Vet Malestrom

Kn1ghtTemplar

I see lots of builds and posts on how easy it is to complete Malestrom on veteran, really, I have a mag sorc with mothers sorrow jewellery and lighting staff and 5 piece necrpotence, staff are gold and armour is either gold or purple, I still can't do it, even watchbthe walk through videos, any ideas.

richo262

Look at the 1 bar build, its vMA easy mode. Plague Dr + False God would prob be the best one these days.

Raisin

Iceheart makes a huge difference IMO.

Varana

vMA is all about training.
It is significantly easier once you've completed it a few times. That's where all the "but it's a walk in the park!" posts come from.

Maybe try to spec more into survivability. Damage is often not that important, except a few fights where burning the boss makes the fight much easier. I used the Mighty Chudan monster set in the beginning, or Iceheart like Raisin suggested, or try a crafted Julianos set with a heavy chest, or things like that. richo's suggestion of Plague Doctor has the same goal - better survivability. I assume you're using Surge to heal.

Siohwenoeht

Kn1ghtTemplar wrote: »

I see lots of builds and posts on how easy it is to complete Malestrom on veteran, really, I have a mag sorc with mothers sorrow jewellery and lighting staff and 5 piece necrpotence, staff are gold and armour is either gold or purple, I still can't do it, even watchbthe walk through videos, any ideas.

You have a solid build, but the real key to maelstrom is practice. Then some practice, more practice and finally, practice.

The guides can make it look too easy.

Kn1ghtTemplar

Ill keep practising, i have surge for heal, and i may and try and farm ice heart, i do have the llambris set though

MerguezMan

"easy" is very relative... It can be once you know what you're doing and what are the enemy patterns.

Your first runs are mainly about getting the good setup and learning each arena's mechanics.

Get prepared to die a lot.

Alienoutlaw

there is no short cut or "easy build" you have to learn the mechanics, VMA is all about add management and target priority

Artim_X

Don't look at the score and focus on using all the sigils on every round in a stage.

apri

The videos you probably watched don't show the hundreds of deaths the players had to take before doing it successfully or flawlessly. Usually those people use highly optimized, strong setups you may not have access to yet. With a strong setup you can burn enemies before they become a threat. If you don't have that burn, a slower approach with the help of sigils might be the preferred tactic. You'll get faster with time, even without OP sets.

Alienoutlaw

my very 1st run took over 7hrs (many stress breaks) but after 10-15 clear runs i now have it down to average of 60mins with a couple of deaths (rng round 7 mostly), a friend of mine had his 1st clear at cp160 (had experience from xbox before moving to PC) so its not about raw dps

Everstorm

If you think that's hard then stay away from vet Femalestrom.

Reyleigh

First time i tried it, i managed to get to stage 5 (didn't know much about mechanics) then i just couldn't pass it, but i wasn't too worried since i didn't know about the mechanics
I went to watch videos/tutorials and still couldn't pass it, i ultimately did after many many deaths, and it turns out it is by far the hardest stage for me (even stage 7 which is a pain for most people was quite easy, but there's a part of rng there with the spawning flowers)
If you get there (or are there) don't give in and keep practicing

Also i wouldn't use plague doctor, iceheart and all that, this doesn't work you need to melt the enemies fast, you need damage
2 pieces slimecraw
5 piece false god
3 piece willpower (jewelry)
Asylum inferno staff (front bar)
use whatever staff for back bar (better if it gives you max mag as a bonus)

In terms of skills you should use matriach and crit surge for heals, also make sure you use crushing shock, you just can't beat a ranged interrupt for vMA, you will melt this enemies using this setup
Don't forget to swap crushing shock for stage 7 though as there's a mechanics where you die if you interrupt the boss

Little vid to help you out, use the same skill setup :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CUNCXJ8NP8

Haquor

Kn1ghtTemplar wrote: »

I see lots of builds and posts on how easy it is to complete Malestrom on veteran, really, I have a mag sorc with mothers sorrow jewellery and lighting staff and 5 piece necrpotence, staff are gold and armour is either gold or purple, I still can't do it, even watchbthe walk through videos, any ideas.

100% safest clear is 5x plague doctor, 5x necropotence, 2x iceheart. You can use a 2 bar varient of the 1 bar setup you see on alcasts website and add some utility skills like surge/drain/accelerationd or additional dot like lighning flood or curse etc to your backbar. Heavy attack, blockade and pet your way to victory.

