How Do You Survive In VMA As A Stam Sorc?!

wellerrocks

How?!

I'm so used to spamming shields as a mag sorc (I still can't do VMA on that)

I'm on the 3rd arena of VMA I just keep dying? Yes I have crit surge with hail hurricane etc but I just drop dead?!

What am I doing wrong?

I have 76% crit with 3.5k weapon damage and 35k stam.

Please help!

Thanks

Brrrofski

I use the healing morphs of the dual wield skills. Bloodlust and bloodthirst.

But just doing damage should keep you alive. Keep caltrops down, hurricane up and keep moving. Do you have vigor? I slot vigor for some rounds. How much health do you have?

serenity_painted

You need to have crit surge/hurricane up at all times, and for crit surge to heal you, dots/ground targeted AoE's need to hit something at all times.

Also use the best thing about a stam build, dodge. You can dodge like no tomorrow compared to a mag build AND you get major expedition if you do it with your bow. Use it if you're ever in doubt.

If you're still struggling, you can re-morph rending slashes and rapid strikes to blood craze and blood thirst, this will give you a lot of extra healing. Or/and equip vigor/dark bargain.
A very high healing set up would be:

1.Blood Craze
2.Blood Thirst
3.Hurricane/Rearming Trap
4.Flex spot - Dark Bargain, Vigor, Deadly Cloak, Steel Tornado
5.Bound Armaments
U.Rend

1.Poison Injection
2.Endless Hail
3.Hurricane/Rearming Trap
4-Critical Surge
5-Bound Armaments
U.Dawbreaker of Smiting/Overload(which is nice if you want acouple of extra skills like caltrops or dark bargain)

Like this you'll be able to outheal almost anything the game throws at you that isn't burst damage, and for that you dodge. When in doubt, just dodge unless you need to get out of an AoE, then it's ussually better to sprint since the game seems to thing you're still at the place you dodged from half the time.
Keep your potions on cool down, don't wait for being on low resources, keep your stam high. Throw in some heavy attacks when you're closing a distance for some extra regen.
Also don't worry about score. Use whatever power ups you need and take your time if you need to regen near the end of the round. Start thinking about score when you can farm it easily and you're 561cp in yellow gear. Cus that's the competition.
Around 520k is a "low" score for stam sorcs since it's the most effective class to farm it with.

GreenSoup2HoT

O.O

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Stam sorcs obviously dont have shields. What they do have is amazing burst, self heals, and movement speed.

Bars I would suggest when learning:

DW -Bloodcraze, Bloodthirst, Vigor, Bound armaments, Hurricane, Dawnbreaker of smiting (Rend is probably better now, but havent tried it).
Bow - Trap, hail, poison injection, Crit surge, Bound armaments, Suppression field.

As you get better, you can morph to the damage version of your DW skills, and when you get really good, drop vigor for steel tornado.

Gear I would try for:

5 Vicious Ophidian (jewelry and two armor pieces), 5 Nightmothers (3 armor pieces and weapons), 2-piece monster set (velidreth is my favorite, but 2 piece bloodspawn is not bad either).

Your weapons should be sharp daggers (one poison, one weapon power), and a sharp bow (VMA bow when you get it). I would go 5 medium 2 Heavy when learning for the extra armor, but 7 medium or 5/1/1 work as well. If you don't have sharp gold weapons, stop what you are doing and get some. All other traits are trash in here. I would run all divines armor with thief mundus and stamina/weapon damage enchants on the rest of your gear.

To be quite honest, stam sorc is about as easy as it gets in here. You need to figure out your kill priority in each stage, and learn to spawn kill. If you put down trap and hail while the portal is forming, and immediately hit them with poison injection, you can move on to the next thing as that will kill most anything. In basically every spawn, I am trying to lay down enough ground dots one portal, and be standing next to another when they appear so two things are instantly dead. Really simplifies every fight.

Also, if this is your first clear, grab the shield sigil in every single round (and the weapon damage one while you are at it). No shame in using sigils to learn, you score wont stick on the board anyway.

