Needed balance changes for Veteran Maelstrom Arena!

Dymence

leipatemeibbaa wrote: »

@Dymence not everyone have continuous 10 hours to spend in the arena as you did the first two week on PTS.
I understand you were able to get through all 9 stages with about one hour, but to be honest how many hours of practices before you get there.

I spent a lot of time in there when it was still actually hard, never actually managing to complete it.

The first time after they fixed the damage mitigation bug/ability cost bug I completed it under one and a half hour.

Also on topic, if bow sucks, then buff bow but don't nerf arena!

X_NOVIA_X

It's hard to take people seriously when they have terrible grammar. HOWEVER, i do not disagree.

Zinaroth

timidobserver wrote: »

Alcast seems to be doing fine. Much better than me on my Magicka Templar atleast.

As far as I can tell, it is easier on a Stamplar because you can easily get enough dps with WW to push the boss hard enough to only have to deal with one Daedroth toward the end, which you can spectral explosion. Worst case scenario the defense buff will let you handle one Daedroth pretty easily.

Doesn't mean the crematorial guards doesn't need a fix. This strategy also requires you to have WW ready at the start of the boss fight, which isn't feasible when you just had the Ash Titan in the wave before, where you also need WW to keep up.

Alcast is also a beast and a terrific player, I dare you to replicate what he achieves in this game.

Overall you're better off with a Magicka Templar in there, but I do agree that stamina in WW has much more burst potential which makes you able to cheese some elements in the arena, it isn't as easy to pull off as it looks though.

timidobserver wrote: »

I do not agree with many of the OPs points, but yours are pretty reasonable. I am all for bug fixes, but I am wary of direct nerfs to the difficulty. I am more in favor of class/skill balancing as opposed to nerfing the difficulty of the arena itself.

It's fair enough that you don't disagree, but with all due respect, atleast I suggested some solutions, Alcast just listed some things.

Both me and Alcast share a big grudge against the crematorial guards though, so if you can't agree on at least that point then you're also disagreeing with him and every other person playing stamina in there I talked to.

Tnoviaub17_ESO wrote: »

It's hard to take people seriously when they have terrible grammar. HOWEVER, i do not disagree.

Accentuating words by writing them in capital letters might be grammatically wrong, but so is writing "I" with a non-capital letter. Are you having a hard time taking yourself seriously aswell?

Dymence wrote: »

I don't think a save feature should be implemented either. Veteran dragonstar arena doesn't have one. Why should this have one? The lack of a save feature is the way the difficulty gets artificially boosted, and I don't think this is a bad thing. Like I said, think vet DSA, think trials with limited souls, etc. I also know vet MSA also has souls, but I don't think you'll ever burn through all 500 souls even after spending roughly 10 hours in there. If a save feature is to be introduced, the amount of souls should be reduced to keep an artificial feeling of difficulty IMO. I'd say from 500 souls to 100 souls, maybe even lower.

I appreciate and respect that you were the first once to complete the arena, well done.

That being said I completely disagree that the difficulty should be artificially boosted through requiring a player to sit in front of his PC four many hours at a time for his first clear. Difficulty gets artificially boosted through competing on the leaderboards, something a save feature would disallow you do to in my opinion, since the timer should tick on even when you're out of game or out of the arena.

I am all for reducing the amount of souls you have in there. 500 is way too much, 100 is a bit too little in my opinion though, eventhough my first clear was with 70 souls spent, I think 200 or 150 would be a nice amount.

To all the people against a save feature:

Why are you against it? It would just give casual players a chance to finish the arena, or atleast advance, under the penalty that their time is going to be aweful which reflects on their score. It won't hurt the difficulty, unless you include the time requirement as a difficulty aswell, which would be ridiculous. People shouldn't be excluded from content because they can't play more than one hour at a time. Every Trial in this game so far has been completable within an hour so there never was much need for this. Raids in other MMOs that take this long to complete have save features in place and weekly raid resets. Just means more people are able to enjoy the content without having to kill the first bosses over and over again trying to do it faster and faster just to allow them to get a couple of tries in on the next boss. People with kids can probably fully relate to the fact that sometimes stuff just comes up and you have to leave the PC for any amount of time that will get you kicked from the server.

I will dare to argue that people who are against this are only opposing it out of self-interest. They want less people completing the content so they can gloat more about their own accomplishments. Look past your own interests!

No hate intended towards you in particular Dymence, just adressing the issue in general.

