I assume the bosses have a lot of armor as I usually can do 10-15k DPS single target against a trash mob in Orsinium and elsewhere with the build. Forgot to mention CPs but I have 260 total with actually 0 in Thaumaturge. I thought I had put some in there but was probably thinking of another character. I'll have to take some out of Blessed/Elfborn and see if that makes a noticeable difference or not.

I made it with my magicka templar In the last round at the enboss I was pulling 10k dps over a 4.50 min fight
I almost use the exact same setup but instead of julianos I have twiceborn star with shadow and thief mundus stone which is slightly more dps with an aditional bonus to health and stamina. I run around with 23-24k health and my bars are as following:

Dw:
Sweeps, toppling charge, harness magicka, BOL, inner light and dawnbreaker/meteor
Resto staff:
Jesus beam, channeled focus, structured entropy, healing ward, Inner Light and empowering sweep (10%crit buff for beam I never used it)

I thought about droping channeled focus and using purifying light on my main bar instead of harness and putting it on my resto bar but I have to test that as soon as I farmed enough money to do it again because I spent a lot on pots and repair costs xD

I hope I was able to help you

Imdrefan wrote: »

If you are focusing on doing the arena and mostly solo, use the increase self healing in red tree instead of blessed in the blue tree. Blessed scales really poorly. I'm not going to pretend That I know exactly what's best for your other points, but putting 1 point into spell erosion and 29 into elf born to and all the rest into thaumaturge, you will notice a huge jump in your damage.

What are you using for skills?

I was going to ask why everyone says to put one point into Spell Erosion but I see it raised my spell penetration from 5460 to 13381. I believe further points into it do little to nothing unless they changed it recently. I'm using almost the exact same skills that Springt mentioned although I found I was using Mutagen a lot than Healing Ward.

Springt-Über-Zwerge wrote: »

I made it with my magicka templar In the last round at the enboss I was pulling 10k dps over a 4.50 min fight I almost use the exact same setup but instead of julianos I have twiceborn star with shadow and thief mundus stone which is slightly more dps with an aditional bonus to health and stamina. I run around with 23-24k health and my bars are as following:
...
I hope I was able to help you

Great stuff, thanks! As I said, its almost the same skills I'm using but will try tweaking it a bit whenever I feel like trying the Arena again. I might try making a set of Twice-Born star and see how it goes (I need another DPS set for my magicka Nightblade anyways).

With the seal-healing of Puncturing Sweeps getting more DPS means more self-healing which means an easier time of it, at least in theory. I'll try tweaking some of my Champion points (and grind some more) and try a few different skills and see how that goes whenever I get the desire (and gold) to try it again in a week or five.

zornyan wrote: »

Springt-Über-Zwerge wrote: »

I made it with my magicka templar In the last round at the enboss I was pulling 10k dps over a 4.50 min fight
I almost use the exact same setup but instead of julianos I have twiceborn star with shadow and thief mundus stone which is slightly more dps with an aditional bonus to health and stamina. I run around with 23-24k health and my bars are as following:

Dw:
Sweeps, toppling charge, harness magicka, BOL, inner light and dawnbreaker/meteor
Resto staff:
Jesus beam, channeled focus, structured entropy, healing ward, Inner Light and empowering sweep (10%crit buff for beam I never used it)

I thought about droping channeled focus and using purifying light on my main bar instead of harness and putting it on my resto bar but I have to test that as soon as I farmed enough money to do it again because I spent a lot on pots and repair costs xD

I hope I was able to help you

I'd drop healing ward for pve and go with purifying imo, the 30% healing buff (although you get it standing in rune) covers a much wider area, and the heal is a handy top up too.

Hm I tried using it but the 30% extra her is not nessesary for pve and most of the negative effects are not cleanse able in the arena so that skill was pretty useless for me and healing ward is really awesome it saved me a lot in there because shields>heals

zornyan wrote: »

You could pick up elemental drain instead, endless magicka supplies.

