I would like Maelstrom weapons to be separated into a regular and Perfected version

John_Falstaff

Folks, if you're set on getting it your way, then at least let people already owning vMA weapons have them upgraded to perfected (if non-perfect will be dropped in nMA). Nobody wants yet another grind of the same trite and annoying content just to get better drops - we already went through that grind; if company decides that such grind deserves better reward, then there you have it, we already did what it takes to earn vet reward. Don't downgrade our weapons to the level dropped in nMA, because we paid for vMA ones in time spend to tackle it. Don't devalue our effort. Do that, and you'll put a start to a trend of making people run all sorts of content over and over by offering new bumps to equipment dropped there without upgrading the previously earned pieces.

Imagine ZOS announcing that your perfected Relequen jewelry gets a bump and vCR now drops "Relequen jewelry v1.1", and you have to regrind everything again. Wonderful for the company, very cheap way to make people play on without having to actually design much if anything, but I'd rather have improved weapons come with improved content. Besides, 1pc bonuses were on those weapons; nerfing them for those bonuses and then giving back (but not to your weapons this time, dear vMA weapon owner, but to those who'll grind again, some more) is as low as it gets. I'd just skip the game if they pulled off such a move.

Mister_DMC

jcm2606 wrote: »

Ability-altering weapons, the vMA bow & staff in particular with this thread, cannot be compared to full 5-piece sets just because of how they work. The reason why people say that people who can't complete vMA won't see an impactful change running the weapons, is because the abilities these weapons alter require proper usage to actually be an advantage.

The vMA bow buffs Volley the longer it lasts, so you get the most out of it when you let it run its course and refresh it immediately as it ends, which newer players, ie the players who can't complete vMA, generally don't grasp (yet). The vMA destruction staff directly buffs weaving, so you will only see the damage boost if you're adequately weaving, which newer players generally don't (yet). To make matters worse, ability-altering weapons, at least weapons like the vMA bow and the vDSA dual wield, require a damage tick to go through in order to proc, and so require the user to have the right rotation to use them, which newer players generally don't have a clean rotation.

So we have these weapons locked behind the veteran version of the arena, and players, who generally won't be advantaged running these weapons, are asking for lesser version of them. At that point, the weapon will literally be useless, because what little advantage the "perfect" weapon has gets gutted if the "imperfect" is a nerfed version of the "perfect" weapon. At that point, newer players will genuinely be better off running a 5-piece set in place of a special weapon like this. So, what's the point of giving out basically a feel-good trophy?

Aside from having access to weapons, vMA does teach you things about the game. vMA not only teaches you awareness skills and how to adapt to mechanics on-the-fly, but it also teaches you about your class's strengths and weaknesses, and how to navigate and exploit them. You cannot learn these things in even a vet trial, where you have 11 other players to carry you through the ***. vMA not only teaches you things, but forces you to learn them in order to even move on to the next add wave, let alone the next stage.

As I said. vMA is less about memorising the spawns, and more about learning the mechanics. There are dozens of guides on vMA, and I recommended two very helpful guides from Joy, who even has tips on not only each of the stages, but each of the classes. This information is out there, and if you are bashing your head against a wall, I highly recommend looking for it, as I was in the same spot.

vMA is one of the most rage-inducing pieces of content in the game if you're inexperienced, but it is one of the very few pieces of content that truly teaches you about the game at such a high level. And it rewards you with a strong weapon, that makes a good player better, but a strong player a monster.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I'm all for adding them simply to see the reaction of people that are asking for them to be added. The look of disappointment when they see their DPS increased a whopping 500 over the weapons they were previously using might be worth it alone.

Facefister

ccfeeling wrote: »

Weapons set should not divided in normal and perfect version.

Zos started it from as, and then black Rose Prison.

They broke the rules.

People forget that ESO shines not just because of its lore, setting and gameplay but also because of its horizontal progression. ESO is one of the rare MMOs where you can use every set at every content without drawbacks. Some people want some kind of a treadmill for their equipment... maybe those people should play WoW where your equipment becomes useless after every major patch...

Mounts, skins or styles for hardmodes or other equivalent achievements are fine but keep the equipment out of this circus.

GreenHere

fxeconomisteb17_ESO wrote: »

I'm not gonna kill myself trying the VMA. It's quite pointless whatever I do. I'm not too much of an avid player.
But I don't understand. If the other dungeons offer a normal and Perfected version, why not the same for Maelstrom weapons ?
First acquire some normal ones, and then go and try beat the VMA. The only way I see to increase my damage is to give up on my tanking, and that makes me very fragile.
And even so, doesn't look like it's enough.

@ZOS_GinaBruno But really, why is Maelstrom different than the others ?

(I got tired of reading through the thread about halfway through, so sorry if someone else covered this, but...)

Since no one has seen fit to answer your direct question with a direct answer, @fxeconomisteb17_ESO, here it is:

Maelstrom Arena was made long before Perfect and Imperfect items/sets were a thing in ESO. It's "different than the others" because it's from a different time. A simpler time, where you either had the chops or not to earn the gear from the Trial. And ZOS hasn't gone back to change Maelstrom in that regard. They may not ever do that.

I will echo the comments about vMA being more doable than you think. It's a mistake to treat it like some brutal thing to beat your head against until you finally force the arena into submission. Be like water; learn to move with the flow of combat. I promise, it's easier than you think once you learn how to Move Like This. Video and written guides are your friend, if you decide you want to buckle down and earn it.

Artim_X

Many moons ago I would of mostly disagreed with having Maelstrom weapons added to normal mode due to the lack of difficulty involved (would of rather have them be randomly sold at The Golden like monster sets for those who have trouble farming them), but the fact that there will be imperfect and perfect versions of the Blackrose weapons somewhat warrants and update to Master/Maelstrom weapons. I have also read some interesting suggestions in different posts on here of potentially updating Asylum weapons so that the main effect is the same for both imperfect and perfect versions, but the perfect versions would have some kind up stat increase.

