VMA Theatre of Despair

gamerguy757

Ok please someone help me for the love Talos or any of the Nine you believe in....
I can not freaking beat the last boss on VMA. I can't even get past the first Daedroth spawn. I'm using the staple Sorc with Julianos and Molag lena and torugs and everything that you read about online. How do I manage the daedroth, the channeled attack, and the healers? Like how am I supposed to run around the whole arena interrupting everything? Someone told me use crushing shock instead of force pulse, but if i leave the arena, it'll clear my progress. And during one round I got up to the second level and destroyed the crystals and my character just stood there motionless. He wasn't snared or CC'ed or anything. He just stood there. Then I got hit with Soul Churn for 30K damage and i'm like "Wasn't I supposed to get knocked down?"
WILL SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME?! I'M SO CLOSE TO BEATING THIS STUPID THING!!

And ZOS, please tell me...what nightmares did you have as children that gave birth to this arena? Like HOLY COW...

Molec

I do it this way:

Medium weave to crushing shock on the boss when he spawns until he teleports for the first time (he is usually 85-90% health), once he has teleported he needs to be interrupted due to his green skull channel and during this attack the healer will be spawned (ignore healer for now). Continue to attack the boss with the medium weave to crushing shock until he teleports again. At this point he will begin to cast his green skull knock down CC so you wait until he begins to cast and then dodge roll, as you are avoiding this the first Daedroth spawns.When it spawns buff power surge and hardened ward and OVERLOAD THE FIRE BREATHING MONSTER INTO OBLIVION If he agros and starts the fire breath sheild through it (spamming 2-3 times if needed) you should kill it in 4-6 overload light attacks (and you should use it on every Daedroth from now on), once the Daedroth is down focus on the boss using the crushing shock weave tactic until he is at 70% then he will teleport onto the platform above, kill the healer and take the clanfear ghost to the blue glowing pad and kill it then teleport upstairs.

On the platform the boss will launch the CC skull at you so you must dodge this (watch the boss for animation cues) during this there are also lava rocks from the environment that will stun and stack damage so you must stay away from these and the boss will also attempt to knock you off the platform; to avoid this you need to look for the stone sheild with a green glow that is traveling around the center of the upper platform and stand infront of it to avoid the bosses explosion. During this chaos you have the 3x 225k health crystals to nuke down, I use overload on 2x and finish the third with crushing shock weaves to preserve overload for downstairs (500ulti works well from)

Once the crystals are destroyed the boss will knock you off the platform (you can also jump for better positioning), when downstairs grab the health sigil and overload the daedroth whilst watching the boss as he will green skull channel you (interrupt). There will now be yellow ghosts for you to collect (ensure you get them) as well as the summoning witches (rune prison works well on these under high pressure situations), kill the witch and focus on boss watching for his knock down cc (dodge roll) grab the defense sigil and speed buff anytime down here until you have collected 3x yellow ghosts. One the ghosts are collected proceed to the power sigil, activate overload, buff power surge, take the power sigil and then use the spectral explosion to stun everything then NUKE! if all goes to plan the boss should die here.

I still haven't got a Maelstrom weapon lol

LadyNalcarya

gamerguy757 wrote: »

but if i leave the arena, it'll clear my progress

No, you will only lose leaderboard score in this case... But on a sorc you need ~1 hour run to get on leaderboard anyway. You can still teleport outside the arena, morph your skill and get full overload.
This boss has a specific pattern - he would always shoot that big skull projectile after the teleport, if he is close to you after teleport he will do an explosive aoe, if he's far away, he will start shaking his staff (that's when you need to interrupt him).
So the only thing you need to do is to learn his pattern... And you can kill crem guards with overload to make things easier.

gamerguy757

@Molec see that sounds excellent but the problem is he spawns the healer AND the Daedroth at the same time so I'm Overloading the daedroth, (takes me around 4 hits to knock one out) but in the time I get Skulled then burned and I have no Stamina left because i had to run across the map to interrupt him. What do I do?
And @KoshkaMurka Leaderboard i could careless about. I've been at this VMA since 7am this morning. its 1pm now. I've been on this boss since 10am. Three hours of nonstop dying

LadyNalcarya

Also after the crystal phase there will be summoners - like at round 4, and yellow ghosts. If you wont miss any ghosts (I recommend using lightning form for extra speed), you will be able to stun crem guard and the boss when you catch the 3rd one. Be careful, the boss enrages if he catches 3 of these ghosts.
If youre having stamina issues, craft or buy some tri-stat potions.
Good luck!

