47's thoughts on Vet Maelstrom arena. (post Morrowind thougths at the end of this old thread)

Ep1kMalware

Solariken wrote: »

I feel you, that last round sucks balls. There is SOOO much luck involved. I play Stamplar, and I start having serious resource issues up on the platform without any bodies to Repentance. Often after breaking the three pillars I have no stam left and just get rekt.

i did stamplar too, that boss was so painful, mainly that very first crem guard. I had a way easier time after going to recovery food/engine guardian here. (my recovery is like 680). Other than that I had no issues using dw/bow/kena

I've heard so much hate on round six but I loved it as welk, round 5 took me almost 10hrd, six took me like 30 minutes on my first clear.

I dont think you're aking for nerfs, just design improvements. I love the difficulty, it was s major turn on. If rngesus does not favor you, you play in primetimem or have very SLIGHT lag its game over, no maelstrom for you.

my 3 biggest hurdles here were:

1: stage 5 boss spent 10 solid hours spamming fear+shatter+fear+e=shatter endlessly. this will unavoidably 1 shot you.

2L stage 7 boss, rest of the arena was easy, but this guy is so prejudiced against stam builds . I To progress I literally had to run around the room using caltrops+poison injection.

3L first crematorial guard in last boss fight. No comment, blood pressure,, rising..

Ch4mpTW

You know... It's interesting... I've found that VMA has made me into an overall better player in ESO. The stress it induces, the amount of care it requires, and the numerous damage and health checks done really applies a toll on you both mentally and physically. And once you participate in these things regularly, you begin to think — "differently". You begin to evaluate the content in ESO, and even the builds and gear differently. You start asking yourself different questions, and start to be aware of everything happening around you 10 fold.

But on the opposite end of the spectrum, VMA has made me into a very angry and overall negative player. I'll notice how I grow a tad bit more angrier at myself and others when things go sideways, and tend to be rather sarcastic at things that transpire within the game. The RNG of VMA also having a major factor in this, as I usually doubt anything of worth will appear in chests whenever I open them. I'll kill a boss in a veteran dungeon, and before I loot the boss' body, I'll say, "Oh, I probably just got more laurels to add to the collection." And overall just not really expect to be rewarded for my effort anymore... Yes... VMA has actually made me feel as though my efforts will for the most part be of little to no meaning in ESO, as RNG has dictated so much within the arena. And 9 times out of ten, things you receive are not what you sought after. Even when you have put in the hard work and hours (I did over 100 runs before my first staff in general appeared).

So all and all, it's a minus and a plus. A negative to complement the positive. Would you rather work at something that you theoretically may not receive (ever), and have your skills (overall) as a player be increased dramatically — while also becoming a rather negative and unhappy player? You decide... How much of your: Happiness, kindness, sanity, and time are you willing to give away to be "elite". . .?

Ep1kMalware

I dunno, maelstrom definitely made me a better player. Ive always been sort of negative with rng aspects.

HuawaSepp

On stage 9 let the summoner summon his friend in the first 3 rounds...
It was a pain in the last round.

NativeJoe

https://www.twitch.tv/trixytricks/v/53483844

My worst time through was definitely my first time... I was shaking , nervous and making all the wrong choices.....

but I made it.

Can't say how it is now for sorcs... but here is what I did lol

f047ys3v3n

I wandered in here yesterday because I had heard a rumor that I don't know if has any truth which indicated that ZOS may be coming around on the fact that the RNG in vMA is so bad that many players have well over 100 runs without the gear they want and are changing it. I heard they are going to make the final drop have a higher probability of being the weapon you are using than others. I have no idea the exact mechanics of this (IE same trait and same weapon) or if the bar not equipped also matters but since the rumor is probably crap anyway and the specific rng is not mentioned as rumor's are always sketchy who knows.

Anyhow, it was enough to get me to run through again too see if I was any better at it and how power creep was effecting things. I'll admit was a bit easier and I did it a lot different. Being as I run a magiblade and for VD PvP reasons all magiblade AOE has pretty much been wrecked I decided to pretty much one bar, single target, the whole thing. That really only caused a few issues as AOE is very much secondary and, on the flip side, a universal magic sheild now has been added in harness magica which allowed me to let my HoT's tick under a sheild like a sorc. This was very useful. Overall the experience was easier even with the nerfed (no longer double criting funnel health) heals. Really, that really came down to the shield which gave a cushion I didn't used to have full time on the magiblade. I did it all in one go this time. 300k score from my 3rd completion. Probably not bad on the learning curve. If the rumor proves to be true on RNG and I can get what I want in 10 or so runs I will certainly grab a sharpened inferno, shoc staff, stam dual weild, and a bow. Otherwise I'm sure I'll wander in in another 6 months or so from boardom.

Lastly, for those who haven't noticed the stam toons have been buffed enough in dps and utility that, even with the least friendly to melee, channels, and lack of ranged interrupt mechanics in the game (the last boss is all of those things,) Stam toons are starting to fill the boards and even get some flawless runs. I have a few buddies that now do the thing on those toons. They say stam sorc is the stuff. Of course, they are running the thing having those super OP dual weild vMA weapons already. Kind of a catch 22 I guess. Easy if you already have the gear you will get in there.

