There's constant back and forth about veteran Maelstrom Arena weapons and their availability. The difficulty of the arena for some and the demoralization of RNG for others are the main issues. The gap between normal Maelstrom and veteran is very wide. Considering Maelstrom weapon drops in normal
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/329875/would-you-accept-nmsa-dropping-maelstrom-weapons-read-before-rage-posting/p1 in the name of accommodating players unfortunately creates more RNG when we need less of it in this game.
Let's solve this without RNG: Let crafters make a weapon with half or less of the 1 piece stats of a Maelstrom or Master weapon. I'll defer to the math people and ZOS to figure out the best way to make them far from equal to those BiS vMA and vDSA weapons already existing. I do not want to devalue any Master or Maelstrom weapons, I luckily own a sharpened one, and it's
precious to me. Instead of a trash or mismatched staff in sharpened outperforming charged Maelstrom weapons, you would at least be able to fill the gap with something that makes more sense. Examples:
5 armor, 2 monster, 3 jewelry, 1 Maelstrom set combo is BiS. I have no problem with that.
5/5/1m is actually not as good as 5/3/2m/X most of the time. You would think an extra set bonus would be better.
It's the X that causes dismay, the call by many to let them get their hands on the weapon that fills that void without completing the trial (arena+
rng) to get it.
- This could provide a solution to all those people looking for 2 handed weapons to count towards the set bonus the same as 2 single handed weapons.
- Everyone looking to make vet Maelstrom less difficult can just craft this instead, if you really need vMA to be easier, the potential min/max dps from the weapon you
might get is probably out of your reach anyway.
- Crafters will get demand for this, as well as motivating people to work toward 9 traits for something besides TBS and master writs.
- A compromise on the issue of crafted sets supposedly being BiS versus RNG derived sets.
- Cure to RNG? No, it's more of a salve than an antidote. The hope is that it will benefit the community as a whole without devaluing the grind already put in by vets.
Additional Options:
The crafter would need to use both potent and fortified nirncrux to make this weapon (independent of the trait)
A cooldown or limit to how many weapons are crafted per day.
It could be a difficult to reach crafting station, via the new Morrowind or similar to Armor Master in Imperial city.
The purpose of this suggestion is to provide a compromise to a few different, often opposed sections of the community with something that could benefit all of us.
EDIT: Changed "Additional restrictions/considerations:" to "Additional options"