One important thing to note about secondary surge is the maximum effect of the arcane does not need to be achieved in a single cast, if you cast an ability twice before firing the leftover energy from both casts will carry over to buff the arcane. This means you don't actually need a warframe with an excessively high energy cap, with a build that only needs one cast to achieve the maximum effect, you can half the necessary energy requirement needed by just casting twice. That said it's a tad excessive to have to cast 3 or more times before you do a single secondary shot, but it can be useful for warframes which cycle through their abilities, like protea with precision intensify. That said it does feel clunky to use as you have to first setup with an ability(s) and then fire a secondary which benefits from a single shot.
So while it's a bit awkward there are some secondary's that do use it rather well. Currently the one I feel uses it the best is the tome. The tome shoot's a slow moving projectile that lingers for quite a long time. So I built my tome to capitalize on electric procs, surge, and regenerating energy to help feed this gameplay loop. I also have the mod for stripping enemy defenses. Essentially aiming to stack multipliers. Status damage, electric procs and their ticks. Chroma, rhino, Yareli can all make excellent use of it. Yareli can reach 800 energy easily with flow only requiring you to cast twice, which generally fits her gameplay loop. Especailly if you're being cheeky and leaning into loyal merlina's invulnerability to survive. Rhino is another great choice as he can lean into arcane battery. and also being the source of roar... And we all know how roar helps shit like electric right? I also chose to add In volt's shock trooper augment to add even more damage. And with jade eximi now in play he's gained an easy source of overguard generation allowing you to lean into reinforcing stomp for upkeep. chroma's Also another benefactor of this combo and plays well into surge freeing up a modslot once more since you have a turbo charged damage buff in vex. Some other guns I've messed with are Aegrit built for electric and gas with a grouping ability to just nuke the shit out of them with one boom. Catabloyst and it's augment also make for some fun times, but it's a little finicky aswell since you have to wait on the nade. I'm also curios about epitaphs charge fire mode aswell...
@@BigKillaJoke Yea, the reason I say it's clunky though is the fact that you're only able to fire one shot before you have to reset the buff means that you have to make sure your shot lands where you want it to which can waste even more time fore setup. The tome is a good choice but personally I've always felt its sorta underwhelming as it's not made to be a dps weapon so the arcane boosts the damage up to where it should be. Also it doesn't seem to synergize with multishot which means shotgun pistols like the brakk are out unfortunately. Multishot is a very powerful mod so it's a real bummer to lose out on it. And yea, arcane battery seems like a natural synergy with surge, one of the niche interactions with arcane battery is that armor buffs actually increase the max energy you get while mid mission which means you don't actually need 3000 base armor to get the full 1000 energy and can gain the armor elsewhere. There's not a whole lot if synergies though, inaros and valkyr are ones which can buff themselves with armor to then get more max energy. Theoretically if you have 300% ability strength and parasitic armor, you only need 1000 shields or 4 blue tauforged shards to get 1000 energy from it.
It's too cheesable. They're meant to fit into a style of play on a build but if they worked like that you'd just run a primary with Shivering Contagion, stack it to max in literally 2s, then go back to whatever it was you were doing for the next 5mins. I agree it would be nice, but I can see why they made them that way.
@@tomj819 they could reduce the timer just like primary merciless and make it lose stacks, that way you don't lose all stacks but are required to still freeze things constantly to get some use of it
On the atomos note, I myself have pushed it to the max, a fire rate of 16 before paired with a 300% ability Wisp and increased secondary fire rate from Furax Wraith. I use pistol ammo Mutation, Pistol scavenger aura, and carrier to mitigate with no problems, only using incarnon for acolytes. Wisp also allows you get above the energy needed for added crit damage. Then run tenacious Bond on carrier and melt everything lol. Kinda interested overgaurd arcane, but taking off cascadia flare and losing 480% weapon damage idk, I'll have to test it out lol
My only problem with the overguard arcane is that without damage arcane the build has to have some changes, but i guess you could drop GalvShot since you'd be pulling out the secondarry only to strip the Overguards i guess, but then I'd have to find a weapon where not using it to murder everything doesn't feel like a waste
The 8x damage to Overguard is worth it on its own yo be fair. Eximus/Thrax units are the only real threat to a proper build at high levels and this arcane nukes their CC immunity into the floor.
I will say with confidence that secondary fortifier is one of if not the best arcanes in the game. As long as you pay attention to your health bar you can essentially fully forgo any focus on modding for survivability.
@@godzephose Its massive positive is increased damage to overguard, but there other arcanes that increase damage across more enemy types. I think fortifier can be very good in longer missions with lots of eximus units because of the damage increase.
Melee afflictions on harmony with voruna is absolutely… well theres nothing in the game that can survive it truly. Embarrass the stalker boys and everything
