Desecrate and Arcane Surge - Why combine them?

[Aoi Arashi]

I see builds suggesting this combo along with spell cascade and faster casting. Whatever for? Help needed to sort this out.

[phadin]

Just looking at the wiki, the purpose of desecrate is creating the corpses. Spell cascade lets it create max corpses (15) in one cast, and faster casting obviously lets you do it quickly. I'm guessing builds that use it turn around and use those corpses for a more offensive spell.

[Rikkore]

To pop arcane surge

[Ratio decidendi]

Arcane Surge buff procs after an amount of mana is spent by the linked active skill.

Linking Desecrate with Spell Cascade and Faster Casting can further increase the mana cost of Desecrate (because of their mana multipliers), which may be needed to proc higher leveled Arcane Surge (the mana cost needed to proc increases with the gem level).

[Aoi Arashi]

Understood but Arcane Surge only affects skills it's linked to. So, I guess my question is, why link it to Desecrate since it will rarely be used where it does damage?

[The_Driver]

Originally posted by trevalynd:

Understood but Arcane Surge only affects skills it's linked to. So, I guess my question is, why link it to Desecrate since it will rarely be used where it does damage?

Check your assumption: Arcane Surge Support only triggers the buff from those. The arcane surge buff itself is applied character-wide.

[jamesc70]

Arcane Surge can only proc by linked spells, but the buff (spell damage, cast speed, and mana regen) is applied to you, which means it affects everything you do.

If you have something you cast often, like curses, linking it to AS to proc the buff can be a huge DPS increase. My Arc Totem guy has a keystone that gives 40% spell damage when I have Arcane Surge - added to a lvl 10 AS, that is 55% spell damage, 19% cast speed, and mana regen from 1 gem in effect... huge.

[Tydo]

Sounds like a few did not read the 3.6.0 notes closely enough.
AS has a link bonus as well as the "global" buff.
"
Arcane Surge Support

Now causes supported skills to deal 10% more Spell Damage while you have Arcane Surge at gem level 1, up to 19% more at gem level 20. This is separate to the spell damage multiplier granted by the Arcane Surge buff itself.
Now has a Mana Multiplier of 130% (from 110%).
"
The thing to pay attention to there is 'supported skills' and '10-19% more spell damage'.

So, in addition to the old way (AS used to only grant the AS buff) it also grants a link bonus like regular support gems.

[Aleksi]

Arcane Surge is best placed in skills that are used frequently enough to keep yourself buffed, with mana cost as high as possible for higher level Arcane Surge and on utility skill so you don't lose main damage link in your main skill (unless your main skill can reasonably maintain high level Arcane Surge, in which case it's a good main damage link).

Desecrate is used to supplement builds that "do stuff" with corpses. With Spell Cascade, it generates more corpses (the skill has cooldown). Both supports increase mana cost and thus you can have higher level Arcane Surge.

Example of such skill would be Flesh offering: The skill consumes a corpse and up to 8 additional corpses around it. Each additional corpse extends the base duration of the skill by 0.5 seconds, making the maximum achievable base duration 7 seconds. For the duration, your minions gain various speed increments.