VMA Stamina nightblade

thepiratehunter

Hey everyone! I am looking for advice on how to complete VMA with a stam nightblade. I am currently stuck on the toxic drome part-can't even image the ice one yet if I'm having this much trouble already- getting killed in less than 50 seconds. I am wondering if it's worth trying to keep it up with a stam nightblade or if I should just start a new character like a magicka sorc? If you used a stam blade, what setup did you use with glyphs? Should I switch to medium or go 5/1/1. I'm currently using a 2h/dw and the following gear:

All heavy armor
2 piece Selene monster
Spriggons jewelry and daggers (both penetrating)
Hundings rage

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!

IamDestiny

In my opinion you have chosen one of the worst classes to begin vMA with. You are stamina and do not have any vo (Vicious Ophidian) gear which increases the difficulty. You should get rid of heavy armor and use medium armor. There are a lot of guides out there that can help you get your skills sorted out (Generally people will use 2h/bow for all the dots). You are gonna NEED vigor as a stamblade (alliance war rank 5). Also caltrops at alliance rank 6 is pretty useful.

If you have trouble just get more cp, get more experience with the game and come back later.

And before people come like "oh gilliam did it with a bucket" or this guy does it like that... Im pretty sure thats their millionth run of the arena.

To be honest there is one thing in the arena that will start to *** you off and that is RNG.

Stage 5: Trolls are going to be really annoying without a ranged weapon (rng).
Stage 7: Do not get me started.
Stage 9: If you do not have the DPS to get the Boss to 70% before the crematorium guard spawns or you can not clear the 3 crystals in one go you will have problems (otherwise pretty easy).

TheRealSniker

StamBlade Main here, the secret to becoming a good nightblade is having stupid burst and surviving it, basically your best defense is offense. Drop that heavy armor and go with medium. Good starter setup would be 5 Hundings and 5 Spriggans for PvE as you appareantly already have it. Go with Dual wield and Bow on backbar. Use the Alcast rotation with Vigor instead of Relentless Focus. If youre in a sticky situation just roll a couple of times and heal back up! Have fun

thepiratehunter

Can you break it down to what skills I should use doing dw/bow? Also, if I did get VO, which set should I get rid of? Thanks!

Morgul667

Im preparing mine for vma and am quite interested as well

TheRealSniker

thepiratehunter wrote: »

Can you break it down to what skills I should use doing dw/bow? Also, if I did get VO, which set should I get rid of? Thanks!

Get rid of Hundings rage and get a vMA bow for your backbar.

Frontbar: Rending slashes, Surprise Attack, Steel Tornado, Vigor, Killers Blade, Dawnbreaker(Ulti)
Backbar: Posion Injection, Endless Hail, Rearming Trap, Caltrops, Leeching Strikes, Bow Ulti

I would advise dropping Spriggans for your weapons as well and getting VO weapons instead since you will need that extra Penetration for your backbar as well since DoTs stay with the same stats they are casted with!

Morgul667

TheRealSniker wrote: »

DoTs stay with the same stats they are casted with!

Interesting , is it confirmed ?

TheRealSniker

Morgul667 wrote: »

TheRealSniker wrote: »

DoTs stay with the same stats they are casted with!

Interesting , is it confirmed ?

Giliam the Rogue and other Theory Craftist mention it in their videos, I have certainly experienced it in my DPS test outs, running Spriggan on armor pieces and having it 100% on the time gives my endless hail about 3k DPS more

thepiratehunter

Can I buy a vma bow? Otherwise, how do I get one?

thepiratehunter

TheRealSniker wrote: »

thepiratehunter wrote: »

Can you break it down to what skills I should use doing dw/bow? Also, if I did get VO, which set should I get rid of? Thanks!

Get rid of Hundings rage and get a vMA bow for your backbar.

Frontbar: Rending slashes, Surprise Attack, Steel Tornado, Vigor, Killers Blade, Dawnbreaker(Ulti)
Backbar: Posion Injection, Endless Hail, Rearming Trap, Caltrops, Leeching Strikes, Bow Ulti

I would advise dropping Spriggans for your weapons as well and getting VO weapons instead since you will need that extra Penetration for your backbar as well since DoTs stay with the same stats they are casted with!

I'm confused (sorry!). If I dropped my spriggan daggers and put VO daggers in instead, how will that help my penetration since Spriggons penetrates a lot with 5-piece? What's the set up with armor then? Will it still be:

Head/shoulder: monster
Legs/waist/boots/chest: VO
Jewelry:? (What should I use?)
Main weapon: VO daggers


Thanks for all the help!

Morgul667

TheRealSniker wrote: »

Morgul667 wrote: »

TheRealSniker wrote: »

DoTs stay with the same stats they are casted with!

Interesting , is it confirmed ?

