Official Feedback Thread for Maelstrom Arena

Aletheion

What was your class, build (active skills, Champion Point distribution) and level?
Sorc/VR16/195 CP (Magician, Arcanist, Elemental Expert, Spell Erosion, Bastion)
4x Magnus, 4x Martial Knowledge, 3x Will Power (VR16 weap, gold VR14 gear, purple VR16 jewlery)
2830 Spell Damage, 32k Magicka, 18k Health, 1635 Magicka Recovery
Pulsar, Liquid Lightning, Hardened Ward, Crystal Frag, Crushing Shock, Shooting Star
Power Surge, Boundless Storm, Healing Ward, Daedric Minefield, Mage's Wrath, Greater Storm Atronach

Which version of Maelstrom Arena did you play: Normal, Veteran or both?
Normal

On a scale from 1 (very easy) – 10 (very hard) how difficult did you find Maelstrom Arena? Please indicate whether you were playing Normal or Veteran.
7 or 8, but that will change when the DPS issues/resource cost issues get resolved

Which Arena was your favorite, and why?
I liked the fire arena where you had to destroy the stones. It was fun, kept me on my toes and challenging.

Which Arena was your least favorite, and why?
Daedra spiders was the least favorite i think. But that was mostly because of learning what on earth was happening and how to mitigate the incessant spider damage.

Which Arena gave you the most trouble?
It's a toss up between the daedra spiders and the frozen waters. I wiped on the spiders the most before I learned the mechanic. Now that i have it down, it likely won't be as grueling. Frozen water had loads of wipes at the very end trying to DPS the boss down before getting killed in the water.

If you could change one thing in any of the Arenas, what would it be?
I'd somehow make the final boss harder. I enjoyed the final fight, but it didn't feel like a climax to this epic arena.

How often did you receive a reward? Were you satisfied overall with the rewards you received?
I got 6 set pieces. So that's very high drop rate. I'm not sure why they were VR15 though. It seems like all of the set drops should scale to your toon (VR16 in my case). The final drop was VR16, but that's alot of work for a single piece of VR16 gear.

What was your favorite reward?
Didn't really have one. I decon'd all of my drops and I'm going to run it a few more times to see what else drops. I'd like to give the Winterborn gear a try.


Thanks for listening,

-Aletheion

KewaG

I'll post my full experience when I get more time to play through the whole thing. Just don't have the time right now.

Just wanted to point out, or reiterate as I see some have mentioned already, in arena 3 there's a glitch with the stranglers. Sometimes when they grab and pull you towards them you teleport back to where they first grabbed you. At times I got stuck for a few precious seconds and died because of the mechanic change where the water becomes electrified. On top of that, it's just plain nauseating when it happens.

FENGRUSH

Fat_Cat45 wrote: »

What was your class, build (active skills, Champion Point distribution) and level?
-Magicka Sorcerer with pets, v16
-5 piece Necropotence v12, 2x Master Inferno, 2x Maw of the Infernal, 3x arcane WIllpower jewelry
-410 CP
-Bar 1: Matriarch, Crystal Frags, Daedric Prey, Force Pulse, Bound Aegis, Meteor
-Bar 2: Matriarch, Purge or Harness Magicka, Liquid Lightning, Hardened Ward, Bound Aegis, Storm Atronach

Which version of Maelstrom Arena did you play: Normal, Veteran or both?
-Veteran

On a scale from 1 (very easy) – 10 (very hard) how difficult did you find Maelstrom Arena? Please indicate whether you were playing Normal or Veteran.
-9. Veteran. The final boss to round 8 wasn't able to be completed in over 50 attempts.

Which Arena was your favorite, and why?
-Arena 2. Unlike some other arenas, the environmental factor is able to be learned and doesn't depend upon random interactions (like lightning bolts from the sky, or the spawn locations of poison plants on Arena 7)

Which Arena was your least favorite, and why?
-Arena 8, specifically for the final boss. The vulnerability after breaking all 3 binding stones is way too short. At most you could do 12% of her life in that time, but usually 8% on average. The adds spawn too fast to keep up with destroying the binding stones and damaging the boss in the short period of time. Eventually you get overwhelmed, and the duration of the fight lasted 15 minutes when I dropped her to the lowest HP at 40% because of the invulnerability.

