Between EO soulfist or Both of the Arcana engravings. Which is more complicated and harder to master or jus play relatively well? Me and my bf decided to pick one or the other and he’s letting me pick first since I’m mechanically challenged :p (I already main a tai scrapper)
Any help is appreciated!
Posted Jan 26, 2023, 8:44 AM UTC
I play both EO soulfist and Empress Arcana.
Before the buff, Empress arcana was very hard to do good damage on and one of the hardest classes to master. Now I think, besides artillerist, it's one of the easiest classes to pump respectable damage on. The rotations aren't as straight forward as for other classes, the card draw adds another element of management, and staying in boundless can be hard. You also need lvl 5 tripods for all of your skills, especially if you play raid captain, which you will need to learn to utilize for every red skill.
However, right now she's kind of overtuned and her skills do a lot of damage on their own, so it's also way less punishing when you mess up a rotation, especially if you play 3 red skills. So even if your skill level is low, your damage will still be decent. The hardest part is trying not to get fucked by your own skills, as every stacking skill moves you in some way.
EO Soulfist on the other hand I find the hardest to really pop off with. The rotations are pretty easy, but managing hype and dominion buff is much more of a challenge than people think. Every raid you need to consider your overall party damage, which can be hard especially in pugs, since you will have to time your hype around it. Missing out on hype 3 is a huge dps loss, and having to wait around when you popped at the wrong time is very punishing. You also need to be on the boss actually 24/7. Add in long ass raids like brelshaza, where you need to consider your number of awakenings, or mechanic heavy raids, where your uptime will suffer and you can see how a bad EO Soulfist can do zdps. But a good EO Soulfist can pump insane numbers of damage.
Overall, Empress is overwhelming at first, hard to pick up, hard to master, but in the current state, easy to be decent at. EO Soulfist is easy to get into, but hard to master and also hard to be decent at. These are just my personal opinions from playing them, though. I've played arcana since her release, so maybe I'm also biased, as I struggled with her in the beginning and now find her very easy after the rework, while I picked up soulfist later on.
I play both as well except i had EO Soulfist before arcana release. I agree with this, both are hard to master classes with high ceilings.
If you're mechanically challenged, Empress will be much harder. Empress you will have a hard time at the beginning but once you get into the flow, it gets easy to be decent at it. To master the class and pump damage? A lot harder. But keep in mind, this is a spec class unlike EO SF which is swift and tankier.
EO Soulfist will be much easier and forgiving especially in raid. You wont struggle as much to survive in raids with EO being a swift class with 3 dashes and a very low CD on the spacebar. However, if you want to be pumping alot of damage, EO SF takes skill. My suggestion is EO SF, it's more forgiving upfront and has an upwards learning curve whereas Empress is a U shaped learning curve IMHO.
EO is not for normal average LA player, you need very good driver with full braincells to play class, you can't be decent with class, you either do no damage or you do a lot of damage, there is no middle ground with this class. it is just the way class is designed. Managing hype is not an easy task, even pressing all buttons that fast is also not that easy because everything is off cd all the time, class is too fast and you have to make sure you using all your side skills while rotating main skills with in the buff period.
Where arcana is pretty straight forward and much easier to play for any average LA player and do decent damage ever since patch.
I used to believe this when I was lower swift (1600) but with 1780+ swift you can still MVP most raids even if you mess up a bunch. Obviously DPS will be a bit lower but I often MVP even after making a bunch of mistakes on my EO.
A bad EO Soulfist will probs still out DPS some of the bottom tier classes but a good EO can probs outdamage other top tier classes.
I love the way you phrased this
A lot of people argue that a class is difficult if theyre commonly called floor pov. After playing 15 classes now (I wanna try em all!), I kinda think its the classes that have to play their heart out 110% to keep up with others that are actually challenging
EO Soulfist main here with Empress as my main alt, both horni.
Can't speak much about Emperor but from my experience, based on skill and general damage output:
Top Empress >> Good Empress = Top EO > Good EO > Average EO > Average Empress > Bad EO >> Bad Empress.
