Primary Frostbite and Primary Merciless work differently, descriptions are identical.

[Azvenauris]

(I will check this post periodically and respond to comments as needed)

Heya, I found something today that I'm unsure is a bug or intended feature, but I figured it is worth sharing. Recently after the Acceltra Prime was released, I made a new build with an arcane I discovered farming for Voruna. I decided to replace Primary Merciless R5 for Primary Frostbite R5 with Primed Cryo Rounds on the Acceltra Prime. However, despite being worded the same, they act very differently. The arcane descriptions are as follows:

 

Primary Merciless Rank 5:

On Kill:
+30% Damage for 4s. Stacks up to 12x.
+30% Reload Speed

Primary Frostbite Rank 5:

On Cold Status Effect:
+3% Critical Damage and +2.25% Multishot for 12s. Stacks up to 40x.

 

Primary Merciless gains stacks per kill and loses 1 stack every 4 seconds that pass while Primary Frostbite gains stacks each time you inflict a cold status and loses all stacks from 1-40 after 12 seconds. I can, however, see that Frostbite would be powerful if it functioned similarly to Merciless, however, the wording is confusing. This is in the current build of the game, tested it before i wrote this post out, and my settings remain default. This happens in Solo and Squad whether I am the host or not.

 

If it is needed or a passerby wants the build, it requires 7 Forma and it is as follows:

(Arcane) Primary Frostbite Rank 5
(Riven mod) Acceltra Critatis (+100.5% Critical Chance, +69.3% Critical Damage, -13.5% Zoom)
Galvanized Chamber Rank 10
Galvanized Aptitude Rank 10
Primed Cryo Rounds Rank 10
Hunter Munitions Rank 5
Serration Rank 10
Critical Delay Rank 5
Vigilante Armaments Rank 5
(Exilus) Vigilante Supplies Rank 5

Edited January 31 by Azvenauris

[(PSN)Sentiel]

This is the case with many Arcanes, some lose the bonuses one by one and some lose them all at the same time.

Since Merciless is harder to trigger it decays slower, and vice versa for Frostbite. Also, Frostbite can be triggered by your companion, so you don't have to mod for Cold at all, making it even easier to activate.

[Azvenauris]

I had assumed that, as I mentioned I could see how near-broken Frostbite could be if it functioned identically to Merciless, though the entire reason I farmed the 315 Lua Thrax Plasms was with the knowledge of how Merciless functioned. This was more a post seeing if it was intentional, if it wasn't, or if there's a way to fix it,

TLDR; is a PSA post since was irritatingly blindsided.

[Tiltskillet]

It would be nice if the game told us ahead of time how stacks expired.  (And/or consolidated this behavior.)  Until then, you're stuck consulting the wiki or other outside resources if you don't like surprises.  (And sometimes you'll be surprised even then.)

5 minutes ago, Azvenauris said:

This was more a post seeing if it was intentional

Only DE could say for sure, but I assume so.  Mostly because its stack behavior seems intelligently balanced to me, partly because it's always been this way.  And partly because it mirrors that of its cousin, Cascadia Flare, which came out several months before.

[Azvenauris]

4 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

And partly because it mirrors that of its cousin, Cascadia Flare, which came out several months before.

I'm not familiar with this arcane, don't think I've used it, did it have a similar issue with expectation and execution?

[Tiltskillet]

12 minutes ago, Azvenauris said:

I'm not familiar with this arcane, don't think I've used it, did it have a similar issue with expectation and execution?

I don't know.  Probably?  Heat is far easier to work with in general though, so people likely tended to not be as worried about maintaining Flare stacks.

[Nekomian]

I think this isn't technically a mechanics bug per se and is by design, since it's way easier to proc 40 cold statuses than get 12 kills, but it absolutely should say "All stacks expire after 12s" or something. I'm not surprised given how many "hidden mechanics" this game has that may or may not even be intended by the devs, but they definitely need to make attempts to try and be more transparent about mechanics in their UI.

[Tiltskillet]

11 hours ago, Naroxas44 said:

I think this isn't technically a mechanics bug per se and is by design, since it's way easier to proc 40 cold statuses than get 12 kills, but it absolutely should say "All stacks expire after 12s" or something. I'm not surprised given how many "hidden mechanics" this game has that may or may not even be intended by the devs, but they definitely need to make attempts to try and be more transparent about mechanics in their UI.

Yeah, this.  My personal pet examples are the Galvanized crit mods.  So many people have bug reported their stack expiration behavior, due to the simple fact that it's assumed they'll work like all the other Galvanized mods and there's no indication to the contrary on the mod card.

You have to dig deep in the forums to verify it's intended.  I'm sure most people don't bug report it and shrug it off as another example of bugframe.  And worse still, of  bugs never getting fixed.  Not a good look at all for DE.