Giliam the Rogue and other Theory Craftist mention it in their videos, I have certainly experienced it in my DPS test outs, running Spriggan on armor pieces and having it 100% on the time gives my endless hail about 3k DPS more

I didnt know,thanks that is quite important to know

TheRealSniker

thepiratehunter wrote: »

TheRealSniker wrote: »

thepiratehunter wrote: »

Can you break it down to what skills I should use doing dw/bow? Also, if I did get VO, which set should I get rid of? Thanks!

Get rid of Hundings rage and get a vMA bow for your backbar.

Frontbar: Rending slashes, Surprise Attack, Steel Tornado, Vigor, Killers Blade, Dawnbreaker(Ulti)
Backbar: Posion Injection, Endless Hail, Rearming Trap, Caltrops, Leeching Strikes, Bow Ulti

I would advise dropping Spriggans for your weapons as well and getting VO weapons instead since you will need that extra Penetration for your backbar as well since DoTs stay with the same stats they are casted with!

I'm confused (sorry!). If I dropped my spriggan daggers and put VO daggers in instead, how will that help my penetration since Spriggons penetrates a lot with 5-piece? What's the set up with armor then? Will it still be:

Head/shoulder: monster
Legs/waist/boots/chest: VO
Jewelry:? (What should I use?)
Main weapon: VO daggers


Thanks for all the help!

I meant instead of running your penetration set on your Weapons do it on your armor pieces so you still have the penetration on your backbar. Run VO on your weapons and jewerly or some armor pieces cause the VO effect isnt as important as the penetration you get!

You can get the vMA bow by doing Maelstrom Arena. Google "Maelstrom Bow", the trait youre going for is either Sharpened or Nirnhorned, both are good in the next patch for backbar

Sorry for not mentioning that if you get the chance of getting VIcious ophidian then use it instead of Hundings Rage.

My Setup is:
Monster Set: Divines Velidreth Medium/Divines Kraghs Medium
Legs/Waist/Jack/Gloves/Boots: Twice Fanged Serpent Medium Divines/Spriggan Medium Divines
Weapons: VO Sword Sharp + VO Sword Precise(Have to farm daggers yet)
Jewerly: VO Jewerly with weapon damage enchant

DocFrost72

My complete was with 5 piece hundings rage (3 body, dual daggers...though you'll want one axe now), 5 marksman (VO is way better if you have it!), and two Velidreth (Selene works just as well, better on bosses). All medium.

DW- Surprise attack, killer's blade, power extraction, expert hunter (didn't bother morphing), Resolving vigor, flawless dawnbreaker (slotted only, until last round).

Bow- rearming trap, poison injection, endless hail, relentless focus, (what is now) leeching strikes, incapacitating strike.

For round three, the big thing is to kill stranglers ASAP. The snare doesn't seem deadly on its own, until you can't get out of the red or kite.

UrbanMonk

TheRealSniker wrote: »

Morgul667 wrote: »

TheRealSniker wrote: »

DoTs stay with the same stats they are casted with!

Interesting , is it confirmed ?

Giliam the Rogue and other Theory Craftist mention it in their videos, I have certainly experienced it in my DPS test outs, running Spriggan on armor pieces and having it 100% on the time gives my endless hail about 3k DPS more

@Morgul667 ,talking about bow bar on back, single target DoTs consider the stats on the bar they are casted on I.e. Poison injection and continue to work with same stats even when swapped to a other bar which might have better stats. While the AoE DoTs I.e. Caltrops, barrage etc do. consider the updated stats when swapped to other bar.
@TheRealSniker - yes I agree with you on having Spriggan uptime 100%. It's a massive damage boost to all skills on offbar specially if you don't have the perfect traits on the back bar.
@thepiratehunter - 5 Hunding + 5 spriggan + 2 monster (head/shoulder- velidreth/ seleen/ kragh) is fine for starting to learn and clear vMA arena. VO definitely will boost your sustain but grinding those daggers is A HUGE PAIN.
If you have spriggan dagger currently, use them and get a bow for backbar. You'd loose some DAmage but try not to spend too much time there.

thepiratehunter

Wow thanks everyone! Just to clarify, I can get maelstrom bow by doing normal maelstrom right? I thought it was only obtainable in vet.

Morgul667

ToxicPAWS wrote: »

TheRealSniker wrote: »

Morgul667 wrote: »

TheRealSniker wrote: »

DoTs stay with the same stats they are casted with!

Interesting , is it confirmed ?

Giliam the Rogue and other Theory Craftist mention it in their videos, I have certainly experienced it in my DPS test outs, running Spriggan on armor pieces and having it 100% on the time gives my endless hail about 3k DPS more

@Morgul667 ,talking about bow bar on back, single target DoTs consider the stats on the bar they are casted on I.e. Poison injection and continue to work with same stats even when swapped to a other bar which might have better stats. While the AoE DoTs I.e. Caltrops, barrage etc do. consider the updated stats when swapped to other bar.
@TheRealSniker - yes I agree with you on having Spriggan uptime 100%. It's a massive damage boost to all skills on offbar specially if you don't have the perfect traits on the back bar.
@thepiratehunter - 5 Hunding + 5 spriggan + 2 monster (head/shoulder- velidreth/ seleen/ kragh) is fine for starting to learn and clear vMA arena. VO definitely will boost your sustain but grinding those daggers is A HUGE PAIN.
If you have spriggan dagger currently, use them and get a bow for backbar. You'd loose some DAmage but try not to spend too much time there.