I won't go into much detail but generally Empress is way more chill gameplay once you learn the boss patterns and don't worry about dying. Also as you can see you don't need to reach peak to pull your weight.
EO is comfy to prog with since she's tankier and unlike arcana can use her dashes freely without losing damage, however the constant time ticking of both your hype and the dominion fang buff is very stressful. You're basically a burst class that needs a lot of factors to combine to do damage, while no supp cares/knows about your hype 3. They all waiting that sweet demaci to throw their buffs :')
Empress - more difficult to get really skilled at the rotations than EO, but once you get the hang of it there is much less variation (only big variable is your card draw which you will learn with time… don’t let it scare you away)
EO - easier to get used to proper rotation and does great damage, however with EO you spend more time learning each individual fight so that you know timings for your Hype meters and when you should or should not push it
Overall they are both insanely fun! Arcana will probably be more work off the start to feel good with, whereas soulfist will require some work with each new raid to learn the best patterns to hit your windows in
I play both classes (SF main at 1560). It depends what you find more difficult or mechanically challenging.
SF has a pretty straightforward rotation, its difficulty comes from planning out your Hype windows. For example in Valtan G2 if the boss is around 135x bars, you shouldn’t think about going Hype 3 because an invulnerable mech will happen soon. Instead, prepare your Hype 3 for after he jumps up and breaks the arena at like 115x. You have to manage the hype window and dominion fang window but honestly the more you know a raid and the corresponding mechs/cutscenes the easier this becomes.
Arcana has a much more dynamic skill rotation based on the cards you randomly draw. The class’s difficultly comes from adapting your skill rotation to these cards. Some of the cards are long 30 second self-buffs so you can just use them whenever. However, other cards have extremely strong buffs that only last a few seconds. You will have to learn the card effects as well as potential card combos and how all of these cards or combos will affect how you rotate your skills. Realistically this is learning 5 cards (Cull, Clown, Fortune, Emperor/Empress-specific cards) and their relevant combos for 5x4 possible different rotations (the other 8 are generally burn cards you can use whenever and don’t affect skill rotation much).
Having played both, I think Arcana definitely has a much steeper learning curve as you have to learn 12/13 card effects and the corresponding skill rotations for the 5 cards and 20 card combos that you can’t just use whenever. On the other hand, SF difficulty comes from planning out her hype and dominion fang cycles. Since you’re probably creating an alt, you’ll be running content you’ve already cleared multiple times so that also makes Hype management a lot easier as you already know the fight well.
EO 100%, very punishing class for misplays, EO not only requires you to master the class but also the raid and boss mech to the core. If you don't know the timings of raids and boss mech you can never play EO properly as you will have to adjust your hype levels according to bosses hp. EO also requires you to keep consistent eye on how much damage your team is pushing which might requires you to go to hype 3 earlier than late.
Arcana just requires you to master your class without having to worry much about raid flow.
Mastery of EO is more like knowing the boss. The combos are fast, but not necessarily hard. If you don't know the boss well, you will mistime your hype 3, which sucks. It's probably the easiest of the 3. Especially in legion raids where you get to see the boss hp, but worse when you can't see hp.
Empress is the hardest imo. The combos aren't hard, but you have to learn a lot of them. They all can change based on your cards drawn. Sometimes you have to hold em, and sometimes you don't. You also have to see a bit into the future, as your damage is backloaded at the end of your combo. And you have to attack nonstop to maintain boundless mana from the nightmare set.
Emperor is in between. The combos are easy and card management is easier than Empress. But some skill animations are long or take a while to deal damage. So the difference is that the skill itself is backloaded, rather than a whole combo. So knowing how to play one means you will know how to play the other.
Ease of play mechanically would be EO SF over Arcana. Arcana and mages have low defense/hp, theyre squishy. If you get hit pretty often, you will not enjoy the mage classes.
Arcana only really pops off late game with high tripod investment and gem investment.
EO SF might feel a bit better than arcana around 1445 but its still not a top dps class, i have never felt my SF pop off, or if its on the mvp screen im genuinely surprised. EO SF is really just use your buff and do ur main dps skills.