TARAFRAKA

crit surge is love crit surge is life

wellerrocks

Brrrofski wrote: »

I use the healing morphs of the dual wield skills. Bloodlust and bloodthirst.

But just doing damage should keep you alive. Keep caltrops down, hurricane up and keep moving. Do you have vigor? I slot vigor for some rounds. How much health do you have?

I have about 17k health, how crucial are caltrops?

wellerrocks

Alright guys I get you! Will give it a go. Will defo use trap beast and aoe one portal and then focus on another. Will also remorph a couple of things.

Cheers

Brrrofski

wellerrocks wrote: »

Brrrofski wrote: »

I use the healing morphs of the dual wield skills. Bloodlust and bloodthirst.

But just doing damage should keep you alive. Keep caltrops down, hurricane up and keep moving. Do you have vigor? I slot vigor for some rounds. How much health do you have?

I have about 17k health, how crucial are caltrops?

Not crucial. Just keep armor barrage down.

wellerrocks

So is the idea I trap beast hail one portal then leave that?

Jar_Ek

Round 3, the things that kill you are not what you think... mostly you die because of one or more of the following:
1. Not moving out of an aoe
2. Having a high snare on you killing your mobility
3. Running out of stamina

These are inter related... but can be helped with dark deal, and shuffle.

If however you're dying due to too much incomming damage either try vigour or switch to heavy armour.

ArgoCye

Use the buffs, man. You're not going for a score on your first run, so just use all of them as they will keep you alive.

wellerrocks

ArgoCye wrote: »

Use the buffs, man. You're not going for a score on your first run, so just use all of them as they will keep you alive.

I'm trying, which is the best sigil to use?

DocFrost72

wellerrocks wrote: »

ArgoCye wrote: »

Use the buffs, man. You're not going for a score on your first run, so just use all of them as they will keep you alive.

I'm trying, which is the best sigil to use?

Speed sigil first to curb the 90% snare and keep regen topped off, then when that runs out grab the D sigil. Last resort is the heal sigil.

CultOfMMO

IMO 17k health is too low for inexperienced stam sorc. Crit surge is broken, but it does take a bit of time to heal you, especially if you're not critting every single second. So dont get bursted down, sit at least at 18.5k

I ran my stam sorc toon the day i got to 50, got wrecked the first play through with 64 attr all in stam, ending up with about 490k score. Then i switched to 15 health, 49 stam, 540k second run ever on that toon. My problem was just getting bursted, so i suspect its the same for you, but yea make sure you are somehow doing dmg literally every split second. Stam sorc is face roll if you are ahead of the tempo, but its incredibly hard if you fall behind.

Shader_Shibes

Caltrops + Crit Surge

UrbanMonk

watch this video of @SirAndy - the master of vMSA.
https://youtu.be/v4bFADjylnU

Pallio

Like everyone else, you have to except the fact that 99% of what drops will be useless. Keep grinding and going into it knowing that you will have to do it 100+ times to get anything useful is the best advise anyone can give you.

DRXHarbinger

Vigor no good these days?

SirAndy

ToxicPAWS wrote: »

watch this video of @SirAndy - the master of vMSA

@ToxicPAWS

Sorry, but that ain't me. Wish i had 1400 CP ...

wellerrocks

Shader_Shibes wrote: »

Caltrops + Crit Surge

Should i go and get caltrops? surely more AOE DOT the better?

Jar_Ek

Caltrops helps keep surge heals rolling, so yes. It's not required, but it is useful as its a very long aoe ground effect that can proc surge.

Mush55

Stam sorc is good it's just down to not making any mistakes and learning spawns, on my first run through and did pretty well till i got to the last boss.

But cant seem to beat the last round, I know it's down to me silly mistakes and lack of real interest but I'll get there in the end.

Joy_Division

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Stam sorcs obviously dont have shields. What they do have is amazing burst, self heals, and movement speed.