Thanks for the clarification

DocFrost72

thepiratehunter wrote: »

Wow thanks everyone! Just to clarify, I can get maelstrom bow by doing normal maelstrom right? I thought it was only obtainable in vet.

Unfortunately no, you must complete veteran maelstrom to gain access to the weapons. Maelstrom and dragonstar ( and only some of the latter's history...) are like this in the entire game.

thepiratehunter

Ok great! One last question,if my armor is penetration is losing divines bad? Or is penetration a glyph you can put on your armor and still have divines?

Brrrofski

You want at least 18k health.

5 vicious ophidian makes VMA so much easier. Hundings would be best to pair with it. Spriggans is fine too though. Velidreth it better then selenes as it can hit mutliple targets. All divines. Probably shadow mundus on NB. Either 7 medium or 5,1,1 if you have undaunted. Both have their benfits.

Skills are pretty universal across all Stam builds. You'd use surprise attack instead of rapid strikes though.

Rest is just practicing it. Learning spawns, learning mechanics and learning rotations. There's plenty of YouTube videos. Ultimately, it's just spending time in there though.

thepiratehunter

I distributed my skill points almost evenly with health and stamina making me have 17k health and 20k stamina. Should I put everything into stamina instead? Also, what is better on armor, divines or penetration? They both seem good.

Danksta

thepiratehunter wrote: »

I distributed my skill points almost evenly with health and stamina making me have 17k health and 20k stamina. Should I put everything into stamina instead? Also, what is better on armor, divines or penetration? They both seem good.

You should have most into stamina. If you're splitting your attributes evenly between stam and health you should have more than 17k health. Are you using max health/stam food? How many Cps do you have?

Divines is what you want on your armor, there's no sharpened (penetration) armor trait.

thepiratehunter

I have 530CP. Why is everyone saying get your penetration from armor if there's no penetration?

Danksta

thepiratehunter wrote: »

I have 530CP. Why is everyone saying get your penetration from armor if there's no penetration?

They probably mean your penetration from 5-piece Spriggans.

So if the reason your health is so low isn't because of low CP I'm assuming it's because you don't use food to buff your health, is that correct?

thepiratehunter

Oh wow, that just occurred to me! I hardly ever use food. Which food would be the best for this? I'm going to use the wormwood, blessed thistle, dragonthorn drink.

Danksta

thepiratehunter wrote: »

Oh wow, that just occurred to me! I hardly ever use food. Which food would be the best for this? I'm going to use the wormwood, blessed thistle, dragonthorn drink.

Either max health/stamina or if you're struggling with resources you could run the max health/stamina regen food that you get from one of the quests in Wrothgar. You'll want to adjust your attributes afterwards so that you have about 17-18k health.

QuebraRegra

DocFrost72 wrote: »

thepiratehunter wrote: »

Wow thanks everyone! Just to clarify, I can get maelstrom bow by doing normal maelstrom right? I thought it was only obtainable in vet.

Unfortunately no, you must complete veteran maelstrom to gain access to the weapons. Maelstrom and dragonstar ( and only some of the latter's history...) are like this in the entire game.

so it's recommended to have a VMA bow that you can't get because you can't complete VMA? Seriously, that's pretty silly.

DocFrost72

QuebraRegra wrote: »

DocFrost72 wrote: »

thepiratehunter wrote: »

Wow thanks everyone! Just to clarify, I can get maelstrom bow by doing normal maelstrom right? I thought it was only obtainable in vet.

Unfortunately no, you must complete veteran maelstrom to gain access to the weapons. Maelstrom and dragonstar ( and only some of the latter's history...) are like this in the entire game.

so it's recommended to have a VMA bow that you can't get because you can't complete VMA? Seriously, that's pretty silly.

I agree, which is why I'd never tell someone to farm VMA with a vMA bow.

Izaki

Spriggan causes you to overpenetrate in 66% of the whole arena. Only 3 arenas have bosses with 18k penetration, the rest are either at 12.5k or 9.1k. So just using Sharpened weapons and Major Fracture is almost enough, and if you put 29 CP into Piercing, you're fine.

thepiratehunter

Wouldn't overpenetration be a good thing since the enemies would die quicker?

Danksta

thepiratehunter wrote: »

Wouldn't overpenetration be a good thing since the enemies would die quicker?

No. If an enemy has only 10k resistances than anything after 10k penetration will be useless since there will be nothing left to penetrate.

SirAndy

TheRealSniker wrote: »

Get rid of Hundings rage and get a vMA bow for your backbar.

Guy asks for help because he can't complete vMA, gets told to get a vMA bow for his backbar ...