LadyNalcarya

gamerguy757 wrote: »

so I'm Overloading the daedroth, (takes me around 4 hits to knock one out) but in the time I get Skulled then burned and I have no Stamina left

Just keep an eye on the boss - if he teleported, prepare to dodge.

Molec

gamerguy757 wrote: »

@Molec see that sounds excellent but the problem is he spawns the healer AND the Daedroth at the same time so I'm Overloading the daedroth, (takes me around 4 hits to knock one out) but in the time I get Skulled then burned and I have no Stamina left because i had to run across the map to interrupt him. What do I do?
And @KoshkaMurka Leaderboard i could careless about. I've been at this VMA since 7am this morning. its 1pm now. I've been on this boss since 10am. Three hours of nonstop dying

Use purple food buffs and tri pots here for this boss. You can leave the arena for a brief time without it resetting (5 mins max to be safe) I updated my post. You should start spamming Hardened Ward if you aren't already during the high pressure phases of the deadroth, the healer can be left as they cause little problem compared to the daedroth and heals very little HP to the boss as well.

LadyNalcarya

Molec wrote: »

gamerguy757 wrote: »

@Molec see that sounds excellent but the problem is he spawns the healer AND the Daedroth at the same time so I'm Overloading the daedroth, (takes me around 4 hits to knock one out) but in the time I get Skulled then burned and I have no Stamina left because i had to run across the map to interrupt him. What do I do?
And @KoshkaMurka Leaderboard i could careless about. I've been at this VMA since 7am this morning. its 1pm now. I've been on this boss since 10am. Three hours of nonstop dying

Use purple food buffs and tri pots here for this boss. You can leave the arena for a brief time without it resetting (5 mins max to be safe) I updated my post.

Well, with TG dlc they added save feature so you can leave arena and come back at any time.

Paulington

https://youtu.be/uHzr7kQycbs

That's how I did it with a PS4 controller so I did it "easymode" by using Overload from the start. Once you do things in the right order it becomes pretty easy. Nuke boss, go to him (don't sprint, just run) and bash, bash healer if needed or just nuke healer by which time the Daedroth will be up, overload Daedroth and continue to nuke boss.

Molec

KoshkaMurka wrote: »

Molec wrote: »

gamerguy757 wrote: »

@Molec see that sounds excellent but the problem is he spawns the healer AND the Daedroth at the same time so I'm Overloading the daedroth, (takes me around 4 hits to knock one out) but in the time I get Skulled then burned and I have no Stamina left because i had to run across the map to interrupt him. What do I do?
And @KoshkaMurka Leaderboard i could careless about. I've been at this VMA since 7am this morning. its 1pm now. I've been on this boss since 10am. Three hours of nonstop dying

Use purple food buffs and tri pots here for this boss. You can leave the arena for a brief time without it resetting (5 mins max to be safe) I updated my post.

Well, with TG dlc they added save feature so you can leave arena and come back at any time.

It's a helpful feature however the save feature will reset you to the beginning of your current stage, I'm referring to leaving the arena and returning within a time frame that will not cause the reset so the OP can collect supplies ect..

gamerguy757

@Paulington you're the second person I've seen using a clan fear instead of bound aegis. Why is that?

LadyNalcarya

Molec wrote: »

KoshkaMurka wrote: »

Molec wrote: »

gamerguy757 wrote: »

@Molec see that sounds excellent but the problem is he spawns the healer AND the Daedroth at the same time so I'm Overloading the daedroth, (takes me around 4 hits to knock one out) but in the time I get Skulled then burned and I have no Stamina left because i had to run across the map to interrupt him. What do I do?
And @KoshkaMurka Leaderboard i could careless about. I've been at this VMA since 7am this morning. its 1pm now. I've been on this boss since 10am. Three hours of nonstop dying

Use purple food buffs and tri pots here for this boss. You can leave the arena for a brief time without it resetting (5 mins max to be safe) I updated my post.

Well, with TG dlc they added save feature so you can leave arena and come back at any time.

It's a helpful feature however the save feature will reset you to the beginning of your current stage, I'm referring to leaving the arena and returning within a time frame that will not cause the reset so the OP can collect supplies ect..

Yeah it surely doesnt reset a few minutes... At least last time I got dced and couldnt get back in game for a few minutes (was getting a message that Idont have valid internet connection), restarted the game and the progress was saved, I even got a score (it was screwed though because of the time loss).