You are tanky with big shields and lots of magicka with plenty of damage.

Go to alcasthq.com and look at his 1 bar pet sorc build and modify it accordingly. It is very safe and efficient for a beginner in vMa. Once you get your clear and grt comfortable with thr mechanics you can change it up as you like.

Beardimus

Kn1ghtTemplar wrote: »

I see lots of builds and posts on how easy it is to complete Malestrom on veteran, really, I have a mag sorc with mothers sorrow jewellery and lighting staff and 5 piece necrpotence, staff are gold and armour is either gold or purple, I still can't do it, even watchbthe walk through videos, any ideas.

Talk us through what's getting you.

Yep you need an ok setup, but @Kn1ghtTemplar it's the mechanics killing you 100%

When you learn you don't see stuff and fight against it.

Any basic Sorc build with crit surge and liquid lighing, blockade aoe overlapped and some front rotation will get you through.

Tell us the level and stage you suffer with

MaleAmazon

Ok so you have the gear. I'll quote the excellent guide:

You need to know what kills you!

Getting killed by the argonian archer special attack on umbrage stage is not about gear and stats, it's about not noticing them and interrupting them.

VMA is highly predictable apart from stuff like rng poison flowers, and even then thats for nodeath runs.

You need to understand what kills you. You didnt even say what stage you were stuck on.

Austinseph1

vMA Is 90% mechanics and mindfulness and 10% build, builds can make it a little easier but you won't complete it without understanding the mechanics. There are people that know it so well that they do it naked without CP, so if you take your time to learn the arenas and adjust your play style the completion will come.

ForzaRammer

skill issue

PizzaCat82

A good build will let you make mistakes. But make too many, and you will die. There's a lot of mechanics and mobs to focus on certain stages, that if you don't kill them immediately, they will make your life a lot harder. Trolls on the Ice stage.. Poison summoners on the poison stage. Arrow guys that charge their shots. Fire dremora mages on the last stages that throw fire around, and the walking guys that summon the bone Collosus. Lots of ways to die if you ignore mechanics.

gatekeeper13

Use this set. It will help you a lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TltS1PUapZM

Reverb

Which round are you getting stuck on? VMA is 100% about mechanics. Or maybe 90% mechanics, 5% gear, and 5% remembering to hydrate between arenas.

akdave0

You have to be perfect on almost all accounts. Know the spawns, know your rotations, know the mechs. Then perfect, perfect, perfect. Once you have done it so many times, you will commit to muscle memory, and as soon as you make a mistake, you will know. Especially on the last round.

Woodenplank

It takes a lot of practice. The first time I tried it, I was stuck in there for hours and hours and didn't even complete.

Nowdays I run it with 1-2 deaths, and pretty good time (and I only do it once a month or so).

Any way; it's probably a good idea to start out with a more defensive build. My first completion was
Double Pets (Healing Winged Twilight+Scamp)
Necropotence + Infallible Aether (hardly optimal, but it did the trick) + Iceheart (shield when you crit = awesome)
Shields on both bars (Hardened Ward + Harness Magicka)
Throw dots like wall of Elements + Liquid Lightning on the ground, Daedric Prey on bosses, and just heavy attack.
And most importantly (this goes for all sorc builds) keep CRITICAL SURGE up 100% of the time.

You'll hardly ever run out of magicka, as you're using heavy attacks. So just keep your shields and DoTs up and let pets do what they do best.

It won't be fast, but it should get you through.

Then the more you play, the more defensive skills you can drop. Nowadays I use 5 Mother's Sorrow+5False God's and spam Force Pulse. Only defensive skill I use/need is Crit Surge (although I still use Ice Heart).

TeamSeinfeld

This isn’t a suggestion on build or skills but I would highly recommend reading the death recap EVERY time. So very useful so that you’re not making the same mistake over and over. And as much as I hated hearing other people say it before I ever cleared it for the first time, it’s true what they say, each time gets easier and easier.

siddique

Personally, I have never tried the famous 1-bar sorc build but I would recommend against it. You should finish it with more or less the same build you use for most content.

For the most part it is all about mechanics. Go for survivability over pure damage. Use Iceheart monster set it's a major help.

r3turn2s3nd3r

As everyone else has already pretty much said, it's 90% memorizing mechanics and high priority add spawns. And the only way to do that is repetition, repetition and more repetition.

I main magsorc, I went from double pet HA build that took hours upon hours to clear years ago the first time to 40 minutes or less flawless runs now on no pet build.

