I gave vMA a try after reaching 160 CP

slickygm

So the first thing I've done after reaching 160 CP was getting a gear that isn't heavily outleveled and then I went straight into veteran Maelstrom Arena (I've done the normal version at around level 30). I've planned it since I've reached ~100 CP (I didn't plan for the fact, that forum and ESO accounts are two different things and I will need an invitation, though).

I've used 5x Night Mother's Gaze (only frontbar - 2 daggers), 4x Hunding's Rage and 3x Agility Jewelry (2 robust, 1 healthy, 2x recovery, 1x weapon damage). Blue stamina + health food. The setup was 5 medium and 2 heavy armor.

On a target dummy I do ~20k DPS solo in the above gear. Obviously less when I had to avoid all the damage in vMA.

I've completed it in one go after 4 hours and 22 minutes, taking a few breaks when it was getting frustrating, dying a few dozen times and received a useless 1h sharpened sword. My score was abysmal. It was 4:30 AM when I finished. I started with 160CP, ended with 163CP and progressed to 164CP after returning the vMA quest.

My conclusions are as follows:

1. It's hard but not impossible-hard.
2. 17.2k health is a little bit too low, would probably be enough at 300+ CP with all the additional mitigation.
3. Most deaths occurred once I was out of stamina.
4. Would probably be easier in my PVP setup (5 heavy and 2 medium).
5. Would probably be easier with 2H instead of Dual Wield.
6. Would probably be easier on magicka.
7. Most of the arena is straightforward with a few frustrating points:
   a) the ice stage last boss, which is very unintuitive and RNG sometimes kicks you in the [snip] (when all currently spawned mobs attack you at the same time and you need some stamina left to bash the troll); taking it slowly works better than rushing it
   b) the venom stage with the plants can be a PITA with an unlucky arrangement; the two trolls were more of an issue that I would expect them to be (a little bit more DPS would solve that issue); the wamasu that most people concentrate on was pretty easy; last boss took only a few retries; died few times wasting stamina on roll dodges
   c) the fire stage - a DK before the last boss was much harder than the boss - I died way too many times; she has some very high burst damage and blocking/dodging was leaving me without stamina; a proper strategy with sigils was the thing that let me progress; last boss took a few retries
   d) the last boss of the last stage was the most annoying of them all, I died like 20 times; I wasn't able to kill all three crystals at once, had to jump down after second, because the damage was getting too high (had to take power sigil and kill the big daedroth)
8. Sometimes it lags despite showing a low latency, making barswaps a no go in a pinch; I've slotted vigor on the frontbar in case of emergency.
9. I would be better had I used this time to take some sleep .

I don't think I'll be getting back there until I'm 250-300 CP or on a completely different setup.

A few screenshots below.






PS. It started as a bet. I was watching my friend, who got me into ESO, playing vMA and I was making fun of him dying a few times (he's ~800 CP). So he said he bets I wouldn't even be able to complete it at all. His face this morning (today morning started for me at 1:00 PM, so shut up ^^) when I've shown him the title - priceless! XD

Don't let others tell you that 300-400-500+ CP are needed in any content in this game. That's just being plain lazy.


[Edited to remove profanity]

Jonno

Vengence Leech set is pretty good for newer players in there

KrisG_83

Impressive, it got a lot easier for me once i realized to put more CP into tumbling. Was stuck on the ice stage for about 2 months im a very casual player but reckon i died on that last boss around 200 times .

Alcast

Gratz And that on a stamina char very nice

Lukums1

Few things to make your life easier -
Suppression Field - nullify CG flame breath + Troll Enrage round 7 - also huge AOE stun round 3-4-5-7-8-9

Run 5000/487 recovery food (trust me 25k stam and still seeing 550-560k scores for me) this way you never run out as you mentioned above.

Run NMG + Monster + VO (if you have) these setups worked day 1 (pretty much) and still do.

Your crit - up it, run thief (ignore the oh thief aint good no more) more crit more heals especially on sorc.

My 2 cents for you, in any case very good effort.

slickygm

Thanks for the tips!

I don't have Vicious Ophidian. I've not ran any trials yet (around 4 weeks in ESO). One of my guilds is doing both normal and vet trials on weekends, so I'll try to tag along. Normal, I guess, because quite often I'm kicked right away even from easy vet dungeons - people don't trust low CPs, once I've even been called a cheater for having stormproof @ 170CP (if I'm not kicked, according to combat metrics addon, I usually do around 50% of the group DPS - in group it's more than solo, between 25-28k).

Apparently it's not an issue in my guilds, though, as pretty much everyone claims they've done vMA at ZERO CP in a reasonable time (I've watched some apparently good and recognizable players doing that in 3-4 hours!) and the VERY FIRST clear ever took them an hour with just a two or three deaths (yeah, I call it bull***t, I've met many people in the game and a lot of high level 400-500 CP players perform similar or even worse than I do, I can't believe I'm THAT much worse than my entire guild ^^, I understand them, though, as I'm trying to show my e-peen every now and then, too... umm, like now exactly, sorry, I'll do my best to keep it in my pants ^^). I've done my research, I've read and watched mechanics/strategies. I still had to get used to it and learn it the hard way, which took over 4 hours.