Anyhow, here is hoping the rumor is true. Would love to have a reasonable chance of getting a good drop. I got an infused resto on my run BTW. I can carry it around and look like I have a nice desto in reaper's LOL.

f047ys3v3n

So for the last month I have been working on a Sorc. By this I mean getting all the undaunted, mages guild, and skill points in general as well as running it as my primary toon. Sorcs seemed to be crushing NB's in ranged dps especially since the new llambris is BIS for both but procs twice as much for the sorc so gives them much more than a NB.

Anyhow, I thought I might wander in to vMA on the fully leveled up sorc and see what happened. For the most part I found that the general opinion that Msorc is easier than Mnblade is true. This came down to, the bigger sheild, the main attack being an interrupt, overload for huge burst dps, having the major spell power buff without a potion, and the shards on proc being a knockdown. The shards was a huge and unanticipated thing as pretty much any trash mob you hit with one was out for the fight. On the flip side of this, there were a few fights where the more constant major expedition on the NB (from cripple), veil for 30% mit, or the larger funnel heals (funnel) were decisive. In the case of both toons the general formula though was heals under shields, range, and keep major expedition up as much as you can.

I would like to pretend that I did better with the new sorc toon but I am still a much better NB than Sorc and the sorc learning curve is pretty steep. In particular, I am very poor on the overload since the toon is not actually built to be an overload sorc. So, in the end, I struggled a lot more with the final boss on the sorc than on my NB and so my NB run ended up a better one.

I was rewarded for all this with a garbage trait bow so as always, in my case, no reward (aside from the title) for the 8k in pots spend and time invested. Oddly, there wasn't even any undaunted plunder. In ESO now you can get pretty much any gear set you need in an average of 5 runs of whatever content it drops in but for vMA it is worse than 1/150. They really have to fix that. It is pretty rage inducing to work that hard for the D every time.

I will have to say I totally disagree with those who say vMA is not challenging anymore. Perhaps if you are an all vMA kitted out stam sorc this is the case but that reflects more on the balance of vMA dual wield weapons than anything else I think. For what it is worth I still find it very challenging on both my Mnblade and my Msorc both of which are kitted out in BIS minus the vMA weapons which are not feasible to obtain even for most players who can complete the content.

I should also note, for those interested, that my latest completes on both toons were in 5 julianos, 5 infallible, 1 kena, all gold. llambris is BIS (2 llambris, 4 infal, 5 julianos is my normal load out) for each of these toons where a boss can be kept still but in vMA I choose the sets that do not require this. I should also note that a variety of better kit for a sorc running vMA exists but this set up is a generally good one and I had it. I am not about to gold out a new gear set for one vMA run. See the prices of gold mats and that ever inflating can of worms for the reasons for that.

f047ys3v3n

So, like many others, I partook in the double loot in vMA Wrothgar event. I went into it the first Monday hopping that ZOS would have done something to improve the odds of getting good stuff. They did not. kasa-obake and Alanar have done a masterful job of detailing exactly how often each item can be expected to drop. Here is a quoted though shortened summary of their work. Their combined efforts represent to me clearly the best and most important, given the specific loot involved, documentation of RNG. I have therefore gyped it here. If you want to know the exact odds of getting exactly what you are looking for I am fairly confident they have worked it out.

kasa-obake wrote: »

Okay so, I've taken all the loot I got from vMSA, the loot of the people who posted there (only took those who mentioned trait + item for every run and ignored quotes + double posts) bringing the total to 510 drops. It's not much but still more than the people who QQ for 10 runs (and I should know, I'm already crying after 10 runs since the event started).

At any rate, here are the results:


And here's some pie charts to help you visualize better:

As you can see, Sharpened is actually the trait that dropped the most out of 510 items. But they all seem pretty equivalent. No reason to cry so far about rigged rng, right ?

However let's take a look at the items themselves:

See ? While the trait drops are pretty similar, the items themselves do not have the same chance to drop, which goes in line with what @Alanar was saying earlier in the thread.

Alanar wrote: »

I've tracked 48 VMA drops, and I can confirm that the 12 weapons do not drop evenly (p < 0.02).

And among these unevenly distributed loots, we have this:


@ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_GinaBruno Would you please reconsider having all two-handed weapons for instance with one unique chance to drop instead of 1 chance per exact weapon type?

Just give every weapon a probability to drop of 1/12, and then 1/8 chance to get one particular trait. That would give a sharpened fire staff a 1/96 probability to drop, same as a infused battle-axe, same as a powered dagger... You get my point.

Right now however, we have this unfair mess:

Alanar wrote: »

. So your chances of getting a specific weapon are:

Bow - 1/6
Restoration Staff - 1/6

Dagger - 1/12
Sword - 1/12
Mace - 1/12
Axe - 1/12

Greatsword - 1/18
Battle Axe - 1/18
Maul - 1/18
Lightning Staff - 1/18
Frost Staff - 1/18
Fire Staff - 1/18

So if you're hunting a sharpened fire staff, you have a 1/18 chance of getting a fire staff at all, and a 1/8 chance of getting sharpened, for a total chance of 1/144 on each drop.

Of course, what would be even more reasonable, is to remove useless traits from the vMSA loot table at all. I understand that you've tried to improve them and make them more competitive. Well, I'm sorry to inform you that it didn't work and in fact made things much worse as both Sharpened and Nirnhoned used to be good traits for a magic build and now only Sharpened is. Sharpened by far outmatches any other trait on any offensive weapon, be it in PvP or PvE. In my less that perfectly conducted testing sharpened is worth about 12% more dps than Nirnhoned or Precise which are about equal and more than 15% over any other trait.