Bars I would suggest when learning:

DW -Bloodcraze, Bloodthirst, Vigor, Bound armaments, Hurricane, Dawnbreaker of smiting (Rend is probably better now, but havent tried it).
Bow - Trap, hail, poison injection, Crit surge, Bound armaments, Suppression field.

As you get better, you can morph to the damage version of your DW skills, and when you get really good, drop vigor for steel tornado.

Gear I would try for:

5 Vicious Ophidian (jewelry and two armor pieces), 5 Nightmothers (3 armor pieces and weapons), 2-piece monster set (velidreth is my favorite, but 2 piece bloodspawn is not bad either).

Your weapons should be sharp daggers (one poison, one weapon power), and a sharp bow (VMA bow when you get it). I would go 5 medium 2 Heavy when learning for the extra armor, but 7 medium or 5/1/1 work as well. If you don't have sharp gold weapons, stop what you are doing and get some. All other traits are trash in here. I would run all divines armor with thief mundus and stamina/weapon damage enchants on the rest of your gear.

To be quite honest, stam sorc is about as easy as it gets in here. You need to figure out your kill priority in each stage, and learn to spawn kill. If you put down trap and hail while the portal is forming, and immediately hit them with poison injection, you can move on to the next thing as that will kill most anything. In basically every spawn, I am trying to lay down enough ground dots one portal, and be standing next to another when they appear so two things are instantly dead. Really simplifies every fight.

Also, if this is your first clear, grab the shield sigil in every single round (and the weapon damage one while you are at it). No shame in using sigils to learn, you score wont stick on the board anyway.

If I were the OP, I would print this post out.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Joy_Division wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Stam sorcs obviously dont have shields. What they do have is amazing burst, self heals, and movement speed.

Bars I would suggest when learning:

DW -Bloodcraze, Bloodthirst, Vigor, Bound armaments, Hurricane, Dawnbreaker of smiting (Rend is probably better now, but havent tried it).
Bow - Trap, hail, poison injection, Crit surge, Bound armaments, Suppression field.

As you get better, you can morph to the damage version of your DW skills, and when you get really good, drop vigor for steel tornado.

Gear I would try for:

5 Vicious Ophidian (jewelry and two armor pieces), 5 Nightmothers (3 armor pieces and weapons), 2-piece monster set (velidreth is my favorite, but 2 piece bloodspawn is not bad either).

Your weapons should be sharp daggers (one poison, one weapon power), and a sharp bow (VMA bow when you get it). I would go 5 medium 2 Heavy when learning for the extra armor, but 7 medium or 5/1/1 work as well. If you don't have sharp gold weapons, stop what you are doing and get some. All other traits are trash in here. I would run all divines armor with thief mundus and stamina/weapon damage enchants on the rest of your gear.

To be quite honest, stam sorc is about as easy as it gets in here. You need to figure out your kill priority in each stage, and learn to spawn kill. If you put down trap and hail while the portal is forming, and immediately hit them with poison injection, you can move on to the next thing as that will kill most anything. In basically every spawn, I am trying to lay down enough ground dots one portal, and be standing next to another when they appear so two things are instantly dead. Really simplifies every fight.

Also, if this is your first clear, grab the shield sigil in every single round (and the weapon damage one while you are at it). No shame in using sigils to learn, you score wont stick on the board anyway.

If I were the OP, I would print this post out.

Only if he prints out your guide first. Haha

Also, caltrops is certainly not required on a sorc. I personally don't bother with it. Problem is, you really don't have room. If you are brave enough to drop Vigor, I would slot Steel Tornado. You could also put it on an overload bar, but you would lose Supression field, which really simplifies a lot of the bosses.

notimetocare

Tl;dr of all advice.
1. Kill first
2. Dont g3t hit
3. Profit

Shader_Shibes

wellerrocks wrote: »

Shader_Shibes wrote: »

Caltrops + Crit Surge

Should i go and get caltrops? surely more AOE DOT the better?

Yep, definitely. I was really sceptical about relying solely on crit surge for heals, but it can crit higher than vigor, and has a much longer duration. So with caltrops down you can be getting heals from a mob half way across the arena.