Would this setup be good for a scrub in vMA?

Casul

Edit let me reformat this. I was in a hurry but I got time now.

I suck as vMA. Even after taking some advice in my last thread I managed to beat level 2. Now I'm stuck on 3. I'm just terrible for some reason. Which confuses me, because I can clear everything else I've fought (including most of craglorn solo.)

My idea as a Imperial stamina warden.

5 ravager (5 veiled heritance)
5 seventh legion
2 velidreth
5h/2m

I find that I die so fast and that's what annoys me. So with maybe blade cloak and ice fortress I can be tanky but still get good damage from procs? Perhaps if ravager doesn't work with flurry I can use veiled since I know I will be taking damage.

I was thinking 3x WD glyphs and using heavy attacks as my sustain since heavy armor buffs them up.

Bar setup would probably be

Bloodthirst
Blood craze
Subterranean assault
Netch
Evil hunter
Rend

Endless hail
Razor caltrops
Poison Injection
Flex slot
Evil hunter
Flex ult

Rotation would be

Netch>sub>heavy>swap>endless>razor>injection>swap>heavy>craze>heavy>thirst>repeat. I could add bear trap but not sure if it's worth it.

Opinions?

Gulnagel

BuildMan wrote: »

I suck as vMA. Even after taking some advice in my last thread I managed to beat level 2. Now I'm stuck on 3. I'm just terrible for some reason. Which confuses me. Anyhoo. Would this be good?

Imperial stam ward btw

5 ravager
5 seventh legion
2 velidreth
5h/2m

I find that I die so fast and that's what annoys me. So with maybe blade cloak and ice fortress I can be tanky but still get good damage from procs? Maybe I can use 3x WD glyphs and use heavy attacks as my sustain.

Opinions?

I'm just going to say it, warden will give you a hard time, I have one myself and warden feels like bringing a waterpistol to put out a fire.

I'm not saying you can't do it, but for a new player? I don't feel warden is the right choice. Probably better if you create a sorcerer and run it in random normal dungeons as a healer, 50 random dungeons with a 50% XP-scroll will get you to lvl 50. Then respec to dps.

A fun thing is, there is a way to keep the random dungeon blue all the time. If you are the last person to leave after you finished the random dungeon and get "activity complete" the dungeon will autokick you, when the dungeon autokicks you it won't register as you completed your daily blue bonus even tho you get the full xp and mail everytime.

Then turn your warden in to a crafter with all the gear you harvest from the dungeonruns. And never use warden in battle again

Asardes

No. Your sustain will be horrible and burst will be lacking. Ideally you should be using at least 5 medium. Since warden doesn't have an execute you can go 2H/bow. I use 5 Briarheart 5/4 VO/Maelstrom bow and 1 Slimercraw/Kra'gh/Kena head on my StamDK. The burst heal from rally is really good. Also brawler gives you shield which is nice in some rounds. Reverse slice can kill groups of 2-3 trash mobs fast. You can use wrecking blow-HA weave on static bosses when you have time as semi-spammable. Of course you can use any 5+5+1 combos for a good effect if you don't have those. For example 5 Hunding 5 Bone Pirate + 1Kena 1/5/1 with Dubious Camoran will give you about 16.5K health and a ton of stamina recovery (1.3-1.8K depending on Mundus) and weapon damage, and still around 48% crit. Your backbar will be mostly filled by utility skills. Poison Injection, endless hail and vigor are pretty much mandatory. The other 2 should be the morph that gives berserk and other that gives sustain. Pribably ballista ult on back bar. Front bar flawless dawnbreaker for weapon damage.

