Legendary Solo Video -- Vashna vs. Hiath (VDSA Level 10)

Vashna · July 2015

Everyone has their passion. Mine is the challenge of completing group content either solo or with a partner. As much as I love Elder Scrolls, having played the entire series dating back to Arena, this game is depressingly easy. There are also unnecessary artificial barriers in many dungeons and trials that force you to have a minimum number of players, whether it's the AA teleport pads, the Hel Ra gates, or bosses in veteran dungeons that permanently CC a player until a teammate frees them. It shouldn't matter if someone completes an instance with less than the intended number; not everyone is motivated by time or leaderboards.

However, there are several instances that become more fun as you tackle them with increasingly less people. Gwysaria and I have been duo'ing several veteran dungeons and VDSA for months. Given the lack of content updates in this game, we've motivated ourselves by performing crazy feats to keep our interest. These adventures have the interesting side effect of revealing the limitations of the game itself.

For example, I recently solo’d the boss round of VDSA level 2 without using bonfires. While tanking both bosses and killing all their adds, I sustained myself through the frostbite for several minutes. At some point the frostbite literally stopped, the icy terrain disappeared, and the environment became greener. The frostbite ended, the bonfires became unnecessary and I finished the encounter almost like it was normal mode. It's obvious the programmer set an arbitrary duration on the frostbite, not expecting anyone to survive that long. (I will be posting videos of this and other feats when time permits. But for now, to the point of this post…)

During the July 4th weekend, one of our duo VDSA runs culminated with me soloing Hiath the Battlemaster. This is one of the only fights in the game that comes close to giving me what I'm looking for -- an intense, highly variable, dynamic 1vX PvE combat that tests my balance of offense, defense and sustainability. But this challenge was more than that -- I wanted to create a video that is visually exciting and entertaining to watch, with great camera shots of reflected meteors, inhales and explosions, where I'm hopscotching across daedric mine fields, and even dodging a mess of supernovas and negates. In the end, it was quite the ride.

I uploaded the video to Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs4UVIisJj8
You can also access or share the video via this alias URL:
http://tinyurl.com/HiathSolo

My movie tagline: "The toughest 17 gold I ever made."

I recommend watching it at 1080p with the audio turned up.
I hope everyone enjoys it!

Paulington · July 2015

Fantastic video Vashna and it's nice to see others enjoy this too. Last patch I solo'd the Lightning Atronach in AA as a Sorc and it was very fun.

I do wish to know though @Vashna, why have you censored your skills when we can see what skills you are using anyway?

Vashna · July 2015

Paulington wrote: »

I do wish to know though @Vashna, why have you censored your skills when we can see what skills you are using anyway?

Hi Paulington,

There's several reasons for that. Most of that UI was already turned off. I also wanted to crop the screen so the resource bars were at the bottom, I wanted a section where I could display song titles, and there was no loss to information --- as you said, everything is easily discernible from watching it, particularly with the buff/debuff icons. In my opinion, adding the extra UI wouldn't have added anything to the video. (Of course, I forgot to turn off a few things, like my quest log in the top right

)

WinterCreator · July 2015

It was lots of fun. Now we need to find a new challenge. ^_^

kaithuzar · July 2015

On the one hand... no big deal, DK things, #standard #win

On the other
Great fight Vashna! That was really epic!

Xantaria · July 2015

Oh my god. Just wow. I'm deeply impressed by this. I know the amount of skill this takes is incredible. Keeping track of ALL the timers there. Just incredible. You have my respect.

BaconMagic · July 2015

Epic. Elite. Wow.

PBpsy · July 2015

Awesome.

Nice to see something amazing related to this game.

Big thumbs up.

Suru · July 2015

oooh congratz Vashna, im glad you werte finally able to do this. Come a long way from before, gj!

Plaid13ub17_ESO · July 2015

Neat Would be nice to see what gear you are using and what your stats/champ skills are. Looks like bloodspawn and master sword for some heals but what do you use other then that?

I dont pay attention to buffs/debuffs so dont recognize all of them. Were you using vigor for self healing?

sagitter · July 2015

Congratulations.
29k health, 27k stamina, and 17k magicka, seems like a lot of cps there, may i ask how many?
I also see vigor, and maybe master sword heals sinergyzing with igneous shield, you don t need an healer

Have you tryed this build in pvp?

kaithuzar · July 2015

Looks like entropy, defensive posture/absorb magic, puncture (with master sword), low slash(i think), searing strike, green dragon blood, caltrops, lots of earthen dk abilities i'm not familiar with; standard, & maybe corrosive?
Sword & Board on both bars, it looked like he was only wearing bloodspawn helm not shoulder?
What is surprising is it didn't look like he was using tri-pots, maybe immovable pots?

Korozenn · July 2015

Wow, @Vashna !

I'm very impressed by the amount of dedication you had in soloing VDSA! Keep up the great work!

Anlaemar · July 2015

Awesome video. I wish there were fights such as this that were more easily accessible for solo players.

andy_s · July 2015

Good job! I can imagine how many random things happened there in previous attempts

QuadroTony · July 2015

better post video in a fist post

not a useless link you posted

but like youtube link with video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs4UVIisJj8

Cuyler · July 2015

@Vashna I already knew you were a beast but this is #BALLING!

alainjbrennanb16_ESO · July 2015

i would say he did well, but something odd about the vid, or it might just be me

Vashna · July 2015

Plaid13ub17_ESO wrote: »

I dont pay attention to buffs/debuffs so dont recognize all of them. Were you using vigor for self healing?

