vMA 2H - Make this useful for PvE again

Altyrann

With Stampede looking very solid, this feels like it should be a great weapon to run, but because the proc damage was nerfed for PvP, it is now largely useless for PvE.

It would be great to see the 2pc bonus being competitive with vMA bow or vBRP DW when run on back bar, even if this means some sort of rework to avoid causing PvP issues.

Sluggy

Perhaps I missed something but I don't recall seeing anything in the last few patch notes that nerfed it. In fact they buffed it about a year ago by removing the limit of targets it can hit. Looking at the tooltip in-game it looks about the same as I remember. It still feels decent to me in solo content and trash fights. What exactly was changed?

EDIT: I'm a dummy. You said maelstrom. I was thinking Titantic Cleave.

Altyrann

Merciless Charge is the vMA one. It was pretty average even before the nerf and laughable now compared to alternatives.

Everest_Lionheart

If you run arena weapons on both bars it’s still worth a look. That means giving up monster set or kilt though and that seems to be too much of a DPS loss. For instance vMA 2H front with Masters DW back running Rele + Deadly has huge potential if you can run a solid DOT build on stam. Next patch all dots are affected by deadly even though the bonus is nerfed. I haven’t tried this combo since they nerfed crit but a few patches ago I was hitting 96K on Stamden with it running 6 dots plus poison.

Altyrann

You can get good total damage but if you look at the 2pc damage specifically it's poor compared to any solid 5pc or alternative arena weapon. If you use DW Master or BRP back bar and 2H front, for example, you'll get significantly more damage with a 5pc like AY front and either a monster set or a mythic plus a 1pc than using vMA front.

Stx

It's not that bad of a back bar weapon is it? Now that stampede procs enchants the bleed is just added damage.

Keep in mind it can apply the bleed to any target hit by the ground aoe and the bleed also refreshes every tick of the ground aoe.

It might not be numerically as strong as thunderous volley but it's not that far behind i don't think. I prefer it because I hate ground targeted skills like volley and stampede being a gap closer is convenient too.

Altyrann

Of 100k damage the proc worth less than 2% even with Deadly. That's a fair bit less than alternatives. Consider, for example, BRP DW giving 6% damage done as well as 6% mitigation as an extra bonus.