Casul

Asardes wrote: »

No. Your sustain will be horrible and burst will be lacking. Ideally you should be using at least 5 medium. Since warden doesn't have an execute you can go 2H/bow. I use 5 Briarheart 5/4 VO/Maelstrom bow and 1 Slimercraw/Kra'gh/Kena head on my StamDK. The burst heal from rally is really good. Also brawler gives you shield which is nice in some rounds. Reverse slice can kill groups of 2-3 trash mobs fast. You can use wrecking blow-HA weave on static bosses when you have time as semi-spammable. Of course you can use any 5+5+1 combos for a good effect if you don't have those. For example 5 Hunding 5 Bone Pirate + 1Kena 1/5/1 with Dubious Camoran will give you about 16.5K health and a ton of stamina recovery (1.3-1.8K depending on Mundus) and weapon damage, and still around 48% crit.

This could work I just hate being so squishy. Before this I was running

5 auto
5 sword singer
1 kena

And my WB were critting for 30k+ I took bear and also was hitting 70k execute crits. But eventually swapped for DBoS for trash clears.

But yes I agree that HA and Reverse slice is great for trash. Especially when they are critting for 20ks.

Asardes

There's the perception that heavy armor gives you much higher mitigation than medium. It's not. If you do the maths it's just 6-8% less damage received. Missing sustain to block, heal, roll dodge and break CC will kill you faster than upfront damage. Automaton and Sword singer have a flaw though: the first doesn't buff PI, the 2nd doesn't buff neither PI nor EH which are actually some of your harder hitting skills. So even if tool tips are high, actual damage isn't. And prioritising targets and doing the mechanics is much more important than raw DPS.

Danksta

I honestly wouldn't recommend heavy armor for vMA unless you know spawn point and you are just coming up short for getting Flawless Conqueror. You'd be giving up too much damage for a little mitigation and you don't know where priority spawns are so you will be overwhelmed with damage.

Asardes

What bar setup I would use on Stam Warden:
2H: Reverse Slice | Wrecking Blow | Brawler | Rally | Camouflaged Hunter | Flawless Dwnbreaker
Bow: Poison Injection | Razor Caltrops* | Subterranean Assault | Bird of Prey | Resolving Vigor | Ballista

*replace with Endless Hail after getting Maelstrom Bow.

Rotation:
Buff: Rally-barswap-Bird of Prey
Poison Injection-LA-Razor Caltrops-LA-Subterranean Assault-LA-Bird of Prey-barswap-HA-Brawler-HA-Wrecking Blow-HA-Wrecking Blow-bar swap [repeat, recast Rally every 3rd rotation]

In execute phase just 3x HA-Reverse Slice or 4x LA-Reverse Slice if full stamina on front bar.

If you feel you don't need the burst heal from rally move Bird of Prey on front bar instead of Rally and use Bull Netch from back bar every 2nd rotation for brutality. You should gain damage done from Advanced Species for every Animal Companions ability slotted so 1-2 on each bar should be ideal.

Kanar

Medium armor, and more sustain. vMA builds need to do everything. Also ravager and 7th are bad for vMA. Any set bonus that relies on you getting hit or building up a series of buffs on a single target is not good. vMA mobs hit for a lot, some levels its like all 5k+ direct damage hits. Only level I found that reliably procs "on damage received" effects is stage 9 with the soul churn.

This is not a DPS dummy. Many threats will die after just a few hits, rarely do you run a DPS rotation, just on end stage bosses and even then it's in bursts.

For learning I would go medium armor (maybe heavy chest) with 21k health. Then your sets can focus on damage and sustain. If you're out of stamina, you're dead. There's a balance you gotta find between damage and sustain, is would err on the side of sustain. If you really want resistances you could try jewelry from a heavy set that gives +res.

Focus on keeping yourself alive and sustained, and don't use DPS to avoid the mechanics. You gotta learn the mechanics first, then you can consider skipping them with DPS.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

The best defense is a good offense. I have done VMA in HA but I dont recomend it. If you are set on tackling VMA for the first time on a stam toon, then I am going to suggest (probably like everyone else) that you do it with medium armor and get your hands on VO gear x5 (3 Jewelry 2 Body). The blue jewelry from Normal runs are perfectly fine, but its the best set for tackling VMA. I would pair that with Velidreth x2 and hundings or Nightmothers x5. This is far and away the best gear combo for VMA. Not saying your way wont work, but if you are struggling with stage 3 (the arena does not get tough until 5), you need to stop trying to reinvent the wheel and go with what works.