Hmm wont help a lot since you dont use a lot of elemental skills as magicka templar and you really want to go dw for spammjng sweeps as main dps skil

In theory your set up is excellent.

I've cleared it with my Templar using a slightly different set up. Instead of Julianos I went Seducer and Atronach Stone.

This allowed me to put all spell damage glyphs on my jewelry. I also use DW, so buffed (with major and minor sorcery) I am at 3.4k spell damage, 1.6k regen (unbuffed), 42k magicka, and 19.3k Heatlh.

The DPS is smaller (not by a large margin) compared to your set up, but I have extreme amount of sustain. With this build I can pull 20K+ DPS on trial bosses and WGT/ICP bosses.

Bars are as follows.

DW: Puncturing Sweep, Toppling Charge, Radiant Destruction, Structured Entropy, Inner Light, Meteor
Resto: Healing Ward, Harness Magicka, Prox Det, Breath of Life, Inner Light, Dawnbreaker

Between Harness, Breton Passive, CP passive, I never run out of magicka. I can usually burn mobs so quickly that I wait on spawn timers depending on the round.

Stage 4 in particular is a round where you do need to burn adds quickly. Boss round, I go to town on him while staying in his green circle. When fire phase comes, I ignore adds and continue to burn him right outside his fire aoe. I usually have him dead before second set of adds spawn. Just keep up your buffs/harness and your jabs should keep you healed. Prox det helps a lot with the burn, damage alone can reach up to 30k crit for myself, I imagine with your set up it would be higher.

Anyways hope this helps.

zornyan wrote: »

rokrdt05 wrote: »

In theory your set up is excellent.

I've cleared it with my Templar using a slightly different set up. Instead of Julianos I went Seducer and Atronach Stone.

This allowed me to put all spell damage glyphs on my jewelry. I also use DW, so buffed (with major and minor sorcery) I am at 3.4k spell damage, 1.6k regen (unbuffed), 42k magicka, and 19.3k Heatlh.

The DPS is smaller (not by a large margin) compared to your set up, but I have extreme amount of sustain. With this build I can pull 20K+ DPS on trial bosses and WGT/ICP bosses.

Bars are as follows.

DW: Puncturing Sweep, Toppling Charge, Radiant Destruction, Structured Entropy, Inner Light, Meteor
Resto: Healing Ward, Harness Magicka, Prox Det, Breath of Life, Inner Light, Dawnbreaker

Between Harness, Breton Passive, CP passive, I never run out of magicka. I can usually burn mobs so quickly that I wait on spawn timers depending on the round.

Stage 4 in particular is a round where you do need to burn adds quickly. Boss round, I go to town on him while staying in his green circle. When fire phase comes, I ignore adds and continue to burn him right outside his fire aoe. I usually have him dead before second set of adds spawn. Just keep up your buffs/harness and your jabs should keep you healed. Prox det helps a lot with the burn, damage alone can reach up to 30k crit for myself, I imagine with your set up it would be higher.

Anyways hope this helps.

What about 5 krag instead? Using 1 regen enchant / cost reduction on jewellery.

Technically your spell power will be around 60 higher, and you'll still have the same regen buffs as seducers, but you'll also get 1k health more, you're just missing out of 8% cost reduction. But I feel that the health is more valuable, especially one you start hitting 300+ cp and can max out cost reduction CP.

I'm well over the 501 cap and the 8% cost reduction does make a big difference when it comes to sustain and non stop dps. I don't see it being worth it (my opinion ofc) to switch. Besides, cost reduc starts losing it's effectiveness because of it's diminishing returns. Those gold glyphs are not giving full value. So in your scenario it would be better to go regen instead on the jewelry. But with the set up I'm rocking I can take advantage of set/passive bonus on cost reduc and get more from it. Those def good thoughts though. Health wise I could get a little more, but I forgot to mention I'm running 5 Light, 2 Heavy instead of the 5/1/1. I will be testing another set up when I go back in for a higher score so will see how that goes lol.

zornyan wrote: »

That's fair enough, personally for more sustain I would say.

