Stamblade tweaks for vMA?

krachall

As I posted in another buried thread, I just completed vMA for the first time after 2+ years. Now I want to farm it until I get a couple bows (I’ve gotten the DW set three times now) and was going to use either a magblade or WW for that.

But I discovered quickly that the only class I can play well enough is my stamblade. So if am committed to farming it on my stamblade, what gear or CP tweaks could I make to improve efficiency?

I’m currently running VO, Briarheart, and Iceheart for vMA with the typical trial/dungeon skills and CP.

Suggestions?

Snaggel

Gear - Vicious ophidian + New Moon Acolyte (or Briarheart or Spriggans). Iceheart too (until next patch) if you're new or prone to dying, otherwise Slimecraw or Balorghs. Both dual wield and Two hander are fine but I prefer two hander even on stamblade. vMA bow if you already have it, if not, Master's or a regular bow matching your set.

Dubious Camoran Throne as drink and 1-2 health enchants would be useful if you're not greedy or score pushing.

Lover or Thief mundus

Frontbar - Surprise attack - Killer's Blade/Reverse Slice - Brawler - Silver Leash - Relentless Focus - Incapacitating Strike/Flawless Dawnbreaker

Backbar - Endless Hail/Arrow Barrage - Barbed Trap - Razor Caltrops/Reaper's Mark - Resolving Vigor - Leeching Strikes - Ballista

Generic CPs are fine as long they are PvE oriented (like, no crit resistance and such). Look to have atleast 9k Physical Penetration (with Major Fracture), 40% bonus crit damage (with Minor Force) and 10-15% bonus damage to direct damage attacks, physical, poison and disease damage and 31 points in Thaumaturge to boost your Arrow Barrage/Hail.

This is a safe setup that's less prone to dying but will not have as much damage as dual wield setup, which uses Whirling Blades instead of Killer's Blade, doesn't use Brawler but instead Dark Shade. Dark Shade and Trap swap places. Silver Leash is still recommended because it considerably speeds up your ability to kill ranged adds by pulling them into melee range and into your AOEs so you don't have to re-place them. Can also be used to interrupt adds in stages 8 and 9 and very valuable to tool to get adds out of frigid water in stage 5.

With all this said, consider practicing your Magblade as it is considerably easier to farm vMA with a magicka build. Swallow Soul + Dampen Magic will keep you alive and Twisting Path and Mystic Orb are the best AOE DoT skills in the game right now (for PvE at least) that only a magicka spec can use effectively. Being able to pre-place ground AOEs on spawn points is an important and effective way to quickly dispose of waves of adds. Being ranged is an advantage too as most of your time is spent killing frail adds that spawn from various points throughout the arenas. Plus you still have access to execute ability (Impale) and a high damage-high cost ultimate (Destruction Staff ultimate) that are quite important.

Qbiken

I think your setup is solid. Both VO + Briarheart are good sets for vMA if your intensions is to farm it. Once you get comfortable with vMA you will most likely be able to drop iceheart for a more offensive monster set such as Velidreth or Slimecraw

Haquor

krachall wrote: »

I just completed vMA for the first time after 2+ years. Now I want to farm it until I get a couple bows (I’ve gotten the DW set three times now)

If you continue to get three weapons on every clear youll have your bows in no time!

krachall

Haquor wrote: »

krachall wrote: »

I just completed vMA for the first time after 2+ years. Now I want to farm it until I get a couple bows (I’ve gotten the DW set three times now)

If you continue to get three weapons on every clear youll have your bows in no time!

Ha!! I’ve actually cleared it three times now is what I meant. I got the DW set each time.


And thanks all for the great advice. Especially @Snaggel

Katahdin

You'll also get faster (ie mre efficient) more you run it.

Nevasca

You could replace Briarheart with Night Mothers Gaze since you don't have major fracture built in. Will result in more damage than briarheart on bosses and on adds.it might be more or less the same.

You could drop iceheart eventually for a damage set like Velidreth. vMA is based a lot on burst it helps a lot to clear adds. Dead mobs can't kill you!

Also what skills you are using? Some scoreleaders used silver leash in the past so you could chain all enemies into youe aoe dots.

krachall

Littlebluelizard wrote: »

You could replace Briarheart with Night Mothers Gaze since you don't have major fracture built in. Will result in more damage than briarheart on bosses and on adds.it might be more or less the same.

You could drop iceheart eventually for a damage set like Velidreth. vMA is based a lot on burst it helps a lot to clear adds. Dead mobs can't kill you!