EDITED:

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Rich hasn't been arrested. He still silently lurks the forums daily, but word on the street is that you're more likely to get a /lurk out of him with constructive posts.

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

I normally lurk on the forums pretty regularly – expect to see me out and about a bit more often.

@ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_GinaBruno this is as constructive as posts can get.

Of course, there will always be that lucky *** that gets the good stuff really quick and on Monday, the first day of the Wrothgar event, I became that SOB by receiving a sharpened flame staff on my 6th total vMA complete. It was the first sharpened vMA weapon I received.

Anyhow, that is not really what this post is about. It is about the things I have further learned in the runs since then. Yes, contrary to the ridiculous logic of ZOS I have run it far more after getting the weapon I wanted than before. The simple reason is that it is so painful to complete and get yet another crap drop when you really really need a different drop that I was previously enraged enough to stay away for literally months after every run. Now, I have what I really need so bad drops only mildly *** me off. You really must be careful with terrible drop rates and no token system because the very last feeling people get when doing content is not the elation of killing the big bad guy but rather the white hot rage of getting a third charged bow. Bad emotions are not why people play games. Presumably they can get plenty of that from their boss at work and get paid for it instead of paying.

As my familiarity and skill with the content has increased in concert with the acquisition of the staff of my previously unrequited desire, my dps has improved and runs have become more relaxed (at least after the 1st death puts out of reach the coveted flawless title). I am now completing in just over an hour on my mNB, which is what I am using, and having somewhere around 3 deaths total which usually come on rounds 3 or 4 of the trash pulls. The trash rounds are very heavily about order of kill and having the spawn locations memorized so that you are on the right mob at spawn. I get turned around in the circular arenas and so don't have any memorized.

What I have learned:
1) Flawless Conquer is mostly about familiarity and having the spawn locations memorized coupled with some RNG love. When you first start to run it will feel like an unattainable dream. Pretty soon after that you will start to see those deaths plummet and that title in view. I have now had 2 death runs and have been to round 9 with no deaths.

2) Getting on the leaderboard is crazy. Those guys are laying down very, very, clean scores. We are talking flawless with no sigals in a lot of cases. Getting on the board should probably be an achievement itself. So, if your working your way to hard completes, gobble sigals like a shameless glutton. You will not cost yourself a leaderboard slot, I promise. The thing to remember about the vMA leaderboard is that not many can fit on it. Sure there are 100 slots per class but realistically, maybe 50 of those 100 are unique accounts. Many players, who are very good, run 4 or 5 toons on the board every week. For this reason really only about an average of 200 total people probably make the board each week or 50 per class. The air is thin up there and once you factor in the ones you will not beat because they are both good players and running cheat engine and the ones that are hard to beat because you are magic and they stam and that class is better stam or vice versa, the task can become even more daunting. I made the board for NB at #85 last week and screenshot it because who knows when the scores will be low enough on Saturday night for me to even try. 485k is about all I'm able to do and it will cost me 4k in pots to do it so only on a slacking week is there much of a shot.

3) Higher dps does actually non-linearly ease some boss completes. Initially, I though that this was not the case and that most bosses went through each phase with triggers based on their health like the arena 5 ice boss or basically all bosses in vDSA. Many bosses in vMA are not like this though. For instance, arena 7's boss does not go into a scream phase based on health but rather a timer. I can now kill him before the second scream phase and even before the second venom caller. This makes the fight easier in a non-liner way (read much easier.) This sort of non-liner shift is also noticed in arena 4, kill boss during meteor phase, and in the crystal phase of the final boss, kill crystals before second faster or third, fastest, wall as well as kill boss in 3rd phase before the 3rd ghost while ignoring summoner altogether, and I suspect the final boss of round 6, you can probably kill it without having to collect all the horvers for a stun. I am actually less than pleased to learn this as it makes the content less resistant to dps creep. The health triggered phase switches in some arenas and in vDSA can have the effect of making burn strategies actually harder. An example was the full burn was in vDSA back in the day or arena 5 of vMA (ice one) today. This gives elite players something a little more rather than less challenging when going for good times. Basically, health triggered mechanics are easier to properly calibrate for dps and hold up better to power creep whereas timer based ones are really only the right amount of challenging for a few players in the sweet spot. Admittedly, there ideally should usually be some combination, and this is done well in the final boss fight, but some fights, arena 7 comes to mind, are not this way. Quite simply, you can now dps break many of the mechanics in vMA. I suspect this has much to do with the much higher scores for sorc than other classes on vMA now but even a lowly magica NB, widely considered the lowest dps combination now, can break quite a few mechanics. I have completed the final boss with as low as 11k dps (It can be done with far less if you do several ghost phases) and as high as 18k. There is no comparison in difficulty.

4) There are a lot of little tweeks on each thing that matter. For instance, don't kill the second healer until the boss goes upstairs on the final fight so that a second one will not spawn (unless you fall down during crystal phase) and therefore you won't have to deal with a healer in the final phase. This way you complete by killing 2 healers, 1 crem gaurd, 3 crystals, and 1 summoner. You can ignore the summoner on the final boss's 3rd phase if your dps is high. On arena 8's 4th trash round always start with the sheild sigial immediately to avoid frequent insta-death. Many of these tweaks really matter, experience is huge. I can see how folks of even my skill level can usually complete with no deaths once they have 50 or 100 runs under their belt.