If Maelstrom weapons are separated into imperfect and perfect versions I think that all currently obtained Maelstrom weapons should automatically become perfect, while the ones obtained from normal will be imperfect without the stat boost. Perfect Blackrose weapons are obtained from just completing veteran mode (plenty of deaths and sigil use will not prevent you from getting your drop) and you have three other people to trade with. As much as I love Maelstrom Arena it is old content that you can only do solo and the drop rate for the specific item you want is cancerous. You can't transmute a staff into an axe. People have already completed hundreds of runs for their desired weapons and it is only fair if the weapons that they already have are made perfect if Imperfect Maelstrom weapons end up being added into the game.

ImmortalCX

Maryal wrote: »

leepalmer95 wrote: »

lokulin wrote: »

MaxJrFTW wrote: »

The sense of self entitlement with this playerbase is outright ridiculous.

If you're not good enough to do vMA, then you have no business getting your hands on the best weapons in the game.

But they wouldn't be the best weapons, the perfected versions would be. Only 10% of players complete the normal arena. Less than 50% of players that complete the normal arena go on to complete the veteran version and only 10% go on to get flawless.

The sense of entitlement among this small percentage of players that only they should have half decent gear is the truly ridiculous thing.

The reality would be tho that even with normal and perfected weapons all the popular published builds would just update to only use the perfected ones and we'd be no further ahead.

Not at all.

The problem is that the player base in this game is just sheer lazy. They're so used to light attacking their way through content that when anything even remotely 'challenging' comes up they'd rather it nerfed and made easier than try it.

I don't see it myself, if i play games are it's too easy i get so bored i either increase the difficulty or stop playing the game.

VMSA is 3 yr old content, it's been nerfed numerous times as well. If you aren't even willing to try the content they don't come on the forum and ask for the rewards to been made easier to get.

The game doesn't encourage experience (as in terms of game mastery). Pvp doesn't encourage it either - in fact, it does the opposite -- it encourages joining ball groups and playing follow the leader.

Unfortunately too many of these (under-experienced) players think they are better at the game than they really are -- and you know what happens next, right? Yep, the forums are inundated with posts from these players qq'ing about some class they can't kill (or got killed by), their inability to counter against some skill/ability, or how their armor is weak-sauce, etc., they either jump on the nerf bandwagon, or insist that ZOS should totally re-work large parts of the game (armor passives, skills/abilities, CP, gear sets, etc.).

When vMA was first introduced nobody beat it their first playthrough, nor their second, nor their third, etc. Back then we knew what it meant to 'get gud' ... we didn't have a barrage of powerful proc sets to choose from, most of us wore agility, endurance or willpower jewelry, and we had relatively few monster sets to chose from (most wore engine guardian, blood spawn or valkyn scoria).

Since that time, for better or worse, ZOS has made it easier and easier for under-experienced players to acquire powerful gear with not a lot of effort ... ZOS knows many of these under-experienced players use this gear as a substitute for experience/game mastery.

Pumping out more and more powerful gear every 3 months isn't fixing anything, in fact, it is making things worse -- the 'power gap' between players with a lot of experience/game mastery vs. under-experienced players keeps getting wider.

You're not going to gain meaningful experience/game mastery by following the leader in a ball-group, or being carried by a group doing difficult pve content, or by watching YouTube videos.

These under-experienced players need to solo difficult content as a learning experience ... but they aren't going to do that unless they are properly incentivized. So far, all we have in that regard is Maelstrom Arena.

So why don't they just do vMA? The problem is that vMA is too difficult for many of these under-experienced players - no matter what they do they will fail; they simply are too under experienced in terms of game mechanics, timing, mastery.

While vMA may be out of reach for a lot of these players, nMA is a different story. For them, completing nMA will be very difficult and challenging, but not insurmountable. Completing this content will give them a lot of 'gains' in terms of experience, game mechanics, timing, etc.

Unfortunately, the rewards from nMA provide little in terms of an incentive to complete the content (you can get better armor sets elsewhere and in group content that you can be carried in).

THROW THEM A BONE! Make non-perfected Maelstrom weapons a reality!

Along this line of thinking, if you want more people to learn how to play Maelstrom, the reward for the normal version should be a pet.

code65536

jcm2606 wrote: »

Ability-altering weapons, the vMA bow & staff in particular with this thread, cannot be compared to full 5-piece sets just because of how they work. The reason why people say that people who can't complete vMA won't see an impactful change running the weapons, is because the abilities these weapons alter require proper usage to actually be an advantage.

The vMA bow buffs Volley the longer it lasts, so you get the most out of it when you let it run its course and refresh it immediately as it ends, which newer players, ie the players who can't complete vMA, generally don't grasp (yet). The vMA destruction staff directly buffs weaving, so you will only see the damage boost if you're adequately weaving, which newer players generally don't (yet). To make matters worse, ability-altering weapons, at least weapons like the vMA bow and the vDSA dual wield, require a damage tick to go through in order to proc, and so require the user to have the right rotation to use them, which newer players generally don't have a clean rotation.

Who the hell cares? How is any of this relevant? Why does it matter to you or to anyone if people who want this gear can't use this gear to its full potential? Relequen is another you-need-to-be-able-to-weave properly set, and a lot of people won't be able to use it to its full potential. Moondancer is going to be worthless to anyone who isn't in a well-coordinated group with lots of synergies being thrown, and people who can't beat vMA are unlikely to be running with groups where Moondancer would be good. But none of that matters: it's available to anyone, just as it should be. Maybe one day they'll learn to use the weapon properly. Or they'll decided that they don't want the weapon because they can't use it properly. Or maybe someone can weave properly but can't beat vMA for other reasons unrelated to their ability to weave. Or maybe they'll use the weapon for a terrible reason such as them liking the appearance of holding a giant honey dipper. It doesn't matter because none of that is your business or my business.

