Flawless Conqueror vs Spirit Slayer

Tariq9898

Which title was harder for you to obtain? Flawless Conqueror or Spirit Slayer.

I thought Maelstrom has a whole was more challenging than Vateshran as you couldn't skip any adds. The poison area had RNG element that could ruin a perfect run.

However, the final boss of Vateshran was definitely harder than anything in Maelstrom for me as a StamDK. Spirit Slayer also required No Sigil and Speed run.

Thoughts?

El_Borracho

Spirit Slayer

Especially now with Arcanist. If you thought the Oakensorc made VMA manageable, Arcanist has made it easy.

Honestly, the bigger obstacle to no-death runs in both arenas are the bugs the devs seemingly have made into "mechanics" as they refuse to fix them. Like in VMA where you can not see some adds damaging you, either the adds themselves or the animation of their attack (archers in arena 5, kyngalds in arena 7, narykanz not visible in arena 8) then your resources instantly drop to zero an you die. Or the glitch in Vateshran with Rahdgarak where your stamina will not regenerate once the grapple phase begins. Or the one that plagues both, where your skills, especially heals, will not fire.

Necrotech_Master

Spirit Slayer

i believe spirit slayer was the harder of the 2 because of the extra requirements for no sigil and speedrun

no death maelstrom is pretty easy if you just take your time and build a bit tankier as there is no time constraint outside of the DPS check of the ice arena

amig186

The Flawless Conqueror

Definitely Flawless Conqueror. I got Spirit Slayer in like 4 runs, 1st was learning the arena, 2nd was doing all the optional bosses, 3rd was playing the areas in a different order to get the stamina sphere (I usually go green-blue-red), and by then I knew enough to run it in 38 minutes without dying. On the other hand, when I did vMA we didn't have things like the pale order or oakensoul ring so that contributed to the difficulty. But even doing them now, on a better character with better gear, I still feel that vMA keeps me on my toes more than vVateshran does.

Rkindaleft

The Flawless Conqueror

Maelstrom was slightly harder for me when I got both around the Reach release.

The RNG factor for Arena 7 in Maelstrom will always make it annoying and you have to kill everything in order to progress rounds.

In Vateshran you technically only have to kill the gate bosses and the main bosses, you can skip like 50% of add groups and still get Spirit Slayer which is a massive time save if you're already cutting it close on the time limit.

Also Maelstrom came out much earlier than Oakensoul, Pale Order and Arcanist which made getting Flawless Conqueror much more difficult 5 years ago.

ceruulean

The Flawless Conqueror

I got Spirit Slayer by accident while farming for vate weapons. But I still don't have Flawless Conquerer. I die in maelstrom to random things. Although I don't use sigils since I want to get leaderboard reward. If we're including sigils then Flawless is probably easier to get.

Then again I am terrible at dealing damage in trash fights, and much better at single target. Mentally I get riled up when I am gangbanged, even if it's just NPCs. The option to skip trash in Vateshran is a godsend. Other people might have the opposite problem.

Jaimeh

The Flawless Conqueror

Flawless Conqueror, for sure, but you have to take into consideration the fact that the game was a whole lot different around the years that vMA was released, versus the time when vVH was released--not just in terms of what was possible damage-wise at the time, but also the available sets and strategies (not to mention that initially progress could not be saved in vMA, and although that didn't matter for FC strictly speaking, it still meant that getting practice for the later stages was a lot more difficult since you had to start over). It took me months to get that title back in the day, when it only took a few days for Spirit Slayer. If I had to compare them as they are now, with nothing else in mind, I'd say Spirit Slayer is more difficult (also because you can just use the sigils for FC), but I really don't think a straightforward comparison is possible, given the discrepancies in the state of the game.

mocap

Spirit Slayer is basically a trifecta run, which by definition is more complicated than a simple undying.

A typical HA build (serg + duelist + oaken) allows you to do 40k+ selfbuffed DPS while having 40k hp, infinite sustain, 28k+ resistances, 10k+ healing per second, one bar 2-3 buttons rotation. It was almost unrealistic to do such build back then, so yes - vMA was definitely harder those days, than vShrans now.

HushAzrael

The Flawless Conqueror

Caveat: I have not **tried** to get either of these. I got spirit slayer by chance when farming on my Arc. I was not trying— just going for fast/efficient runs. So, technically FC is harder for me. I might actually try and see if I can get it.

amig186

The Flawless Conqueror

Running these arenas again for class scraps has reinforced my opinion that SS is easier than FC, due to the simple fact that VH doesn't have anything akin to the bug-ridden, RNG-heavy mess that is arena 7, the vault of umbrage. The VH final boss has a bit of RNG involved, adds might pop up at an inconvenient time, the dremora miniboss might show up first so you have to deal with that annoying fire mage for the rest of the fight, but it's all leagues more managable than multiple mushrooms suddenly spawning under your feet while you're fighting a boss. If it weren't for that, FC would be easier, just a bit more tedious since you can't skip anything.