4) Man the loot is depressing. Yea, I know, what an ass this guy who got a sharpened inferno staff is to even mention this. Still, 19 total runs and I have only 2 desired weapons. I kinda wanted to mess around with some of the very OP vMA stam weapon builds. They are really what makes stam do huge things after all. Some sharpened dual wield weapons to make my stam sorc dwarf my magica builds in dps or a sharpened 2 hander to add to that already crazy high damage of crit charge (seriously, how anybody can think that think is balanced is well beyond me.) Perhaps a sharpened bow to rain down on some folks in pvp as well. I would also really like to try the double tripple proc heavy attack DK build but at 1/144 chance on the staff... Anyhow, kind of depressing to get so much junk even if you did already get what you really wanted and needed. Most of the time when I think of doing vMA I just shrug it off because the changes of getting something useful are so low and go do something with a good chance of rewards or that at least will drop me some gold.

f047ys3v3n

My vMA loot drop history for those interested. I will keep it updated.


1) no weapon
2) no weapon
Server RNG change weapon now guaranteed (was previously 1/4 chance)
3) infused resto
4) charged bow (this run was my magica sorc)
Wrothgar event, double vMA loot
5) Infused resto, Defending lightning stave
6) Decisive dagger Sharpened inferno (yep, I got it, did a little dance had a drink, yelled to everyone I know and was as happy as I have ever been in game)
7) Powered sword / infused sheild, Infused resto
8) Charged lighting stave, Nirnhoned resto
9) Infused bow, Charged mace / impen sheild
10) Powered resto, Infused mace / impen sheild
11) precise resto, Nirnhoned Maul
12) Sharpened sword / reinforced shield, charged bow
13) Infused battle axe (2h), Precise bow
14) Charged Battle axe, Sharpened Dagger (hell's yea)
15) Infused bow, Sharpened mace / Impen shield
16) Nirnhoned greatsword, Sharpened tank sword / divines shield
17) Infused dagger, Nirnhoned Maul
18) Precise Dagger, Precise Inferno
Wrothgar event ends, back to 1x drops
19) Charged bow, Precise bow (this was the gold weekly reward for the run, yay I made the boads 440k cutoff)
20) Defending mace / divines sheild, Decisive Greatsword (weekly drop 420k cutoff)
21) (I got flawless conqueror on this run) Sharpened bow, decisive sword / nirn sheild, arcane winterborn pendant (weekly 443k cut)
22) Charged bow, sharp resto (weekly 360k cut)
23) Sharpened resto (ran my vampire kajjit NB, ouch)
24) Maul Infused, Charged bow (weekly 398cut, 519k no death)
25) Lightning stave decisive, Infused dagger arcane signet of succession (weekly 420k cut)
26) Sharpened greatsword, (weekly Sharpened axe, robust winterborn pendant. Hell of a week, my two last stam weapons.)
27) Sharpened Axe (yep, 2 in a row), (precise resto, arcane permafrost neck)
28) Nirnhoned ice staff, (Defending bow, arcane ring of the hunt)
29) Infused great sword, (435k cut, decisive mace, rein shield, healthy para band)
30) Charged maul, Nirnhoned mace / Infused sheild (Weekly)
2/6/2017, Housing drops, vMA now yeilds an argonian behemoth trophy drop rates also changed to "individual weapons" rather than "weapon classes" Nobody knows exactly what that means percentage wise. Looks like maybe 1/100 for what you want instead of 1/144. Dual weild weapons also drop now in unmatched pairs. Leader boards also reset so I made my self #9 overall in NB which, of course, won't last.
31) Dagger charged / Dagger decisive, Bow Nirnhoned Healthy succession ring (Weekly)
32) Infused bow, Sharp resto / healthy winterborn pendant (weekly)
33) Precise resto (ran my original toon and crafter orc stam sorc for the achieve and experience)
34) Nirn Axe charged dagger, Decisive Greatsword (weekly)
35) Sharpened Shock stave, Decisive mace / Nirnhoned shield(weekly 511k cut)
36) Nirnhoned Inferno, Powered resto (weekly 511k cut)
37) Charged resto, Sharpened shock stave (weekly 507k cut)
38) Precise shock stave, Decisive resto / Healthy neck of glory (weekly 509k cut)
39) Resto Charged, Powered mace / Divines Sheild (weekly 522k cut!)
40) Decisive 2H axe (Finished my mPlar run from more than a year ago. The first run I started post progress saving)
Morrowind released, big resource and medium attacks nerfs happened.
41) Precise Bow, Powered mace / Impen Sheild / Well Fitted Hunt Shoulders (weekly no cut!)

f047ys3v3n

So my weekly leader-board run went pretty swimmingly. 507,846 score a sharpened bow, and...... 0 deaths. Yay, I got my flawless conquer title on my main mNB! I should have kept a heart rate monitor on because I think I went off the charts as soon as that final boss took a knee and I knew it was over. For those curious about the stats:

507,846k score (not even close to all time leaderboard but easily weekly)
57:38 total time
17,432 dps on the final fight
2,986 hps on the final fight
1,217 damage taken/sec on the final fight
2:28.1 time of final fight
30 spell power pots for the whole arena
~15 sigals of few of which did save my life and a few of which were because when you get to arena 9 with no deaths for only the second time you get a real hunger for sigal stew.