Xsorus

Until they somehow balance the fact that magical shield spammers are easier then melee stamina users, and get the same reward; there will be no point in playing that setup. Hell there are just 9 vet maelstrom DKs right now on the us servers, and like 60+ sorcs.. There is really no excuse for releasing content with that number disparity

Dubhliam

Save feature. Yes.

Psilent

Xsorus wrote: »

Until they somehow balance the fact that magical shield spammers are easier then melee stamina users, and get the same reward; there will be no point in playing that setup. Hell there are just 9 vet maelstrom DKs right now on the us servers, and like 60+ sorcs.. There is really no excuse for releasing content with that number disparity

It'll get nerfed; don't worry. It's the nature of the MMO genre; release the dungeon to where it's a challenge to elite players, then nerf it a few weeks later so all players can complete it. The elite players get the advantage of top end loot first. I've only made it to Arena 5 Round 3 before I had to go a few days ago. A save feature would be nice, so I can restart at Arena 5, but having to do Arenas 1 through 4 again makes those arenas even easier.

Septimus_Magna

Psilent wrote: »

Xsorus wrote: »

Until they somehow balance the fact that magical shield spammers are easier then melee stamina users, and get the same reward; there will be no point in playing that setup. Hell there are just 9 vet maelstrom DKs right now on the us servers, and like 60+ sorcs.. There is really no excuse for releasing content with that number disparity

It'll get nerfed; don't worry. It's the nature of the MMO genre; release the dungeon to where it's a challenge to elite players, then nerf it a few weeks later so all players can complete it. The elite players get the advantage of top end loot first. I've only made it to Arena 5 Round 3 before I had to go a few days ago. A save feature would be nice, so I can restart at Arena 5, but having to do Arenas 1 through 4 again makes those arenas even easier.

Same here, the benefit is that each time you do vMA the earlier stage will become easier because you get used to the mechanics. The problem is that many players simply dont have the time to start over from the beginning each time.

I understand that a save feature in vMA might be difficult for the leaderboards but most players dont care about a good score the first time they try to complete it.

anitajoneb17_ESO

iliatha wrote: »

Katinas wrote: »

[*] Save feature is a must. Please allow us to save progress and continue the next day or the next time you log in.

Why should a feature get implemented that allows you to complete the arena no matter how long you have to play ? If the runs take too long you could just try to get better at the stages that cost you the most time.

While I understand the "L2P" sarcasm behind this, I really don't see how someone can advocate against a save feature. I mean, really. How are people even supposed to learn to achieve this arena quicker if they have to restart over and over every time ?

There are various factors that may influence the achievements of any given player : mastering of mechanics, skills, situational awareness, gear, build, champion points, playtime, experience, practice, whatever. But RL availability for uninterrupted playing definitely should not be one of them.

Obviously ZOS has given it a thought because the save feature is available in normal mode, but I honestly cannot figure out why they decided to not make it available in vet mode. I also think this should have been made available for DSA too. It's not much of an issue now but I remember back then fighting against falling asleep at 4 am with guildies, trying to beat DSA final boss again and again because we had the rezzes left and did not want to lose the progress...

And in case they make it available for vet mode, I don't think it should impact the scoring for leaderboards. I mean, an arena is an arena, the difficulty doesn't change according to whether you beat it all in a row or over several days.

Gilliamtherogue

MLRPZ wrote: »

Some fixes are good, some are too much, we need to keep this instance HARD and by hard I mean, you have to be proud of yourself when you get you're shiny a*s out of there with you bound on pickup loot

Since when does insane basic attack damage that lack true skillful counter play = hard? I fail to see how spawning 3 archers all across from each other all hitting for 7-8k with 20k armor is "hard"? This whole instance is filled with so much artificial difficulty it's baffling. When we "hardcore" players asked for difficult content, we meant mechanic and technical based game play that rewarded quick reactions and tactic development. There is nothing tactical about being forced to spam 20-30k damage shields, or dodge roll until your stamina is dry, just so you can survive common mob types. The big enemies like Lurchers/Centurions/Wamasu totally make sense since they're hulking enemies that should be treated with caution, but the fact that I can die faster to some nameless archer argonian with a bow instead of the final boss himself makes no sense.

