Whoah, boy.. Where to start?
My build is a vr16 wood elf Templar stamina build. I've got 557 cp, and can complete all other end game content with so much ease. I can solo all normal dungeons, and some of the vet dungeons. However when I started off in maelstrom I learned a couple important things. Zenimax doesn't care about fixing bugs, and there are some major walls in here for stamina builds. But with much head banging I've found ways to overcome a lot of them.
I'm using 5 pc nightmothers gaze, 2 Lekis maces sharpened, or sharpened bow on my dps bar, and a 2h sword on my buff bar. 2pc/kenai and 2pc engine guardian, 3 pc healthy jewelry. Warrior Mundus stone.
Arena 1: this is pretty simple, I just use cleansing ritual/vigor/dual wield for sustain, and dps with caltrops and jabs. The boss has a hard hitting range attack that can easily be healed through. I just grabbed the power sigil and burned him down.
Arena 2: This one is more annoying than hard,.. The spinning blades can be paused by pulling the levers. The electricity pool in the middle I found can heal you when you stand In it, but the duration is too short to use it. Definitely would avoid this temptation as once you start getting heals you get blasted back, stunned, and take heavy damage. The boss was simple, 3 centurions spawn, and will shield themselves after taking some damage. After you damage Each one, one at a time all 3 start attacking at once. My strategy was to use poison injection on them, and leave caltrops in the middle. I'd run from one side of the room pulling the levers to stop the blades, the centurions move to the middle, and I dps them. Focus on the weakest first and they're pretty easy.
Arena 3: This one was tougher, but I could heal through most of the damage jousting purifying ritual/vigor on my Dw bar. The stranglers are important to kill since they slow you and that's a definite Nono here. When the wamasu spawned, I ignored it until the adds were killed, then I he became an easy fight, only interrupted by having to kill stranglers. Same thing with lamia queen, I took defensive sigil, dealt with the adds, then took power sigil and focused on boss. I just kept behind her, and killed stranglers as they spawn. If I took too much damage I'd heal up while moving to another island. Dodge roll cancelling vigor is important here, I'd get that strategy down before going further. Even jumping by mistake may make or break your attempts.
Arena 4: too easy! Caltrops and arrow barrage on npc spawn portals killed the adds very quickly. It took some getting used to learning where those portals were, but once there I got to the boss quickly. The boss was hard at first, but I started using a more aggressive strategy and it became simple. I used my Dw bar/cleansing ritual setup for the fattest self heals I could make, and stayed on his rump. I dps do through the lightning, staying in the green circle at his feet picking up sigil so as we went around the room. When he turned fire I'd be just behind him still dpsing. The adds that spawned, often wound up under the boss and died as well. Maintaining cleansing ritual, vigor in my rotation kept me alive.
Arena 5: HOLY ADDS BATMAN! The first 3 rounds was nothing but caltrops, arrow barrage, and jabs. I died a couple times, but it wasn't that bad. Round 4 is when things Got tough, I had to learn where the Giants spawned, and burned them as fast as I could. That made it much easier for me. The boss I found was very biased toward stamina users, and the attacks are crap. I spent hours here because the boss would nonstop spam fear along with his deadly frontal aoe. Sometimes over and over and over again without pause. I actually almost broke my controller over this. This was as much fun as that boss in demon souls that takes your levels. The mechanics were solid, and the fight was fun, but the absolute randomness in his attacks really made the defeat feel more like a luck progression than anything. I literally spent hours praying to rangesus that he would just stop spamming fear/shatter whenever I'd crit Rush to a troll. For a strategy, I had to plan out which platform I killed him on, because this being my first time in maelstrom, I needed those sigils! Ideally I wanted the platform with the defensive/power sigil to be the last one. I found the adds spawn in progression to his health, so I'd learn when the adds would come in, and where, and be ready for them. If you run out of stamina, you can literally walk in circles around the boss until you're ready for the next adds. Soon as he was 35-40% health, the last set of adds spawn. Just grab that defensive and power sigil, and burn him to the ground. Ignore the adds, they won't kill you, promise. Every guide I read failed to mention that he also breaks the last platform at like 15% health, so as soon as those adds spawn, you need to end the fight quickly.
Arena 6: this is my favorite, I loved everything about this arena. There's some big guys that spawn, I ignored them and focused on killing hoar era near the totems, then I'd stacks aoes, drop my dawnbreaker, and burn. The 4th wave 2 lurchers spawned at the end, but I used the totems to stun them, not too bad. The boss fight is chaos, but extremely doable. You need to focus here, if you can't, take a break and come back later. The biggest threat was that stupid little spider, I tag him with poison injection/caltrops until he died. I cannot stress how important vigor is here, the entire fight I was getting hit for 6.5k d,g from the boss, purifying ritual, rally, vigor all the time. The main strat for here here was to kill the we spinners, and kite hoarvers to the totems. All I needed was poison injection, vigor, purifying ritual, and rally. You can 1 shot the spinners with a medium/poison injection. A lurcher comes out at I think half health, Ingrabbed the defensive sigil and killed it. The only enemy in this fight is concentration. After the ring hell of the last arena, seeing deaths here were actually my fault was very soothing. I think I got the boss on my 3rd or 4th try.