EDIT: If the bug where we do half of the intended damage because of too high phsyical/spell resist on enemies, then disregard the above.

Which Arena gave you the most trouble?
-Arena 8 final boss, same reason as above. The vulnerability after destroying all 3 stones is too short, adds spawn too fast, and the overall length of the fight may be longer than 20 minutes because of the combination of those two.

EDIT: If the bug where we do half of the intended damage because of too high phsyical/spell resist on enemies, then disregard the above.

If you could change one thing in any of the Arenas, what would it be?
-Arena 1 is good how it is.

-Arena 2 is good how it is.

-Arena 3 is good how it is, although those Stranglers mess with the placement of your character. If they grab you for the farthest distance away you break the threshold for acceleration and get teleported backwards.

-Arena 4 is good how it is.

-Arena 5 is extremely unfavorable to melee players. Some of those enemies sit far back in the ice waters, basically forcing a ranged playstyle. Maybe expand each ice platform size a bit, or have them spawn closer to the glaciers.

-Arena 6 has a difficult boss just because of how chaotic it becomes. Webspinners, Hoarvers running around like headless chickens, spider hordes, and spider daedra adds. It if were easier to focus targets through the mobs that's what I would change. I died countless times there because those tiny spiders have big enough hit boxes to block my attacks on a hoarver or webspinner.

-Arena 7 was entertaining, but the random spawns on those plants got annoying. Just when you think things are going your way, one spawns just outside your vision and you walk into it.

-Arena 8 final boss stays vulnerable for at least 4 more seconds and adds spawn slightly slower.

How often did you receive a reward? Were you satisfied overall with the rewards you received?
-Set item about 40% of the time. All armor pieces, so I don't know if jewelry drops from there

What was your favorite reward?
-Wingergrasp (I think) seems like an interesting set to promote Ice destruction staves

Here's a Twitch replay of me spending way too long going from arenas 2 through 8 twitch.tv/fat_cat45/v/19418204

So at first glance I thought you were using a root - but then in interest to how magicka sorc would tank this, I watched a round.

Youre using 1 pet and bugging out mobs so they just stand still while you kill them? If so - I think ill rotate bugging mobs out pet into my stam sorc build and see how that rolls!

Lalaeith

What was your class, build (active skills, Champion Point distribution) and level?
V16 Stamina NB Bow/twohanded, Vampire
~300 cp, 50 of those in Elemental Defender
Mostly Attacking with bow skills (Lethal Arrow, Bombard, Poison Arrow), 2h Bar for buffs (Rally) and Finisher
Vr14 gear

Which version of Maelstrom Arena did you play: Normal, Veteran or both?
Normal
On a scale from 1 (very easy) – 10 (very hard) how difficult did you find Maelstrom Arena? Please indicate whether you were playing Normal or Veteran.
7
Which Arena was your favorite, and why?
Arena 6 because I liked the mechanics a lot. They were not random, if you manage to be good and clear all the stones, you are rewarded, most mobs had a "purpose" apart from dealing damage to you.
Which Arena was your least favorite, and why?
Arena 8. Quick mob respawn times and the very small window of vulnerability after all the stones of the boss were destroyed made this a bit annoying. I did not die here (a miracle in my opinion ), but I didn't enjoy the fight a lot.
Which Arena gave you the most trouble?
I died most in Arena 6 because at first I needed a while to figure out the mechanics and then I had trouble with targeting, especially when it comes to the webspinners.
If you could change one thing in any of the Arenas, what would it be?

• Longer mob respawn times in Arena 8 and/or a longer phase of vulnerability. Also, the shards were not easy to target. Sometimes took me a while before I actually dealt any damage to them.
• Somehow improve targeting in Arena 6, maybe make the spiderlings untargetable? They are not really supposed to be killed anyways?
• In Arena 7, it would be nice to have just a little more time before the plants deal damage.

While these are things that were annoying to me, I don't mind additional mechanics to make the fights interesting again after these adjustments. Especially when the mitigation bug is fixed, I don't mean to ask for a nerf here.
How often did you receive a reward? Were you satisfied overall with the rewards you received?
What was your favorite reward?
I recieved 6 rewards. 2x succession, 2xhunt, 1x permafrost, 1x something with glory? My favourite was the Hunt.

nat_northb16_ESO

First off, apologies for not knowing the name of anything...

