Tips/tricks for SDK in vMA?

Ohhgrizyyy

Anything yall can give me. Im tryin to farm in to get vMA dw and well I used to do it way back on a Magsorc and it was insanely easy. Honestly on any mag class but for Stam DK I'm struggling hard. Dont know what sets to rock. I do have a vMA bow and heals are struggling a bit. I did most of a run with Sunder, Hundings and Mephalas and then swapped to Nightmothers instead of Hundings after I realized I had a set. Any tips on cheap gear to get? I plan on working towards another SDK build that actually includes vMA DW. Skill setups would be appreciated too.

FatelessLava

Hi, I’ve done StamDk I’m vMA several times, and to me I find it easier than my Stamden. What I wear on my Stam DK is Vicious Ophidian and twice fang serpent on my first clear. After that I switched to briarheart and Vicious Ophidian. With briarheart on the body so I have that 5 peice on all the time. If you don’t mind farming Sanctum for VO or TFS . For monster sets I run Iceheart (saves my ass several times) and switch it to bloodspawn on the poison stage so the icy aura doesn’t hurt the menders.

On my bar I run
Claw, bloodcraze, bloodthirsty, blade cloak, vigor and Flawless dawnbreaker

Back bar I run
Endlesshail, trap, poison injection, caltrops, noxious breath and ballista.

I found ballista works better than standard or even corrosive in certain fights, even though standard gives that damage buff and damage reduction, certain fights you want to keep moving (engine guardian boss) in the poison stage I switched dawnbreaker to barrier as a clutch in case I get the poison spore on me.

In the ice stage and poison stage I swap trap for wings, reflect those damn ice attacks and arrows back at them!

StamDk is hard in vMA since we don’t have a passive way of healing other than bloodcraze and bloodthirst, but that set up is what I found works the best for me.

With briarheart and the dots from the abilities it procs often and heals you on crits, which my khajiit loves. You could try hundings weapons, and three body armor and briarheart rings/neck (those are pricy but can be farmed. Just make sure they have the robust trait) with two other body armor and the monsterset of your choice. Iceheart would pair nice with briarheart because when you crit you have a 20% chance to get a shield and 10% to heal and get a boost to weapon damage.

What stages are you having trouble with the most?

usmcjdking

VO/Agil/Asylum 2H. If you don't have VO use hunding and Orzarga's HP/Stam regen food. You won't be getting a decent score and probably not even a flawless, but corrosive will be up so fast that there is very little real threat that can kill you.

Ohhgrizyyy

FatelessLava wrote: »

Hi, I’ve done StamDk I’m vMA several times, and to me I find it easier than my Stamden. What I wear on my Stam DK is Vicious Ophidian and twice fang serpent on my first clear. After that I switched to briarheart and Vicious Ophidian. With briarheart on the body so I have that 5 peice on all the time. If you don’t mind farming Sanctum for VO or TFS . For monster sets I run Iceheart (saves my ass several times) and switch it to bloodspawn on the poison stage so the icy aura doesn’t hurt the menders.

On my bar I run
Claw, bloodcraze, bloodthirsty, blade cloak, vigor and Flawless dawnbreaker

Back bar I run
Endlesshail, trap, poison injection, caltrops, noxious breath and ballista.

I found ballista works better than standard or even corrosive in certain fights, even though standard gives that damage buff and damage reduction, certain fights you want to keep moving (engine guardian boss) in the poison stage I switched dawnbreaker to barrier as a clutch in case I get the poison spore on me.

In the ice stage and poison stage I swap trap for wings, reflect those damn ice attacks and arrows back at them!

StamDk is hard in vMA since we don’t have a passive way of healing other than bloodcraze and bloodthirst, but that set up is what I found works the best for me.

With briarheart and the dots from the abilities it procs often and heals you on crits, which my khajiit loves. You could try hundings weapons, and three body armor and briarheart rings/neck (those are pricy but can be farmed. Just make sure they have the robust trait) with two other body armor and the monsterset of your choice. Iceheart would pair nice with briarheart because when you crit you have a 20% chance to get a shield and 10% to heal and get a boost to weapon damage.

What stages are you having trouble with the most?

The honestly died on I think every stage at least once except for the first stage. But the parts I struggled was the 2nd stage (healing through bleed and the hits) final boss in Ice Arena (healing through all the ***holes shooting ice at me), Rng spores on poison arena (cant control) and the final, primarily the final boss and well even slightly on the titan. It was horrible trying to heal through daedroths fire. Usually didnt have enough burn to get boss to teleport up top before deadroth spawned. I've learned that penetration is almost more important in vMA then flat damage is

Ohhgrizyyy

FatelessLava wrote: »

Hi, I’ve done StamDk I’m vMA several times, and to me I find it easier than my Stamden. What I wear on my Stam DK is Vicious Ophidian and twice fang serpent on my first clear. After that I switched to briarheart and Vicious Ophidian. With briarheart on the body so I have that 5 peice on all the time. If you don’t mind farming Sanctum for VO or TFS . For monster sets I run Iceheart (saves my ass several times) and switch it to bloodspawn on the poison stage so the icy aura doesn’t hurt the menders.