To all of these people saying there are "valid" counter play mechanics in game, please, be real. Get off your sorc or caster build with damage shields and free self healing, and go put on some swords and try it as a stamina build. I would love for you to come back to a vMA topic and still sit there and agree that it's balanced. When Zenimax was discussing vMA leaderboards as a showcase to who was the best at their class, I think they meant who was the best at abusing skilless mechanics like shield stacking or out ranging almost the entirety of fights. This instance has finally begun to show people the issues stamina builds still have from launch, despite what all of the PvP community whines about with them. Hopefully Zenimax has been watching and listening to the players who actually have the skill to go in with stamina and complete this place, so that they can start fitting in meaningful fixes for this alleged class/combat balance update we're getting. Oh and of course to see how terrible their coding has been in some of these fights, like the shields or mushrooms of stage 7.

And before I hear L2P, I've already cleared vMA multiple times on a stamina and caster nightblade. I cleared in less than half the time on my fresh caster with half my passives missing and mismatched gear, than I did my stamblade with over 200 days of play time.

Alcast

Gilliamtherogue wrote: »

MLRPZ wrote: »

Some fixes are good, some are too much, we need to keep this instance HARD and by hard I mean, you have to be proud of yourself when you get you're shiny a*s out of there with you bound on pickup loot

Since when does insane basic attack damage that lack true skillful counter play = hard? I fail to see how spawning 3 archers all across from each other all hitting for 7-8k with 20k armor is "hard"? This whole instance is filled with so much artificial difficulty it's baffling. When we "hardcore" players asked for difficult content, we meant mechanic and technical based game play that rewarded quick reactions and tactic development. There is nothing tactical about being forced to spam 20-30k damage shields, or dodge roll until your stamina is dry, just so you can survive common mob types. The big enemies like Lurchers/Centurions/Wamasu totally make sense since they're hulking enemies that should be treated with caution, but the fact that I can die faster to some nameless archer argonian with a bow instead of the final boss himself makes no sense.

To all of these people saying there are "valid" counter play mechanics in game, please, be real. Get off your sorc or caster build with damage shields and free self healing, and go put on some swords and try it as a stamina build. I would love for you to come back to a vMA topic and still sit there and agree that it's balanced. When Zenimax was discussing vMA leaderboards as a showcase to who was the best at their class, I think they meant who was the best at abusing skilless mechanics like shield stacking or out ranging almost the entirety of fights. This instance has finally begun to show people the issues stamina builds still have from launch, despite what all of the PvP community whines about with them. Hopefully Zenimax has been watching and listening to the players who actually have the skill to go in with stamina and complete this place, so that they can start fitting in meaningful fixes for this alleged class/combat balance update we're getting. Oh and of course to see how terrible their coding has been in some of these fights, like the shields or mushrooms of stage 7.

And before I hear L2P, I've already cleared vMA multiple times on a stamina and caster nightblade. I cleared in less than half the time on my fresh caster with half my passives missing and mismatched gear, than I did my stamblade with over 200 days of play time.

Stamina NB is very decent in Arena. I can do runs with like 2 deaths bc NB has such OP skills....even on stam. Only *** that kills me is bugged stuff like bubble stage 7 + pison RNGesus and stage 6 invisible stuff after boss is dead.

However, all other stam classes are quite screwed.
idtched my templar for now till I am done farming the *** out of vMA with Stam NB.

tengri

What pisses me off the most about the no-saving in VMA is that @ZOS apparently made the deliberate choice to turn this off to exclude everyone from VMA content (and weapons) who can not sit down for long, uninterrupted sessions; for whatever reason - and there are plenty.
Yes, yes, L2P, *insert random dude I dont give a *** about* can complete it in less than two hours easy.
Up yours. I dont care what others might or might not do.

This really does not sit well...

Waseem

the developers - as its seem- thought that average player will finish veteran maelstrom arena in 2 hours, not 8-9 hours

Sukenlihol

Balancing autoattacks damage and saving progress is enough. Especially "saving progress" is vital..

Connection problems or tecnhical issues can be heartbreaker at last stages..

Dymence

Zinaroth wrote: »

timidobserver wrote: »

Alcast seems to be doing fine. Much better than me on my Magicka Templar atleast.

As far as I can tell, it is easier on a Stamplar because you can easily get enough dps with WW to push the boss hard enough to only have to deal with one Daedroth toward the end, which you can spectral explosion. Worst case scenario the defense buff will let you handle one Daedroth pretty easily.

Doesn't mean the crematorial guards doesn't need a fix. This strategy also requires you to have WW ready at the start of the boss fight, which isn't feasible when you just had the Ash Titan in the wave before, where you also need WW to keep up.

