Maelstrom weapon

macsmooth

There is a question at the bottom of all this

About a year ago I decided to give that hellish of arena a try and jumped straight in to vma and did well got to stage 5 fine but hit the dps wall that is in stage 5 (ie don’t dps the boss down) so I put my controller down and walked away from there frustrated

So couple months ago after deciding again I re-entered hell once more picked up at stage 5 but managed after few attempts and a nice guide on the web to get stage 5 done, then I got to stage 6 and kept dying to the red spiders and just couldn’t get all the pillars on the end boss. Even just straight dps the boss down I would get it to about 80k health left before it was game over, so again I put my controller down and walked away once more

Last weekend I decided I had nothing better to do so I thought why not let’s get frustrated once more, this time I walked through stage 6 7 8 and even straight through to the very last boss with little trouble but the last boss was annoying I could do the first phase and upstairs just fine and the CG are not a issue unless I got knocked off upstairs into the lava and they would rush me on the lava edge this was annoying but once upstairs was done I just couldn’t get to the ghosts before the boss got them so I took a days break and came back to it the next day with a little change up to my build. After several more deaths I finally managed to become a 0.34% player yeah

So I walked up to the chest and said watch me get a 2h I wanted the bow, but I got a flame staff so I thanked the rng overlords and promptly transmuted it to infused

So being a sucker for punishment I decided I’d have a repeat of the last year and the very next day I started vma all over again but even to my surprise I completed it again in about two hours with no more than about 10 deaths poison rng and the last boss again, my new vma build setup seems to work very well for me

So I walked up to the chest and said I bet I get another flame staff and I got a Nirnhoned bow so once again I thank the rng overlords and ran

Yes I’m a very happy boy well old very old boy that is

Now question seen as the bow dropped with a very good trait, should I transmute the bow to infused and put a weapon enchant on it or keep the bow as Nirnhoned and put a stam recovery or poison enchant on it and make up for the weapon enchant with a infused front bar?

Baring in mind that the bow will be transferred to other characters (some sustainable and some not so sustainable characters) until I pick up more bows

Asardes

Nirnhoned would only buff Poison Injection off the back bar since ST DOTs inherit the initial stats when they were cast. Since it's a very weak skill as of late, it would be a loss to buff only that but decrease DPS overall trough not getting as much up time & increase from your enchant. They also reduced the damage of Volley (base skill) by quite a lot, and hit the Maelstrom bow particularly hard because they also increased the tick timer from 0.5s to 1s so even if they somewhat buffed the bonus, the last ticks are weaker now than they used to be. Nowadays the bow is there mostly to proc your berserker enchant (weapon & spell damage) so infused is pretty much the only trait worth using. Endless Hail is also better for your sustain since it lasts 14s, so you cast it less often, and you will get the most of the Maelstrom bow effect Thunderous Volley since it has more time to stack damage. Whether you wanna keep the bow, and farm for another, or transmute it depends on how fast you can get transmutation stones vs. farming vMA. I suppose the former is easier from what you've written.

macsmooth

Asardes wrote: »

Nirnhoned would only buff Poison Injection off the back bar since ST DOTs inherit the initial stats when they were cast. Since it's a very weak skill as of late, it would be a loss to buff only that but decrease DPS overall trough not getting as much up time & increase from your enchant. They also reduced the damage of Volley (base skill) by quite a lot, and hit the Maelstrom bow particularly hard because they also increased the tick timer from 0.5s to 1s so even if they somewhat buffed the bonus, the last ticks are weaker now than they used to be. Nowadays the bow is there mostly to proc your berserker enchant (weapon & spell damage) so infused is pretty much the only trait worth using. Endless Hail is also better for your sustain since it lasts 14s, so you cast it less often, and you will get the most of the Maelstrom bow effect Thunderous Volley since it has more time to stack damage. Whether you wanna keep the bow, and farm for another, or transmute it depends on how fast you can get transmutation stones vs. farming vMA. I suppose the former is easier from what you've written.

Thank you for your prompt reply it’s very informative, I knew about the changes to the bow from scale patch if I remember right

Funny story I used my last 50 crystals on the flame staff so will have to wait for a week or two for a re-supply of transmutation crystals, so will keep running vma and see if I can pickup some more bows as I wouldn’t mind picking up the lightening staff

I just wasn’t sure what the difference is between infused and weapon vs Nirnhoned and damage glyphs and making up for the weapon glyph front bar was, I tank mostly so dps isn’t my main bag of tricks

Hail for sustain and barrage for the damage is a fair point thank you

Asardes

macsmooth wrote: »

Asardes wrote: »

Nirnhoned would only buff Poison Injection off the back bar since ST DOTs inherit the initial stats when they were cast. Since it's a very weak skill as of late, it would be a loss to buff only that but decrease DPS overall trough not getting as much up time & increase from your enchant. They also reduced the damage of Volley (base skill) by quite a lot, and hit the Maelstrom bow particularly hard because they also increased the tick timer from 0.5s to 1s so even if they somewhat buffed the bonus, the last ticks are weaker now than they used to be. Nowadays the bow is there mostly to proc your berserker enchant (weapon & spell damage) so infused is pretty much the only trait worth using. Endless Hail is also better for your sustain since it lasts 14s, so you cast it less often, and you will get the most of the Maelstrom bow effect Thunderous Volley since it has more time to stack damage. Whether you wanna keep the bow, and farm for another, or transmute it depends on how fast you can get transmutation stones vs. farming vMA. I suppose the former is easier from what you've written.