Close calls
Boss round of arena 2, I know, I always ride the edge on taking damage from those stupid spinning blades. I really should shield more, I ran way to close one of those hits.

Round 4 of arena 5, I pushed the mini-boss too fast and got what amounted to 2 trash pulls at once. A veil and the shield sigal barely saved me. Screen was red baby. Round 4 of arena 5 is nasty, one of the highest incoming damage per seconds in the whole of vMA and with some stuns to boot.

Round 3 of arena 7, ate a shroom, it was less groovy than you think. shield, shield, shield, shield, roll, green, phew.

Round 4 of arena 7, One bloody archer spawned right into his snipe animation and I was turned around dpsing his friend thinking I had a second. I must have been 1/100th of a second from death when I got over to bash him. I thought I was a dead duck.

Round 4 of arena 8, Man things went less then great on that mini boss and his two little friends. Things were healing, not quite dying to the dots that were supposed to kill them, and I was slowed and shielding like a fool. Of course, without the heal sigal I would have been dead. The start of that pull is a great time to take that sigal (the shield sigal is already gone at that time as it is taken the first trash pull of that round when four ranged enemies will otherwise shoot you all at once.) The mechanics of arena 8 are simple but everything hits like a mack truck and there are some interrupts. A very good round to have memorized and to sigal at key times.

Round 5 of arena 9, for some reason that huge flying meany almost killed me this time despite the shield sigal and my own shield before his knock back and fire explosion. Not sure why this was. That is my normal procedure and usually it is less dicey.

f047ys3v3n

Tried something different and did the arena on my kajitt NB that is a vampire. I was also running the atronach stone instead of theif but this was not on purpose, I just didn't notice until round 8. I ran that kajitt, a stam race, as a magic build and wow, race matters. I mean I knew race matters (lol) but mattering in the numbers in a 12 man raid that will easily complete content and mattering when it comes to actually getting content done solo do not feel the same. Despite having more regen from atro stone, 1,100 vs 840 and gobbling far more spell power pots, I still had resource issues the whole run. The reason is that lower dps from a lower magica pool, and more flame damage taken from vampire, added up to a whole lot more shielding, which also lowered dps, and significantly longer pulls which also increased resource consumption. 10% less dps on bloodspawn can actually translate into 30% dps in vMA when all that vicious cycle stuff is added into the picture. In point of fact, it was 30% less dps going from about 17k over the whole final boss fight on my typical Breton who is not a vamp run to 12k on the kajit who is.

I also watched some youtube vids today including one that was a mag NB with a really huge score. First off, I very much suspect that guy is running cheat engine. His gear should get a bit less non-crit damage than mine and a bit more crit damage. He appeared to be getting more than a bit more non-crit than me though with individual skills often hitting for far more than mine do. That discussion aside though, we will just pretend he is a player who's skills all legitimately hit harder than mine. It was very interesting to see how this much higher dps effected pulls as well. Essentially trash mobs did not typically damage him to any extent as the first would die to the ground dots left for it, the second he would immediately attack, and the third would be the only one he had to heal for. Typically, on my Breton, I have to deal with 2 out of 3 adds on a pull as the first hits the floor before the other two get to me. Today though, on the kajitt, all 3 got to take a whack. These differences matter a lot in difficulty of complete and score. That player I watched did have some very nice technique for pre-stacking buffs and ground dots that I will try to incorporate in my build next time. It was better than what I do and I have little doubt that even without the juice he would kick my butt.

Well, for what it is worth I did get the thing done I just didn't put a second toon on the weekly board which was kinda the idea I was going for. 344k is not going to stick. I guess I got a shiny title on a toon I don't play much and a sharpened restoration staff to not use. I think the more valuable lesson was one of race and the compounding effect that dps can have in isolation of almost all other factors.

SickDuck

Constantly resurrecting your own thread is not nice. Especially if you are the only one contributing to it. Hard to expect any meaningful conversation when people going through long post halfway realise it's ancient text and quit. Maybe you want to move your new findings in a fresh new discussion.

Sorry for being rude, but after reading the top 3 entries and realised the date I just lost interest to go through the rest.

f047ys3v3n

The first thing I should say here is that vMA weapons don't work now, have not worked in almost 2 months, and only Talos knows when, or if, they will work again. Unacceptable. ZOS did, after a month and a half, at least acknowledge this though. I would like to think may spamming of chat in their last live helped with this because I would like to think I matter. Who knows, vMA weapons are broke though. Currently only one person in raid will get the enchant bonus from any vMA weapon. Bad for mag dps, disastrous for stam. The enchant for bow is also depleting every tick, crazy fast, like 2 vMA rounds. For a person who had his hard won Infallible Aether gear purposefully broken back in the 1.6 update and reduced to less than the green trash drop set with which it shared a motif this is just one more insult to the endgame raider. I do not feel valued. I feel *** upon.

Here is the link to the ongoing thread about broke vMA weapons: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/324753/bug-maelstrom-destro-staff-enchant-broken-edit-all-maelstrom-weapons-broken/p1

Well, between the broke vMA weapons, the stuff to do with housing, and the fact I have been playing less I had not been in vMA for almost 2 months. Ironically, it was indirectly due to my current lack of interest in raiding that I went back in this week. I have been questing on my old main crafter orc stam sorc and it's ability to solo bosses that I cannot solo on my mNB made me think I would give it a go. I thought it would be nice to get a complete on that old toon and perhaps see things from a stam perspective.