On my bar I run
Claw, bloodcraze, bloodthirsty, blade cloak, vigor and Flawless dawnbreaker

Back bar I run
Endlesshail, trap, poison injection, caltrops, noxious breath and ballista.

I found ballista works better than standard or even corrosive in certain fights, even though standard gives that damage buff and damage reduction, certain fights you want to keep moving (engine guardian boss) in the poison stage I switched dawnbreaker to barrier as a clutch in case I get the poison spore on me.

In the ice stage and poison stage I swap trap for wings, reflect those damn ice attacks and arrows back at them!

StamDk is hard in vMA since we don’t have a passive way of healing other than bloodcraze and bloodthirst, but that set up is what I found works the best for me.

With briarheart and the dots from the abilities it procs often and heals you on crits, which my khajiit loves. You could try hundings weapons, and three body armor and briarheart rings/neck (those are pricy but can be farmed. Just make sure they have the robust trait) with two other body armor and the monsterset of your choice. Iceheart would pair nice with briarheart because when you crit you have a 20% chance to get a shield and 10% to heal and get a boost to weapon damage.

What stages are you having trouble with the most?

Also this isnt really for score runs or insanely fast clears. Just so I wont struggle and die an insane amount. As stated I used to have my magsorc spec'ed for a heavy attack build which was easy mode in vMA. I never spent the time to learn exactly where some adds spawned but I do know the rounds generally or used to (quit for like 11-12 months and just returned to ESO) and I had only about 12 clears cause at the time I got my 2h maul for PvP and a nirn lightning which was BiS at the time

usmcjdking

Stam DK is really strong because of corrosive. I cleared VMA with no CP, no food and no pots on stam DK by virtue of how amazing corrosive armor is.

2H is the best IMO for learning VMA as it's simply better at a) stam management b) self-buffs. Forward Momentum is really strong in the arena and provides much desired snare immunity that you won't be getting otherwise.

My standard bars when I run on my DK are Reverse Slice - Wrecking Blow - Forward Momentum - Nox Breath - Veno Claw - DBOS. Bow bar is PI, Endless hail, Caltrops, Vigor, Frag Shield - Corrosive Armor.

Ohhgrizyyy

Also just got a Magblade to 50 last night. Would it be better to just get that in something simple like BSW, Juli and Skoria/Groth. Farm the mages I need, farm the extra skill points, farm the undaunted and use that for vMA? This will be my first ever PvE built magblade and idk if I'll stick to my Stam DK or Magblade as a main but I really want to honestly get the vMA DW and try this Xynode build and if I truly like it I'll farm for or get all the other sets necessary. The build I'm going for is vMA Axe/Dagger, vMA Bow, 5 Relequen, 5 TFS. The whole idea is to use flurry to buff your claw, rending and trap beast damage and he parsed (someone kept major fracture up full time for him) and hit 52k with it.

Ohhgrizyyy

usmcjdking wrote: »

Stam DK is really strong because of corrosive. I cleared VMA with no CP, no food and no pots on stam DK by virtue of how amazing corrosive armor is.

2H is the best IMO for learning VMA as it's simply better at a) stam management b) self-buffs. Forward Momentum is really strong in the arena and provides much desired snare immunity that you won't be getting otherwise.

My standard bars when I run on my DK are Reverse Slice - Wrecking Blow - Forward Momentum - Nox Breath - Veno Claw - DBOS. Bow bar is PI, Endless hail, Caltrops, Vigor, Frag Shield - Corrosive Armor.

Why frag shield? For the mending?

Vermethys

For sets I'd use Vicious Ophidian (or Battlefield Acrobat if you don't have VO), Briarheart, and Iceheart as the monster set. Switch out Iceheart for Stormfist once you get more comfortable.

Regarding skills to use: use Poison Injection on every target you see, use Caltrops more often than Endless Hail (that snare is useful against fast moving enemies like the S&B dremora in the last stage), use Venomous Claw and Blood Craze (or Rending Slashes) once in melee range; both are very cheap. Flames of Oblivion is nice to have at all times, and you can probably make use of Reflective Plate but it is very situational (like when the 3 archers spawn in round 4 of stage 7).