What was your class, build (active skills, Champion Point distribution) and level?
Templar Magicka Tank, VR14 (Template) 5 Light Armor 2 Heavy (Spell damage, high health and healing focused)
300 CP Spread evenly between all trees bar a lot of reduce cost (mag) and high Magic damage increase (after 12% spell crit buff)

On a scale from 1 (very easy) – 10 (very hard) how difficult did you find Maelstrom Arena? Please indicate whether you were playing Normal or Veteran.
Normal - score of 8 (mainly due to working out the mechanics, once learnt I'd say it's a 4)

Which Arena was your favorite, and why?
The Final Arena - Reminded me a lot of the Ebony Blade battle and the mechanic with the ghosts was just epic!

Which Arena was your least favorite, and why?
I'd have to say the poison arena due to the final round. Took such a long time to work out the mechanics of cleansing poison, interrupting boss/using shielded area, taking down the casters, taking down the poison summoning mages and finally avoiding all of the ground AOE damage. All of this potentially happening at the same instant. Super fun, took a long time and a lot of tries!

Which Arena gave you the most trouble?
Poison arena for the above stated reasons as well as how useful dodge rolling would be, if I had the stamina. Due to being a melee based build I would use it for bashing and charging (toppling charge seems to be bugged again causing nil character response after charging on occasion)

If you could change one thing in any of the Arenas, what would it be?
Just making clearer what the resonance things are in the Spider Daedra Boss Arena. (Took a while to work out but once I did, arena was pretty straightforward)

How often did you receive a reward? Were you satisfied overall with the rewards you received?
Each round I received a nice new set item, blue quality. I do have 75 points into the Thief Champion tree to get the bonus to chest rewards though. I was very satisfied with these rewards. Didn't receive a master weapon but due to RNG didn't have high expectations to get one (need a reason to replay a few times right??? )

What was your favorite reward?
Has to be the Frost/Magicka (Wontergrasp/Permafrost) set pieces (4 in total, 2 boots though so 3 for use thus far). Looks really nice to promote Ice staves which I have not had an interest in until now! Also a nice simple magicka damage set which I will likely try out and run with other sets as a 4/5 piece, thanks to the jewellery being available (good call on that BTW and thanks!!)


Overall incredibly enjoyed the whole experience, have to give it a 9 out of 10

Divinekorsai

I'm going to be brutally honest. vMaelstrom is extremely hard and I don't think even some of the best players will be able to do it. The damage output is way more than what a stamina can heal through and magicka classes can barely even manage with healing ward, harness magicka and sword and shield. I wrote Deltia's guide to nMaelstrom and parts of vMaelstrom and I say that veteran needs a damage nerf. On the brighter side normal was made perfectly so everyone can beat it.

Yakidafi

I just alt+f4 after dying right after frozen blood when the yeti destroy the first ice block and you instant die. veteran. Happend about 6+ times. final fight of frozen blood.

FENGRUSH

Divinekorsai wrote: »

I'm going to be brutally honest. vMaelstrom is extremely hard and I don't think even some of the best players will be able to do it. The damage output is way more than what a stamina can heal through and magicka classes can barely even manage with healing ward, harness magicka and sword and shield. I wrote Deltia's guide to nMaelstrom and parts of vMaelstrom and I say that veteran needs a damage nerf. On the brighter side normal was made perfectly so everyone can beat it.

Im confident it will be nerfed. There is still an adjustment to be made on fixing damage on NPCs - but they will likely offset this by raising mobs HP.


ZOS was watching my stream and telling me their testers beat this on all classes with 300 CP and no master weapons. Im going out on a limb here and saying I dont think that was the case - I believe they meant normal mode. I would love to see evidence otherwise!

With that said I love the challenge, but I agree that the bar is so incredibly high that it will have to be nerfed. I went in there with a nonoptimal build, understood mechanics and still hit a wall at a point. Its brutally tough, and I hope it stays very difficult, but it will definitely be more reasonable as well.

