Arcane Surge is Extremely Inconsistent
Arcane Surge is supposed to add 20 spirit power, 15% ability duration, and 12% ability range to your next ability used after dash jumping. From my testing, how exactly this is implemented from ability to ability is extremely inconsistent. As examples:
-If Seven triggers Arcane Surge and uses power surge, only the first bullet fired after using it will benefit from the +20 spirit power in terms of damage. This would suggest that Arcane Surge's damage boost only affects the first hit of abilities affected by it, however:
- When affected by Arcane Surge, Wraith's full auto (a very similar ability to Seven's power surge) every single bullet will benefit from the increased spirit power. The same is true for Pocket ult, Vindicta flight, Mina ult, etc.
In terms solely of damage, every ability I tested benefitted fully from the spirit power with three exceptions that only benefitted partially (it's very possible there are others):
-Seven's 3
- Celeste's 1, which will benefit with the flair itself and on the first bullet after applying the debuff but none after
- Celeste's ult, which will only benefit on the first bounce.
However, two abilities I discovered do not benefit at all from the damage boost, those being:
- Silver's 2 (the follow up shot does not get boosted)
- Seven's 2 (same damage regardless of Arcane Surge)
Additionally, the range and duration effects of Arcane Surge are also inconsistent.
- Mcginnis's ult will benefit from Arcane Surge for about 8 seconds (notably not the listed 7 seconds), both in terms of damage and range. After those 8 seconds are over, the damage and range will both decrease
- Seven's ult however (and it seems like most other abilities), keeps both the range and damage boosts for the whole time, well past the 10 second mark.
Note that the wiki lists a set of specific rules for Arcane Surge, including that the buff will last a decreased amount of time based on how long ago you dash jumped. From my testing, this does not seem to be the case in current patch
Tldr: Arcane Surge is jank and broken and it makes it so that the unicorn item sucks on the unicorn character even though it should be really good and that makes me sad Valve pls fix ):