The next thing is you have to have some heals Bloodthirst and Blood craze are not enough for your first clear. Warden has some nice healing options. They have a stamina based heal in Soothing Spores, can heal from light and heavy attacks with green lotus (also gives weapon crit so you can drop evil Hunter), and leeching vines which puts life steel on the target. You also have access to vigor, which might be better than any of them. My advice is a combo of Vigor and Green Lotus at a minimum. You might also want to look into Deadly Cloak. It is a powerful mitigation skill and does decent aoe damage. I dont like evil hunter in VMA, but if you feel like you need to run it, you only need it on your front bar.

As to your rotation, a long one is fine for bosses, but you need to be careful about doing to much DOT damage on normal mobs. They die too fast anyway. VMA DPS for the most part is all about burst. On my stamina toons, I open with a fully charged Heavy Attack on almost everything. It hits hard and fast, returns stamina, and in the case of a warden, returns health. A good tactic in VMA is to try and spawn kill portals. Put down things like caltrops, hail and Trap no a portal, and most things will be dead. Try to funnel other enemies into your AOE. If you recast all of the above for every single enemy in there, you will be out of stam in a blink of an eye. Sub Assault>HA>Bloodthrist will kill most of the mobs in there, especially if other DOTS like those above and Deadly cloak are ticking and your Veli procs.

Edit: Also, dont rule out the bear ultimate. The damage could be better, but he will draw aggro on enemies which means less damage on you.

Edit 2: I also recommend 5/2 Medium/Heavy with at least one healthy glyph on a big piece for first timers. You might not need it with an imperial. On that note, Redguard is far and away the strongest stamina VMA race.

Danksta

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

The best defense is a good offense. I have done VMA in HA but I dont recomend it. If you are set on tackling VMA for the first time on a stam toon, then I am going to suggest (probably like everyone else) that you do it with medium armor and get your hands on VO gear x5 (3 Jewelry 2 Body). The blue jewelry from Normal runs are perfectly fine, but its the best set for tackling VMA. I would pair that with Velidreth x2 and hundings or Nightmothers x5. This is far and away the best gear combo for VMA. Not saying your way wont work, but if you are struggling with stage 3 (the arena does not get tough until 5), you need to stop trying to reinvent the wheel and go with what works.

The next thing is you have to have some heals Bloodthirst and Blood craze are not enough for your first clear. Warden has some nice healing options. They have a stamina based heal in Soothing Spores, can heal from light and heavy attacks with green lotus (also gives weapon crit so you can drop evil Hunter), and leeching vines which puts life steel on the target. You also have access to vigor, which might be better than any of them. My advice is a combo of Vigor and Green Lotus at a minimum. You might also want to look into Deadly Cloak. It is a powerful mitigation skill and does decent aoe damage. I dont like evil hunter in VMA, but if you feel like you need to run it, you only need it on your front bar.

As to your rotation, a long one is fine for bosses, but you need to be careful about doing to much DOT damage on normal mobs. They die too fast anyway. VMA DPS for the most part is all about burst. On my stamina toons, I open with a fully charged Heavy Attack on almost everything. It hits hard and fast, returns stamina, and in the case of a warden, returns health. A good tactic in VMA is to try and spawn kill portals. Put down things like caltrops, hail and Trap no a portal, and most things will be dead. Try to funnel other enemies into your AOE. If you recast all of the above for every single enemy in there, you will be out of stam in a blink of an eye. Sub Assault>HA>Bloodthrist will kill most of the mobs in there, especially if other DOTS like those above and Deadly cloak are ticking and your Veli procs.

Edit: Also, dont rule out the bear ultimate. The damage could be better, but he will draw aggro on enemies which means less damage on you.