Pretty much everyone fails in there, and a lot at that, in the beginning. Just be patient and keep at it.

furiouslog

None of the builds I've seen for my magplar are actually viable in vMA for me. I used FG/MS/Iceheart for my first clear, and I had to switch skills around between stages to match the mechanics for each stage. It's basically a crash course on how to figure out to best play your character. Published builds are what work for those players, but unless you play exactly like them, or can teach yourself how, you will need to spend time figuring out how to mitigate all of the challenges before you in your own way.

Kn1ghtTemplar

Guys cheers, i finally completed Malestrom, i died a lot, but learnt a lot. I thought i chosen Vet but i only got blue rewards, time to do it again,
I used piece plague, 5 piece necro, with necro lighting and fire staff, plague jewellery and llambris visage and pauldrons,

im of to farm iceheart and try my luck again on Vet

Si

FrancisCrawford

Kn1ghtTemplar wrote: »

Guys cheers, i finally completed Malestrom, i died a lot, but learnt a lot. I thought i chosen Vet but i only got blue rewards, time to do it again,
I used piece plague, 5 piece necro, with necro lighting and fire staff, plague jewellery and llambris visage and pauldrons,

im of to farm iceheart and try my luck again on Vet

Si

Vet is a lot harder. Those attacks or environmental damage that were safe to pretty much ignore at Regular difficulty won't be on safe to ignore on Vet. Round 4 is still easy on Vet, however.

But that's the good news. I've never made it through VMA Round 5.

aaisoaho

I think the key to my success on my first completion of veteran maelstrom arena was patience. I made myself clear I was in no rush to get it done and decided to do 2 stages a day, no more, no less. I was taking my time to see the mechanics and did not try to dish out maximum damage, just tried to stay alive and whip the monsters with a wet noodle.

The pain points for me were:
- stage 2: I had hard time figuring out how to dance around the spinning blades. On my first successful run, I just ran away from the blades on the outer edge of the arena and hit the mobs when I saw them, and if the blade was too near, I dodgerolled trough them.
- stage 5: Matriarch Runa gave me a serious spanking because I dealt too much damage to her without killing the mobs in between the fights. Taking it slow was the way for me to finally spank her back. (do note: there is no RNG in the fight against her, frost trolls spawns on a timer and they need to die asap, mobs spawns based on the health% of the boss and the platform destruction is also based on her health%)
- stage 7: first deaths were because I didn't know what to prioritise, I died because of the archers' oneshot, I died because the poisoncallers called poison. (note: prioritise archers that are 'taking aim' and then the poisoncallers and then archers that are not yet taking aim.) After making it to argonian behemoth, I was yet again facing some whipping and whooping. The thing that mostly got me killed was killing the adds accidentally, no adds, no bubbles, nowhere to hide from the scream. This was the moment where I realised I should swap my gear and skills to suit the fight better - off with the stormfist monsterset, off with the AoE skills, single target skills and survival gear to the rescue.
- stage 9: final boss required me to learn the fight pattern. I died to almost every high-damage mechanic before I was able to kill him. The pattern I learned was something like: lay down aoes and prepare to burst as soon as he spawns, watch where he teleports and dodgeroll towards him to interrupt him, deal with the adds and the boss simultaneously by dealing cleave damage and try to get upstairs after killing the crematorial guard and the dremora add. When upstairs, the skull attack appears to be timed, so timing the dodges/blocks is the key to survive. I personally destroyed 1 crystal and damaged the second to the 50% health and then jumped down, dealt with the adds and came back up to destroy rest of the crystals, then down again, grabbed the sigils (shield sigil first) and then tried to maximise my damage output on the boss.

TL;DR: take it slow, learn the mechanics, focus on surviving and you'll eventually be victorious.

carlos424

Kn1ghtTemplar wrote: »

Ill keep practising, i have surge for heal, and i may and try and farm ice heart, i do have the llambris set though

Kn1ghtTemplar wrote: »

Ill keep practising, i have surge for heal, and i may and try and farm ice heart, i do have the llambris set though

I cannot emphasize enough how much iceheart helps survivability. Also, use the matriarch for heals and damage. Having a pet will also give you another 1k+ health (one of the passives). I also use lightning form for resistances plus speed boost. Try to use ele drain on bosses. Not only gives debuff but also recovery. And dont be afraid to pick up sigils. The shield sigil makes some rounds much easier as it reflects damage back (i.e. ranged adds shooting bows)