Maelstrom weapons worth it in Scalebreaker?

Kel

Seems to me (personally, in my opinion) that Zos is missing the point locking these weapons behind the hardest solo content in the game.
They are indirectly nerfing staffs and bows by nerfing the skills that trigger these weapon bonuses, and flat out nerfing (again) the dw maelstrom weapons.
I'm especially saddened by the dw nerfs, as using dw was in a good place after falling off for years, and just as its seeing a resurgence it's getting the nerf bat.

Running maelstrom for the weapon drops worth it in Scalebreaker?

Need someone smarter than I am to break this down, because i just can't see the logical reason to go through vMA just to have weapons sitting in my bank.

Thanks in advance for any replies and insights.

rumple9

No they are not worth it - better off using regular sets.

Ironic that the nerf is coming to maelstrom DW, lightening staves and bows just about the time the event is likely to start with double drops

Luigi_Vampa

Seeing as how light attacks are still the highest DPS on a parse, wouldn't a Maelstrom inferno staff still be worth it?

Kilnerdyne

Dagoth_Rac

Luigi_Vampa wrote: »

Seeing as how light attacks are still the highest DPS on a parse, wouldn't a Maelstrom inferno staff still be worth it?

Maelstrom staff does not increase light attacks by a percentage, just by a flat amount. It does not matter how much DPS light attacks are doing, only the flat extra damage portion from maelstrom staff. Is the flat damage you gain from VMA staff worth more than the DPS gain of replacing nerfed Wall of Elements with a different skill that got buffed on PTS (Soul Trap, Entropy, whatever)?

Imagine you have a job that pays you a salary of $8000/second + $3000/second as a bonus. They nerf your salary to $6000/second but keep $3000/second bonus. Another company offers you a job for $10000/second but no bonus. $10000 > ($6000 + $3000), so you drop old job and take new job.

$3000/second = live and PTS VMA staff set bonus
$8000/second = live Wall of Elements
$6000/second = PTS Wall of Elements
$10000/second = PTS Soul Trap/Entropy/whatever

In other words, it is not about light attacks. It is about Wall of Elements getting nerfed and other skills getting buffed. Are you losing more than you gain by keeping Wall of Elements on your bar? I don't know answer. I just made those numbers up. But someone, somewhere will be crunching the real numbers and coming up with an answer once Scalebreaker goes live.

WuffyCerulei

Maelstrom lightning/fire staves are still worth it. They buff your light attacks, and light attacks should be your top damage.

Kel

WuffyCerulei wrote: »

Maelstrom lightning/fire staves are still worth it. They buff your light attacks, and light attacks should be your top damage.

That's the point. The staffs buff your light attacks...inside wall of elements. With AoE's (including wall) getting nerfed, if wall is no longer slotted on your bar, the vMA staff is useless.

See where I'm going?

It's not just a buff to light attacks....it depends on another skill. A skill taking a heavy nerf and perhaps not worth slotting anymore. Hence my question.

Higano

I can't say for sure, but I'm still fairly certain that vMA destro staves will still be BiS for mag as Wuffy explained.

As for vMA DW, I'm pretty sure they're still viable, as I've seen 100k+ dps parses yesterday with them. The fact that the bonus applies to all DoTs within 4 secs is pretty nice in itself. You can do 1 Flurry and apply most of you backbar DoTs (Arrow Barrage, Soul Trap, PI for example) before switching back to front bar and Flurry. And yes, the bonus still remain on the DoTs after the 4 seconds.

Basically, they got a small nerf, but it looks like it's still going to be BiS for ST fights.

So, should you still run vMA? Yeah, since it looks like it will have BiS gear for both mag and stam DDs. And even if the weapons were trash, you could still run it if you really wanted transmute stones.

WuffyCerulei

Kel wrote: »

WuffyCerulei wrote: »

Maelstrom lightning/fire staves are still worth it. They buff your light attacks, and light attacks should be your top damage.

That's the point. The staffs buff your light attacks...inside wall of elements. With AoE's (including wall) getting nerfed, if wall is no longer slotted on your bar, the vMA staff is useless.

See where I'm going?

It's not just a buff to light attacks....it depends on another skill. A skill taking a heavy nerf and perhaps not worth slotting anymore. Hence my question.

IT’S STILL WORTH USING.

Most magicka will go for Unstable Wall of Elements, as it’s gonna last 8 seconds and got a huge buff to the explostion at the end. If you don’t use the vMA staff, your dps will suffer more without it.

Not to mention that Wall will still proc the enchant on your backbar. Destructive Clench’s dot won’t proc it.

Kel

WuffyCerulei wrote: »

Kel wrote: »

WuffyCerulei wrote: »

Maelstrom lightning/fire staves are still worth it. They buff your light attacks, and light attacks should be your top damage.

That's the point. The staffs buff your light attacks...inside wall of elements. With AoE's (including wall) getting nerfed, if wall is no longer slotted on your bar, the vMA staff is useless.

See where I'm going?

It's not just a buff to light attacks....it depends on another skill. A skill taking a heavy nerf and perhaps not worth slotting anymore. Hence my question.

IT’S STILL WORTH USING.

Most magicka will go for Unstable Wall of Elements, as it’s gonna last 8 seconds and got a huge buff to the explostion at the end. If you don’t use the vMA staff, your dps will suffer more without it.

Not to mention that Wall will still proc the enchant on your backbar. Destructive Clench’s dot won’t proc it.