Edit 2: I also recommend 5/2 Medium/Heavy with at least one healthy glyph on a big piece for first timers. You might not need it with an imperial. On that note, Redguard is far and away the strongest stamina VMA race.

I'm surprised you'd say that Redguard is by far the best stam race for vMA. I'd agree if VO wasn't a thing, but with VO sustain becomes a non-issue and at that point I'd say Khajiit is better for vMA.

In trials? Redgaurd all the way. Sustaining on a Khajiit without 5 piece VO in trials is a chore.

Casul

Ok from what I'm seeing it seems to be that my issue is not necessarily that I'm dying to fast. It's that I'm not killing in an efficient way.

Hmm. Ok what about this.

7m

2x Velidreth
5x MNG
5x Spriggans (I have a sharpened dagger and a precise mace)

Then I can push some of my CP from pen to something else (either blessed or more damage)

Maybe a bar setup such as

Shrouded dagger (I can redo morph if need be)
Steel tornado
Subterranean assault
Vigor
Green Lotus
DBoS

Endless
Razor
PI
Light weight bear trap
Shuffle

How does this look? With imperial I can typically get 20k regardless when maturation procs (even if it bugs)

Also what mundus and food should I use. Typically I run hp and stam food. I could go with orzgas if need be. Would theif be good if I was running 3 divine 3 infused 1 impen (veli shoulder)

Asardes

If you want to run 2W the skill I would recommend is deadly cloak. The mitigation is really nice. Steel tornado is not that good since trash mobs have very low heath and die from your ground placed DoTs and maybe a few light and heavy attacks on top of those.

You can try something like that:

Bar setup:
2W: Rending Slashes | Blood Thirst | Deadly Cloak | Bird of Prey | Bull Netch | Dawnbreaker of Smiting (or Rend)
Bow: Poison Injection | Razor Caltrops (or Endless Hail) | Subterranean Assault | Green Lotus | Resolving Vigor | Ballista

Rotation:
Buff: Bull Netch->Bird of Prey->Deadly Cloak->bar swap->Green Lotus
Subterranean Assault->LA->Poison Injection->LA-Endless Hail->bar swap->HA->Rending Slashes->HA-Bloodthirst->HA->Bloodthirst->LA->Deadly Cloak->LA->Bird of Prey->bar swap [repeat, refresh Bull Netch and Green Lotus every 2 rotations ]

You don't have an execute for 2W but the skills do slightly more damage to low health enemies so the rotation remains the same.

I kind of hesitate to recommend such a setup for beginners, since the lack of hard execute will put you in some very stressful situations.
For example:
- in the 4th arena the robot spider will spawn more adds unless it dies right after the 1st flame phase
- in the 5th arena last round if you don't kill Runa fast enough she will break the last island when she reaches low health and the adds would have killed you by then
- in the 6th arena last round the spider boss will enrage again pretty fast at low health and start doing a crap ton of damage if you don't nuke her fast enough after she comes back from the stun
- in the 7th arena unless you finish the round bosses fast more spore calling mages will spawn so more chances to die. Especially the trolls can be nasty if they enrage
- in the 8th arena penultimate round the flame knight can drop a 2nd standard and drag you right in if you don't nuke her fast enough
- in the 9th arena the crematorial guards must go down pretty fast since their DoT stacks fast, also Solkyn must die stunned or shortly after the stun from the ghost ends or he'll start doing a lot of damage and spawning adds again
- no recommendation for the first 3 since there's really no DPS race there and everything dies easily; they are more like warm up.

Kanar

I use orzagas tripe trifle. Don't have camoran throne. Just depends what you need, max stam or recovery.
I personally wouldn't use steel tornado, blood craze is a good dot.

AverageJo3Gam3r

Run medium for better sustain and burst. To survive vMA, you need to load up on burst and kill stuff faster. Prepare for several hundred deaths your first clear. We've all done it. VMA is more about familiarity with the arena than anything else. But that feeling you get when you beat it the first time...nothing beats it.