"You lack the skill to use the set to its full potential" is not only patronizing, but an entirely invalid reason to deny people gear.

jcm2606 wrote: »

So we have these weapons locked behind the veteran version of the arena, and players, who generally won't be advantaged running these weapons, are asking for lesser version of them. At that point, the weapon will literally be useless, because what little advantage the "perfect" weapon has gets gutted if the "imperfect" is a nerfed version of the "perfect" weapon. At that point, newer players will genuinely be better off running a 5-piece set in place of a special weapon like this.

This is wildly speculative. If ZOS makes new Perfect weapons with an extra stat bonus (like the BRP weapons), then Imperfect will not be "gutted". It'll just be what the current weapons already are, and Perfect will be a buffed version with extra stats. If ZOS makes new Imperfect weapons with slightly lower numbers (e.g., similar to how the Imperfect Asylum resto reduces cost by 27% vs. 30% for the Perfect), I would hardly call that "gutting".

jcm2606 wrote: »

So, what's the point of giving out basically a feel-good trophy?

Nobody's giving out any "feel-good trophies" because the gear isn't the trophy. The "feel-good trophy" is the Stormproof title. Or that polymorph. Gear isn't--and shouldn't--be the trophy. But for people who cling onto the notion of gear as trophies, well, the Perfected weapons would be the new trophy.

jcm2606 wrote: »

Aside from having access to weapons, vMA does teach you things about the game. vMA not only teaches you awareness skills and how to adapt to mechanics on-the-fly, but it also teaches you about your class's strengths and weaknesses, and how to navigate and exploit them.

This is completely and utterly irrelevant. Yes, vMA is a rite of passage for anyone who wants to engage in ESO's endgame. I strongly urge people to do vMA. And I always tell them, "If you're running vMA for the gear, you're running vMA for the wrong reasons." People should run vMA. But they should run vMA because of what vMA teaches players and for the sense of accomplishment. vMA is not about the gear. It shouldn't be about the gear.

JinMori

i'm fine with normal dropping the standard quality, and vet dropping the better quality,

Ayastigi

An_An wrote: »

SoLooney wrote: »

Is that seriously your answer to not being able to beat vma? Is to make the weapons perfected and non perfected so anyone can get a cookie?

You obviously dont need the weapons. Facepalm

Umm thank you for telling me what I don’t need.
While you’re at it would you also like to tell me how to play my game ?

You obviously are a very good player so I’d request you to keep your privilege in check in the future.

Is this real life, did you tell somebody to check their privilege because you think they are a very good player?! If college was too hard for you would you ask them to make the work easier so you can get a degree? When they tell you no and say study and work harder and that if you can't do the work then you don't deserve the degree would you tell them to check their intellectual privilege? People are soft as charmin.

Emma_Overload

Aliyavana wrote: »

If you can't complete vma, you likely don't need them for competing the content you plan to do

I seriously doubt there is ANY content in the game that requires the use of Maelstrom weapons. I can't imagine that any of them are necessary for PvP, either.

HOWEVER, there is most certainly a SOCIAL requirement to possess certain gear. Some guilds act like friggin' country clubs with all their ridiculous demands, especially when it comes to trial groups. I strongly suspect this social aspect is the underlying reason for requests like the OP's.

GreenHere

Emma_Overload wrote: »

Aliyavana wrote: »

If you can't complete vma, you likely don't need them for competing the content you plan to do

I seriously doubt there is ANY content in the game that requires the use of Maelstrom weapons. I can't imagine that any of them are necessary for PvP, either.

HOWEVER, there is most certainly a SOCIAL requirement to possess certain gear. Some guilds act like friggin' country clubs with all their ridiculous demands, especially when it comes to trial groups. I strongly suspect this social aspect is the underlying reason for requests like the OP's.

While that is a good point, and I think you're right, a big part of the reason for said requirements is to know, "oh, you completed vMA? You must be at least semi-competent... c'mon in then!"

Not trying to say one way or another that people need to clear vMA or gtfo; just pointing out another angle of it. This has been an interesting thread. :P

code65536

Emma_Overload wrote: »

Aliyavana wrote: »

If you can't complete vma, you likely don't need them for competing the content you plan to do

I seriously doubt there is ANY content in the game that requires the use of Maelstrom weapons. I can't imagine that any of them are necessary for PvP, either.

HOWEVER, there is most certainly a SOCIAL requirement to possess certain gear. Some guilds act like friggin' country clubs with all their ridiculous demands, especially when it comes to trial groups. I strongly suspect this social aspect is the underlying reason for requests like the OP's.

LOL. There is no social requirement for gear. I don't know any guild that has asks you to have a particular weapon. They're more interested in how good of a player you are. Of course, there is a lot of overlap here--the players who are good are players who have completed vMA and have the weapons and it's assumed that you of course have these weapons, so it's easy for an outsider to think, "oh, they're respected because of the weapon". They aren't.

For example, consider someone who stumbles through and barely scrapes through vMA once, spamming sigils the whole way through but gets lucky with the exact weapon that they wanted on that first run, versus someone who has beaten it hundreds of times flawlessly without sigils but who, due to bad luck, never got the weapon they need (in the days before trait change, there were people who didn't have a decent weapon even after hundreds of runs).

If a guild does ask about vMA, they won't ask "do you have a vMA inferno". Instead, they'll ask, "what's your highest vMA score"? The weapons are not--and never were--the badge of honor that people in this thread make them out to be, so why are people getting so flustered about making them accessible to the normal crowd? The people who care are more interested in your score, not your loot drops.