Nice.
Thanks for the explanation.

SidraWillowsky

It's still doing better than a 5-pc set backbar for me on PTS

Kilnerdyne wrote: »

This is quite possibly the best thing I've ever seen on the forums.

Grandma

Check out this video from t3hasiangod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6LKBOMaYFI&t=12s

He goes over whether maelstrom or master's bow is better for backbar. Long story short: vMA bow is weaker but not by a large margin.

Staves are even less nitpicky. We use the other morph of blockade now, the one that explodes, to do more dps [it also lasts longer now due to pts buff], this makes vma staff completely viable and still BiS for magicka builds. Now, as for whether magicka will still be useable after scalebreaker remains to be seen, as stamina healers and dps are the only thing able to complete trial content..

finally for DW the nerf looks a lot worse than it is. It's still insanely powerful, and people are still parsing over 100k with it. It looks worse than it is, I promise you they're still 100% viable.

HappyTheCamper

Kilnerdyne wrote: »

Lol. No viable Warden builds I see

blnchk

HappyTheCamper wrote: »

Kilnerdyne wrote: »

Lol. No viable Warden builds I see

Must be what the hammer in the background is lying on.

Luigi_Vampa

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

Luigi_Vampa wrote: »

Seeing as how light attacks are still the highest DPS on a parse, wouldn't a Maelstrom inferno staff still be worth it?

Maelstrom staff does not increase light attacks by a percentage, just by a flat amount. It does not matter how much DPS light attacks are doing, only the flat extra damage portion from maelstrom staff. Is the flat damage you gain from VMA staff worth more than the DPS gain of replacing nerfed Wall of Elements with a different skill that got buffed on PTS (Soul Trap, Entropy, whatever)?

Imagine you have a job that pays you a salary of $8000/second + $3000/second as a bonus. They nerf your salary to $6000/second but keep $3000/second bonus. Another company offers you a job for $10000/second but no bonus. $10000 > ($6000 + $3000), so you drop old job and take new job.

$3000/second = live and PTS VMA staff set bonus
$8000/second = live Wall of Elements
$6000/second = PTS Wall of Elements
$10000/second = PTS Soul Trap/Entropy/whatever

In other words, it is not about light attacks. It is about Wall of Elements getting nerfed and other skills getting buffed. Are you losing more than you gain by keeping Wall of Elements on your bar? I don't know answer. I just made those numbers up. But someone, somewhere will be crunching the real numbers and coming up with an answer once Scalebreaker goes live.

I know it isn't a percentage. Wuffy already explained it though. You're looking at extra light attack damage / AoE dot / explosion if using unstable / enchant proc. My point was that light attacks are our most damaging skill and I think that Maelstrom staff even with wall nerfed will still lead to more damage than anything else. Testing will confirm, but so far I've seen people still using Maelstrom staff on PTS.

MilwaukeeScott

Kel wrote: »

Maelstrom weapons worth it in Scalebreaker?

No

virtus753

I suppose it depends what you mean by “worth it”. Do you mean worth farming or using?

I can’t comment on the staves, but for bow/dw:

The bow got nerfed a bit directly on top of the skill it affects, because doubling its numbers doesn’t mathematically make up for losing nearly half the ticks when damage increases per tick. Even so, the bow still adds nearly 1k dps to Arrow Barrage and a little more to Hail. The issue is that while the vma bow is still better for AoE damage, the master’s is better for single-target, and the upcoming increase to ST skills pushes that as the most effective way to complete content in most dungeon/trial situations.

Meanwhile, the vma dagger/axe combo can (as mentioned) parse over 100k, but there’s a pair of parses over in the PTS forum showing just 152 dps of difference on 101k parses on the same character with and without vma DW. I don’t know if those are comparable average parses or if either was higher/lower than average with those setups, since parses done by hand will vary even with the same setup, but that little of a difference makes me think it would be statistically insignificant with more testing. Whatever else, it highlights the difference between “viable” (which vma DW weapons certainly are) and “worth it” (which is subjective). As of now I’m not sure we can say that vma DW definitively adds dps over a non-vma front bar.

Hopefully we’ll continue to get more testing data as the PTS progresses.

MLGProPlayer

Why wouldn't they be? They're free extra DPS.

Kel

Xynode just posted this a few minutes ago.

https://youtu.be/jeSWLD-m-hE

Dual wield looks like it'll be fine.

Noticeably missing is a vMA bow....replaced by a master bow. I know Xy has sworn by the vMA bow since vMA was a thing.
Sign of things to come?

Ramber

Higano wrote: »

I can't say for sure, but I'm still fairly certain that vMA destro staves will still be BiS for mag as Wuffy explained.

As for vMA DW, I'm pretty sure they're still viable, as I've seen 100k+ dps parses yesterday with them. The fact that the bonus applies to all DoTs within 4 secs is pretty nice in itself. You can do 1 Flurry and apply most of you backbar DoTs (Arrow Barrage, Soul Trap, PI for example) before switching back to front bar and Flurry. And yes, the bonus still remain on the DoTs after the 4 seconds.

Basically, they got a small nerf, but it looks like it's still going to be BiS for ST fights.

So, should you still run vMA? Yeah, since it looks like it will have BiS gear for both mag and stam DDs. And even if the weapons were trash, you could still run it if you really wanted transmute stones.

fully buffed/debuffed trials dummy parses are the worse thing to go by, they are not realistic dps at all ever. look for parses on the older 6mill dummies. 100k lol