Alcast is also a beast and a terrific player, I dare you to replicate what he achieves in this game.

Overall you're better off with a Magicka Templar in there, but I do agree that stamina in WW has much more burst potential which makes you able to cheese some elements in the arena, it isn't as easy to pull off as it looks though.

timidobserver wrote: »

I do not agree with many of the OPs points, but yours are pretty reasonable. I am all for bug fixes, but I am wary of direct nerfs to the difficulty. I am more in favor of class/skill balancing as opposed to nerfing the difficulty of the arena itself.

It's fair enough that you don't disagree, but with all due respect, atleast I suggested some solutions, Alcast just listed some things.

Both me and Alcast share a big grudge against the crematorial guards though, so if you can't agree on at least that point then you're also disagreeing with him and every other person playing stamina in there I talked to.

Tnoviaub17_ESO wrote: »

It's hard to take people seriously when they have terrible grammar. HOWEVER, i do not disagree.

Accentuating words by writing them in capital letters might be grammatically wrong, but so is writing "I" with a non-capital letter. Are you having a hard time taking yourself seriously aswell?

Dymence wrote: »

I don't think a save feature should be implemented either. Veteran dragonstar arena doesn't have one. Why should this have one? The lack of a save feature is the way the difficulty gets artificially boosted, and I don't think this is a bad thing. Like I said, think vet DSA, think trials with limited souls, etc. I also know vet MSA also has souls, but I don't think you'll ever burn through all 500 souls even after spending roughly 10 hours in there. If a save feature is to be introduced, the amount of souls should be reduced to keep an artificial feeling of difficulty IMO. I'd say from 500 souls to 100 souls, maybe even lower.

I appreciate and respect that you were the first once to complete the arena, well done.

That being said I completely disagree that the difficulty should be artificially boosted through requiring a player to sit in front of his PC four many hours at a time for his first clear. Difficulty gets artificially boosted through competing on the leaderboards, something a save feature would disallow you do to in my opinion, since the timer should tick on even when you're out of game or out of the arena.

I am all for reducing the amount of souls you have in there. 500 is way too much, 100 is a bit too little in my opinion though, eventhough my first clear was with 70 souls spent, I think 200 or 150 would be a nice amount.

To all the people against a save feature:

Why are you against it? It would just give casual players a chance to finish the arena, or atleast advance, under the penalty that their time is going to be aweful which reflects on their score. It won't hurt the difficulty, unless you include the time requirement as a difficulty aswell, which would be ridiculous. People shouldn't be excluded from content because they can't play more than one hour at a time. Every Trial in this game so far has been completable within an hour so there never was much need for this. Raids in other MMOs that take this long to complete have save features in place and weekly raid resets. Just means more people are able to enjoy the content without having to kill the first bosses over and over again trying to do it faster and faster just to allow them to get a couple of tries in on the next boss. People with kids can probably fully relate to the fact that sometimes stuff just comes up and you have to leave the PC for any amount of time that will get you kicked from the server.

I will dare to argue that people who are against this are only opposing it out of self-interest. They want less people completing the content so they can gloat more about their own accomplishments. Look past your own interests!

No hate intended towards you in particular Dymence, just adressing the issue in general.

No offense taken, I also understand where you're coming from.

It's just that a save feature is so unorthodox when looking at all the previous content. Specifically veteran dragonstar arena. That one didn't have one, why should this have one? Or to spin it around, why shouldn't both have a save feature then? What makes maelstrom arena so special?

Waseem wrote: »

the developers - as its seem- thought that average player will finish veteran maelstrom arena in 2 hours, not 8-9 hours

As far as I'm aware, they never intended for their average players to finish it to begin with. On the eso live I specifically remember them stating: The veteran maelstrom arena is something for the hardcore pve players who love a challenge.

GaldorP

I got to the final round of stage 7 yesterday with a Stamina DK build that uses Bow and Restoration Staff. It took me about 10 hours, and in the end I had to give up (I had done several attempts before where I got to the boss round of stage 4 and I've cleared the arena several times on normal mode, of course, which I consider to be easy now).