Also what skills you are using? Some scoreleaders used silver leash in the past so you could chain all enemies into youe aoe dots.

I've heard the NMG suggestion before so I'll try that next.

Iceheart is a nice crutch for me right now but I did make it to Stage 4 without dying before I realized I had forgotten to equip it on my last run. I'll keep it for now but maybe switch after the nerf goes live.

I'm currently not using silver leash but I'm going to try it on my next run. I'll probably replace Dark Shade with it as I think it will help a ton in Ice and and a few other levels. I'm assuming some of the mechanic-based mobs (like the summoners in 9) can't be chained but it will be nice to not have to chase down those damn archers in 5 and 7. Maybe use it for the bugs in 6 as well so I can pull them to the pillar I want to clean.

Thanks!

goldenarcher1

Brawler skill+Mighty Chudan monster set+anything else.

vgabor

krachall wrote: »

I'm currently not using silver leash but I'm going to try it on my next run. I'll probably replace Dark Shade with it as I think it will help a ton in Ice and and a few other levels. I'm assuming some of the mechanic-based mobs (like the summoners in 9) can't be chained but it will be nice to not have to chase down those damn archers in 5 and 7. Maybe use it for the bugs in 6 as well so I can pull them to the pillar I want to clean.

Silver leash doesn't really need on every stage, but helps a lot on:
- stage 4 getting those ranged ones next to you onto the ice from the water,
- stage 7 interrupting/chaining the archers together next to you,
- stage 8 interrupting/chaining the flame channeling mages,

(ie: using it on a taking aim archer or channeling mage it interrupts those when pulling them to you and they also will be stunned for like 2 seconds after)

krachall

Thanks again all. I'm getting a good bit faster but still hit frustrating patches. My last run only took me 7 attempts at the final boss. My first attempt took 30+. But it also took me at least 10 attempts on the Stage 6 boss which I'd previously never taken more than two attempts. Go figure.

Where I've made the most progress is stages 1-5. I can get through those in about 25 minutes including the final boss on 5 which originally took me 2 years to get past. I've also gotten reasonably confident on 7 even though I need a good bit of luck to kill the final boss. If I get lucky and my shield mage is within melee range of the boss, I usually complete it (unless I do something like roll dodge out of the shield...yeah, I do that a lot by accident).

And the RNG is stuck. In five completions, I've gotten:
DW set
DW set
DW set
S&B set
DW set

I'd be happy to see a staff right now!

And one more question: I'm currently using the standard stam DPS potion (weapon crit, weapon damage, stamina...the one that uses Blessed Thistle, Dragonthorne, and Wormwood). Is that the right potion or should I switch to something that improves my survivability?

hakan

what do you guys do in 7th (or 8th?) phase which has argos and poisons?

That guy one shots me everytime but i have around 20k hp maybe thats why.. since block or dodge could be unreliable there, i just light attack with bow and then balista it down.

combined with poison caller/prayer and random poison locations, it becomes unbearable to me. the hardest part imo.

krachall

I run vMA with 15,800 hp and melee him most of the time. But I rotate around him an roll dodge through him constantly. I’m not really trying to parse on him at this point as much as keep alive. The true damage comes when he’s shrieking and I can (hopefully) stand in the shield and parse.

krachall

UPDATE!

Not that anyone really cares but digging through threads like this were a huge help for me to get my first completion so maybe it will help others.

I've now completed vMA 9 times and have managed to make it on the scoreboard 3 times with a high score of 341,000. Not enough to stay on the leaderboard for long but it's nice to make a full run in under 2 hours. I've got enough runs to really identify my weakness and have made some tweaks to hopefully compensate.

First, I got my Maelstrom Bow on my ninth run. But I also got a Master's Bow from vet DSA a couple days later. So the first tweak was outfitting my dedicated vMA stamblade with the Master's Bow (Caustic Arrow). My Maelstrom bow went to my main trials/dungeon stamblade. Was kinda nice to get my Maelstrom Bow and Master's Bow just a couple days apart.

Second, I started tracking my deaths by stage in my last 3 runs and I'm really only struggling in two stages: 6 and 9 and both mainly with the final bosses. I've gotten pretty good at 5 and 7 but my last run was 24 total deaths with 20 of them happening in 6 or 9.

So my second tweak, upon recommendation from a friend, was to make a set of Prismatic DW weapons. These do 3099 magic damage to daedra -- helpful for my two worst stages. I'll swap to these weapons before those stages.