Thank you for your prompt reply it’s very informative, I knew about the changes to the bow from scale patch if I remember right

Funny story I used my last 50 crystals on the flame staff so will have to wait for a week or two for a re-supply of transmutation crystals, so will keep running vma and see if I can pickup some more bows as I wouldn’t mind picking up the lightening staff

I just wasn’t sure what the difference is between infused and weapon vs Nirnhoned and damage glyphs and making up for the weapon glyph front bar was, I tank mostly so dps isn’t my main bag of tricks

Hail for sustain and barrage for the damage is a fair point thank you

My suggestion is to keep all the weapons you get because you don't know when you make a new character, or they become good again due to direct or indirect changes.

For example in Morrowind/Horns of the Reach patch, when I did the bulk of my farming, Lightning staff was the most effective magicka weapon because there was no downtime on off-balance. Every trial group was running 8 sorcerers and all lightning damage to get the most out of it; sorcerer damage was also overtuned to the point where people were jokingly calling the game Elder Sorcs Online. Then they changed that and put a cooldown, so people moved to other classes and Inferno Staff, which is pretty much what we have now.

An even more complicated example is Dual Wield (Cruel Flurry) which was good at the start, when the arena was introduced, because you didn't have any 5p sets with weapons, and only a few 3p sets with jewelry so everyone was running Maelstrom 2W with Agility, Hunding and some of the few monster sets that were available. Then they started introducing 5p sets, and decreased the weapon damage from 3K to 2K so they weren't as viable. After Morrowind they nerfed sustain by scaling back recovery and eliminating cost reduction from CP so this kind of rotation, alternating Flurry and DoTs became very hard. In Scalebreaker they buffed certain DoTs so this set became very good again on pretty much every class even if the bonus was reduced to 1K, but the condition was also changed, so you got a buff to all DoTs for the duration, instead of having to refresh it. In Dragonhold they nerfed the DoTs again, but they buffed the modifiers for class DoTs (DK) and all DoTs (Necromancer) so DW is still pretty good on those classes.

Restoration staff is a very good but often overlooked weapon, because it's mostly used in PvP. I've used it on several classes and the sustain you get from it is hard to overlook, especially now when you hit 3 targets with one cast, so it will proc pretty much every time when it's off cooldown.

1H+S hasn't been that effective but I did use it in one of my builds, a Stamina Warden, to sustain various magicka skills, such as Shimmering Shield.

macsmooth

Asardes wrote: »

macsmooth wrote: »

Asardes wrote: »

Nirnhoned would only buff Poison Injection off the back bar since ST DOTs inherit the initial stats when they were cast. Since it's a very weak skill as of late, it would be a loss to buff only that but decrease DPS overall trough not getting as much up time & increase from your enchant. They also reduced the damage of Volley (base skill) by quite a lot, and hit the Maelstrom bow particularly hard because they also increased the tick timer from 0.5s to 1s so even if they somewhat buffed the bonus, the last ticks are weaker now than they used to be. Nowadays the bow is there mostly to proc your berserker enchant (weapon & spell damage) so infused is pretty much the only trait worth using. Endless Hail is also better for your sustain since it lasts 14s, so you cast it less often, and you will get the most of the Maelstrom bow effect Thunderous Volley since it has more time to stack damage. Whether you wanna keep the bow, and farm for another, or transmute it depends on how fast you can get transmutation stones vs. farming vMA. I suppose the former is easier from what you've written.

Thank you for your prompt reply it’s very informative, I knew about the changes to the bow from scale patch if I remember right

Funny story I used my last 50 crystals on the flame staff so will have to wait for a week or two for a re-supply of transmutation crystals, so will keep running vma and see if I can pickup some more bows as I wouldn’t mind picking up the lightening staff

I just wasn’t sure what the difference is between infused and weapon vs Nirnhoned and damage glyphs and making up for the weapon glyph front bar was, I tank mostly so dps isn’t my main bag of tricks

Hail for sustain and barrage for the damage is a fair point thank you

My suggestion is to keep all the weapons you get because you don't know when you make a new character, or they become good again due to direct or indirect changes.