Vigor is an amazing skill, but I wasn't using it. I didn't have enough room on my action bars. I couldn't sacrifice any of my 10 [non-ultimate] skills, as I used each one repeatedly. I also had healing covered in many other ways (I have 8 sources of healing between sword, CP passives, racial and active heals). Finally, Vigor is just a heal; I typically gravitate toward skills that have 2-3 or more combined effects to promote flexibility in skill use. (That is, using the same skill in different situations.) Every skill on my bars has multiple effects, except for Unstable Flame (but this is my primary damage dealer, affording me 20-25k damage for only ~300 stamina).

kaithuzar wrote: »

... lots of earthen dk abilities i'm not familiar with... What is surprising is it didn't look like he was using tri-pots, maybe immovable pots?

I used Igneous Shield in various ways throughout the fight -- a) Single cast for Major Mending to support healing thru fire phases, b) Multi-cast for shield spam when stamina was low to continue sustaining damage while relying on Earthen Heart passives to regain stamina.

The other skill not mentioned was Volatile Armor (actually in the Draconic Power line). No, I don't use Hardened; the bubble is gimp compared to tossing out AE dots on everything around me. The faster targets die, the sooner I stop taking damage.

No, I wasn't using immovable pots. I was actually using Elixir of Speed, which turned out to be a treat, but it was not my initial intention. I was trying to use Weapon Power pots, but my quickslot kept getting bugged/stuck because of the crit buff, so I replaced that effect with speed. Ironically, the day after I made this video (Monday 7/6), ZOS released a patch for Weapon Power pots.

I did use several tri-pots toward the end of the fight, but that was because Hiath applies a pulsar effect in the 25% phase that reduced my health by about 40%. My concern in the last phase was to maintain high resources/recovery across the board; stamina alone (for DPS) was no longer my concern once all the mini-bosses were killed.

However, I didn't spam pots the entire fight. I used about 10-12 potions total during the 26 minute battle.

andy.s wrote: »

Good job! I can imagine how many random things happened there in previous attempts

The number one random killer is inhale. Your health drops to 1% and there are many variables that can finish you off -- a bolt in mid-flight from a flame atronach or mage boss right as the inhale executes, or being pulled overtop lava or a daedric mine. This is why I spent so much time in the video applying defensive stance right before the vacuum pull, and why I cleared out daedric mines and kept Hiath near me at all times, to limit the distance traveled on inhales.

alainjbrennanb16_ESO wrote: »

i would say he did well, but something odd about the vid, or it might just be me

I'm not sure I follow you. What is odd about the video? I forgot to include this in my post and my video, but I used Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) to record the video and Cyberlink PowerDirector 13 to edit. The VDSA footage itself was untouched. All I did was put an intro/outro, add a text overlay to keep track of how many bosses and adds I killed, a bar to the bottom for song display, and ALOT of audio editing to synchronize the music to the action.

[Deleted User] · July 2015

The user and all related content has been deleted.

QuadroTony · July 2015

author still dont know how to post videos on the forum

lol

i will watch it when he will post it in proper way
as in mine previous post

Addihul · July 2015

This is absolutely and unequivocally, ridiculously, and indubitably amazing.

NotSo · July 2015

Omg so op plz nerf bolt escape

Slonekb05 · July 2015

Agreed, game is a cake walk they need to do something about this. Soloing group content is a red flag, been posting about this as well. http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/193927/zos-players-gimping-themselves-for-an-actually-challenge-eso-we-have-a-problem#latest

ColtPython · July 2015

Well crap. I was trying to do something like an all werewolf run for a challenge/boasting, but now you've gone and topped us all....

Nice job!
You are the ultimate warrior.

Lynx7386 · July 2015

Slonekb05 wrote: »

Agreed, game is a cake walk they need to do something about this. Soloing group content is a red flag, been posting about this as well. http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/193927/zos-players-gimping-themselves-for-an-actually-challenge-eso-we-have-a-problem#latest

You need to take context into account, though.

For example, in Destiny, there are players who can solo the raids and even prison of elders. However, for every 1 player that can solo that kind of content, you've got hundreds upon hundreds who have trouble completing it even with a full group.

Pman85 · July 2015

Slonekb05 wrote: »

Agreed, game is a cake walk they need to do something about this. Soloing group content is a red flag, been posting about this as well. http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/193927/zos-players-gimping-themselves-for-an-actually-challenge-eso-we-have-a-problem#latest

DSA can be solo'd but it is also a score based system. Until these solo players can get close to the group scores, then I see no problem.

Thelon · July 2015

Is this on the Live Server or the PTS?

WinterCreator · July 2015

Korozenn wrote: »

Wow, @Vashna !

I'm very impressed by the amount of dedication you had in soloing VDSA! Keep up the great work!

He didn't solo the entire vDSA, just the last boss. I'm sure that he could, given his abilities, but he 2-manned the dungeon, and then his partner suicided so he could solo Hiath.

WinterCreator · July 2015

QuadroTony wrote: »

author still dont know how to post videos on the forum

lol

i will watch it when he will post it in proper way
as in mine previous post

No offense, but it's kind of petty that you would post in here just to tell him that you won't watch the video because it's not put into his post in a way you think it should be, especially if you already went to the link. Like, you literally went to the link, found a way to put it in your post, but refuse to watch it. It's not required for anyone to watch it, and if you don't want to. Don't.

Vashna · July 2015

Thelon wrote: »

Is this on the Live Server or the PTS?

Live servers during July 4th weekend. I felt, what better way to celebrate a national holiday for independence than to solo something. After previous attempts, I told my friends I was aiming to do this during the holiday weekend. They can attest to how antsy I got as the date approached.