Metafae

If they made perfected versions and tied it to perfect clears I would be so mad.

I have cleared it without dying on 3 different characters, but each time I was lucky to not get slammed by the lag monster during the later stages.

I don't know what it is about that arena, but they never fixed it. From Arena 5 onwards, the game starts to lag really really bad for me when each wave of enemies spawn.

Too many times I've had my flawless run ruined by the game freezing up when a wave of enemies spawn, and then coming out of the frozen state already dead.

Fix the game already, this is really old content and its still broken af

Cl0udW4ve

Artim_X wrote: »

Many moons ago I would of mostly disagreed with having Maelstrom weapons added to normal mode due to the lack of difficulty involved (would of rather have them be randomly sold at The Golden like monster sets for those who have trouble farming them), but the fact that there will be imperfect and perfect versions of the Blackrose weapons somewhat warrants and update to Master/Maelstrom weapons. I have also read some interesting suggestions in different posts on here of potentially updating Asylum weapons so that the main effect is the same for both imperfect and perfect versions, but the perfect versions would have some kind up stat increase.

If Maelstrom weapons are separated into imperfect and perfect versions I think that all currently obtained Maelstrom weapons should automatically become perfect, while the ones obtained from normal will be imperfect without the stat boost. Perfect Blackrose weapons are obtained from just completing veteran mode (plenty of deaths and sigil use will not prevent you from getting your drop) and you have three other people to trade with. As much as I love Maelstrom Arena it is old content that you can only do solo and the drop rate for the specific item you want is cancerous. You can't transmute a staff into an axe. People have already completed hundreds of runs for their desired weapons and it is only fair if the weapons that they already have are made perfect if Imperfect Maelstrom weapons end up being added into the game.

Problem is that nMA is way too easy. In my opinion DLC Dungeons/Raids in normal mode are much harder than nMA. Even if you would add new stats for the perfected version, the imperfected will also be a very strong weapon, which you will get very easily.
But i have to agree to your second paragraph. Most players ran vMA more times then the can remeber. Dont think anybody would like to rerun it just for a "new" perfected version.

Beardimus

fxeconomisteb17_ESO wrote: »

I'm not gonna kill myself trying the VMA. It's quite pointless whatever I do. I'm not too much of an avid player.
But I don't understand. If the other dungeons offer a normal and Perfected version, why not the same for Maelstrom weapons ?
First acquire some normal ones, and then go and try beat the VMA. The only way I see to increase my damage is to give up on my tanking, and that makes me very fragile.
And even so, doesn't look like it's enough.

@ZOS_GinaBruno But really, why is Maelstrom different than the others ?

No, flat no.

Honestly to get the weapon you need to be good enough for the weapon to make a difference. If you can't get to it, odds are your build or playstyle has other, much bigger gains, than the vma weapon will actually give.

Just weaving correctly can make a big gain in DPS.

His isnt meant to sound off or harsh but honestly people obsess about getting a vMA weapon and I believe my view above.

What's your build for vMA? Whats your DPS now? where are you getting stuck? Mechanics is a huge part of it, sure DPS helps avoid some of them hence nMA is way easy and you don't learn much.

Gives us the details of the problem and sure we can help. VMA is very doable now

Rowjoh

VMA is an outdated tedious timesink and the weapons haven't been bis for a long time.

Move on and enjoy the wide variety of better more fun content and rewards

robpr

MA is very outdated content now and in my opinion, we should carry on to new stuff already. As BiS changed over the patches, Bow and Staff is still required if you want to maximize yourself. While having 500-1k dps more on single unit is irrelevant, when all your DDs in a trial have it then it's a significant improvement.

Game needs more variety. Look at most magicka dps builds. All are the same in most cases.

John_Falstaff

@robpr , I'll agree that variety is required. Though mm-m, not sure about magicka builds. In my view, magicka has way, way broader selection just under the meta. BSW can outperform Siroria on mobile fights, someone uses Scathed, someone uses Silks, now Strategist is thrown into the pile. Stamina? There's no single set that adds even close to such obscene amount of damage that Relequen gives.

But granted, variety improved somewhat with Summerset, and gap between vMA and regular sets is narrower because 2H/bow/staff now counts as two set pieces. I think people that will get bow/staff from nMA are going to be sorely disappointed about performance, because they'll tinker around with those weapons, and eventually find out that simply changing rotation and weaving better will have boosted their damage numbers much more dramatically than slotting Maelstrom bow or staff.

SHADOW2KK

Sure OP, you can have your idea implemented if I and others who have completed VMA numerous times can have all our weapons upgraded to Perfected cos ya know, we earned it.

VMA weapons are not a magic fix to dps, if you are a terribad player, then having a VmA weapon is not gonna make you godlike, never mind the fact that you will probably never ever get one in the first place.

Learn your class/classes, learn your rotations better, weaving/ani cancelling, decent gear, train on dummy.

Swomp23

I think people really overestimate the power of maelstrom weapons. It will add maybe 2k dps on your parse, max. If you can't beat it, just run your front bar set on your back bar too. I think that because ppl see this weapon on every BiS build they think they absolutely need it, but it's far from the truth.
If you can't beat vMA, the very small dps increase you would get from the maelstrom weapon would be negligible.

I got nirnhoned ligntning staff this weekend on my 3rd clear. Went on a dummy for comparison. Did 25k with 2x Julianos and 26k with front Juli and back lightning Maelstrom. Maybe I could hit 27k with inferno, but I'm not even sure.

You don't NEED Maelstrom weapons. It's a nice-to-have. I'd even say that it's weaker than a 5-pieces set if you don't weave perfectly.

