does it really work? it didnt work like plagued work. my damage didnt ramp up while i was mobbing
it will partner it with ascendent
ofcourse something will change because ascended has resist reduct. try it plain arcane damage. it doesnt add damage. even on crits. i tried plagued+arcanist hoping crit will debuff it with arcane like the description says, also disappointed
without Ascendent arcane debuff from Arcanist only lasts for 1 second on mobs. So, consider that when calculating damage. If you have Plagued + arcanist, your weapon element type should be poison as well (unless you have ascendent to change your attacks to poison).
and as I have mentioned on other guides, dont let that high base damage, some get 200M base dmg, fool you. What make arcanist very good is it gives you high damage AND pair it with other damage multipliers from sets and other affixes.
Im using my Enchantress build with only 10+Mil base damage after debuff and I can still kill mobs instantly at floor 5,000 M3
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i have iceburn set so basically arcane debuff should stick around longer than expected. i tried using arcane element with arcanist set equipped. my damage didnt change at all
You need Ascendant to go with Arcanist for the effects to even work. Yes wrath or iceburn are very good combos 
!
It’s not explained in the codex or set description though but hopefully the Devs will change it in order to reduce confusions.
Summon @SteigerBox .
Fixed. Without Ascendent, Arcanist will do nothing.
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bummer then. arcanist should work alone since its description says otherwise that crit will debuff arcane
It does do an Arcane Debuff, sadly that debuff lasts 0s and has no effect. 
Ascendant gives Arcane Debuff both duration and effect.
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well since explosive has been changed. does explosive apply same debuff as the element it procced? having poison damage will give you poison explosion? would that cause huge damage boosts especially if you have 2000% explosive using a primal high base damage weapon like gauntlet and hammer?
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I actually don’t know. 
Explosion never really interested me before so I never tested it out.
I do know that if you use an MH attack, it will cause an explosion based on the element of your MH. I do not know what happens when you use an OH attack.
it will still be based on MH no matter how you deal damage
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Arcanist would work as long as you crit dmg so any form of dmg whether it is wrath, explosion, offhand dmg, main hand dmg, etc can cause Arcanist and Ascendant to work but only when crit which isn’t hard.
we were talking about explosion
Yeah ok. Explosion does do MH% dmg as it says in description . Also it’s 5% chance. If you have 2× explosion affix, it’s still 5% chance to trigger 800% MH explosion.
If you use offhand attack, I think it still triggers a MH explosion but I’m not 100% sure. I mean I used offhand attacks such as shatter, torrents and all and I swore I still triggered MH% explosions so you are correct in a way when you say it deals MH% Dmg no matter which method of dmg.
Sorry that I didn’t quite get that you talked about how explosion works. It’s just that I saw a question which asked if explosive affix caused Arcanist and I think it does.
based on my experience, having poison element comboed with explosion makes it proc like a crit or crushing blow. since more damage are given off be it low poison dot it will still proc explosion. and seeing as any other game when mobbed like DQ, chance to casts abilities go haywire
Yup. Also it’s extremely effective in fire+bleed +inferno builds as I have witness on my fire shock build. When it procs like that so much, you can easily deal 100B dmg or much much more when enemies packed together. Also blistering and maybe high voltage depending on if the build is pure fire or fire shock is effective. With Arcanist and Ascendant, it’s even more effective sometimes. Also effective in shock build with bleed or shock plus ice and frozen too.
It’s a neat affix when used well. Of course it is very good with plagued+poison cloud. It used to be overpowered to the point where in green garden, explosions spiked the toxic cloud damage exponentially to over septillion or more dmg to the point where screen is filled with numbers;at least 40-60% of the screen.
In PvP , it’s not as good but it has its uses. It’s quite good with reflect and insane dmg reduction builds along with CV but obviously tricky to build. Also great with high hit frequency. It is personal preference but it definitely has its uses in PvP if you can find them.
so you’re telling me if i have ascended/prismatic, i can put on a different elemental critical damage for better modification? if i prioritize poison, then i have blight for obvious reasons. putting blistering/highvoltage/frostbiting will be a different modifier when i proc their respective elemental crits?