For example in Morrowind/Horns of the Reach patch, when I did the bulk of my farming, Lightning staff was the most effective magicka weapon because there was no downtime on off-balance. Every trial group was running 8 sorcerers and all lightning damage to get the most out of it; sorcerer damage was also overtuned to the point where people were jokingly calling the game Elder Sorcs Online. Then they changed that and put a cooldown, so people moved to other classes and Inferno Staff, which is pretty much what we have now.

An even more complicated example is Dual Wield (Cruel Flurry) which was good at the start, when the arena was introduced, because you didn't have any 5p sets with weapons, and only a few 3p sets with jewelry so everyone was running Maelstrom 2W with Agility, Hunding and some of the few monster sets that were available. Then they started introducing 5p sets, and decreased the weapon damage from 3K to 2K so they weren't as viable. After Morrowind they nerfed sustain by scaling back recovery and eliminating cost reduction from CP so this kind of rotation, alternating Flurry and DoTs became very hard. In Scalebreaker they buffed certain DoTs so this set became very good again on pretty much every class even if the bonus was reduced to 1K, but the condition was also changed, so you got a buff to all DoTs for the duration, instead of having to refresh it. In Dragonhold they nerfed the DoTs again, but they buffed the modifiers for class DoTs (DK) and all DoTs (Necromancer) so DW is still pretty good on those classes.

Restoration staff is a very good but often overlooked weapon, because it's mostly used in PvP. I've used it on several classes and the sustain you get from it is hard to overlook, especially now when you hit 3 targets with one cast, so it will proc pretty much every time when it's off cooldown.

1H+S hasn't been that effective but I did use it in one of my builds, a Stamina Warden, to sustain various magicka skills, such as Shimmering Shield.

Thanks for the information and irony is I have 15 characters all max levels and skill points geared up for PvP and crafting alts but very rarely break them out to do pve content but yeah each character has given me their weapon choices for their builds ie stam sorc and stamdk wants the bow or dw, stamplar wants the 2h and stemden wants the s&b pretty much what you said

The lightening staff is for my main sorcerer and necromancer

Yeah the restro staff I want for my healer

The only one character I have that actually doesn’t want to order a weapon is my tank dk lol

My plan is to branch out more and give dps a more of a try but still want to collect these weapons just wished I did it at double drop event

Asardes

Well I have only 10, and will expand to 12, the other 6 will stay as crafters for the foreseeable future. Maelstrom 2H is kinda weak, since the DoT it puts on the target is ~1K in practice (the tool tip is about 1.6K/s but people have resistance) and forces you a skill that's not very useful, after they cut the snare from Critical Charge. If you want a standalone weapon for PvP that's would be the Asylum one. Especially on Templar where you have two cheap ultimates to use - Rememberance and Empowering Sweep - and you don't really rely on DoTs for your damage.

macsmooth

Asardes wrote: »

Well I have only 10, and will expand to 12, the other 6 will stay as crafters for the foreseeable future. Maelstrom 2H is kinda weak, since the DoT it puts on the target is ~1K in practice (the tool tip is about 1.6K/s but people have resistance) and forces you a skill that's not very useful, after they cut the snare from Critical Charge. If you want a standalone weapon for PvP that's would be the Asylum one. Especially on Templar where you have two cheap ultimates to use - Rememberance and Empowering Sweep - and you don't really rely on DoTs for your damage.

I forgot those weapons existed lol nah just kidding I will have to get back into trails with taking a break from all the crap on chat I have just been concentrating on pug runs and levelling all my characters up for the pass year and a bit hence why it took so long for me to revisit vma that and life commitments

Thank you again for the information it’s very helpful

Asardes

macsmooth wrote: »

Asardes wrote: »

Well I have only 10, and will expand to 12, the other 6 will stay as crafters for the foreseeable future. Maelstrom 2H is kinda weak, since the DoT it puts on the target is ~1K in practice (the tool tip is about 1.6K/s but people have resistance) and forces you a skill that's not very useful, after they cut the snare from Critical Charge. If you want a standalone weapon for PvP that's would be the Asylum one. Especially on Templar where you have two cheap ultimates to use - Rememberance and Empowering Sweep - and you don't really rely on DoTs for your damage.

I forgot those weapons existed lol nah just kidding I will have to get back into trails with taking a break from all the crap on chat I have just been concentrating on pug runs and levelling all my characters up for the pass year and a bit hence why it took so long for me to revisit vma that and life commitments

Thank you again for the information it’s very helpful

You don't even have to do veteran. Normal gives the same weapon too, and the difference from that to Perfected for which you need to do Veteran+3 is irrelevant. Disciplined Slash gives up to 14 ultimate depending how high is your execute bonus, while Perfected Disciplined Slash gives 15, but in practice you won't ever notice that in PvP, because no one will stay at very low health for a long number of Executioner/Reverse Slice casts - he will either die or heal back. Maybe in PvE where you have long executes for some bosses you can see that difference but AFAIK that weapon is never used in PvE anyway.
https://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Asylum+Weapons