Learning goals
- Understand conditional triggers.
- Understand uptime.
- Understand trigger reliability.
- Understand cooldowns and chance effects.
- Avoid arcanes that do not match playstyle.
Explanation
Many arcanes only work after a condition is met, such as on kill, on headshot, on reload, on ability cast, on damaged, on critical hit, on status effect, on melee hit, on Operator action, on shield break, or on pickup. Uptime is how often the effect is active during real gameplay. A strong effect with poor uptime can feel weaker than a smaller effect you trigger constantly.
What should I do?
Ask whether your build can trigger the arcane often, whether the trigger happens in boss fights, whether it needs kills or headshots, whether taking damage is safe, whether it has a cooldown, and whether the duration is long enough.
Common mistakes
Avoid these arcane mistakes before spending farm time, duplicates, or Platinum.
- Equipping on-kill arcanes for fights with few enemies.
- Equipping headshot arcanes on builds that do not reliably headshot.
- Using ability-cast arcanes on builds that rarely cast.
- Using on-damaged arcanes on fragile builds that die first.
- Ignoring cooldowns.
- Assuming trigger chance is guaranteed.
Key Takeaways
- A powerful arcane with poor uptime may be worse than a simple arcane you trigger reliably.
Practical task
Real mission behavior matters more than an arcane's theoretical effect.
- Pick one arcane.
- Write its trigger.
- Run one mission.
- Notice how often the trigger happens.
- Decide whether uptime is High, Medium, or Low.
- Decide whether the arcane fits your playstyle.
You can explain whether an arcane has reliable uptime for your build.