Arena 7: WHAT IN THE HELL ZOS? the first 2 rounds are easy, defensive sigil for the archers, and they go by-by. They hit very hard and use taking aim. More annoying than hard. For the trolls, just procing kena and jabbing them with my maces made light work of them. For round 3 I used a bow, since the wamasu has powerful slows and aoes. I just used caltrops and poison injection here. Easy. Wave 4 has a lot more archers, the first 2 spawns Have an archer each, I used binding javelin to subdue them quickly. The 3rd wave has 3 archers, I just grabbed the defensive sigil and they practically killed themselves. Two trolls were the door prize for killing the archers, so I grabbed the power and haste sigil, and burned one down ASAP. I tried using the bow since I still had it equipped from round 3 wamasu and beat my head in. Honestly the 2 sharpened maxed dropped them much quicker than aoe stacking. Hard fight became easy. The boss was horrid. Everything I hate about eso was compiled into arena 7. The tendency to favor specific builds here is astonishing, the rng here is a cascading tornado of intolerable bullcrap. It feels like they put so little thought into this stage, honestly. The add phases made me think the boss would be easier, at least with arena 5 I knew not to expect miracles by round 3. After 10 hours of mindlessly beating my head against this boss Infinally found a reliable strategy for us poor stamina classes going for a complete. I dropped caltrops and ran in a circle around the room using poison injection. I actually didn't prioritize the sommoners so much with this strat. If Insaw one, I'd tag it with a heavy ark along side poison injection and go about my business. My highest priority was killing one of the mages asap. Their teleport is glitchy as hell and it wAs almost always a killing blow for me. Kill one quick, and you have no issues. Inside the bubble I just used poison injection on boss, and rebuffed. Soon as the boss was half health, poison injection did its magic and his health dropped like a rock. Caltrops helped in killing the minders health while the boss screamed, it'd be half health by the time the scream was over.
This arena was so bad I feel like suggesting a few improvements since ZOS welched on bone shield coming this next update. The mushroom explosions summonses spam should have more distance, they form very large, immediate walls of instant death. If you're not lucky these will kill you half the time you crit Rush to a summoner. Adopt the same strat here with portals in wgt and you'll be okay. Mushrooms spawning I. Summoner bubbles, really? They should also fix up the teleport explosion from the minders, at 14k dmg a pop these are wAy too deadly to have a broken telegraph. This fight was just way to hateful toward stamina classes, and needs a few minor tweaks so that everyone has a fair shot. The rng in this fight almost made me given up completely. I did like the fact the boss hits with enrage damage when you killed a minder, it was the ONLY reason I had to pay attention to his attacks. Nothing about it is hard, once you get a strategy, it's just random. Slotting engine guardian here helped me a thousandfold. My final complaint is the time it takes to get to the minder before the boss screams. At this point if there is even a single spit pool on the ground, and you clip it, you take the enrage damage and die. If you have to detour at all. And you probably will because of the enraged damage, the boss will scream and you will die. I think adding another 2 seconds to the timer here will remove so much rng and frustration out if the fight to make it fun.
Arena 8: I like this one, prioritize the kyngold fire spinners and you'll live a lot longer, binding javelin and shield bashes will save you a lot of deaths. Aoe damage and 5pc nightmothers excels here. The boss was not as easy for me as videos made it look, it takes practice. Poison injection, crit Rush, and arrow barrage were my best friends. I'd start on the speed sigil, barrage/poison inject, and crit Rush. Repeat in the far sigil, kill the fire add, and do the next one. You really have to be fast, if not you'll encounter a firewall mechanic that gets spammed throughout the fight, and it kills. Id save the power sigil for when the boss was 50% health and just execute him. My biggest killer here was the bosses chains, it got me hurt way too often, and most my mates that farm visa didn't even know he had chains. Just something to watch out for. This boss isn't hard, just don't over do it on the adds. With a little rehearsal this fight got easier and easier.
I'm currently about to enter arena 9, the last one before my complete. I'll update after I've cleared it. For those stamina users out there wanting to reroll a sore for vmsa, you can do this. You don't need ultra dps (you add that in ass you get better with each boss). All you really need is a strategy that works. If you're not getting past the boss/round then your strategy isn't working
try something new. Once you got it and you can kill the boss, you can slowly start adding more dps. I can absolutely face roll any dungeon in this game, but my first mistake in vmsa was over concentrating on dps. Figure out what will get you past the boss, and when you get better at it, then find new ways to squeeze in dps. I must say though, the faster you can kill stuff in eso, the easier it is to stay alive, but in vmsa I've only had issues with 'burn' methods. People in the videos do it because they've done that fight over and over again. They can burn the boss because they figured out what works to get past it and they improve with little tweaks here and there. I've had a lot of fun in maelstrom so far, and I've never wanted to beat myself against it. But the challenge I've had with this place, it has rapidly grown on me.
If you read this wall of text, thank you for your time, and good, luck in vmsa. ( We stamina builds can't let all the magics builds hog the title now can we