Managing hype in later raids is pretty rough but valtan and vykas not so much which is where you'll hear managing hype can be hard.
Arcana has a much higher dps ceiling but thats reserved for endgame with max investment. Arcana isn't something you really "alt" with.
There is a reason you never shown on MVP screen on SF lol, it is not as easy as saying use buff and rotate skills, playing SF is all about hype management and SF is not an alt material either, you need min 1800 swiftness to keep 100 uptime on dominion gear set, going even 1790 swiftness will cause 3-5 sec downtime on gear set and so on. So you need all purple accessories + high stat bracelet. Mediocre SF player can mostly do same damage as blue GL and very good SF EO can even beat Sorcs easily.
1800 swift... Dont even think thats possible..... 1780 is almost perfect accessories. Which isn't realistic. Eo sf doesnt come close to the op spec classes with similar investment. They just dont.
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You could get 1706 swift before bracelets. Now with bracelets you should be able to get ~1816 at max. Swift accessories are also much cheaper than spec accessories so it's a lot easier to get high quality swift.
Eo sf does a lot of respectable damage. Especially in legion raids where there's a lot of downtime of doing mech, such as g3 clown. You can hype 3 and recharge the hype meter during Mario phases.
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Since no one has really touched on Emperor, it's even more reliant on chaning rotations or adapting depending on the cards you draw. Less impact per card, but the rate at which you draw them is also significantly higher. You also must spam skills well do still maximize your dmg output. Lots of your skills are stationary skills as well so the boss must either stand still or you need to predict boss's movement and vulnerability. It's also a swift class with boundless nightmare abuse or dominion set so your skills will be coming up very often.
Emperor Arcana would be at least the most different from Tai Scrapper since its a bit more ranged focused compared to EO SF/Empress, so thats always a good consideration in determining what class you want to roll.
Empress Arcana is definitely the hardest to master by a long shot, but has the highest damage ceiling out of all of the builds. Emperor and EO Soulfist are probably around the same in difficulty.
Sounds like it’s Emperor > EO > Empress for you. Emperor is most similar to tai I would say. EO requires hype management and getting your rotation down tight, and Empress isn’t difficult per-say, but i think it’s fair to say it’s not for those considering themselves mechanically challenged
Is Empress not the most difficult class in the game to hit your DPS ceiling on? There’s so much you can be doing to output more damage in every scenario and so many different ways to do it. Curious as to what class you think is harder because I play a lot of classes, and it’s by far the most difficult one to play well. Difference between a really good and a really bad arcana is ridiculous. Can be either F or SS tier damage depending on the player piloting it
I wouldnt say Arcana empress is that hard how people think, at the end of the day is a hit master class and after the lastest patch there is more room for error and less rng. You could be fucked when stacking before if you missed blue skills, unlucky with serendipity crits or card draws, but they fixed all those things.
That’s not what makes it hard though. It’s the fact that you have to play at extremely high APM and be thinking actively about your next rotation at all times based on what skills are coming up and what patterns the boss is in. I feel like people who say it’s not hard have to be playing it horribly. If you just play it, it’s so obvious that it requires so much more focus and active gameplay than almost all of the other classes. What class do you think is harder to play well? Obviously, it’s not hard to play if you just sit there and safely get off a ruin skill every 10 seconds without dying. That’s not what I’m talking about though. I’m talking about actually playing the class to its maximum potential.
You're 100% right, no other class is harder to hit ceiling on. I've mained empress for quite a while now and I don't think I've ever hit ceiling on any encounter I've done, since it's just so many things that need to go right to hit it. Every fight is basically going through a flowchart.
High APM? yes. But thinking about rotations? Not really. Especially when you’re in boundless. You have two crit buffs that are always up, so there’s really no thinking about applying synergy. Just get your COD or return on the boss before popping red skills. MS buff? Always up if you’re going through the skills properly. Also, I’m not talking about playing a class to it’s maximum potential, which requires both heavy investment and time on the class. OP asked a general question, so I gave a general answer in regards to a class to try out. If I were to make a general assumption, they don’t seem to care about any of that. Just what would be fun for them.