In general, I found the Veteran Maelstrom Arena incredibly difficult, but still doable, in theory, with some luck and if you don't make a single mistake. Some things were really just crazy difficult in my opinion though:

• I could only beat the final boss in stage 4 as a werewolf (thanks a lot to @Alcast for posting these Stamina DK videos, I couldn't have done this boss without them). Without werewolf transformation, killing a dwarven sphere (~95k Health) which constantly shoots darts at you for 7-8k dmg and will one-hit you with its electric charge + some other monsters at the same time while dodging the red circles from the boss and the electric waves from sentries is simply impossible to do quick enough for me to do any damage to the boss in the next moving phase. This boss is too much of a dps check, in my opinion.
• In the final round of stage 6, I feel like the enrage mechanic of the boss is really too much. If there's a single hoarver you don't kill near a pillar with webs or if there's a single webspinner you don't kill fast enough, the global stun that happens when you free all pillars comes too late and the boss will simply one-hit you at some point with an unblockable instant-attack for 75-80k damage (the attack is simply called "Spit" and I didn't even see the boss doing anything). I feel like that's too much and the fight is really difficult enough as it is without that enrage mechanic.
• In stage 7, in the western healing pool, there is a spot where your character will start swimming because the water is too deep. This killed me at least once.
• The Wamasu boss in the 3rd or 4th round of stage 7 is incredibly hard to fight for non-sorcerers. It will fire lightning spheres at you which cannot be blocked and which were sometimes not visible to me. And the wamasu fired these spheres repeatedly at me until I was hit. Once hit, your movement speed is reduced by a good amount and you take a ton of damage over time for a few seconds which I could barely outheal with Igneous Shield, Vigor, and Regeneration. Then the Wamasu walks up right next to you while you can barely move and it will use its strong lightning attack in 4 random directions which will always one-hit you. At the same time, this boss has a ton of health. I don't know if there's any kind of trick to avoid the slow attack, but I could only beat this boss with luck (lightning circles were fired in a way that I still had a chance to dodge). Now if I had a 25k+ damage shield and Bolt Escape, of course...
• The "Staggering Stomp" attack of the final boss in stage 7 is barely visible for me (I play on medium settings). I died probably over 50 times to it while standing quite far away from the boss (20 meters or more). Please make this attack which always instantly kills a player with a single hit more visible.
• The boss in stage 7, in general, is stupendously difficult for Stamina builds. There isn't a single mechanic that doesn't automatically kill the player with one hit apart from the lightning bolts that mages throw.
  • Boss hits you with a stun -> instant death by Wrecking Bite.
  • You get hit by a poison AoE circle -> 8k damage per second, if you're not standing right next to a healing pool you're dead. Absolutely no way to outheal that damage, not even with the healing or defensive sigil active.
  • One of the mages decides they want to teleport to your location and do a lightning bubble attack -> 15k instant-damage that cannot be avoided and stuns you as well. This will get you killed almost every time even if you have 20k Health.
  • The boss starts screaming -> certain death if you don't interrupt it within about 3-4 few seconds if there's no lightning mage around.
  • And then, of course, there's Staggering Stomp, an unlimited range attack that the boss shoots in 4 directions which to me was barely visible, and it's hard to tell which direction exactly the boss is facing -> one-hit death.

In general, it seems to me like the veteran mode was designed with a character in mind that can continously deal around 10k damage per second on a single target and out-heal or avoid around 10k incoming damage per second at the same time. I believe some builds simply can't do that, and not because they are inefficient at what they are, but simply beause the player chose the wrong class and resource (Stamina or Magicka) or the wrong weapon. I think it's sad if a weapon meant to deal damage like the bow gets its effective uses reduced to killing others players from stealth in PvP before they can react or one-shotting easy monsters from stealth during easy solo quests.

Oh yes, and a save progress feature for the veteran mode would be great ^^ Reduce score accordingly so leaderboard runs would still have to be done in one go, but please give us non uber builds at least a chance to finish the arena and get the achievement. It's hard enough to complete each stage once already ><

FENGRUSH

Alcast wrote: »

Gilliamtherogue wrote: »

MLRPZ wrote: »

Some fixes are good, some are too much, we need to keep this instance HARD and by hard I mean, you have to be proud of yourself when you get you're shiny a*s out of there with you bound on pickup loot

Since when does insane basic attack damage that lack true skillful counter play = hard? I fail to see how spawning 3 archers all across from each other all hitting for 7-8k with 20k armor is "hard"? This whole instance is filled with so much artificial difficulty it's baffling. When we "hardcore" players asked for difficult content, we meant mechanic and technical based game play that rewarded quick reactions and tactic development. There is nothing tactical about being forced to spam 20-30k damage shields, or dodge roll until your stamina is dry, just so you can survive common mob types. The big enemies like Lurchers/Centurions/Wamasu totally make sense since they're hulking enemies that should be treated with caution, but the fact that I can die faster to some nameless archer argonian with a bow instead of the final boss himself makes no sense.

