No problem, I got it, just needed to ask, 'cause you mention Emperor build in the guide and there’s no skillset for it, which confused me a little. Anyway, great guide m8, will try the build as soon as I get the legend protection rune which is kind of needed 
Thank you very much!
Sorry that I can’t be more of help but I prefer to do anything that might be wrong because I’m not very knowledgeable about it!
Have fun with Arcana! 
Surely having fun m8, thanks again for your reply, I’ll figure something out until I get those runes 
Time to experiment starts now
Currently playing an Emperor build loosely inspired by Jiudau’s build, getting MvP’s in yoho.
The main combo is pretty easy:
evokex2 → stream of edge (ms buff + crit buff) → return (crit buff) → dark resurrection → unlimited shuffle (protection rune - barricade buff)
The trick is to get them to all hit during the unlimited shuffle spell so they all benefit from the 16% barricade buff. Picking cards is not as much of a focus with this build as you just spam them during your unlimited shuffle spin. Save wheel card for double awakening if you get it.
Second combo:
checkmate (protection rune) → celestial rain (protection rune)
This is your filler for when the main combo is on cooldown. With better cooldown gems and swiftness you might have to run focus runes on evoke/dark resurrection as you start to run into mana issues.
Raid captain makes a good 4th/5th rune and has good synergy with the movement speed buff from stream of edge!
For chaos dungeons and mobbing you can swap checkmate deadline tripod for wave of cards tripod and watch the whole screen disappear!
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So with all the new balance path in KR is empress arcana going to change? I dont know if I should buy the barricade engraving +12
I couldn’t try these changes myself, by how is it looking now, no, it shouldn’t change much. There a huge nerf on star and some combo that we know know might become impossible in the future, but ultimately empress will stay good as it is now without much changes.
I would recommand to buy for +12 Grudge and CursedDoll (useful for all of your alts).
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I would like to buy grudge+12 but its too expensive so for now Im going with barri 
Barricade is such such cheaper, I bought mine like 1k each (planning to buy grudge for the other engraving +12 tho ofc). From what I’ve seen in KR streams, most of them now switched to Four cards since it could be the replacement for Serendipity as is more sustained crit damage and can be thrown various times before it goes into CD and it’s card generation is more generous, Barricade and the rest of the build highly likely to stay the same altho now raid captain could be an option (still no KBW since we already got our crit damage synergy on a skill).
Also note: even if you don’t change a dime in your build, you’ll still doing more damage than current live according to one KR youtuber doing tests.
The changes overall were a buff to the Arcana, more damage on Ruin skills (+5 % buff), better RNG on the good cards so bursts happen more often, altho it balanced a bit the card generation (reduced card luck tripods but now damage on ruin skills generate deck gauge), the star card and the moon card had some effects switched but most of it stays the same, moon card got buffed and we got 2 new juicy cards.
Overall now we have more constant damage, less CD between skills, more damage, more stack generation, more chances to burst, and more sinergies to play with.
Hope this helps someone, my 2 cents from my investigations.
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I saw some kr players changing protection runes for wealth so Im not sure about barricade
Every youtuber I’ve seen so far is using still protection + barricade. There some certains new build variatons now such as having 4 ruin skills in your bar but ultimately most of them tells me that this build is unreliable in real scenarios and makes the rotation way too complex or clunky.
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thanks for the info! I wanted to be sure before getting barri
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If you want you can wait for the PTR changes to settle to see how people finally step up but I already got them legendary so meh hahaha
What an exceptionally Quality post/guide. Thank you its great work and very comprehensive.
I as thinking of maining Arcanist and this guide decided it for me.
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I started using Raid Captain over barricade, as I didn’t have 3 protection rune for all ruin skill.
Does Emperor buff all skill damage or only Normal skills? Atm, I’m using 6 normals 1 blue 1 ruin and really like it.
If you play Empress I don’t recommend you use Raid Captain over Barricade.
If you have only 2 protections runes for Celestial Rain and Secret Garden (any of them, even blue), it’s worth it. You can always put a third one later on Serendipity when you will have the third one.
Yes it does increase the damage for all the skills that arcana have.
And I see that you are playing the 116 configuration which is really fun I must admit!
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it really is fun. it feels so quick! i could drop unlimited shuffle for checkmate but i like shuffle and checkmate feels awkward.
also could use suggestions on the need for quick draw on dark res and evoke in this build. recently i dropped them for the quick prep and added damage tripods. is that not the play?
If you want to play with Checkmate instead of Shuffle, it will require you to change your current engraving and use Scratch Dealer too. In the end, the gameplay will be very different of what you are playing now, and you might not like it as much.
And you were right to remove the quick draw on both of the spell, as in it’s not needed.
For Dark Resurrection you want to take Intense Card instead.
And for Evoke you want to take Quick Prep like you did.
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Bumping this thread to see if OP has any thoughts leading up to the balance patch.
I did some Loawa surfing and noticed most people still run the same engravings, but with more 4 red skills setups. JiuDau was the only one I saw who was regularly running Backflush with no Serependity. Doesn’t seem like anyone is actually running Wealth on their reds and just sticking with Protection for Barricade.