Now, make no mistake, my stam sorc has good gear. It has gold sharp vMA weapons (which really actually now work only in vMA as it is solo, lol) as well as 5 gold hundigs and a mix of gold and purple Vicious Ophidian. Orc is kind of *** but the gear is BIS and stam sorc is well suited to vMA. I had a pretty clean complete. It was somewhere around 12-15 deaths, not all that many sigils, maybe 25 total. I had a few thoughts after this experience.

The first thing that I noticed was that a stam toon takes a lot less damage. My stam sorc only had about 2k more health than my mNB does and does not have the Breton spell resist that the mNB does but it simply does not get hit near as hard. Shots that would take my mNB to 30% health did not seem to take the sorc to even half. Maybe it is the medium armor, maybe it is the buff from hurricane, but it is a totally different experience. The stam sorc felt a little like a tank and really had a lot more time to deal with things and leeway to make mistakes.

The next thing I noticed was something I expected after looking at a few of my after action reports from my stam sorc on a world boss. After all the endless mNB heals nerfs mine does about 2k heals per second despite having 25 champ points in +healing. This is actually rather similar to a mSorc toon I also run some. This heal amount is not enough alone to keep up with vMA incoming damage most of the time. A combination of shields from the Iceheart set and cast shields are necessary to make up the difference at the cost of resources, time, and ultimately dps. The stam sorc does a little over 6k sustained heals per second on boss fights. This is from a combination of power surge, rend, and the very occasional use of vigor. This 6k is enough not only to keep up with the average vMA incoming damage but even enough to face tank crematorium gaurds with no sigils, other adds up, and sometimes even mistakes. Stam sorcs are simply forgiving in a way that no other class / resource combination I have ever played in this game is. I expected this in vMA and was not dissapointed.

A surprise I had in vMA with the stam sorc was how hard individual skills hit on a stam toon. We all know magica does more dps in raids. Well, mNB doesn't, but other magica builds do. This larger dps is very much a matter of stacking lots and lots of DOT's and group buffs. The basic magica weave, whether it be funnel, force pulse, or sweeps, isn't all that much dps though. In vMA, most stuff is dead before full DOT duration so they have limited value and your magica dps doesn't really ramp up. What I found was that the basic stam attacks were just simply more powerful. So, even though I am not well practiced, and do not do near my mNB damage with my stam sorc, I did not have dps problems. Actually, I had more dps issue running a vampire kajitt race mNB though for the achieve doing exactly what I normally do on my Breton, with her gear, than I did on the stam sorc. This astounded me. I am simply not good at my stam sorc. I really don't have a good rotation. I don't have buff trackers set up for my DOT's and buffs, and I am not so good at applying them all at the right times. My simple conclusion is that, although magica can ramp up to higher damage, stam hits harder easier, and with fewer skills.

My overall experience was definitely that the answer to the age old question of what is vMA easiest to run on is clearly stam sorc. I have now run vMA on the usual suspects, mNB, which I am amazing at, mSorc, which I got pretty good at, and stam sorc, which I am poor at. I also have to say that running vMA is not really very difficult on a stam sorc. The huge incoming heals and general tankieness are just such that you can make an awful lot of mistakes.

f047ys3v3n

I am sort of wrapping up my vMA stuff. I'm not sure how much I am going to play in the post Morrowind Heavy handed era. I don't really dig the slow unresponsive combat and I don't think ESO has enough going for it to justify both spending more money for the new content and relearning both a rotation and a weave tempo from scratch. As a medium weave player, primarily and mNB at that, none of the current stuff will really work. On to the latest vMA adventures.

I set a new personal best with that last mNB run. I broke 540k. It turns out that actually spending the money to run pots much of the time is a big boost.

I also decided that I would finish the first vMA run that I had started when they made the change that let you save progress. Yes, that is right, I had a run, the first run, sitting unfinished, one the last arena, for well over a year. It was on an mPlar and the mechanics of the final boss were very hard on an mPlar what with it being mostly melee. I had a think and here is what I came up with. It worked pretty well.

Basically, I scrapped the melee thing. mPlar actually has good ranged DOT's (they are decent ranged DPS's though lack heals in this capacity.) I compensated for the lack of heals when doing ranged crushing shock and ranged DOT damage by dropping a ritual of retribution and doing some mutagen from time to time. I also dropped breath of life from both bars. I don't know what to say about that skill except that it is a giant steaming pile of feces that also costs a mint and tricks inexperienced players into liking it. Just say no to breath. Maybe if you are in a garbage pug group doing dps and need to keep up the crappy healer. That is really the only excuse. It is basically paying 3k for what is usually 5k heals and another 5k overheals. Here were my bars:

Destro (5 julianos, 3 infal, 2 iceheart, vMA flame)
Vamp bane, blockade of fire, crushing shock, ritual of retribution, harness, comet ulti

Resto (sharp vMA resto)
Blazing spear, radiant glory, puncturing sweep, mutagen, healing ward, nova ulti

You will note that I left out purifying light. It is a great DOT with friends, but alone there isn't much damage to store up and it is the opposite of the dot one thing and do something else type play that vMA rewards. I should also note I went balls out in dps with theif stone, all spell damage glyphs and health / magic food. Without the overpriced breaths and sweeps I managed ok and when I got low I preserved the least add in a pull and channel heavied him down for resources. Sweeps might even better be replaced with Javelin for a CC that buys you time.