My last tweak was to download Code's Combat Alerts add-on. I don't run a lot of add-ons but I hear that this one is really good at helping with Taking Aim mobs. These mobs are probably my main cause of death besides mechanics so I'll take the help. Usually I die to Taking Aim because I simply didn't see the archer spawn and thought I'd cleared the trash. Then...boom...35k damage.

My build is now:
Iceheart (still a huge help, even after the nerf and I'm not good enough to run a DPS set here yet)
Vicious Ophidian (stam regen is critical for me. Number one cause of death is Stage 9 is being out of stam when the boss is under 15% health)
Night Mother's Gaze (major fracture)
Master's Bow

Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to run it since making most of these tweaks but I'm shooting for a >400k score since I have the bow and don't really need to grind it for gear any more. My next step is to get good enough at avoiding damage/learning spawns to swap Iceheart for a DPS set.

Hope this helps someone!

Karmen

I cant get the vicious ophidian since I just cant go to the trials (no guild and no random wants to to theses old trials anymore).
I'm cp445, is there a way to do vma without a trial set ?

krachall

Can you get Relequen? nCR runs may be more common and Relequen is probably better than VO.

Even without Relequen, There are good stam DPs sets overland and crafted. Briarheart, Night Mother’s Gaze, Hundings Rage, etc.

EDITED: a good player who knows the mechanics and spawns could probably complete this in Adept Rider and Sithis’ Touch sets.

kylewwefan

It’s great you’re getting better!

I think the score pushers were using VO/NMG/Veledreth rocking Shadow Mundus and popping 60 cp or so into piercing.

I would use the maelstrom bow in there %100 for sure. It’s too good not to. The DSA bow is not as good in that place. Too many ads.

I had use VO/Briarhearts/Veledreth heavy helm with health enchant and gold food. Briarhearts looks to be an even more solid option with this new patch.

Maelstrom Bow infused w/Berserker glyph. Briarhearts Daggers Main hand Nirnhoned w/poison glyph, off hand infused with absorb stamina. Bloodthirsty jewelry.

It may not be the best, but I’m quite comfortable with it.

Now that you’re starting to get the feel of it, you have more options. You could throw camo hunter on the bar and use shrouded dagger or power extraction for your major buffs while allowing you more freedom of potions, like health Stam add armor, or health stam Crit.


I haven’t ran it in a little while on stamblade but NMG never really seemed super good to me. Maybe it does now IDK? Not sure if the lover or the shadow or even the warrior would be the best for you.

But anyways, you have many options at your disposal that may work better for you now that you know how to run the place.

Runs usually take me about 45 minutes or so. Normal took me a half hour just to run the content. No idea how the über guys get in the 20 some odd minute time frame.

krachall

Thanks! Lots of great tips in there.

My big goal is to swap Iceheart for Veli. I’ve made it to Stage 6 without Iceheart but needed the shield to get through. I also rely too much on it in Stage 2. Lol.

I have one slot on my back bar that I’m experimenting with. I started with Daek Shadow there. I liked it because sometime the trash mobs would focus the shadow instead of me.

I then swapped it for Silver Leash but found I only use it in a couple fights. Probably a waste of a slot.

Maybe I’ll try camo hunter and see how that works.

Thanks again!

kylewwefan

Relequen. in VMA is complete poop. If you’re trying to learn the place. You’ll never build up stacks on anything.

My bars always look something like,

Back Bar: endless hail, trap beast, poison injection, vigor, flex, ultimate Barrier.

This flex spot could be anything from shadow, caltrops, soul trap, leeching strikes etc.

Front Bar: surprise attack, flex, killers blade, flex, flex, ultimate Incap

You have a lot of options here. I find rending slashes/blood craze to be completely optional. I like power extraction. It’s a hard hitting AOE, gives you major brutality, class skill cheap enough to be a spammable. Whirlwind misses the mark a bit at least for SNB. Camo Hunter for Savagery. For any other class, you could replace surprise attack with shrouded daggers or silver shard. They’re both great spammables. The relentless. Whether you actually use it or not is up to you.

More than half the time I’m probably popping a barrier ultimate rather then incap. Using a tripot instead of weapon power is also like an added uh oh moment, easy button kind of fix.


The trick to the second round is go up by where the blade stop switch is and do the whole fight until bosses from right there. Stay on your bow bar a lot. I never bother turning it off. Side step the blades. Vigor.

The sixth round I stay by those back two totems most the time. I intentionally don’t uncover them. Just keep two or three clear.