Swomp23

jcm2606 wrote: »

Ability-altering weapons, the vMA bow & staff in particular with this thread, cannot be compared to full 5-piece sets just because of how they work. The reason why people say that people who can't complete vMA won't see an impactful change running the weapons, is because the abilities these weapons alter require proper usage to actually be an advantage.

The vMA bow buffs Volley the longer it lasts, so you get the most out of it when you let it run its course and refresh it immediately as it ends, which newer players, ie the players who can't complete vMA, generally don't grasp (yet). The vMA destruction staff directly buffs weaving, so you will only see the damage boost if you're adequately weaving, which newer players generally don't (yet). To make matters worse, ability-altering weapons, at least weapons like the vMA bow and the vDSA dual wield, require a damage tick to go through in order to proc, and so require the user to have the right rotation to use them, which newer players generally don't have a clean rotation.

So we have these weapons locked behind the veteran version of the arena, and players, who generally won't be advantaged running these weapons, are asking for lesser version of them. At that point, the weapon will literally be useless, because what little advantage the "perfect" weapon has gets gutted if the "imperfect" is a nerfed version of the "perfect" weapon. At that point, newer players will genuinely be better off running a 5-piece set in place of a special weapon like this. So, what's the point of giving out basically a feel-good trophy?

Aside from having access to weapons, vMA does teach you things about the game. vMA not only teaches you awareness skills and how to adapt to mechanics on-the-fly, but it also teaches you about your class's strengths and weaknesses, and how to navigate and exploit them. You cannot learn these things in even a vet trial, where you have 11 other players to carry you through the ***. vMA not only teaches you things, but forces you to learn them in order to even move on to the next add wave, let alone the next stage.

As I said. vMA is less about memorising the spawns, and more about learning the mechanics. There are dozens of guides on vMA, and I recommended two very helpful guides from Joy, who even has tips on not only each of the stages, but each of the classes. This information is out there, and if you are bashing your head against a wall, I highly recommend looking for it, as I was in the same spot.

vMA is one of the most rage-inducing pieces of content in the game if you're inexperienced, but it is one of the very few pieces of content that truly teaches you about the game at such a high level. And it rewards you with a strong weapon, that makes a good player better, but a strong player a monster.

^^ This exactly. You sir, detailed my thoughts better than I could. Here, have an upvote.

Swomp23

Mister_DMC wrote: »

Couldn't have said it better myself. I'm all for adding them simply to see the reaction of people that are asking for them to be added. The look of disappointment when they see their DPS increased a whopping 500 over the weapons they were previously using might be worth it alone.

I LOLed. Then I cried when I realised this is exactly what happened to me.

pelle412

I will echo what has been said earlier in this thread. You do not need vMA weapons to do any content in this game. They only add a small amount of DPS boost. Most of your DPS gain is from practicing rotations. When most people completed vMA the very first time, they probably had torn out half their scalp, smashed a few keyboards and threw a few computer mice into the wall, but if you stay with it and beat it, it does get much easier on subsequent runs.

Maryal

ImmortalCX wrote: »

Maryal wrote: »

leepalmer95 wrote: »

lokulin wrote: »

MaxJrFTW wrote: »

The sense of self entitlement with this playerbase is outright ridiculous.

If you're not good enough to do vMA, then you have no business getting your hands on the best weapons in the game.

But they wouldn't be the best weapons, the perfected versions would be. Only 10% of players complete the normal arena. Less than 50% of players that complete the normal arena go on to complete the veteran version and only 10% go on to get flawless.

The sense of entitlement among this small percentage of players that only they should have half decent gear is the truly ridiculous thing.

The reality would be tho that even with normal and perfected weapons all the popular published builds would just update to only use the perfected ones and we'd be no further ahead.

Not at all.

The problem is that the player base in this game is just sheer lazy. They're so used to light attacking their way through content that when anything even remotely 'challenging' comes up they'd rather it nerfed and made easier than try it.

I don't see it myself, if i play games are it's too easy i get so bored i either increase the difficulty or stop playing the game.

VMSA is 3 yr old content, it's been nerfed numerous times as well. If you aren't even willing to try the content they don't come on the forum and ask for the rewards to been made easier to get.

The game doesn't encourage experience (as in terms of game mastery). Pvp doesn't encourage it either - in fact, it does the opposite -- it encourages joining ball groups and playing follow the leader.

Unfortunately too many of these (under-experienced) players think they are better at the game than they really are -- and you know what happens next, right? Yep, the forums are inundated with posts from these players qq'ing about some class they can't kill (or got killed by), their inability to counter against some skill/ability, or how their armor is weak-sauce, etc., they either jump on the nerf bandwagon, or insist that ZOS should totally re-work large parts of the game (armor passives, skills/abilities, CP, gear sets, etc.).

When vMA was first introduced nobody beat it their first playthrough, nor their second, nor their third, etc. Back then we knew what it meant to 'get gud' ... we didn't have a barrage of powerful proc sets to choose from, most of us wore agility, endurance or willpower jewelry, and we had relatively few monster sets to chose from (most wore engine guardian, blood spawn or valkyn scoria).

Since that time, for better or worse, ZOS has made it easier and easier for under-experienced players to acquire powerful gear with not a lot of effort ... ZOS knows many of these under-experienced players use this gear as a substitute for experience/game mastery.

Pumping out more and more powerful gear every 3 months isn't fixing anything, in fact, it is making things worse -- the 'power gap' between players with a lot of experience/game mastery vs. under-experienced players keeps getting wider.

You're not going to gain meaningful experience/game mastery by following the leader in a ball-group, or being carried by a group doing difficult pve content, or by watching YouTube videos.