For most pulls you buff with mutagen and then drop spear, ritual, and wall on a portal. This makes it pretty toasty for that first enemy and you pretty much just weave at the others as they come to the bbq. In reality I didn't use sweep as I was not going for score and killing one at a time safely kiting worked well. Actually, it worked better than well. I finished that last arena without a single death and really not many sigils either. I was very surprised. It is an odd way to play a templar, more like a sorc or nb style, but it works well in vMA because vMA mechanics are basically made for sorcs and nb's. Ranged dps, passive HOTs, pre-loaded ground dots, self buffs to cast between pulls, a ranged interrupt, and major expedition are what is rewarded and these are easy to incorporate in those builds. Since the templar's DOT's are ranged can cover enough of these bases to get it done and I found it much easier than doing the usual templar face tanking sweeps thing though this is probably just because I play ranged toons almost all the time. If you are having problems getting though with your templar though I recommend the unusual build with the one caveat that, while I did find it clean, it was by no means fast.

f047ys3v3n

So, I did vMA post Morrowind and thought I should write a little to help the newbees, or those now frustrated and rage quitting. The first thing that should be noted is that, with the changes to resources, you have a lot less of them. It is very dramatic. I expect probably 2/3rds of players who could complete vMA before will not be able to do so now. As an illustration, the weekly leaderboard filled for only 1 class, sorc, the first week of the changes on PC. It has not failed to fill for any class in over a year. Here is a summary of the resource reductions.

15% cost reduction removal from CP
7% cost reduction removal from armor passives
10% regen reduction from CP
Unspecified regen reduction from changing base regen scaling from resource pool size to level
Destruction of most active ability resource returns, most notably siphoning strikes.
Nerfing of DK ulti drop passive resource return
Nerfing of redguard stam return passive.
5% cost increase for stam players
30% cost increase for vigor.
45% reduction in heavy armor resource return.

The new meta
The new general meta for sustain is to do fully charged heavy attacks to return resources. To fully sustain solo this tends to mean that just about whenever you are not applying a DOT you need to be channeling a full heavy. In raids this is less dramatic, as you have some group buffs adding support. Solo though, heavies pretty much whenever you can, in addition to full expensive potion uptime, would be pretty much the requirement if you want to have full damage gear, and food on. I guess gear is as good a place to start discussing strategy as any.

Gear: resources or power
Many folks, especially less experienced folks, will think immediately of cost reduction / regen sets like seducer, litch, or warlock. Regen jewelry glyphs, split provisions such as frothgar or potent brew might be thought of as well as use the atronach mundus stone. I do not think this is a great idea because, though you effectively get more resources with them, you also effectively get less damage per resource because your skills don't hit as hard. While you will sustain longer in a fight, the fight will also get longer because the enemies health is the same and you are doing less DPS. My experience is that, in most cases, the fight gets longer faster than your sustain getting longer. This results in you paradoxically having less resources with more resource heavy load outs. While I have not tested this out with all the different configurations, I have tried a few and found myself in worse trouble than going full out damage.

There are a lot of damage sets possible that I think have similar performance. You probably know what they are so I will only mention the two I believe are actual difference makers. For magic I recommend the Iceheart 2pc set as it casts a lot of 10k sheilds. This takes significant pressure off your defense resulting in less casts of the very expensive shield. Iceheart additionally does some AOE damage for a little icing on the cake. For stamina, Vicious Ophidian is a must. How good is this set? Well, it is not unlike having seducer and moondancer in one set. Actually, in solo play, it is a little better than seducer + moondancer. That is not an exaggeration. This set was designed back around 1.3 as a set to make stamina viable in PVE at a time that it was very weak in that capacity. Things have been greatly rebalanced since that time yet the set has not been nerfed. As such, it is now as strong as 2 BIS 5peice sets.

Classes and builds that work
While creep had slowly brought all classes and resource combinations into viability in vMA while making those well suited to the mechanics rather easy this is no longer the case. Compatibility with vMA mechanics and resource efficiency are now quite key. You really cannot afford to spam vigor on your sNB to make up for it's poor healing efficiency any more. Your healing, damage, and handling of the mechanics must now be efficient. As such, I think the order of effectiveness, from best to worst, is now sSorc, mWarden, sWarden, mNB, mSorc, mTemp, mDK, sDK, sTemp, sNB. Mind you, while I have done vMA on many of these, I have not done it on all and do not even have any Wardens. There is a good deal of guesstimation in my ratings. Warden is rated highly because it's good resource management and balance of defense and offense are exactly what vMA demands.

What to actually think about and do in vMA
First off, do not be concerned that top of the leaderboard scores only went for 601k to 598k. Those guys are not running out of resources because they are killing all bosses in less than 1 min. They don't really need to do much differently. Most of us do. The big nerf ZOS dealt out was primarily a floor drop not a ceiling lowering.

