for
most of the fights. Both Empress and Emperor are focused on stacking blue skills to detonate
with red skills (ruin), however Emperor does not do as much dmg due to it’s unique engraving
difference.
2) What is the skill build of this spec?
When you see people talking about Arcana, you will hear them say three numbers such
as ‘3 1 4’. These correspond to the color of the skill. First is blue skills, or stacking, and then
Red skills, or ruin, and finally Yellow skills, or normal.

The most common Emperor skill build is 3 1 4. There are variations that are also common, such
as 1 2 5, 1 1 6, and 2 2 4. I’ll go over what they are and pros and cons from some compilation
info and testing.

All emperor builds are swift/crit. Crit is on

necklace.
314

314 build utilizes buffs from stream and scratch dealer to increase the window of
damage with your return (return increases crit d for 5 sec window). This build is the
most mobile of all of the emperor builds in its v.2 form (listed below), and gives the most
buffs overall to the player. This build is also a very good one because it won’t mana
starve you as much as the others, by placing conviction and judgment runes on Stream
of Edge and Scratch Dealer. This build has less card draw however baked into its kit
compared to the other variations of emperor builds, which can be less dps.
Tripods:

The tripods you want to aim to level up are Return x x 2 , Dark Res 1 x x , Dark Res x x
2, Evoke x 2 x , Checkmate 1 x x , Checkmate x 2 x , Checkmate x x 2, Stream of Edge
x 3 x, and Celestial Rain 2 x x , x 3 x , and x x 2. Highest priority is Dark Res , Celestial
Rain, and Evoke.
3 1 4 v2

Checkmate is not for everyone, and you can run other options depending on mobility
needs or other buffs. A common replacement is both dancing of spineflower and spiral
edge. Checkmate does the most damage by quite a large margin, so only replace this if
you know you are not going All out Attack and you do not like the checkmate animation.
If you can’t get the checkmate animation out consistently, it will lose dps, and this build
will be better. Tripods are same as above prio.

125
For our 1 2 5 build, we replace blue skills with more yellow skills, which grants us larger
card draw resulting in more combos of high dps such as cull+judgement, more mana
restore from moon+star cards, and higher standing dps. This build can be played with
the blue skill of either stream for buffs, or checkmate to stack 4 blue cards and increase
dmg. The main skill difference is adding Mysterious Stampede as a yellow skill for us.
Celestial Rain is this build’s red skill dump, and we only use Serendipity as a counter, or
if we get judgement and/or cull with 4 stacks already on. Celestial will be your red skill
used 90% of the time. This build excels at stationary dps and with high swiftness has
very high apm moving and casting. Additionally, with emperor draws it has the potential
for the highest dmg of the emperor builds with luck.

Tripods prio: (mainly same as above) RUNES ← linked to bottom of sheet

-Dark Res all
-Evoke conc circle
-Stream crit
-Return crit d
-celestial rain all

Tripod Selection:

Call of Destiny 3 1 1
Return 1 3 2
Dark Res 2 3 2
Evoke 2 1 2
Myst Stampede 3 2 1
Unlimited Shuffle 3 or 1 2 2
Checkmate 1 2 2
Stream of Edge 2 3

1 2 5 v.2
This build replaces stream with checkmate and mysterious stampede with shuffle. You
almost exclusively want to go this build if you are committed to All-Out-Attack as an
engraving. The main difference with this build is you have two channeled spells, and
you want to pos. More towards the boss’ back due to checkmate being a back attack.
Overall, this is more dps than the original 1 2 5, but is harder to play, and is harder to
shuffle in the combos of cards while trying to avoid mechanics.

116

The 1 1 6 build is a spam-heavy and the highest apm build of any of them. It utilizes 6
yellow skills to draw cards at the highest frequency, and only uses checkmate as the
one blue to dump into celestial rain. This build is lots of fun if you are looking for a
challenge, and in KR was ran on many arcana alts to do Guardian raids (sources at
bottom), so you can try it out and see how you like it. I would only recommend this build
fully once Emperor gem is out because this build draws the most cards and that will buff
the damage.

224

Another variation, this build aims to implement the buffs from stream with the damage
from checkmate into a rotation that allows for Celestial rain dumps. I don;t have too
much experience with this build, and most either fall into 3 1 4 or 1 2 5, but this is an
option to test out if you are not liking unlimited shuffle/mysterious stampede. This will
overall do a bit less dps by switching out the yellow skill, however will have slightly more
move speed and crit.