To all of these people saying there are "valid" counter play mechanics in game, please, be real. Get off your sorc or caster build with damage shields and free self healing, and go put on some swords and try it as a stamina build. I would love for you to come back to a vMA topic and still sit there and agree that it's balanced. When Zenimax was discussing vMA leaderboards as a showcase to who was the best at their class, I think they meant who was the best at abusing skilless mechanics like shield stacking or out ranging almost the entirety of fights. This instance has finally begun to show people the issues stamina builds still have from launch, despite what all of the PvP community whines about with them. Hopefully Zenimax has been watching and listening to the players who actually have the skill to go in with stamina and complete this place, so that they can start fitting in meaningful fixes for this alleged class/combat balance update we're getting. Oh and of course to see how terrible their coding has been in some of these fights, like the shields or mushrooms of stage 7.

And before I hear L2P, I've already cleared vMA multiple times on a stamina and caster nightblade. I cleared in less than half the time on my fresh caster with half my passives missing and mismatched gear, than I did my stamblade with over 200 days of play time.

Stamina NB is very decent in Arena. I can do runs with like 2 deaths bc NB has such OP skills....even on stam. Only *** that kills me is bugged stuff like bubble stage 7 + pison RNGesus and stage 6 invisible stuff after boss is dead.

However, all other stam classes are quite screwed.
idtched my templar for now till I am done farming the *** out of vMA with Stam NB.

No respect for bow now no respect for stam sorc.


Going to make a video dedicated to @Alcast for arena now. FENGRUSH is inspired.

Alcast

GaldorP wrote: »

I got to the final round of stage 7 yesterday with a Stamina DK build that uses Bow and Restoration Staff. It took me about 10 hours, and in the end I had to give up (I had done several attempts before where I got to the boss round of stage 4 and I've cleared the arena several times on normal mode, of course, which I consider to be easy now).

In general, I found the Veteran Maelstrom Arena incredibly difficult, but still doable, in theory, with some luck and if you don't make a single mistake. Some things were really just crazy difficult in my opinion though:

• I could only beat the final boss in stage 4 as a werewolf (thanks a lot to @Alcast for posting these Stamina DK videos, I couldn't have done this boss without them). Without werewolf transformation, killing a dwarven sphere (~95k Health) which constantly shoots darts at you for 7-8k dmg and will one-hit you with its electric charge + some other monsters at the same time while dodging the red circles from the boss and the electric waves from sentries is simply impossible to do quick enough for me to do any damage to the boss in the next moving phase. This boss is too much of a dps check, in my opinion.
• In the final round of stage 6, I feel like the enrage mechanic of the boss is really too much. If there's a single hoarver you don't kill near a pillar with webs or if there's a single webspinner you don't kill fast enough, the global stun that happens when you free all pillars comes too late and the boss will simply one-hit you at some point with an unblockable instant-attack for 75-80k damage (the attack is simply called "Spit" and I didn't even see the boss doing anything). I feel like that's too much and the fight is really difficult enough as it is without that enrage mechanic.
• In stage 7, in the western healing pool, there is a spot where your character will start swimming because the water is too deep. This killed me at least once.
• The Wamasu boss in the 3rd or 4th round of stage 7 is incredibly hard to fight for non-sorcerers. It will fire lightning spheres at you which cannot be blocked and which were sometimes not visible to me. And the wamasu fired these spheres repeatedly at me until I was hit. Once hit, your movement speed is reduced by a good amount and you take a ton of damage over time for a few seconds which I could barely outheal with Igneous Shield, Vigor, and Regeneration. Then the Wamasu walks up right next to you while you can barely move and it will use its strong lightning attack in 4 random directions which will always one-hit you. At the same time, this boss has a ton of health. I don't know if there's any kind of trick to avoid the slow attack, but I could only beat this boss with luck (lightning circles were fired in a way that I still had a chance to dodge). Now if I had a 25k+ damage shield and Bolt Escape, of course...
• The "Staggering Stomp" attack of the final boss in stage 7 is barely visible for me (I play on medium settings). I died probably over 50 times to it while standing quite far away from the boss (20 meters or more). Please make this attack which always instantly kills a player with a single hit more visible.
• The boss in stage 7, in general, is stupendously difficult for Stamina builds. There isn't a single mechanic that doesn't automatically kill the player with one hit apart from the lightning bolts that mages throw.
  • Boss hits you with a stun -> instant death by Wrecking Bite.
  • You get hit by a poison AoE circle -> 8k damage per second, if you're not standing right next to a healing pool you're dead. Absolutely no way to outheal that damage, not even with the healing or defensive sigil active.
  • One of the mages decides they want to teleport to your location and do a lightning bubble attack -> 15k instant-damage that cannot be avoided and stuns you as well. This will get you killed almost every time even if you have 20k Health.
  • The boss starts screaming -> certain death if you don't interrupt it within about 3-4 few seconds if there's no lightning mage around.
  • And then, of course, there's Staggering Stomp, an unlimited range attack that the boss shoots in 4 directions which to me was barely visible, and it's hard to tell which direction exactly the boss is facing -> one-hit death.