What most of us now must realize is the resource management in vMA is not a matter of tactics anymore but rather, one of strategy. I say this because there is little that you can do, in vMA, when you start to run low on resources in order to get them back. The active return abilities you used to have, like siphoning strikes, were nerfed by as much as 80%. At the same time, the mechanics of vMA were never designed with the full heavy attack in mind and, many of the adds have cc's, or heavies that will interrupt the full heavy. Since an interrupted full heavy lands in the medium range it returns no resources at all and also does low damage. A full heavy by contrast gives back somewhere in the 3-4k range of resources and actually does high damage. For the details on the exact mess of a breakdown see this thread. Many mechanics sequences in vMA also have long stretches where no full heavies are possible. You therefore cannot simply throw in a full heavy in vMA the way that you usually do in a trial. There is no tank to hold agro or healer to heal while you do it.

Instead of reacting dynamically based on your resource status, you fully plan each fight so that you enter some sequences will full resources by basically just sitting there with your finger on the left click for long periods of time during other sequences. Here are some specific examples of what this looks like:

1) In the trash pull rounds most can be done in a similar manner (a few later rounds seem to have a little different spawn rules with spawns happening earlier). Leave one ranged enemy fully alive while burning the others. You then basically just full heavy channel on that add until the next round starts to spawn or he dies. This lets you burst the first adds removing all those enemies that are going to stun and interrupt you as well as moving your incoming damage to a very low number while returning resources to your self on this last, artificially preserved, enemy. It is slower, but it works.

2) On the boss of arena 2, with the triple shielding dwemers, prepare full heavies to go off as each one unshields. This boss can get you in resource trouble if you push hard. Take it easy on this one and focus on getting a full heavy during shield transitions.

3) Arena 3 and 4 bosses have not so much health. You should be able to do them as before. This is basically necessary on arena 4's boss as any deviation from a straight burn here has always been a very bad idea requiring far more dps output to play the mechanics than to burn the boss.

4) Arena 5, the ice one, has always punished pushing hard. It does so more now. Use the time after the adds on the first two platforms are killed to full heavy the boss so that you start with full resources on each platform. Be careful not to cleave the boss too much when doing the adds. Don't push him or he will move to the next platform before you get your resources back. On the last platform burn the boss.

5) Stage up Arena 6's boss as before with just one pillar covered at the start. Don't pop that one until you get low on resources. Then pop the pillar, and full heavy the boss while down. After she gets back up but you will be good on resources to finish the fight.

6) Arena 7's fight is counter intuitive. You cannot full heavy or be very conservative on resources most of the fight as the boss will catch you and bite your ass which will both interrupt you and gravely wound you. If you try to burn you will likely run short and die. I did a few times. You must actually full heavy during the scream phase when you would really like to dig in and do some damage. In the end, you have to go through more total phases because you are doing sub optimal damage during what was the phase to do optimal damage before. It feels rather backwards.

7) Arena 8's boss can be burnt. It took me two stun phases as before though the adds did get out this time and need an interrupt.

8) The final fight is really where the difference between the elite and all others shows. The elite will burn the boss to the crystals phase without a crematorium guard spawning and do the whole thing in about 1 min so they don't run out of resources. It takes me more like 3 min. There are 7 different mechanics in this fight and many require a block, roll dodge, or movement faster than can be channeled during. There is little time to full heavy between these mechanics but you must. There is a little window after the first crematorium guard before the boss is pushed to go upstairs but you can't go too slow or a second guard will spawn as they are timed. There is also a little window after the first dodge of a skull upstairs and before the second skull and wall. Each of these windows is only good for one, maybe 2, heavies. After you go back down you must push hard and if you fall down during the crystal phase you will likely loose too many resources on the extra guard to succeed. The overall margin is very slim as the fight is long and there is little place to get back resources. I even ran shy on stamina upstairs with the new costs for block and roll dodge. In the end, I was less than 3 seconds from death when I finished the boss off. I had run out of resources and was light attacking and spamming impale hoping he would die before the guard hit me with the flames. It is a close run thing.

Probably the most important thing too keep track of in all these fights is that you really cannot afford to cast many shields. In the past, I didn't bother morphing from twisting path and funnel health to the better vMA morphs and I just shielded some. You can't really afford to shield much as a magica toon or to vigor much as a stam. You must carefully utilize your cost effective HOT's to make these push button solutions unnecessary. Further, if you are of a build that essentially requires these, like sNB, you are probably screwed. You really need a lot of cost effective defense to get things done. Along this line of thinking, you also can't afford much in the way of dodge rolls, blocks, and break free. You just can't recover from mistakes or bad RNG the way you could. You very easily run out of resources and die from what used to be minor mistakes.

General comments
All in all I find the new resource management scheme in general to be slow, unresponsive, unfun, poorly adapted to game mechanics, and of little interest to me. I have done vMA and a few trials since the changes but have unsubbed, canceled my preorder on Morrowind, and don't plan on doing much endgame PVE content in game. Doing vMA was particularly illustrative of the bad effects of the changes on game playability. I think that partially charged heavies returning decent resources might fix much of the issues and bring me back and that ending cheat engine might also go a long way as it is both hiding the magnitude of the effect of the changes and making a terribly unfair competitive landscape.

I hope these thoughts on vMA strategies help some folks as they try to readjust to things or try to initially complete this content. I also hope ZOS will make some changes before this all lands on console players heads. For what it is worth the quests in Morrowind looked pretty good and substantial when I tested them on PTS. It is just hard for any game to become a substantially better player experience than it's underlying combat system allows and this whole fully charged heavy thing is a pretty miserable combat system change.