These under-experienced players need to solo difficult content as a learning experience ... but they aren't going to do that unless they are properly incentivized. So far, all we have in that regard is Maelstrom Arena.

So why don't they just do vMA? The problem is that vMA is too difficult for many of these under-experienced players - no matter what they do they will fail; they simply are too under experienced in terms of game mechanics, timing, mastery.

While vMA may be out of reach for a lot of these players, nMA is a different story. For them, completing nMA will be very difficult and challenging, but not insurmountable. Completing this content will give them a lot of 'gains' in terms of experience, game mechanics, timing, etc.

Unfortunately, the rewards from nMA provide little in terms of an incentive to complete the content (you can get better armor sets elsewhere and in group content that you can be carried in).

THROW THEM A BONE! Make non-perfected Maelstrom weapons a reality!

Along this line of thinking, if you want more people to learn how to play Maelstrom, the reward for the normal version should be a pet.

Pets are not enough of an incentive and you know it!

We are talking about a game that has made it easy for under-experienced players to have as much 'raw power' as a highly experienced player via the barrage of powerful proc sets, monster sets, enhanced weapons, etc. that are so darn easy to obtain in this game (whether they be crafted, or attained via group content where the under-experienced player is 'carried' by the group). Instead of these powerful sets equalizing the power-imbalance, it turns out that these powerful sets emphasize the problem even more!

Under-experienced players who get ahold of these powerful sets still get outclassed by the more experienced player. When they can't perform the way they think they should, they blame everything else, another class is OP, or some ability, skill, or passive is OP, or they blame the CP system, or their armor type is weak-sauce, or there needs to be more healing in the game, or whatever.

There comes a point when we have to look at what this game encourages, how it encourages it. A lot of content has been dummied down. Equipment is extremely powerful. It's pitifully easy to get carried in difficult content to get even more powerful gear. Join a ball group and play follow-the-leader in open world pvp. Nothing about this encourages someone to 'get gud' ... quite the contrary, it's instant gratification just about every where you look.

On the other side of the coin are the more experienced players ... and many of them have complained about dummied down content, about the forum whiners who want to nerf everything that kills them or that they can't kill, and about how open world pvp has deteriorated over the years. We complain, but what are we doing about it? What is being done to get these under-experienced players some good old-fashion in-game experience that sharpens their ability to deal with game mechanics and timing?

Well, we do have Maelstrom Arena - the only content in the game where you can't be carried by your friends or guildies. But ... guess what? A great deal of those under-experienced players don't stand a chance in hellllll of completing vMA - the experience gap is just too wide!

Think back, why did so many players grind (and I do mean grind) vMA when it first came out? Hint: it wasn't for the armor sets! If maelstrom weapons were never introduced into the game, how many people do you think would have done that content?

All I'm saying is that offering non-perfected maelstrom weapons in nMA would be a huge incentive that would get many of these under-experienced players to undertake nMA -- it will undoubtedly be very difficult for them to complete, but very difficult is not the same as impossible. I'm not saying that this is the answer to everything, but it's a darn good start.

John_Falstaff

@Maryal , one problem is, the difficulty gap between nMA and vMA is huge. nMA doesn't prepare people for vMA at all, it doesn't teach anything, it's almost a binary case - from "not even trying" people jump to clearing it, and come out without knowing much of mechanics and spawn points or anything. A novice will get to certain CP and will just dive into nMA to happily emerge holding a bow in his teeth, but he's still just as unprepared for vMA (or anything as difficult) as he was before. And now he doesn't even have an incentive, partially because 150 weapon damage is so much more meager reward for the sudden dive into insanity than a whole new piece of gear, and partially because wow factor is gone, he equipped the bow and it didn't make him magically hit twice the DPS he has now.

MaleAmazon

I can just say that personally for me, managing the first clear of vMA was a big source of pride. It was one of those "YEEEEES!!!" moments I haven´t really had (barring playing RTS vs humans) since I was a child playing nintendo and finishing a game just felt great. So I would encourage people to stop saying "I´ll never clear it", gear up and keep trying.

Now I can clear it whenever I want. Just the way it goes.

I don´t oppose people getting imperfect gear, but I would weep inside since the *only* difficult solo content in the game would have gotten dumbed down. Really, we don´t need *less* solo challenges.

And also, yeah, don´t expect a maelstrom weapon to actually improve your performance. I just use the sword and shield on my main when tanking, since it is practical for a medium armor DD when switching to tank for a quick dungeon run. I don´t quite see people who can´t handle vMA, pulling off advanced cruel flurry rotations.

ZarkingFrued

lokulin wrote: »

MaxJrFTW wrote: »

The sense of self entitlement with this playerbase is outright ridiculous.

If you're not good enough to do vMA, then you have no business getting your hands on the best weapons in the game.

But they wouldn't be the best weapons, the perfected versions would be. Only 10% of players complete the normal arena. Less than 50% of players that complete the normal arena go on to complete the veteran version and only 10% go on to get flawless.

The sense of entitlement among this small percentage of players that only they should have half decent gear is the truly ridiculous thing.

The reality would be tho that even with normal and perfected weapons all the popular published builds would just update to only use the perfected ones and we'd be no further ahead.

I've never completed normal lol, went straight into Vet. What's funny is that this dungeon caters to so pvp players as you need damage and defence/heals. Anyhow, I think that the 5% beat Vet concept is a little rigged as that's 5% of all players that have ever played, including the ones who get to level 10 and quit.

Bevik

Maryal wrote: »

ImmortalCX wrote: »

Maryal wrote: »

leepalmer95 wrote: »

lokulin wrote: »

MaxJrFTW wrote: »

The sense of self entitlement with this playerbase is outright ridiculous.

If you're not good enough to do vMA, then you have no business getting your hands on the best weapons in the game.