There are even more skill builds, such as 3 2 3, 4 2 2 , and some other niche edge ones
that I recommend looking more into on https://loawa.com/ , where you can find some
specific edge use cases.
3) What is the Empress/Emperor build?
This build utilizes the Emperor format and tacks on Empress for additional damage.
This was made by JiuDau, and does more damage late game than other builds
according to his vast amount of playing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xapwLgGpYCU&t=1s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt7Mtk7g-6A

These are the two links to see JiuDau talk about his build and explain what it does.

4) What Gems, and where is Emperor gem?

As of 7/25, right now Emperor gem does not exist in our version of the game. However,
once it does, it is top priority for us. The gems we use in builds are mostly 4/5 damage
gems and 7/8 cooldown gems:

Damage:
-Evoke
-Dark Res
-Celestial Rain
-Checkmate (if running)
-Emperor

Cooldown:
-Evoke
-Dark Res
-Celestial Rain
-Checkmate
-Call of Destiny
-Return
-Stream of Edge
-Mysterious Stampede/Unlimited Shuffle
5) I feel weak as Emperor, am I doing something
wrong?

Most likely you are just spamming cards to use them. Each build requires you still to
play cards effectively, especially cull+judgment. Additionally, Arcanist is a class that
relies heavily on tripods to level up it’s damage. Focus on looking on the market for the
tripods that are high priority to see your damage boost up. Also, practice in Trixion and
Guardian raids.

6) What is the rotation of the build?

The general rotation of Emperor will be the same regardless of what build you are
running. We use Call of Destiny off cooldown, and then place our buff if applicable
(stream). Then, our dmg window starts. We place evoke under, activate dark res, and as
the animation for the demon is coming out, we use Return. Then, we pop the evoke,
and channel either our checkmate (if applicable), use a yellow skill (if applicable), and
then use Celestial Rain. All of this should be possible with enough swiftness and CD
gems.

For 3 1 4:
For 1 2 5

Rotation is same, except judgements feed into serendipity, and you can fit one
mysterious stampede into your return window.

7) When do I use cards? When do I use Emperor

card?

We prefer to use Emperor card with a Cull card, but most of the time we can just use it
as soon as we get it. Since Emperor draws cards quite often, we want to make sure we
don’t lock a slot down, so that we can keep drawing cards and using them. I’ve linked a
sheet made by someone else that explains Empress card interactions, but most of it will
fit intuitively into our 5 second window as well.

For cards such as three headed and balance, we can use these when not in our window
to stack up to 4 stacks without having to checkmate, or if we arent running checkmate,
to get to 4 stacks instantly to pop Celestial.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ttoHy8lvfvxAosRRNsojeDoK6HditxoeMYb4e2jDr
DE/edit?usp=sharing

^Card usage sheet

8) What engravings do I go?

Emperor is nice because there are many different viable engravings. The most common
you will see is

-Raid Captain lvl 3

-Grudge lvl 3
-Cursed Doll lvl 3
-Mass Increase lvl 3
-Order of Emperor lvl 3
-Adr lvl 1

However, there is also variations to this:

-All out Attack lvl 3

-Keen Blunt Weapon lvl 3
-Adrenaline level 3
-Others on Loawa (such as heavy armor, fortitude, spirit abso) – would not recommend
currently

Additionally, you can leave the Order of the Emperor at Level 1.

9) What Argos set?

Preordained. Maxroll says Harsh Oath, and that is not optimal

10) What relic set?

2 x Nightmare 4 x Dominion

6 x Dominion or

6x Salvation.

Players run all three of these, the most common by far is 6x dominion, however 2x
Nightmare in the early game will alleviate many mana problems.

11) Why Prismatic Mirror ult?

Deathbound does more damage based on the stacking cards, and since many of our
builds don’t focus on that, we want to effectively draw cards as fast as possible with
Prismatic Mirror. Use this most often at the start of the fight for the dominion buff.
Sources and videos:

https://lost-ark.maxroll.gg/build-guides/order-of-the-emperor-arcanist-raid-guide

https://loawa.com/rank

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt7Mtk7g-6A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SqW1ywZk7M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VZqUPSbtz0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3KHDLwwE88 (1 1 6 example)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoRwPzjlieY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU-kzpjfjBc

https://youtu.be/B9yzGMhCPcg (hell valtan example)

https://www.inven.co.kr/board/lostark/5346/116373 *look at comments as well

VALTAN HELL BUILD
Runes in 1 2 5