Molec

KoshkaMurka wrote: »

Molec wrote: »

KoshkaMurka wrote: »

Molec wrote: »

gamerguy757 wrote: »

@Molec see that sounds excellent but the problem is he spawns the healer AND the Daedroth at the same time so I'm Overloading the daedroth, (takes me around 4 hits to knock one out) but in the time I get Skulled then burned and I have no Stamina left because i had to run across the map to interrupt him. What do I do?
And @KoshkaMurka Leaderboard i could careless about. I've been at this VMA since 7am this morning. its 1pm now. I've been on this boss since 10am. Three hours of nonstop dying

Use purple food buffs and tri pots here for this boss. You can leave the arena for a brief time without it resetting (5 mins max to be safe) I updated my post.

Well, with TG dlc they added save feature so you can leave arena and come back at any time.

It's a helpful feature however the save feature will reset you to the beginning of your current stage, I'm referring to leaving the arena and returning within a time frame that will not cause the reset so the OP can collect supplies ect..

Yeah it surely doesnt reset a few minutes... At least last time I got dced and couldnt get back in game for a few minutes (was getting a message that Idont have valid internet connection), restarted the game and the progress was saved, I even got a score (it was screwed though because of the time loss).

I had Stage9 Final Boss reset in less than 10 minutes the other day which annoyed the life out of me I dc'd and when I returned I was Stage 9 Round1. It was only a guide to ensure it doesn't reset for you.

gamerguy757

Well unfortunately i took around 7 minutes to respect everything (I put more points into the Fighter's Guild passives. All the monsters in VMA are Daedra so with those passives I'll get 10% more damage?) and the game reset my progress. ALL THE WAY TO THE LAST BOSS AND ITS GONE. I NEED A SHOULDER TO CRY ON PLEASE.
I respecced to Crushing Shock to interrupt the bosses. The difference in Damage is negligible. Any more tips please? ANYTHING. The other stages (beside Frozen Blood and the Poison one) are pretty simple.

Samphaa

Start the fight off

Dodge his first skull he shoots at you

He will teleport, if he teleports to you and does the big red ring it's a right pain as he'll then start to do his necrotic swarm crap as the daedroth spawns.

If he doesn't teleport to you, go to him and bash him instantly, don't sprint as you'll burn your stamina. As soon as you've bashed him, try and take the healer down before the daedroth spawns, if you don't it doesn't really matter, but it helps. I usually slot boundless storm and streak instead of double barring clannfear for the last boss.

I generally try not to waste my overload on the first daedroth. Just crushing shock weave whilst stacking hardened ward. If you kill him, great, if not, you haven't wasted any overload, and can start again, you'll need it later on. Pick up the healing sigil if you need to.

The boss will teleport as you're fighting the first daedroth, when you see him do this he's about to shoot another skull at you, dodge roll it.

Once the daedroth is dead, burn the boss and get him to 70% asap.

Take the clannfear over to the lit up portal and kill it, use the portal to go upstairs.

I haven't tested to see if what I'm about to write in the next few line actually works but if you take each crystal down until it's about to be destroyed, the wall that you're ment to hide behind does not speed up. I usually take each crystal down individually, and by the time the 3rd wall is up, you need boundless storm movement speed or you'll burn through your stamina trying to sprint and catch up to it.

During this phase it is absolutely essential that you look at the boss, not as in face your character to him but be aware of what hes doing. He will shoot skulls at you and knock you off, if you're lucky you can cc break it and stay up but the single most important thing is to constantly have 1 eye on the boss. I couldn't get this into my head the first time I did it and it cost me alot of deaths.

When the 3rd crystal is destroyed the boss will knock you off into the lava, slap a hardened ward on and pick up the haste sigil if you need to. He'll do his channeled necrotic swarm as soon as you get back down. Bash him as soon as you can, don't sprint to him or you'll get there with no stam and wonder why you can't interrupt him. I'm pretty sure as soon as you bash him he'll start charging up another skull to shoot at you, make sure you have eyes on him and dodge roll it.

Start collecting the gold ghosts that appear, try your hardest not to let the boss get even a single ghost as the fight becomes quite a bit harder.

Once you have 3 ghosts, wait for the daedroth to spawn whilst still doing damage to the boss, 90% of the time the portal for the daedroth will spawn as you pick up the last ghost, if it doesn't hold onto the spectral explosion until you see him appear.

Activate spectral explosion and turn overload on, burn the daedroth fast and get him out of the way, also kill the summoner in the middle who is trying to spawn the bone colossus. Pick up the power AND defense sigil at this point. The power one obviously helps with damage and the defense sigil will reflect his necrotic swarm back at him so you don't need to run over and bash and can casually burn his face off with overload.

I usually slot endless fury on my Overload bar so you must make sure you don't burn through your overload and then can't execute.

I'm sure I've missed something but that's all I can think off atm. Good luck man, sh*ts hard first time. Hopefully you'll get something you want.