Any meta stam dps setup can clear vMA. I recommend 5 night mothers gaze (2 daggers+3 body), 5 vicious ophidian, 2 velidreth, and a random crafted bow back bar (nmg I guess). Vicious ophidian is super useful for sustain and speed, but you can replace NMG with hundings, briar heart, spriggans, or TFS.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Danksta wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

The best defense is a good offense. I have done VMA in HA but I dont recomend it. If you are set on tackling VMA for the first time on a stam toon, then I am going to suggest (probably like everyone else) that you do it with medium armor and get your hands on VO gear x5 (3 Jewelry 2 Body). The blue jewelry from Normal runs are perfectly fine, but its the best set for tackling VMA. I would pair that with Velidreth x2 and hundings or Nightmothers x5. This is far and away the best gear combo for VMA. Not saying your way wont work, but if you are struggling with stage 3 (the arena does not get tough until 5), you need to stop trying to reinvent the wheel and go with what works.

The next thing is you have to have some heals Bloodthirst and Blood craze are not enough for your first clear. Warden has some nice healing options. They have a stamina based heal in Soothing Spores, can heal from light and heavy attacks with green lotus (also gives weapon crit so you can drop evil Hunter), and leeching vines which puts life steel on the target. You also have access to vigor, which might be better than any of them. My advice is a combo of Vigor and Green Lotus at a minimum. You might also want to look into Deadly Cloak. It is a powerful mitigation skill and does decent aoe damage. I dont like evil hunter in VMA, but if you feel like you need to run it, you only need it on your front bar.

As to your rotation, a long one is fine for bosses, but you need to be careful about doing to much DOT damage on normal mobs. They die too fast anyway. VMA DPS for the most part is all about burst. On my stamina toons, I open with a fully charged Heavy Attack on almost everything. It hits hard and fast, returns stamina, and in the case of a warden, returns health. A good tactic in VMA is to try and spawn kill portals. Put down things like caltrops, hail and Trap no a portal, and most things will be dead. Try to funnel other enemies into your AOE. If you recast all of the above for every single enemy in there, you will be out of stam in a blink of an eye. Sub Assault>HA>Bloodthrist will kill most of the mobs in there, especially if other DOTS like those above and Deadly cloak are ticking and your Veli procs.

Edit: Also, dont rule out the bear ultimate. The damage could be better, but he will draw aggro on enemies which means less damage on you.

Edit 2: I also recommend 5/2 Medium/Heavy with at least one healthy glyph on a big piece for first timers. You might not need it with an imperial. On that note, Redguard is far and away the strongest stamina VMA race.

I'm surprised you'd say that Redguard is by far the best stam race for vMA. I'd agree if VO wasn't a thing, but with VO sustain becomes a non-issue and at that point I'd say Khajiit is better for vMA.

In trials? Redgaurd all the way. Sustaining on a Khajiit without 5 piece VO in trials is a chore.

Let me rephrase. Redguard is far and away the best stamina race for people not named Streak or Andy. Haha. I dont claim to be a master at VMA, but I have run it on every class and typically clear with 0-2 deaths in under 50 minutes. 99% of my deaths are because I ran out of my primary resource. Redguard pretty much takes that problem off the table. There is definitely an argument that crit is more important in VMA than trials because crit generally equals burst, but I personally think that even in VMA, the max stam and better resource management far outweighs that for 99.9% of us. Fun fact, when I was first going for flawless on my stam sorc a while back, I was a khajiit. I had done 4-5 one-death runs, but there were a few spots where I would always struggle to sustain. I changed to redgaurd and the first run (and several subsequent runs) were flawless. It might have been me just finally getting over the hump, but I really do think it makes it easier.

If you are trying for a world record score, you could probably convince me that khajiit is a few seconds a head of redgaurd. If you are struggling with stage 3 of VMA, redguard is miles ahead of khajiit.