Necrotech_Master

Spirit Slayer

amig186 wrote: »

Running these arenas again for class scraps has reinforced my opinion that SS is easier than FC, due to the simple fact that VH doesn't have anything akin to the bug-ridden, RNG-heavy mess that is arena 7, the vault of umbrage. The VH final boss has a bit of RNG involved, adds might pop up at an inconvenient time, the dremora miniboss might show up first so you have to deal with that annoying fire mage for the rest of the fight, but it's all leagues more managable than multiple mushrooms suddenly spawning under your feet while you're fighting a boss. If it weren't for that, FC would be easier, just a bit more tedious since you can't skip anything.

the minibosses in VH on the final fight are not random, it depends on which island you port over too during the explosion phase

i generally always try to do the fire mage one last so i dont have to deal with them very long

if you port over to the island near the "coldfire" themed pipes you get the ice mage/lightning strike mechanic
if you port over to the island near the "woodsy" section, you get the minotaur/illusion minotaur mechanic
if you port over to the island near the "lava" section, then you get the fire dremora/fire mage mechanic

you can choose which order you want to do them in

amig186

The Flawless Conqueror

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

amig186 wrote: »

Running these arenas again for class scraps has reinforced my opinion that SS is easier than FC, due to the simple fact that VH doesn't have anything akin to the bug-ridden, RNG-heavy mess that is arena 7, the vault of umbrage. The VH final boss has a bit of RNG involved, adds might pop up at an inconvenient time, the dremora miniboss might show up first so you have to deal with that annoying fire mage for the rest of the fight, but it's all leagues more managable than multiple mushrooms suddenly spawning under your feet while you're fighting a boss. If it weren't for that, FC would be easier, just a bit more tedious since you can't skip anything.

the minibosses in VH on the final fight are not random, it depends on which island you port over too during the explosion phase

i generally always try to do the fire mage one last so i dont have to deal with them very long

if you port over to the island near the "coldfire" themed pipes you get the ice mage/lightning strike mechanic
if you port over to the island near the "woodsy" section, you get the minotaur/illusion minotaur mechanic
if you port over to the island near the "lava" section, then you get the fire dremora/fire mage mechanic

you can choose which order you want to do them in

Tbh i never even noticed there was anything on the platform othet than the grapple pole and the portal. I'll have to keep an eye out next time, thanks. That also solidifies my point that VH is easier because there's much less RNG involved.

Necrotech_Master

Spirit Slayer

amig186 wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

amig186 wrote: »

Running these arenas again for class scraps has reinforced my opinion that SS is easier than FC, due to the simple fact that VH doesn't have anything akin to the bug-ridden, RNG-heavy mess that is arena 7, the vault of umbrage. The VH final boss has a bit of RNG involved, adds might pop up at an inconvenient time, the dremora miniboss might show up first so you have to deal with that annoying fire mage for the rest of the fight, but it's all leagues more managable than multiple mushrooms suddenly spawning under your feet while you're fighting a boss. If it weren't for that, FC would be easier, just a bit more tedious since you can't skip anything.

the minibosses in VH on the final fight are not random, it depends on which island you port over too during the explosion phase

i generally always try to do the fire mage one last so i dont have to deal with them very long

if you port over to the island near the "coldfire" themed pipes you get the ice mage/lightning strike mechanic
if you port over to the island near the "woodsy" section, you get the minotaur/illusion minotaur mechanic
if you port over to the island near the "lava" section, then you get the fire dremora/fire mage mechanic

you can choose which order you want to do them in

Tbh i never even noticed there was anything on the platform othet than the grapple pole and the portal. I'll have to keep an eye out next time, thanks. That also solidifies my point that VH is easier because there's much less RNG involved.

the mini island where you grapple to doesnt have really any unique features, but theres some like floating islands surrounding the grapple island which is what determines which boss your fighting

kyle.wilson

Have you finished getting the side achievements for of the Undying Song in Vateshran?

kringled_1

The one that has to have the atronach smash a bunch of imps at the same time has a lot of rng in it, at least it seemed so for me. Most of the others were pretty predictable to carry out.

Necrotech_Master

Spirit Slayer

kringled_1 wrote: »

The one that has to have the atronach smash a bunch of imps at the same time has a lot of rng in it, at least it seemed so for me. Most of the others were pretty predictable to carry out.

that one wasnt too bad, it just took a long time to get up to 5 imps spawned at once, 3 times in the same fight

mostly need a lot of self heals, and you can dodge roll the smash to help line it up better with the imps

tsaescishoeshiner

The Flawless Conqueror

Spirit Slayer is much harder on Melee. I got Spirit Slayer within my first few runs of Vateshran, whereas Flawless Conqueror involves getting through sooo much nonsense and easy mistakes that instakill you. That said, I started vMA when I was new to endgame content, but was way more experienced by the time Vateshran Hollows came out.

lardvader

The Flawless Conqueror

Did spirit on 4th run. Died 3 times prior to fall dmg while grappling.

But this was years after my first flawless on oakensorc with almost 2000 cp and thousand of hours of more experience.

And again oakensorc....

Anyone can get flawless/spirit slayer with that build

autocookies

Spirit Slayer

deleted

Stafford197

The Flawless Conqueror

Flawless Conqueror back when it came out was MUCH harder. You actually had to build properly, learn mechanics, and fight things without nuking it all. It took lots of learning/trial and error across many runs to finally get a Flawless complete and I was super excited once I beat it. Definitely was one of the highlights of this entire game when it came to solo content (although it is not the case anymore due to power creep).

By the time Vateshran Arena came out, we were already in the ultra high DPS phase of the game. I ran the arena a few times to learn things because I went in there completely fresh/with no prior knowledge. It was on my 3rd or 4th run that I purposely pushed to complete a Spirit Slayer run because it was just so easy. If you push damage and fail to meet certain DPS checks it can get rough, but once you learn them those pushes become far easier to achieve. If you decide to just play at a normal pace/with a tiny bit of defense though then the arena becomes extremely easy.

Not saying Vateshran is bad content though. I did enjoy it, but it was a far more casual kind of solo experience compared to the brutal gauntlet that Maelstrom used to be imo.