Need help preparing for vMA grind

Anil235

I'm a CP243 Stamina Dragonknight running 2h/bow. I want to start doing vMA soon so I can get my maelstrom weapons to improve my dps, but I am having a couple of issues. First, I'll list what my stats are and what gear I'm using.

I'm running 5 pieces of purple hunding's rage, all divines/infused with purple stamina enchants. I am using the stamina recovery mundus stone with around 1100 stamina recovery. When buffed, my 2h bar is 2900 weapon damage and my bow bar is 2600 weapon damage. My 2h bar is: Critical Rush, Rally, Executioner, Dizzying Swing, and Venomous Claw. My bow bar is: Poison Injection, Volatile Armor, Endless Hail, Acid Spray (I swap this for something else sometimes), and Resolving Vigor. I die extremely quickly and I can't seem to do enough dps to the bosses while keeping the adds in check. I also am running 3 pieces of agility with bad traits and non-Kuta stamina recovery/weapon damage enchants.

I'm having a large problem here: I need gold to buy and craft better gear so I need to farm higher level trials and dungeons, but my DPS is maxing out at 12k with a dw/bow build so therefore no reasonable trial group will take me. This means that I should try to get maelstrom weapons from vMA so I can actually improve my DPS to run trials, but I can't do vMA without better crafted gear. I can't make gold nor can I grind gear.

I use health/stam food and weapon critical/health/stamina potions. My weapon critical is around 40%. What else can I do to improve my gear? I didn't notice much of a difference going from store-bought viper gear to crafted Hunding's Rage. Aside from grinding out more CP, what can I do to get my DPS to at least 20k without sacrificing sustainability or other stats? Any help is appreciated.

rhapsodious

The most important thing is the need to get a rotation down. I don't have any Maelstrom weapons (although I do have full gold gear and am at CP cap) and I pull 12-14k baseline. Can get up to 20-23 if the enemy isn't/I'm not ping-ponging around or constantly needing to spam Vigor.

A reasonable trial guild should take a 12k dps who can follow directions into nSO where you can sleepwalk through most of the enemies and get stuff worth selling, then you can gold up your gear.

I'd do health/stam recovery food instead. The sustain is way more important IMO than an extra 5k pool. The food you want is Orzoga's Tripe Trifle Pocket or whatever it's called. It's the one that looks like a toaster strudel.

Also, use the sigils! Don't be stingy. When you can beat VMA with the sigils, then you can wean yourself off of them.

AntMan100673

You could use thief mundus for increased critical but I don't know if that would cause you issues with your stamina recovery.

There are other ways to make gold, you can make several thousand a day just from stealing/pickpocketing & writs without too much effort. You're not going to go from your current gear to all gold with gold enchants and robust agility jewellery in 5 minutes but if you just improve one piece at a time you'll improve gradually to the point you can do vma and trials

susmitds

I suggest your CP to at least 350. vMA is pretty hard other wise.

DRXHarbinger

Cp is a little low. General rule is around 300 but depends how beasty you are. Gold glyphs are pretty much a must though, my weapon damage is over 4k buffed with rally and regen 1400 with 70% crit. You will have a hard time. But with practice you'll still do it.

de_la_Dude

I have around 350CP and gave it my first go this weekend on my stamblade. Its still very hard with CP160 (mostly) gold gear - but thats the point

I made it to stage five before I decided to pause the attempt.

Some tips that I found helped me a lot:

• Potions are not optional; use weapon power pots on cool down
• DoT up-time is crucial; the rounds I kept 100% up-time on my bow dots went much smoother
• Vigor in anticipation of damage, not in reaction to it
• Take frequent breaks. Walking away for just 10m helped me avoid frustration and instead learn from my deaths
• Power ups are not optional on your fist run through; they are very strong and using the right one at the right time will get you through the narliest parts
• Watch playthroughs to learn the harder mechanics

Practice your weaving and rotations and tracking your buff uptime. CPs and gear can only take you so far. You need to know your build inside and out in order to properly react to the challenges of the arena. A lot of my deaths were a result of not refreshing buffs/DoTs/HoTs or being on the wrong bar at the wrong time. Its important to try to learn from every death. If you can do that you'll make it through eventually and you'll come out a better player in all content as a result. The potion guzzling does get expensive though.. thats ultimately why I paused the attempt

DRXHarbinger

Don't bother with tristats. I stopped using them ages ago. I didn't actually ever bother using them anyway until I cleared it as alchemy was still level 10.

Wrecking_Blow_Spam

Potions are optional not a requirement IMO. I did it in my first try using only about 20 magicka trash(found/looted) pots.
No special tri pots, spell power etc.