Maintenance for the week of December 2:
• PC/Mac: NA and EU megaservers for patch maintenance – December 2, 4:00AM EST (9:00 UTC) - 9:00AM EST (14:00 UTC)
• Xbox: NA and EU megaservers for patch maintenance – December 4, 6:00AM EST (11:00 UTC) - 12:00PM EST (17:00 UTC)
• PlayStation®: NA and EU megaservers for patch maintenance – December 4, 6:00AM EST (11:00 UTC) - 12:00PM EST (17:00 UTC)
• PC/Mac: NA and EU megaservers for patch maintenance – December 2, 4:00AM EST (9:00 UTC) - 9:00AM EST (14:00 UTC)
• Xbox: NA and EU megaservers for patch maintenance – December 4, 6:00AM EST (11:00 UTC) - 12:00PM EST (17:00 UTC)
• PlayStation®: NA and EU megaservers for patch maintenance – December 4, 6:00AM EST (11:00 UTC) - 12:00PM EST (17:00 UTC)
Maelstrom Arena 5-Piece Set Quality of Life
SerLoras
✭✭✭
I'm really disappointed that these patch notes' "Updates to Item Set Sourcing" don't include Maelstrom Arena.
Currently, the way loot drops in Maelstrom Arena makes it basically impossible to complete the Stickerbook without grinding for dozens and dozens of hours.
In addition to the very useful and popular Maelstrom Arena 2-piece weapon sets, Maelstrom Arena drops 6 other much less useful 5-piece sets (Elemental Succession, Glorious Defender, Hunt Leader, Para Bellum, Permafrost, and Winterborn). Each of these 5-piece sets includes 13 separate weapons and 2 jewelry items. These 15 items from each of these 6 sets only drop on the final chest of the Maelstrom Arena after killing the last boss.
This means that in order to fully farm the Stickerbook for Maelstrom Arena, even with curated items drops, you have to clear Maelstrom Arena 90 times!
Even if you farm it on normal at world record speed, you will still be required to spend dozens of hours repeating the same content over and over again, for borderline useless gear.
Compared to other content, the gear in Maelstrom Arena is uniquely difficult to farm for 2 main reasons.
First, Maelstrom Arena is the only content in the game that has 6 separate 5-piece sets. Dungeons only have 3 sets, Overland zones have 3, and Trials have 4. Not even other Arenas have 6 sets. Vatashran Hollows only has 3 sets, and Dragonstar has 4. Blackrose doesn't have any 5-piece sets (it just drops Overland gear from Murkmire). Second, Maelstrom Arena is a solo Arena. That means there is no chance to make farming easier by trading gear with other players. You can only get the gear as a single drop, one at a time.
Additionally, Maelstrom only drops these 5-piece weapons on the last boss, compared to Vatashran Hollows which drops weapons and jewelry for its 5-piece sets multiple times per run, making its sets much much easier to complete.
The Stickerbook grind for these Maelstrom 5-pieces sets really needs to be adjusted to be more inline with other content, and this patch is a real missed opportunity to make that change.
Edited by SerLoras on July 17, 2023 4:12PM Currently, the way loot drops in Maelstrom Arena makes it basically impossible to complete the Stickerbook without grinding for dozens and dozens of hours.
In addition to the very useful and popular Maelstrom Arena 2-piece weapon sets, Maelstrom Arena drops 6 other much less useful 5-piece sets (Elemental Succession, Glorious Defender, Hunt Leader, Para Bellum, Permafrost, and Winterborn). Each of these 5-piece sets includes 13 separate weapons and 2 jewelry items. These 15 items from each of these 6 sets only drop on the final chest of the Maelstrom Arena after killing the last boss.
This means that in order to fully farm the Stickerbook for Maelstrom Arena, even with curated items drops, you have to clear Maelstrom Arena 90 times!
Even if you farm it on normal at world record speed, you will still be required to spend dozens of hours repeating the same content over and over again, for borderline useless gear.
Compared to other content, the gear in Maelstrom Arena is uniquely difficult to farm for 2 main reasons.
First, Maelstrom Arena is the only content in the game that has 6 separate 5-piece sets. Dungeons only have 3 sets, Overland zones have 3, and Trials have 4. Not even other Arenas have 6 sets. Vatashran Hollows only has 3 sets, and Dragonstar has 4. Blackrose doesn't have any 5-piece sets (it just drops Overland gear from Murkmire). Second, Maelstrom Arena is a solo Arena. That means there is no chance to make farming easier by trading gear with other players. You can only get the gear as a single drop, one at a time.
Additionally, Maelstrom only drops these 5-piece weapons on the last boss, compared to Vatashran Hollows which drops weapons and jewelry for its 5-piece sets multiple times per run, making its sets much much easier to complete.