But they wouldn't be the best weapons, the perfected versions would be. Only 10% of players complete the normal arena. Less than 50% of players that complete the normal arena go on to complete the veteran version and only 10% go on to get flawless.

The sense of entitlement among this small percentage of players that only they should have half decent gear is the truly ridiculous thing.

The reality would be tho that even with normal and perfected weapons all the popular published builds would just update to only use the perfected ones and we'd be no further ahead.

Not at all.

The problem is that the player base in this game is just sheer lazy. They're so used to light attacking their way through content that when anything even remotely 'challenging' comes up they'd rather it nerfed and made easier than try it.

I don't see it myself, if i play games are it's too easy i get so bored i either increase the difficulty or stop playing the game.

VMSA is 3 yr old content, it's been nerfed numerous times as well. If you aren't even willing to try the content they don't come on the forum and ask for the rewards to been made easier to get.

The game doesn't encourage experience (as in terms of game mastery). Pvp doesn't encourage it either - in fact, it does the opposite -- it encourages joining ball groups and playing follow the leader.

Unfortunately too many of these (under-experienced) players think they are better at the game than they really are -- and you know what happens next, right? Yep, the forums are inundated with posts from these players qq'ing about some class they can't kill (or got killed by), their inability to counter against some skill/ability, or how their armor is weak-sauce, etc., they either jump on the nerf bandwagon, or insist that ZOS should totally re-work large parts of the game (armor passives, skills/abilities, CP, gear sets, etc.).

When vMA was first introduced nobody beat it their first playthrough, nor their second, nor their third, etc. Back then we knew what it meant to 'get gud' ... we didn't have a barrage of powerful proc sets to choose from, most of us wore agility, endurance or willpower jewelry, and we had relatively few monster sets to chose from (most wore engine guardian, blood spawn or valkyn scoria).

Since that time, for better or worse, ZOS has made it easier and easier for under-experienced players to acquire powerful gear with not a lot of effort ... ZOS knows many of these under-experienced players use this gear as a substitute for experience/game mastery.

Pumping out more and more powerful gear every 3 months isn't fixing anything, in fact, it is making things worse -- the 'power gap' between players with a lot of experience/game mastery vs. under-experienced players keeps getting wider.

You're not going to gain meaningful experience/game mastery by following the leader in a ball-group, or being carried by a group doing difficult pve content, or by watching YouTube videos.

These under-experienced players need to solo difficult content as a learning experience ... but they aren't going to do that unless they are properly incentivized. So far, all we have in that regard is Maelstrom Arena.

So why don't they just do vMA? The problem is that vMA is too difficult for many of these under-experienced players - no matter what they do they will fail; they simply are too under experienced in terms of game mechanics, timing, mastery.

While vMA may be out of reach for a lot of these players, nMA is a different story. For them, completing nMA will be very difficult and challenging, but not insurmountable. Completing this content will give them a lot of 'gains' in terms of experience, game mechanics, timing, etc.

Unfortunately, the rewards from nMA provide little in terms of an incentive to complete the content (you can get better armor sets elsewhere and in group content that you can be carried in).

THROW THEM A BONE! Make non-perfected Maelstrom weapons a reality!

Along this line of thinking, if you want more people to learn how to play Maelstrom, the reward for the normal version should be a pet.

Pets are not enough of an incentive and you know it!

We are talking about a game that has made it easy for under-experienced players to have as much 'raw power' as a highly experienced player via the barrage of powerful proc sets, monster sets, enhanced weapons, etc. that are so darn easy to obtain in this game (whether they be crafted, or attained via group content where the under-experienced player is 'carried' by the group). Instead of these powerful sets equalizing the power-imbalance, it turns out that these powerful sets emphasize the problem even more!

Under-experienced players who get ahold of these powerful sets still get outclassed by the more experienced player. When they can't perform the way they think they should, they blame everything else, another class is OP, or some ability, skill, or passive is OP, or they blame the CP system, or their armor type is weak-sauce, or there needs to be more healing in the game, or whatever.

There comes a point when we have to look at what this game encourages, how it encourages it. A lot of content has been dummied down. Equipment is extremely powerful. It's pitifully easy to get carried in difficult content to get even more powerful gear. Join a ball group and play follow-the-leader in open world pvp. Nothing about this encourages someone to 'get gud' ... quite the contrary, it's instant gratification just about every where you look.

On the other side of the coin are the more experienced players ... and many of them have complained about dummied down content, about the forum whiners who want to nerf everything that kills them or that they can't kill, and about how open world pvp has deteriorated over the years. We complain, but what are we doing about it? What is being done to get these under-experienced players some good old-fashion in-game experience that sharpens their ability to deal with game mechanics and timing?

Well, we do have Maelstrom Arena - the only content in the game where you can't be carried by your friends or guildies. But ... guess what? A great deal of those under-experienced players don't stand a chance in hellllll of completing vMA - the experience gap is just too wide!

Think back, why did so many players grind (and I do mean grind) vMA when it first came out? Hint: it wasn't for the armor sets! If maelstrom weapons were never introduced into the game, how many people do you think would have done that content?

All I'm saying is that offering non-perfected maelstrom weapons in nMA would be a huge incentive that would get many of these under-experienced players to undertake nMA -- it will undoubtedly be very difficult for them to complete, but very difficult is not the same as impossible. I'm not saying that this is the answer to everything, but it's a darn good start.