Yattaq

FENGRUSH wrote: »

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Divinekorsai wrote: »

I'm going to be brutally honest. vMaelstrom is extremely hard and I don't think even some of the best players will be able to do it. The damage output is way more than what a stamina can heal through and magicka classes can barely even manage with healing ward, harness magicka and sword and shield. I wrote Deltia's guide to nMaelstrom and parts of vMaelstrom and I say that veteran needs a damage nerf. On the brighter side normal was made perfectly so everyone can beat it.

Im confident it will be nerfed. There is still an adjustment to be made on fixing damage on NPCs - but they will likely offset this by raising mobs HP.


ZOS was watching my stream and telling me their testers beat this on all classes with 300 CP and no master weapons. Im going out on a limb here and saying I dont think that was the case - I believe they meant normal mode. I would love to see evidence otherwise!

With that said I love the challenge, but I agree that the bar is so incredibly high that it will have to be nerfed. I went in there with a nonoptimal build, understood mechanics and still hit a wall at a point. Its brutally tough, and I hope it stays very difficult, but it will definitely be more reasonable as well.

They've likely had months to learn fights and adjust builds as the fights have evolved. PTS has only been up for a couple days. Don't be surprised when you see full leaderboards within a couple weeks of it being live.

Enodoc

Divinekorsai wrote: »

I'm going to be brutally honest. vMaelstrom is extremely hard and I don't think even some of the best players will be able to do it. The damage output is way more than what a stamina can heal through and magicka classes can barely even manage with healing ward, harness magicka and sword and shield. I wrote Deltia's guide to nMaelstrom and parts of vMaelstrom and I say that veteran needs a damage nerf. On the brighter side normal was made perfectly so everyone can beat it.

I think they should fix the occasional "half-damage" issue before they nerf anything. vMA needs to be hard, but it may currently be harder than usual due to the bug in mob damage mitigation.

Kerioko

Got the new master resto. Wow this thing is underwhelming. I like the magicka return with mutegen, but the 3% spell crit is awful when every other weapon is getting spell/weapon damage. I feel the crit needs to be somewhere around 6% or more, otherwise drop it and add the same spell damage that is on the destro staves.

When, and if VDSA gets raised to V16, one of each master resto would be an awesome combo for non-temp healers. Give stam with springs on one bar, get back magicka from mutegen on another!

VoiDGhOs7

FENGRUSH wrote: »

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Divinekorsai wrote: »

I'm going to be brutally honest. vMaelstrom is extremely hard and I don't think even some of the best players will be able to do it. The damage output is way more than what a stamina can heal through and magicka classes can barely even manage with healing ward, harness magicka and sword and shield. I wrote Deltia's guide to nMaelstrom and parts of vMaelstrom and I say that veteran needs a damage nerf. On the brighter side normal was made perfectly so everyone can beat it.

Im confident it will be nerfed. There is still an adjustment to be made on fixing damage on NPCs - but they will likely offset this by raising mobs HP.


ZOS was watching my stream and telling me their testers beat this on all classes with 300 CP and no master weapons. Im going out on a limb here and saying I dont think that was the case - I believe they meant normal mode. I would love to see evidence otherwise!

With that said I love the challenge, but I agree that the bar is so incredibly high that it will have to be nerfed. I went in there with a nonoptimal build, understood mechanics and still hit a wall at a point. Its brutally tough, and I hope it stays very difficult, but it will definitely be more reasonable as well.

I've completed the nMaelstrom with v14 templates and is doable even with less cp on the other hand the vMaelstrom is very hard at the moment but mainly bacause of dmg bug also the mobs have twice as much health as in normal.

Seeing the feedback there arent many players that managed to get past vet stage 1 and the one who managed were nb's with veil and lot of off heal abilities or sorc pet builds because you can avoid the direct dmg and dps down the mobs,anyway we'll see how vMaelstrom is as soon as the dmg bug gets fixed.

slumber_sandb16_ESO

@ZOS_GinaBruno

The Maelstrom's Shield: This has a stat enchant and thats it. Seems kind of pointless since it will make it fairly useless to take over a crafted set shield for example. I wrote a suggestion in another thread about it that I figured I'd share here. Having the shield affect another skill would make it unfair, so how about making the shield have a synergy with the 1h weapon just like the dual wield enchant has a synergy with eachother.
"After using Rampaging Slash(1h weapon effect) your heavy attacks do X% more damage and has a 25%-50%(depending on stamina used, less stamina = faster heavy attacks = faster stamina recovery) increased attack speed for 5 seconds."
So now using both of them as a tank I'd have the option to drop my defence to do a bit of extra damage, go on a short rampage. It would also allow tanks to recover stamina in a more manageable way rather than just spamming Molten Armaments(as a DK) for stamina recovery, as well as reduce the risk of taking massive damage from bosses during those short windows where a single heavy attack might be possible.
This is from a PvE perspective by the way.