The Stickerbook grind for these Maelstrom 5-pieces sets really needs to be adjusted to be more inline with other content, and this patch is a real missed opportunity to make that change.
9
-
Braffin✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭Yeah, should be changed so weapons drop at least starting with round 7. The main reward is the maelstrom weapon in the end, not those comparatively trashy sets.Never get between a cat and it's candy!
---
Overland difficulty scaling is desperately needed. 9 years. 6 paid expansions. 24 DLCs. 40 game changing updates including One Tamriel, an overhaul of the game including a permanent CP160 gear cap and ridiculous power creep thereafter. I'm sick and tired of hearing about Cadwell Silver & Gold as a "you think you do but you don't" - tier deflection to any criticism regarding the lack of overland difficulty in the game. I'm bored of dungeons, I'm bored of trials; make a personal difficulty slider for overland. It's not that hard.3 -
SerLoras✭✭✭Yeah, should be changed so weapons drop at least starting with round 7. The main reward is the maelstrom weapon in the end, not those comparatively trashy sets.
Yeah, I really just don't understand how it makes sense for some random sets that no one uses in Maelstrom to be the most time consuming sets in the game to fully farm.1 -
SerLoras✭✭✭Another suggestion might be to make the Maelstrom 5-piece sets bind on equip instead of bind on pickup.
If people could sell the sets on guild traders that would increase quality of life for Stickerbook addicts, and also open up a potential revenue stream for people that don't care about Stickerbook and want to hock their unwanted gear.
Sure, most dungeons and arenas don't have BoE gear, but Blackrose Prison just drops straight up overland gear, so that is some precedent. Also, the Maelstrom sets are so niche that there is really no risk of creating any balance issues by making them less tedious to get.1 -
Quethrosar✭✭✭✭no way, i paid the price already, give me a refund on something if this gets changed lol.
0 -
Necrotech_Master✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭i think the minimum number of runs through maelstrom to 100% collect it is like 72 (if you got all of the maelstrom weapons perfected and non perfected in the same run)
i would really like it too if they allowed the normal set weapons to drop in the 2 previous arenas to the final one (the ones which currently only drop jewelry) as i think it might make more sense, many of these sets are not great to begin with
it would also make it closer to vateshran where non final bosses can still drop weapons from the normal sets tooplays PC/NA
handle @Necrotech_Master
active player since april 2014
i have my main house (grand topal hideaway) listed in the housing tours, it has multiple target dummies, scribing altar, and grandmaster stations (in progress being filled out), as well as almost every antiquity furnishing on display to preview them
feel free to stop by and use the facilities2 -
SerLoras✭✭✭Necrotech_Master wrote: »it would also make it closer to vateshran where non final bosses can still drop weapons from the normal sets too
Yeah, that inconsistency is what bothers me the most. ZOS clearly wants to make gear farming less grindy, and they have done a good job adding new features that make happen. I just hope they'll notice that Maelstrom is still a pretty big outlier in that regard.0 -
Necrotech_Master✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Necrotech_Master wrote: »it would also make it closer to vateshran where non final bosses can still drop weapons from the normal sets too
Yeah, that inconsistency is what bothers me the most. ZOS clearly wants to make gear farming less grindy, and they have done a good job adding new features that make happen. I just hope they'll notice that Maelstrom is still a pretty big outlier in that regard.
maelstrom is also an odd case where it has 6 full gear sets besides the maelstrom weapons, vateshran only has 3
the other cases (BRP and DSA), blackrose just uses the overland gear (as noted in the thread) to fill in, and DSA non-master set gear is all bind on equip and not bind on pickup (so its fully tradeable and sellable outside of the instance)
i actually would hope they would just go the DSA route with the other arenas, and allow the non-special weapon sets to be normal bind on equip sets that can be traded and sold outside of the instance, while the special weapons would still require actually running the contentplays PC/NA
handle @Necrotech_Master
active player since april 2014
i have my main house (grand topal hideaway) listed in the housing tours, it has multiple target dummies, scribing altar, and grandmaster stations (in progress being filled out), as well as almost every antiquity furnishing on display to preview them
feel free to stop by and use the facilities3 -
SerLoras✭✭✭Necrotech_Master wrote: »maelstrom is also an odd case where it has 6 full gear sets besides the maelstrom weapons, vateshran only has 3
the other cases (BRP and DSA), blackrose just uses the overland gear (as noted in the thread) to fill in, and DSA non-master set gear is all bind on equip and not bind on pickup (so its fully tradeable and sellable outside of the instance)
i actually would hope they would just go the DSA route with the other arenas, and allow the non-special weapon sets to be normal bind on equip sets that can be traded and sold outside of the instance, while the special weapons would still require actually running the content
Oh wow, I never even noticed the DSA trash sets were BoE before. That's even more inconsistent! I completely agree. That seems like a great easy fix. It will make things less tedious and more consistent.
0