Draxys

You could try going tanky. There are heavy sets that will give you solid dmg stats. I watched a vid of a heavy stam DK flawless vma and he was using terrible sets like morkuldin. But stam DK is a tanky brute so he was able to finish, albeit very slow. Not a scoreboard setup but potentially safe for a clear.

usmcjdking

Ohhgrizyyy wrote: »

usmcjdking wrote: »

Stam DK is really strong because of corrosive. I cleared VMA with no CP, no food and no pots on stam DK by virtue of how amazing corrosive armor is.

2H is the best IMO for learning VMA as it's simply better at a) stam management b) self-buffs. Forward Momentum is really strong in the arena and provides much desired snare immunity that you won't be getting otherwise.

My standard bars when I run on my DK are Reverse Slice - Wrecking Blow - Forward Momentum - Nox Breath - Veno Claw - DBOS. Bow bar is PI, Endless hail, Caltrops, Vigor, Frag Shield - Corrosive Armor.

Why frag shield? For the mending?

Yeah, mending. Some rounds I slot wings over it.

thanoscopter

OP, it is like others have said, the Vicious Ophidian is the BIS for this. You want cheap sets that get the job done though and I believe there are several you can consider.

I would say keep the Nightmother's Gaze and instead of Hunding's Rage use something like Briarheart OR Veiled Heritance OR Ravaging set. These will improve your survivability (Briarheart not so much since the survival is tied to proc) and you can swap to your VMA bow without losing the set bonus of Hunding's. P.S. Briarheart daggers (Materre's Bodkin) are available from a quest in northern Wrothgar near the ships if interested...I would not overpay for them.

Another benefit of Veiled Heritance or Ravaging set is that they add physical resist or +health. You can also use the chestpiece of these sets as your 1 heavy piece to get the additional armor chests provide. The rest of should be weapons and jewelry though.

Another option is to buy the Mighty Chudan's helmet off the gold vendor (if you dont got it already) and wear that as your monster set. Your damage will go down but you may be able to clear it without the frequent deaths due to the +8000 or so resist all + health it gives.

WrathOfInnos

Specifically for the ice round, you can reflect all the mage and archer projectiles with wings. This is handy in a few other rounds as well, like the poison round archers.

GlorphNoldorin

I have done many rounds of stam dk with one death, on 310-350 ping (along with nb which I dont play, is my last stam class to get flawless on). The set up I use is VO weapons/daggers/jewelry and Hundings with Chudan monster set (20-24k resists). The resists I find make up alot for the lag. I usually die only to rng poison on rnd 7.

I use shrouded daggers as my spammable, have reflective plate on back bar and use corrosive as my main ulti. Finding out when to use wings, reflect sigils and corrosive is the key.

I infuse the jewelry (2 wpn damage, 1 regen) and can make do with 30k stam but have 1600 regen and 3.6k base weapon damage before glyph and pot/shrouded dagger. The regen I find is necessary for double casting and lag just seems to sap stam.

Vigor is the only heal I use and I cant find space for igneous but I dont think I need it any way.

My very first clear of vma on a stam toon I used heavy seventh legion body and briar heart jewels weapons(basically what I was pvping with at the time) but I think medium is better to persevere with.

What_In_Tarnation

Obsidian shield is a great source for healing boost, but I'll use spike armor for a longer duration and add the passive from draconic power which can boost your healing received by 12% while your spike armor is on. spike armor reduced your damage taken while give you 12% healing received.

And about sets, there's 1 set called
Vengeance of the Leech, a good starter set that can help you sustain a lot if you don't have VO yet. Then add 1 set like hunding's rage or NMG (if you don't wanna use noxious breath) and monster set (slimecraw, velidreth or stormfist). The rest of pieces can just use agility weapons (bow and DW/2h) for 1.4k max stamina or something else like weapons damage, max health or stam regen..e.t.c.

FatelessLava

Ohhgrizyyy wrote: »

Also this isnt really for score runs or insanely fast clears. Just so I wont struggle and die an insane amount. As stated I used to have my magsorc spec'ed for a heavy attack build which was easy mode in vMA. I never spent the time to learn exactly where some adds spawned but I do know the rounds generally or used to (quit for like 11-12 months and just returned to ESO) and I had only about 12 clears cause at the time I got my 2h maul for PvP and a nirn lightning which was BiS at the time

I don’t go for score runs either. One day eventually perhaps. I die a lot too. I did find the shield from Iceheart helped through the second stage, making sure vigor is up all the time. The last stage the CG gives me trouble too. What I found works best is to run around them spamming bloodthirst and making sure bloodcraze is up on them. I usually saved a dawnbreaker if I absolutely needed it for them. For the last boss I built ulti on the stage before him and dropped ballista to burn him along with pre placing my dots.