Zlater

Kerioko wrote: »

Got the new master resto. Wow this thing is underwhelming. I like the magicka return with mutegen, but the 3% spell crit is awful when every other weapon is getting spell/weapon damage. I feel the crit needs to be somewhere around 6% or more, otherwise drop it and add the same spell damage that is on the destro staves.

When, and if VDSA gets raised to V16, one of each master resto would be an awesome combo for non-temp healers. Give stam with springs on one bar, get back magicka from mutegen on another!

haha yeah I think all of the new master weapons bar the 2-handed are pretty underwhelming. And that shield looks really... stupid. I guess its good to decon though :P

What was your class, build (active skills, Champion Point distribution) and level?
Used a kinda standard sorc build but with a S&B instead, and I ditched my aoe half way through.
Endless Fury, Shielded Assault, Bound Aegis, Hardened Ward, Harness Magicka, Reviving Barrier
Force Pulse, Crystal Frags, Bound Aegis, Hardened Ward, Power Surge, Bat Swarm

Which version of Maelstrom Arena did you play: Normal, Veteran or both?
Normal (so far)

On a scale from 1 (very easy) – 10 (very hard) how difficult did you find Maelstrom Arena? Please indicate whether you were playing Normal or Veteran.
Ha well it was a very nice challenge, don't know how vet will be

Which Arena was your favorite, and why?
The last one was real neat, I liked how mechanics were played out.

Which Arena was your least favorite, and why?
I think the Ice one was the most annoying.

Which Arena gave you the most trouble?
Urgh the stupid Argonian one, it took forever to work out what was going on, loved the last boss fight there though.

If you could change one thing in any of the Arenas, what would it be?
Maybe its just a bug, but I had a lot of trouble doing anything but light and heavy attacks on the immunity stones.

How often did you receive a reward? Were you satisfied overall with the rewards you received?
I am happy with the set piece drop rate, but the rewards overall seem pretty useless, I'm sorry but the sets I found aren't worth anything to me. Including the: Hunt Leader, Elemental Succession (maybe to someone this is useful), Perma Frost and Winterborn. They are especially useless to me because they are bind on pickup, as it stands so far, once ive finished the vet achievements, I probably have no reason at all to go back.

What was your favorite reward?
The succession necklace, that looks like it might be ok.

Flattedfifth

Well gee, shields don't have their own ability tree so... what ability would they enhance? They could just not give us a shield period.

They should just remove them from the loot table to stop future whining.

slumber_sandb16_ESO

Flattedfifth wrote: »

Well gee, shields don't have their own ability tree so... what ability would they enhance? They could just not give us a shield period.

They should just remove them from the loot table to stop future whining.

The shield could synergize with the 1h sword/mace like I wrote above, just as the dual wield ones synergize with eachother by each adding 50% chance to trigger the effect. Something that adds to the skill to make it less meh.

leipatemeibbaa

Vet Level is very hard. I spent almost 3 hours to past stage 3. I felt tired after 3 hours of concentration on playing and would like to continue on next day, but unfortunately I have to start all over again.

I suggest to come up a way that player can save the arena up to 7 days. I believe quite a lot of players has been spending over 10 hours to get to stage 8+ not everybody has the energy to continues play for that long.

The only way to keep arena from reset is to keep your charac online not being kicked off due to lack of activity.

Rayste

FENGRUSH wrote: »

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Divinekorsai wrote: »

I'm going to be brutally honest. vMaelstrom is extremely hard and I don't think even some of the best players will be able to do it. The damage output is way more than what a stamina can heal through and magicka classes can barely even manage with healing ward, harness magicka and sword and shield. I wrote Deltia's guide to nMaelstrom and parts of vMaelstrom and I say that veteran needs a damage nerf. On the brighter side normal was made perfectly so everyone can beat it.