In general, it seems to me like the veteran mode was designed with a character in mind that can continously deal around 10k damage per second on a single target and out-heal or avoid around 10k incoming damage per second at the same time. I believe some builds simply can't do that, and not because they are inefficient at what they are, but simply beause the player chose the wrong class and resource (Stamina or Magicka) or the wrong weapon. I think it's sad if a weapon meant to deal damage like the bow gets its effective uses reduced to killing others players from stealth in PvP before they can react or one-shotting easy monsters from stealth during easy solo quests.

Oh yes, and a save progress feature for the veteran mode would be great ^^ Reduce score accordingly so leaderboard runs would still have to be done in one go, but please give us non uber builds at least a chance to finish the arena and get the achievement. It's hard enough to complete each stage once already ><

Some very good points @ZOS_GinaBruno

I am actually surprise that you got that far with a bow build. Bows since the start of 1.6 were nerfed into the ground so hard they can not be viable anymore.

Ranged Magicka DPS is favoured so much in vMA its horrible. Stamina builds have to be close range WITHOUT SHIELDS to deal with bosses and take huge amounts of damage while magicka ranged DPS guys just can circle bosses and get not hit at all while dealing full dps.
Then there are bugs, a lot of them that screw you many times.
Stage 3 > Strangers broken pull that "disables" you for 1s + worst case puts you back at your destination while mobs still attack you becuase "technically" you are still there.
Stage 6 > hitbox issues, broken WW, after boss is dead invisbile lightning kills you
Stage 7 > Poison DoT way too strong (Sorc popping shields like nothing happens, Stam is dead in 2s. gg), Wamasu snare and DoT hits way too hard. When you get Snares+ Flower exploding all over the place you are literally done. NPC popping Blue Protection bubble too late = RIP (Magicka just popping shields no problemo, stamina RIP and bb nodeathrun)
Stage 8 > Melee bosses basically oneshot me with 24k HP. Ranged Magicka DPS does not even know how hard they hit bc you can circle the bosses easy peasy.

However, before ZOS will even start fixing bugs or the balance issues I am SURE they will just nerf the arena. well played gg.
Yet I am not really sure if ZOS is aware of those bugs/imbalances becuase they literally did NEVER respond to those threads that brought up those points.

Dracane

If only the Maw of the Infernal set would work in a similar way like these ceremonial guards from wgt and last stage of Maelstrom Arena..... then I would be living a good and satisfied life.

Katinas

To everyone opposing save feature: get real. Normal mode saves your progress if you log out or leave instance for a few minutes or a few hours. Veteran mode should have the same option. I mentioned this before: if you choose to leave you automatically deny yourself a chance to ge ta good score; your score can be lowered 10x times or 100x times just to make sure that if you choose to leave you will not abuse it to make a perfect run with taking a break or something. You choose this option knowing that your score will be tens or hundreds of times lower than someone who did it without saving their progress. Top people in every class leaderboards with their 300-400k pts scores will not be affected by someone who had to leave to attend something important IRL and who resumed after a few hours and got a 250 pts score. Also they had a chance to loot a master weapon, where is harm in that?

OrphanHelgen

I agree that stage 7 is too much pain for a melee dps

Katinas

OrphanHelgen wrote: »

I agree that stage 7 is too much pain for a melee dps

Stage 9 is equally pain in the backside. Especially since boss' attacks stun you and daedroth's fire and melee attacks are coming nonstop.