Forgot to add, switch to tri pots and if you've done a respec and have crushing shock, ignore the bash parts and hit him once with that, crushing shock makes this fight so much easier.

Kas

For the first phase:

• start the boss with full (non-ulti) dps - for my build this means lighting field up and close range with lightning armor spamming force pulse weaves. (block/dodge the one knock-back bolt)
• let him port once and interrupt (crushing shock or walk up to him. i walk up to him, using force pulse for a long time now), at that time healer and deadroth spawn for me and my damage numbers
• (OPTIONAL: turn on overload)
• kill the healer
• kill the deadroth (depending on damage you have to block/dodge one of the bosses knock-back bolts). With optimized sorc damage, you can kill the deadroth before he casts this bolt, with overload you can easily do it, see the posted video for how much time there is with overload
• (turn off overload if you activated it earlier)

With good damage this brings you into the second phase already, with bad damage you have to repeat it for another round and always watch out for the boss teleport (following by the attack you need to interrupt) and his knock-back bolt. I don't know the timing by heart if you need more than one round.



Bonus:

for the second phase you have to deal with 1 knock-back bolt, the channelled explosion where you have to hide behind the moving wall and afterwards always two bolts and then the explosion. If you should ever fall down, always active overload, this is otherwise the most tricky situation.

for the third phase, prioritize interrupting the channel over collecting the golden ghosts over anything else. if you collect all ghost, you can always use the synergy when a deadroth spawns. always kill add with higher priority than damage boss (unless you want to squeeze out more than 460k points). since this is your first run, you might also want to use sigils. eventually use the reflect one. going from there it should still be ghosts > boss damage unless you know you'll finish him quickly.

Keep in mind that dealing with everythign that's going on is quite a challenge in the beginning, but if you do, his actual HP is a joke. If you reflect and don't have to interrupt the channel anymore, you can sometimes take down 25% of boss health within a few seconds

Paulington

gamerguy757 wrote: »

@Paulington you're the second person I've seen using a clan fear instead of bound aegis. Why is that?

Well this is a very old video and at the time we were still learning at the time so I used a Clannfear to take some aggro off of me.

Nowadays though I just use a full PvE setup with double Molag Kena etc. Clannfear just makes it a little easier as it takes some damage off you. .

gamerguy757

OK cool. So you would recommend the interrupting Crushing Shock? Also, do the Fighter's Guild passives help the DPS a bit? I mean, everything is pretty much undead/Daedra right?
Man, its so inconsistent. Sometimes i can one-shot weave the adds in the last stage, and sometimes it takes me forever.
Right now, my gear is 5 piece julianos, 2 Kena, 3 Willpower, all gold, all enchanted, two torugs swords (nirnhoned. should i have gone precise?). I have around 63% crit with Thief mundus. i screwed up and didn't make all armor divines.

AOECAPS

I left for 2 min and had it reset when I was on stage 9 boss fight tried the next day got to stage 6 and was just burnt out

Valrien

gamerguy757 wrote: »

@Paulington you're the second person I've seen using a clan fear instead of bound aegis. Why is that?

@gamerguy757 Aggro management and easy healing.

Valrien

gamerguy757 wrote: »

OK cool. So you would recommend the interrupting Crushing Shock? Also, do the Fighter's Guild passives help the DPS a bit? I mean, everything is pretty much undead/Daedra right?
Man, its so inconsistent. Sometimes i can one-shot weave the adds in the last stage, and sometimes it takes me forever.
Right now, my gear is 5 piece julianos, 2 Kena, 3 Willpower, all gold, all enchanted, two torugs swords (nirnhoned. should i have gone precise?). I have around 63% crit with Thief mundus. i screwed up and didn't make all armor divines.

Yes, Crushing Shock. Also ALWAYS take the FG passives. They help so much in just about everything.

Try this bar setup:

1. Crushing Shock, Crystal Fragments, Elemental Drain, Bound Aegis, Inner Light, Shooting Star

2. Hardened Ward, Power Surge, Mages' Wrath, " ", " ", Power Overload

3. " ", " ", Liquid Lightning, " ", " ", " "

For a safer build, put a Resto on the back and replace Wrath with Healing Ward, then swap BA for Clannfear, then use Energy Overload instead of Power Overload. If the balls-to-the-wall DPS build won't work for you the more defensive approach most certainly would.