Im confident it will be nerfed. There is still an adjustment to be made on fixing damage on NPCs - but they will likely offset this by raising mobs HP.


ZOS was watching my stream and telling me their testers beat this on all classes with 300 CP and no master weapons. Im going out on a limb here and saying I dont think that was the case - I believe they meant normal mode. I would love to see evidence otherwise!

With that said I love the challenge, but I agree that the bar is so incredibly high that it will have to be nerfed. I went in there with a nonoptimal build, understood mechanics and still hit a wall at a point. Its brutally tough, and I hope it stays very difficult, but it will definitely be more reasonable as well.

I finally had a chance to hop in last night and here is how it went for me....

Went in with my pvp single target build being cocky..... about 30 minutes of wipes on the last round I decided to start tinkering with builds. Tried pet builds for about 20 minutes and finally sucked it up and went AOE.

1st round cleared in about 1.5 hours .... wow. Having learned the mechanics, sure it will be faster next time.

2nd round was not as bad I probably cleared it in about 20 minutes.

3rd round and im 2 hours into this thing. I wiped probably 20 times from stranglers tossing me around and the mist/lightning mechanic I couldn't figure out and was too tired to.

So yea, you are looking at 1 hour per round on average....

Having said all that, the damage seems REALLY high. Is there some type of mitigation bug going on possibly? And my resources seemed to drain much faster than normal.

Anyways I will probably try and advance further this weekend but man is this thing hard.

Zlater

Flattedfifth wrote: »

Well gee, shields don't have their own ability tree so... what ability would they enhance? They could just not give us a shield period.

They should just remove them from the loot table to stop future whining.

Some pickups do have an enchant that gives you a damage shield on hit.

asneakybanana

FENGRUSH wrote: »

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Divinekorsai wrote: »

I'm going to be brutally honest. vMaelstrom is extremely hard and I don't think even some of the best players will be able to do it. The damage output is way more than what a stamina can heal through and magicka classes can barely even manage with healing ward, harness magicka and sword and shield. I wrote Deltia's guide to nMaelstrom and parts of vMaelstrom and I say that veteran needs a damage nerf. On the brighter side normal was made perfectly so everyone can beat it.

Im confident it will be nerfed. There is still an adjustment to be made on fixing damage on NPCs - but they will likely offset this by raising mobs HP.


ZOS was watching my stream and telling me their testers beat this on all classes with 300 CP and no master weapons. Im going out on a limb here and saying I dont think that was the case - I believe they meant normal mode. I would love to see evidence otherwise!

With that said I love the challenge, but I agree that the bar is so incredibly high that it will have to be nerfed. I went in there with a nonoptimal build, understood mechanics and still hit a wall at a point. Its brutally tough, and I hope it stays very difficult, but it will definitely be more reasonable as well.

If you have time to work out the mechanics and know what to do its not that bad. . First night I ran to stage 5 of vet mode without using any sigils. . Took me about 3 hours but once I figured out the mechanics for each round u would slowly tweak my approach until I got it. This was using my Dk pvp gear. . Tried with my normal pve gear but the sustain wasn't there. . It reminds me of dsa at launch in terms of challenge. So I Really hope it doesn't get nerfed because the sigils should make it easy enough for any of the more casual players.

Personofsecrets

The Maelstrom weapon for sword + board users is really bad, really, really bad. I'll elaborate in my own thread in a couple of days, but long story short, it basically gives nothing and even increasing the small values of what it does give won't make these items useful.

slumber_sandb16_ESO

I'd like to see v16 versions of the old Master weapons from DSA added to the solo arena, if not permanently then at least until DSA scales to v16. Would be a shame if they werent used anymore simply because they dont scale.

Personofsecrets

got to first boss, don't have the patience for soloing, wondered what i was doing with my life.

could I hypothetically do a dps race? yes, it isn't that hard, but as I said I'm not going to wait around for just the right moment to finally push damage and, if the first boss is going to have an annoying heal mechanic, then I don't really care to see what the rest of the bosses have.