"It’s the fact that you have to play at extremely high APM and be thinking actively about your next rotation at all times based on what skills are coming up and what patterns the boss is in"
Did you just described every dps class in the game? The only "hard" thing the class has is that you have to be at meele most of the time while being squisy, but it has 3 mobility skills that are really easy to make dodges with them, the fact that you have to know how every card works (you learn in a few days playing the class), and that you can get your damage skills interrupted, but they are so fast that doesnt really matter.
I play both empress arcana and EO SF. Their difficulty is very different. The best way to put it is arcana is more difficult micro wise and SF is more difficult macro wise.
What that means is for arcana the difficulty comes from being able to get your rotation down, keep spamming skills to stay in boundless, and adapt your rotation to certain cards that you draw. There is not much “planning ahead” other than for some certain cards. Arcana may be harder to pick up but you can easily practice rotation in trixion.
For SF the difficulty does not come from your rotation, as that is pretty simple, but it comes from knowledge of the raid and to do some quick maths on how to optimize your hype levels. To play EO SF at a high level you must know how to time your hype levels to the raid. For example, if you think a long mechanic is coming in 40 seconds based on current party dps and current boss health and you are currently not in hype, you want to go into hype 2 for 20 secs then go into hype 3 for 20 seconds for max dmg. But what if you’re calculations are wrong and the mechanic happens in 30 seconds? Then you waste 10 seconds of hype 3. What if mechanic happens in 50 seconds? Then you waste 10 seconds of hype 2. What if the boss goes into an random untargetable mechanic (clown albion) as soon as you enter hype 3? Then you just wasted all of your hype 3. Whenever I enter a raid on my EO SF I already have a general plan of when I enter hype 2 3 and cooldown for the entire fight and adapt to party dps and speed it up or slow down my plan accordingly. Not to mention optimizing dominion buff such that the downtime occurs during hype cooldown. Also this macro is not practicable in trixion, adding to the difficulty.
So yea I think arcana is more difficult mechanically as cards can change your rotation and combos. EO SF is pretty easy mechanically as it’s rotation stay the same throughout all hype levels but SF is more difficult in general because it requires raid knowledge and prediction that you can’t really practice.
Do you know how this compares to blasting awakening during hype 3 for 100% uptime on dominion?
You absolutely do not want to use awakening during hype 3. Hype 3 duration is too valuable to waste on a super long zdps skill. Only time it’s okay is when boss goes into mechanic during your hype 3 so you use the remaining duration to use awakening, but this is a very specific situation .
With high swiftness, high 1700s, you will only have a few seconds downtime on dominion if you exclusively use awakening during hype 2. You can then time it such that the downtime happens at your weakest point, hype cd. Ideally you want hype 3 to be fully within dominion buff, awakening asap in hype 2 such that as much of hype 2 duration is also in dominion buff. Hype cd does not matter. If your awakening comes off cd during hype cd, you would wait the long wait for hype 2 before using awakening.
If you have 1600s swiftness or must have 100% uptime on dominion you can run judgement conviction. Hype 2 + conviction will give you enough cd for permanent dominion but this is totally rng as I had times where I went through my entire hype 2 duration without procing conviction.
That makes sense, thanks.
I just recently started my progression into relic accessories and 5x3, so I only just recently got my swiftness up to par (just shy of 1600). I been using the community guide and my error was that I completely missed that you could still have 100% uptime in hype 2 with my swiftness (it's tight, but doable!). For some reason I thought at my swiftness you could only maintain it 100% with hype 3.
And I really don't want to use C+J, so that's nice. Thank you for getting me to double check my stuff.
With high 1700s do you still use conviction judgment or did you switch them out?
I switch them out for quick recharge. I have 1773 swiftness and using my awakening during hype 2 will give me a 5 second downtime on dominion buff. I then just need to make sure that this 5 second downtime does not happen during hype 3.