I Hate Maelstrom Arena

Midori_Oku

I'm at over 200+ runs and still have not got a sharpened bow, inferno staff, or lightning staff. Hell, I would take a Nirnhoned bow at this point. At least then poison injection would do more. =/

Chadak

I've beaten vMA several times at this point, but I think I'm perma-done with it.

I enjoyed my nMA. I ran it several times for practice, and because I didn't know at the time that there was no chance of getting a weapon drop out of it. When I found out I needed to finished vMA to get a weapon drop at the end, I upped my game, polished my toes and went at it.

I'm a fan of the Dark Souls games. I genuinely enjoy a good challenge when its something I actually regard as being good...and nMA/vMA feel pretty well designed and varied enough to be one heck of a nice little gladiator arena fight.

So, I bashed on vMA and died a lot, eventually worked it all out and cleared it. Yay! What a rush!

I was not thrilled to get a 1h axe with the powered trait. That took my enthusiasm straight back down to nil.

I felt that it cheapened the entire experience to the point that I'd actually have been happier not to get a reward at all, because I wouldn't have felt mocked by it.

I didn't touch vMA again for a bit. Then I decided 'what the heck, it was fun to bash against. I've done it once, I can do it again. I'll just forget about the potential for a cool weapon and try to enjoy the thing itself'.

That worked out well enough for four more runs, but at the end, I'd get another weapon drop...and it would be absolute...mind numbing...garbage.

I've been running it on my magsorc, so my viable weapon options are in the garbage anyway (fire or lightning staff. The end), and what have I gotten for my troubles?

The 1h powered axe above.
A 1h sword with the flipping Charged trait
A resto staff with Sharpened
A bow with defending
A dagger with Charged

The only accurate summary of how I feel that wouldn't get me banned for sharing it is as follows.

McCracken79

You want to know why it's not fun? Because it's solo... It would be leaps and bounds better if it was a duo or squad like in DSA. You always have more fun when you play with friends.

redshirt_49

Easiest way to ease they pain of VMA farming? Add a weapon drop to the end of every arena with increased chance of "better" stuff the higher you go.

But yeah, such as it is I think we all have banks bursting with useless maelstrom weapons that you don't want to sell because of how you worked for it (and it's not actually worth it, since rare items like this have pitiful price points at vendors) and don't wanna deconstruct for the same reason. Why not just introduce tokens? Turn in the useless stuff for x amount of gems and do it enough and you can buy what you want for x amount of gems. But not the terrible box with random weapons and random trait kind. Please. Leave traits random but at least give us the option to choose the weapon.

bebynnag

code65536 wrote: »

Mashille wrote: »

That may be true however in many builds I theorycraft I am left with a single or 2 open slots on weapons, which means the only thing it / they can really be is VMA weapons.

For example I made a new Stam DK build a few days ago and realised all the sets fitted together except I had an open DW slot with no set on it. As I was using Flurry and DOTS I thought VMA Weapon fits perfectly but I didn't actually have a good one so I needed to farm in order to get a decent one.

Flurry builds don't work that well, particular on a stam DK. With Molten Armaments buffing your heavy attack damage, you're better off using heavy attacks are your "spammable" instead of Flurry for the damage and for the sustain. So instead of Flurry>DoT, it's HA>DoT. Furthermore, vMA DW has been nerfed to the point that you're just better off using regular weapons, particularly since regular enchants have been buffed significantly, and you really want to use a Poison and Weapon Damage enchant on your DW weapons. 2x 5p sets and a 2p monster set on the front, and on the back, one of the 5p sets will be downgraded to 3p and replaced by a vMA bow (which unlike vMA DW, is something that you do need).

Right now, the only weapons that are sought after are sharp fire and lightning staves and sharp bows. All other vMA weapons are lackluster.

and ^^this^^ is why all i ever get from chests & weekly rewards are sharpened axes and daggers FML!

zcripturez

Integral1900 wrote: »

VMA is so that masochists can get their pain fix, I did it once and no way this side of hell am I going back

This is how I felt after a nearly 4 hour run of vet white gold tower last night. Thank god I got the helm I wanted because I'm never doing a vet dungeon again lol

DjMuscleboy02

I have run vma well over 700 times and have never seen a sharpened or precise inferno staff. I never saw sharpened dw weapons until they were irrelevant and I just recently got a sharpened bow just in time for it to fade into nothingness in a month. It's not fun, personally I don't enjoy any solo content so it will never be fun, and it's irritating to just blow through cash getting absolutely nothing as a reward.

There is no second option to a vma staff, it is literally a 4-6k dps increase and not having one could cause you to miss out on raiding opportunities at the highest level.

Let's say I've completed exactly 700 runs, I've done more but we'll say 700. And most runs take 35-45 minutes, but we'll be completely unrealistic to make a point and say 30 minutes. Let's turn this into a workday scenario.

700*30=21,000/60= 350 Hours in vma.
350/40 = 8.75

I have spent well over 8 weeks ~3 days in vma if it were a full time job and have 1 usable weapon to show for it. That's absolutely unacceptable.

Mashille

Blackbeard wrote: »

Did 4 runs one evening and it gave me sharp greatsword, sharp bow and a sharpened dagger

Dracofyre

puffytheslayer, he not beating up that cow, he doing meat tenderizing.