ColoursYouHave

Overall I like the arena, but one issue I have had is in the stage with the obelisks that light up. I've noticed that if you kill one of the hoarvors away from an obelisk it gives you the option to pick it up and throw it using the synergy key, however it is very difficult to find a position that actually allows you to pick it up. I usually have to spend a good 5-10 seconds completely ignoring all other enemies just to position myself so the "press x to activate synergy" message to pop up, and many times when it does show up even the slightest camera or character movement no longer allows me to activate the synergy. I think the targeting window for picking up the hoarvor corpses needs to be made larger, as right now it is near impossible to try to find a position where you can pick up the corpses without losing all focus of the enemies around you.

Zlater

Oh I have feedback you might like:

On the whirling blades stage, I noticed that those spinning metal mechanical blades did spell damage instead of physical damage. I think it doesn't make sense and it made it too easy because I could just use harness magicka to ignore the blades, and just DPS everything else down as per usual.

While I kinda like it how it is, I would have just expected them to use physical resistance, cause they are spinning swords and all.

Kova

I REALLY don't like that it's a constant DPS race. The Arena caters to just one type of playstyle, which means you have alienated a lot of your solo playerbase. I know healers and tanks that are personally refusing to even consider the arena because of this. I've vetted all the way to the spider daedra, can't keep up with the obelisks being wrapped, and my concerns are strictly on DPS based fights.

• 1st boss requires you to kill them or the mobs fast enough, or it will proc a heal. Even if you get this boss to 10%, a full mob siphon has it back to 75% health. That's not challenging, that's punishment.
• 5th boss requires you to dps her down quick or you'll die almost instantly (bug maybe?) to the ice water.
• Although other bosses don't have a race mechanic, because of the relatively low health high dps wins out as a playstyle.
• As others have stated, the 50% reduction in damage is making this more punishing than anything else. Even builds that focus on dps solely are barely capping 7k.

Elloa

I agree with @Kova. And I'm only doing normal. I'm not a top notch players, but I'm not a that bad either. Except that maybe I don't do very great DPS. This because I'm mostly a healer and I've been playing 13 years of healers in all MMO you can think off.

Healers and Tank players are not just playing healing and tanking character, they also have often a different mindset and they are often mediocre at DPSing. Why? I suppose its a personality archetype (not speaking about ALL healers, but a lot of them). This is something that I observe in my community. We gather like 50 % of healers across all our games, and most of those healers are obviously forced to DPS to be part of raids and such, and generally not that great at it. This simply to explains that healers and tanks that are not great at DPS is not related to their class/build, but how they play in general. ANd therefor its nice if the devellopers consider this fact when they design competitve solo content such as TMArena.

The Maelstrom arena so far is really great. Awesome design, gorgeous and pretty fun. Its also very hard (at least for me, I find it pretty hard) wich is good, right.
However "Enrage" timer is a crap idea. Cause the players not capable to pull off the DPS required to finish the fight will constantly fail. Some players (like me) are just bad at DPS even with a Cookie-Cutter Deltia build. Does that mean we should not be able to survive the arena, if we can controls the mobs, heal ourselves, run, dodge, whatever method you can think off? I think there should be another option than "nuke the boss ASAP" to allow players to be able to continue the fight in a different way if they can.

This is SOLO gaming. So there is no escape. There is no way to bring a friend that can pull out a bit more DPS to succeed.
My suggestion would be to replace the hard enrage timer by a soft enrage timer for certain fights, like the 5th arena. So if the players can't kill the boss in time, the fight is more difficult, but its not "GAMEOVER"


Speaking of wich, I finaly managed to kill that b**** Ogress after 1000000 tries on 3 different character on normal.

Firstly tried with a lvl 35 premade Dragonknight archer. Never succeeded it after a whole night of wipe. When I was close to destroy my computer, I dropped and recreated a Vet14 premade Dragonknight archer to see if it was the lvl (not enough skills etc) the issue. Never managed to complete the fight either.
I finally went with my premade Vet14 Templar (magika build) and I managed to kill her after a few tries. But it was a close call.

This is maybe a L2P issue, but I also have the feeling that magika have a serious advantage over stamina.

Alphashado

Group content/DSA - Expert/dedicated healer excels at their preferred role by using optimal builds, gear and practice.
Reward - Group success/loot.