Why would you give anything to nMA finishers? It is so easy you can do it without dying with crafted gears on a non-CP char. If someone is not willing to learn the game why would you reward that behaviour? You know how many people I've met they said don't teach them or tell them the mechanics or hard cast frags or whatever you call it then they wiped. People are not taking their time to learn things. ESO is already dumbed down to that level when people just run through dungeons and overland content without even looking around. Pet build + heavy attacks can make you finish vMA. Why would you want reward a content which can be completed with a level 3 char? Don't feed those players who can't be arsed to learn their chars, mechanics or whatever. Every normal arena teach you what is the mechanic in the Veteran version, people are not watching what is happening as normal is so easy as it can get. Even the title for completing normal should be handed out.

kylewwefan

I have lots of VMA stuff. Most people are still blowing me out of the water on Dummy parse with or without VMA stuff. It’s ok. I got barely Güd maybe?

I’m still laughing pretty hard at this

Mister_DMC wrote: »

Couldn't have said it better myself. I'm all for adding them simply to see the reaction of people that are asking for them to be added. The look of disappointment when they see their DPS increased a whopping 500 over the weapons they were previously using might be worth it alone.

I’d seen another guy write somewhere in one of these “VMA Weapons Fom Normal” threads, that non-Stormproof don’t even need to be stepping foot into Vet Trials.

Well they can do it for sure. But these aren’t typically groups that are pushing high leaderboard scores. They may make leaderboards, because (get over yourself) not that many people are trying.

I do the same thing. Run a warden, templar, DK, nightblade through Maelstrom and guaranteed leaderboard spot and gold weekly reward. Because they’re empty. Sorc is apparently easy mode on VMA; I struggle with it. Just me.

Like when VMoL,VHOF, VAS, VCR are weekly. All you need is a complete and get leaderboard spot. Just how it is.

Now then, if Perfected Maelstrom came from weekly rewards or some kind of vet hardmode added. That would be cool. I think Flawless is a bit of a stretch.

Learn to Play

VMA teaches you how to play VMA. This stuff is not always so applicable in vet trials. Identify and neutralize priority targets. Avoid /Block heavy damage and environmental. Self Sustain/Self Heal etc.

Well maybe they are the same?

Here, no truer has it ever been that a dead DPS is no DPS. It’s actually start round over. This is where trials start falling apart.

Git Güd

Ok. I’m not pushing scores on anything. I can do some things and be ok. And I’m ok with that. I’m not gonna spend alot of time beating on this dummy either.

One time, a fellow helped me out. I spent an hour on dummy. It raised my damage significantly. I totally see how people can get hooked on that. But not me. I just needed to get enough. And be sustainable. And can actually get somewhere close to that damage in combat.


Cut To The Chase

Anyone is only gonna care for this stuff for Vet Trials.

It’s not gonna make any difference for overland stuff.

It’s not the reason you can’t beat some dungeon.

It certainly won’t help in PvP.

Virtually the only place these ability altering weapons are gonna be that useful is in Vet Trials. That is competitive raiding. Maybe a dozen or so groups actually compete in. And they are good players. Like really good. Getting some cheap knockoff Maelstrom stuff is not gonna help you push them scores. Nor should it.

TL;DR

What’s the point?



Side Note

IF THEY DID.....start giving them away for weekly rewards or some ungawdly hard HardMode Maelstrom. Could you see Templar, Warden, DragonKnight filling out weekly leaderboards again for a chance to get that sweet Perfected Maelstrom Ice Staff or S/B and Mythical Inferno Staff? Maybe find a way to fix the DW and 2H.

I still don’t.

Maryal

John_Falstaff wrote: »

@Maryal , one problem is, the difficulty gap between nMA and vMA is huge. nMA doesn't prepare people for vMA at all, it doesn't teach anything, it's almost a binary case - from "not even trying" people jump to clearing it, and come out without knowing much of mechanics and spawn points or anything. A novice will get to certain CP and will just dive into nMA to happily emerge holding a bow in his teeth, but he's still just as unprepared for vMA (or anything as difficult) as he was before. And now he doesn't even have an incentive, partially because 150 weapon damage is so much more meager reward for the sudden dive into insanity than a whole new piece of gear, and partially because wow factor is gone, he equipped the bow and it didn't make him magically hit twice the DPS he has now.

If you think my suggestion was about preparing someone to clear vMA, you missed my point altogether. My suggestion had absolutely nothing to do with trying to prep someone to clear vMA.

Let's backtrack a bit ... a few years ago, a good player was defined by their skill, their knowledge of the game, game mechanics, their timing, etc. Players understood abilities/passives, not only of their own class, but also of other classes and skill lines .... they used that knowledge to their advantage. We all started out the game as noobs, we all made mistakes and died many deaths in the beginning. People got gud. Many players back then became experienced and knowledgeable, they honed in their timing -- both offensive and defensive. People did that because that's what you had to do to get good.

Move forward in time and now you have an influx of newer players who can't hold a candle to these more experienced players. What happened? An influx of easy to acquire powerful equipment to help bridge the 'power gap' between the highly experienced and the under experienced. This strategy worked for a time, but only because it temporarily masked the real problem.

Move forward in time even more -- now you have a sizeable number of under experienced players in the game who expect to be spoon-fed because that is what this game has encouraged for a while now. They make demands to change the game to fit their needs (if it kills me it's OP, if I can't kill it it's OP) while the rest of us scratch our heads. We tell them ltp, but nothing in the game encourages that -- they join follow-the-leader ball groups in pvp and they get carried by others in pve.

My suggestion is about taking a step forward by incentivizing under-experienced players to involve themselves in gameplay that requires them to learn challenging* game mechanics as well as hone in on their timing (both offensive and defensive), as well as having to strategize.

*challenging to an under-experienced player

You incentivize them by offering non-perfected maelstrom weapons for clearing nMA content.
vMA is already incentivized, but vMA is well beyond what under experienced players can deal with.

Again, my suggestion is NOT as a prelude to vMA. My suggestion is about incentivizing people to accomplish something meaningful (for them) ... it's about pointing them toward the path that leads to game mastery.