Submitted a /bug ticket on this (260421-002684) and got the usual "thank you for your feedback" response. I'm having to dig back about three years in memory when Necrom and the Arcanist class first hit the live servers, but this was a "feature" that got patched out very quickly. The dev comment on it at the time was that the Arcanists crux was not intended to be built up and carried forward into a combat encounter (unless the encounter happened while the timer was counting down), so is it perhaps the case that this has been reverted? I'm not complaining about being able to start a fight with a fully-charged beam, but the developer position on this was that it was not intended behavior.
I'm fresh out of outrage, but I could muster up some amused annoyance if required.