Group content/DSA - Expert/dedicated tank excels at their preferred role by using optimal builds, gear and practice.
Reward - Group success/loot.

MA- Expert/dedicated Tank/Healers must change their play style, gear, technique etc.

In other words, Tanks and Healers are generally rewarded for excelling at their role. By including DPS checks in MA, you are putting them at a severe disadvantage, and in many cases, taking them out of their comfort zone.

Tanks and Healers are in high demand because they are often loveless roles that many people already find unappealing. Introducing Solo content that further dissuades people from wanting to fill these roles is detrimental to the overall health of the game.

I'm not sure what the answer is. I'm sure it wouldn't be easy to rethink a few of these fights so they will still be challenging for every role without making it easy for any of them. But I'm sure it can be done since only a few of these fights seem heavily dependent on sustained dps, yet they are still fun and challenging.

I do know that if nothing is changed, be prepared for an influx of complaints from Healers/Tanks that feel penalized for being good at their preferred role.

Just food for thought ZOS.

code65536

The 50% reduction in damage is an unintended bug, according to ZOS. I really think we should wait for that fix first, since being able to actually do full damage will probably drastically change the balance and feel of the arena. I'm hoping it's soon, as I'm chomping at the bit to beat it on vet.

Personofsecrets

Kova wrote: »

I REALLY don't like that it's a constant DPS race. The Arena caters to just one type of playstyle, which means you have alienated a lot of your solo playerbase. I know healers and tanks that are personally refusing to even consider the arena because of this. I've vetted all the way to the spider daedra, can't keep up with the obelisks being wrapped, and my concerns are strictly on DPS based fights.

• 1st boss requires you to kill them or the mobs fast enough, or it will proc a heal. Even if you get this boss to 10%, a full mob siphon has it back to 75% health. That's not challenging, that's punishment.

This is exactly how I felt as a player who normally tanks. I mean, I'm used to the game not being catered to me. It's fine, but it sort of sucks as well.

Am I saying it is hard? No, it isn't particularly something that I would find challenging with the right skills and build, but from my small experience and what I have read over many posts, what makes different arenas unattractive is that they are too mechanic focused.

That is, players don't have enough time to complete mechanics without having to do said mechanic all over again. Personally, I don't find the value in such mechanics.

I know, I know, people have been begging and whining for so called mechanics again and again. I'm also sure you acknowledge that you can't make everyone happy. That all being said, I don't get the fascination with mechanics. Clearly, when a fight is not enjoyable, it was because the mechanics are bad. I don't understand the allure of having to clumsily use the synergy key over an object and then go through a sluggish animation, in order to get something done.

For example, when people said that the were surprised by and enjoyed the Adjudicator's mechanic forcing them to pick a lock, I thought they were insane. Seriously, people like being taken out of a fight and forced to do a tedious task with the chance that another stray mechanic will kill them through none of their wrong doing? That is really outrageous to me. It is especially outrageous because of how enjoyable ignoring mechanics can be. AA speed runs are one of my favorite things in the game and when people thought that they had to perform the Lightning Atronarch's mechanic after the transition to 1.6, something was taken away from the fight.

What gets taken away is focus. For example, being interrupted on the Lightning Atronarch fight, by it's mechanic, usually meant that everyone had to scramble like children, but someone would inevitably die for whatever reason. I just didn't find the fun in that. Alternatively, fighting Hyath the Battlemaster, while skipping his flame atronarch mechanic, makes the fight really intense and precise. Can we be good enough players to know the mechanics so well that we have the tools to break them and, therefore, complete the fight faster and more efficiently? That is the question that really gets me motivated to play.

Having to do some bizarre task, especially now with the synergy key, does not get me motivated to play. It doesn't lead to a super compelling experience, and, as you are seeing some players discuss, the mechanics reach the point of being overdone. That is, players have to focus too much on these random mundane tasks rather than actually fighting.

Just my thoughts. I'll be doing Maelstrom again, but it sounds like I wont have the patience for some of these so called mechanics. That's fine, I know the game isn't made for everyone. I mean, I'm still elated that you increased the range of the healing effect of the Obsidian Shard ability after I begged for that change for weeks.