I don't have any complete monster set yet. Few heads from the easy dungeons (like vFG1, vEH1, vBC1, vCoA1, vSC1 - it's quite funny how many people don't know they should dodge that spit attack when she's staring at them ^^), but to date I've been kicked from every of the harder dungeons I've queued for (I don't mind it that much, I just find other things to do, like going solo into normal versions for the undaunted key - like Selene's Web yesterday). I have maybe a dozen shoulders from various sets (I'll try to get Stormfist for both stamina regen and decent damage with 2 pieces).

I have supression field fully leveled, I'll try that. I'll try changing dawnbreaker morph (I've been using Flawless Dawnbreaker for the passive weapon damage bonus, but the stun of Dawnbreaker of Smiting would probably have worked better in vMA). I tried Dubious Camoran Throne earlier, it was helping A LOT, but I've had waay too low health for vMA. I'll try to buy some Health+stamina regen food then or ask in guild if someone could craft that for me.

I think I should also level my alchemy. I'm still at level 15 and using only the potions dropped by mobs. I don't have enough ingredients yet to do that, though (and I'm broke after getting the initial gear and recently buying missing spriggan pieces , not to mention that my first vMA run took ~10k in repair costs and now I sit at ~17k gold, I've had almost 300k after selling schematics from the recent event, but I've used a good chunk of that for bank space upgrades).

I created a healer (argonian templar) and a tank (argonian nightblade - seems to be much more fun than a dragonknight), that should make it easier to get into dungeons and farm for monster sets.

Anyway, I'll try vMA again during the weekend with changed ultimate, different food, maybe a monster set. I should be ~190 CP by then, which should help on its own. I think I'll put some CP into dodge cost reduction, too.

Sorry for all the grief and internet exhibitionism. I'm just like that, can't help it, but I'm still positive about it .

LeagueTroll

Wow

NyassaV

Congrats. After I got what I needed from there I'm not going back, it's a chore and boring so don't feel out of place if you find yourself hating that place even though you can clear it

Kanar

Stamina sorc says vMA is not hard
I mean, good job doing it but it's the easiest stam class (maybe easiest overall) for vMA.

Asardes

Well done. I've seen people over 1000 CP who haven't done it yet.

Robo_Hobo

That's pretty impressive to me!

I was only able to complete it at around 450 CP (but I started trying at 250) with dozens of multiple hour sessions across the span of several months. Even now at 600+ CP with about ~15 runs on my belt I still can't do it without dying close to or over the 15 counted times.

I like hearing things like this though, it really shows that difficult stuff like that can be done without the best gear or CP even if you're new. Skill and will are the biggest factors over any fancy armor or champion point buff...but for those of us who lack that kind of skill, any little bit of extra stats helps.

slickygm

Yesterday I finally got my maelstrom bow. I tell you, the game knows exactly what I want and gives me everything but it . It was powered, but I transmuted it to nirnhoned. The weapon is insane. I've done a lot of gear swaps recently, and the differences were usually within 1k DPS. The vMA bow on the other hand outparsed previous best setup by 1.3k (powered, before transmuting) and 3k (nirnhoned), all solo, selfbuffed, I didn't have a chance yet to try it in group.

It took around a month and 20 clears to get the bow, so not that long. First try at 160CP took over four hours, next tries (160-180CP) were usually just below 2 hours. Now I'm 290CP and vMA is SO MUCH EASIER. CP does matter more than some people admit. Both in terms of DPS and damage mitigation (which is actually more important for vMA, as there is a huge difference between being able to take two and three hits, as this gives much more time to react and recover). Recent runs were 85-90 minutes, between 5/15 and 0/15 (so yes, I'm still dying a lot, but not as much as before).

The single best advice I've got was to ditch max health + max stam food and use max health + stam regen food (I still do not have VO - bad luck on my side, I've got complete or almost complete sets of moondacer, infaliable aether, mending, twilight remedy, a few pieces of tfs, but AFAIR only sturdy VO arms... again, the game knows exaclty what I want ).

code65536

slickygm wrote: »

Now I'm 290CP and vMA is SO MUCH EASIER. CP does matter more than some people admit.

Or it could be that the more times you've run it, the easier it becomes. Kinda hard to separate the CP from the experience, since you're gaining both at the same time.

I recently ran one of my bank mule accounts through vMA (taking advantage of the free access to the DLC during the ESO+ trial), which had just a bit north of 200CP, and while CP (and gear) do make a noticeable difference, experience with the arena is still the most important thing. I was expecting a long, death-riddled disaster of a run. But it actually went pretty smoothly. A lot faster than I expected, and a lot fewer deaths than I expected (I made it to stage 8 with just two deaths... and then proceeded to die five times on that stage after telling my friends that I had 13 vitality--I'll chalk that up to me becoming complacent and overconfident.)

You don't have to create a second account for the low-CP experience, though. Throw in a 3K CP respec, and I think you'd be surprised at how much easier it seems even at, say, 160, now that you've built up more experience.