DRXHarbinger

News just in. Been tested today. Succession set is superior to Julianos. Purely on the basis on your weave is so much harder (90% of arena combat) the crystals go down faster and on the shock rotation you overload a crap load more with Kena procs.

gamerguy757

If you use Succession, doesn't that take away the critical ratings? I mean, the build uses and relies on crit for healing and dps.
Man...I was able to make it all the way to Spiral Shadows with no deaths. Now I'm just terrified to go back to Theatre

DannyLV702

My first time trying to complete it I was already sleep deprived, so by the time I got to he last boss, I didn't have it in me to finish it so I gave up lol. I was to the point of forgetting what I was doing. That save feature really would have saved my ass...and my time...fml

DRXHarbinger

gamerguy757 wrote: »

If you use Succession, doesn't that take away the critical ratings? I mean, the build uses and relies on crit for healing and dps.
Man...I was able to make it all the way to Spiral Shadows with no deaths. Now I'm just terrified to go back to Theatre

It goes down to 55% if using thief and precise staff. Nothing to worry about. Give it a go if you've got a set you'll notice the difference with what is essentially a set which is mainly for staying alive until overload time. It does a *** ton of damage. ZOS did create this set for a reason and think this may well be it. Procd frags timed properly do all the healing needed as does overload.

code65536

Molec wrote: »

KoshkaMurka wrote: »

Molec wrote: »

gamerguy757 wrote: »

@Molec see that sounds excellent but the problem is he spawns the healer AND the Daedroth at the same time so I'm Overloading the daedroth, (takes me around 4 hits to knock one out) but in the time I get Skulled then burned and I have no Stamina left because i had to run across the map to interrupt him. What do I do?
And @KoshkaMurka Leaderboard i could careless about. I've been at this VMA since 7am this morning. its 1pm now. I've been on this boss since 10am. Three hours of nonstop dying

Use purple food buffs and tri pots here for this boss. You can leave the arena for a brief time without it resetting (5 mins max to be safe) I updated my post.

Well, with TG dlc they added save feature so you can leave arena and come back at any time.

It's a helpful feature however the save feature will reset you to the beginning of your current stage, I'm referring to leaving the arena and returning within a time frame that will not cause the reset so the OP can collect supplies ect..

All instances--vMA, trials, 4-man dungeons, etc.--reset 5 minutes after everyone has left that instance.

If you're going to go respec, the best way to do it is to port out, refund skill points (Elden Root is my favorite since the shrine is just a few steps from the wayshrine), and then immediately port back in. After you're back inside the vMA lobby, then you can spend the time to actually re-spend those skill points.

As for the final boss of Stage 9...

• At least for beginners, you really do want to use Crushing Shock because you will need to interrupt him during the final phase too, and there's nothing like frantically running for him, getting chewed on by his channel, and then running right into a white ghost that does 9K of damage to you.
• Don't be afraid to use sigils! Though they aren't quite as useful for an overloading sorc, the defense sigil is still a game-changer. I highly recommend that people trying to get their first clear grab the defense sigil right when the boss teleports away and starts the channel near the start of the round. Once you have the defense sigil, do not interrupt him--his channel will be reflected right back at him, so not only are you immune, but you are also doing lots of extra DPS against him. This makes the first phase much easier (esp. if you don't have a lot of overload due to constantly wiping and restarting the round). The important thing at this point is getting past that part and getting practice with the crystal phase and with the final phase. You can worry about doing this fight without sigils after you've had a few clears and have had enough practice with all the precise choreography needed for this stage.

gamerguy757

What I normally did was after the first teleport, grabbed the health vigil to help with the Daedroth. I didn't know the Defense vigil reflected his channel...i read it didn't lol.

Ariisen

http://xboxdvr.com/gamer/aRiisen/video/15466384

Pretty much how I do it.

Destro: Crushing Shock, Hardened Ward, Crystal Frag, Bound Aegis, Innerlight ULT: Ice Comet
DW: Liquid Lightining, Mage's Wrath, Power Surge, Bound Aegis, Innerlight ULT: Energy Overload
Overload: Liquid Lightning, Hardened Ward, Boundless Storm, Bound Aegis, Innerlight

Bad case of sigil spam during that run but I was going for Flawless, so...
The sigil of defense on the first Crematorial Guard makes everything easier.

Bfish22090

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkV8Oyc1FAQ

gamerguy757

@Ariisen you just made me cry lol. I had no idea the defense vigil blocked all those shots. Seriously? Bruh kill me now. Are you rocking the classic julianos/kena/torugs/willpower?

Ariisen

gamerguy757 wrote: »

@Ariisen you just made me cry lol. I had no idea the defense vigil blocked all those shots. Seriously? Bruh kill me now. Are you rocking the classic julianos/kena/torugs/willpower?

Yeah, classic setup.
For the easiest run possible, sigil of defense when he teleports, overload while he shoots (to avoid interrupting him) and overload the first crematorial, a few crushing weaves and he goes up.