Troneon

Integral1900 wrote: »

VMA is so that masochists can get their pain fix, I did it once and no way this side of hell am I going back

This ^^

Worst buggy laggy poorly made content I have ever played.

It's more RNG, luck of spawns and bugs than it is player skill....very lazy design. Completed vet and never went back.

Oh and almost zero rewards....

John_1999

I feel your pain, after finishing the arena for the very first time, it felt really good. After Houers and hours of trying.
But than it just become a new farmspot, but a very annoying one.
I have found some nice weapons, even a sharpend inferno, but I dont have any sharpend 2H, I really want.
I just dont do it anymore, I hate that place, I hate wrothgar too.
It makes me sick, even if I think to do it one more time.

On top of that, you have to use so many potions, that are very expensive these days (thx for no sustain patch).
And it is absolutly not rewarding at all, all sets are garbage compared to other sets, you can find there.
I need around 60 min to clear it, and if you dont get a good weapon at the end you have just wasted 60 min of your life.
That is how I feel.

This is place is far, far away of being fun.

Artis

code65536 wrote: »

ArchMikem wrote: »

My last vMA attempt one run i got the last boss down to just 6k health. One more ability would have won me the arena and given my first weapon. But i wiped. And after that no matter what i did, i couldnt get him past 50%.

That was when i decided never again. Theres an obvious need for SOME kind of change there cause youre right, its not fun in the slightest. But whenever someone wants a change to Maelstrom the woodwork bursts with people bashing on you, calling you a carebear, to git gud and l2p.

The difficulty of vMA is fine, and no amount of "please nerf" threads in the 1.5 years of its existence has convinced ZOS to change anything.

I too dislike vMA and don't think it's fun. But that has absolutely nothing to do with how easy or difficult it is. vMA isn't fun because it's a lonely solo instance that people run over a hundred times only to get constantly shafted by the game's RNG loot system.

Nobody in the "woodwork" (except maybe Artis) has any issue with changing the loot system, which is what this thread is about. And yes, we do respond negatively to anyone wanting to nerf vMA's difficulty because it has already been severely nerfed indirectly by all the power creep over the past 1.5 years.

Rataroto wrote: »

vma is easy and fast, not to say a small profit if you take chests. Plenty of gems for free as well as purple mats, final chest may tilt you (if you're that easly tilted), but its rng.

for a 40 minutes run and getting 9 gems + 9 purple mats at least, I'm ok with it, tho wouldnt mind adding Plunder to it.

(Before you ask, first complete was on orsinium day 2, got a necklace, second complete on the next day, got a sharp bow. and yeah I have everything that drops there)

I do vma for the fun and distraction of boredom

Profit?! Yes, with a Flawless run (so no extra repair costs beyond those incurred from XP gain), the net gold is positive, but just barely. And the vendor value of the Soul Gems is barely enough to cover the MM cost of the trash pots you used (and if you use spell pots, then you're definitely not profiting from vMA).

The reason I would never consider vMA profitable is because of the opportunity cost. Just running around for 40 minutes picking flowers or mats is far more productive. Thieving for half that time would yield several times the "profit". Or, in less than the time it takes to do a vMA run, I could do a SotH HM motif run and get a motif worth 30-90K.

Or, if you want to compare against another frustrating RNG weapon farm, I've gotten a grand total of just one sharp MD fire or shock staff drop for me personally after 195 vMoL clears. But unlike the equally-frustrating vMA weapon RNG, farming vMoL is actually fun because you are running it with friends. vMoL is truly profitable because you get 15K worth of Plunder. And vMoL's RNG is less punishing because there are 11 other people who might get what you want and who might be convinced to trade it with you. And the amount of time it takes to run is similar for both.

If they added 5K plunder to the final chest and a weekly coffer containing a Winterborn motif chapter, it'd take a lot of the sting out of vMA. But when I finish vMA with yet another junk weapon and a laughable "profit" of a few decon mats and a few hundred gold after repair expenses, it just feels like salt in the wound.

Don't forget, that now no weapon trait is better than other traits by more than 1% or so. Talking about combat traits of course. So it happened. They did change the loot system by making most weapons usable.

They should've added sellable stuff or plunder to vMA long time ago. I agree with the second part completely.

overclocker303b14_ESO

Getern wrote: »

Some of you might not be aware of but for first few patches after MA launch, we could loot weapons in 3 traits only: Sharpned, Precise and Defending. 2/3 usuable traits, all they have to do is bring that back. It won't make it too easy but it will definitely help.

^ this

PlagueSD

vMA learning curve...

MarzAttakz

I'm not even gonna bother with a craptastic ping of 250 - 999+ ... got better ways to abuse myself for 200+ hours before I die.

FLuFFyxMuFFiN

vMA is difficult to complete your first time. The joy of finally completing it creates an illusion of it being enjoyable for the next couple runs. After a while it becomes more and more of a tedious task with its horrible RNG. Eventually people just give up trying to get their weapons they want. I have only completed vMA about 10 times give or take a couple runs. I quickly got bored of running it after my 5th or 6th run and getting absolute garbage as a reward. vMA desperately needs improvements like a token system or something similar. Otherwise I don't see myself wasting my time with farming for weapons.

Bobby_V_Rockit

Oops