5x krag
1x kena
3x torugs.
3x willpower 2x regen /cost and 1 spell damage

That'll have you 2 health bonuses, 3 regen bonuses, and near enough similar spell power. Maybe even a tad more. Your regen will be higher too.

You dual wielding I take it?

Yes, I dual wield for the spell damage and passives. I suppose the same argument could be made for using Twice Born Set as well and use shadow/thief. You would get your health bonuses, slightly less regen, but major dmg output.

Springt-Über-Zwerge wrote: »

I made it with my magicka templar In the last round at the enboss I was pulling 10k dps over a 4.50 min fight
I almost use the exact same setup but instead of julianos I have twiceborn star with shadow and thief mundus stone which is slightly more dps with an aditional bonus to health and stamina. I run around with 23-24k health and my bars are as following:

Dw:
Sweeps, toppling charge, harness magicka, BOL, inner light and dawnbreaker/meteor
Resto staff:
Jesus beam, channeled focus, structured entropy, healing ward, Inner Light and empowering sweep (10%crit buff for beam I never used it)

I thought about droping channeled focus and using purifying light on my main bar instead of harness and putting it on my resto bar but I have to test that as soon as I farmed enough money to do it again because I spent a lot on pots and repair costs xD

I hope I was able to help you

No purifying light ? No surprise your dps is not good.
Replace inner light with purifying light and vampires bane or reflective light.

Your bar should look like this:

First Bar Dual wield: Puncturing sweep, jesus Beam, purifying light, toppling charge, Honor the dead (get rid of Breath of life, believe me, you NEED honor the dead)

Second bar restroration staff: Channeled focus, Ward ally or healing ward if you wish, harness Magicka., entropy and I like putting Equilbrium on for my special immortal tactic.

Joy_Division wrote: »

The more I try and die, the more I am convinced the arena is really biased toward high dps builds. You have to kill stuff fast or you will get overwhelmed by trash. I haven't finished it yet, but I can give you advice on the rounds that you are struggling with:

• You don't need mutagen; just puncturing sweep spam stuff.
• If you have three magic regen glyphs, you really should use the thief. I don't think you need 3, 2 should be enough. Note: I have no idea how templars play with 800 magicka regen. Obviously it has been done. It's not like I don't use channeled focus. I guess since I'm a crap race with no magic bonus and PvP morphs, I cant DPS stuff down fast enough which means I have to waste magicka healing
• In general, ranged adds are the most dangerous because they always hit you and you can't puncturing sweep them and heal yourself.
• In rounds with lots of magic-based ranged adds (4,5), I find eclipse to be very useful
• Your DPS should be higher with your spec. If I had to guess you are wasting global cooldowns casting stuff like mutagen.
• The best buff is the defense because it reflects. Once you learn the spawns, grab that buff when there are numerous ranged adds.

For Round Three:

• You have to charge the ranged lamias and puncturing sweep them down ASAP. I personally find them more dangerous than the stranglers.
• Getting yanked around is annoying. Just fight on the island u get yanked too (unless there is ranged lamia, then u should charge them)
• The wamasu and the uppercut mini-boss are kitable; I kill the adds first and then deal with them.
• I use Radial Sweep this round for the damage mitigation as I think this round prioritizes surviving
• Hag mini-boss is annoying bc/ she has a pull but still go after adds before her.
• Boss has high damaging melee attacks. Other stuff you can heal/harness through. Again prioritize adds. I use meteor against her.

For Round Four:

• First two rounds have a lot of mage casters. Eclipse one, charge/jab the other.
• For third round, there are a lot of spheres that fire darts at you. Grab the defense buff and try to get them together to puncturing sweep down. Don't underestimate the spider swarm; they will chew through your health fast. Jabs them down.
• For boss, I am of the opinion you *have* to burn it because you cant stop all those lightning sentries and eventually you will get a spider, sphere, and two-hander adds at the same time.
• What I do i grab the power buff as round starts and stay in the green circle jabbing it. When it stops, stay right there. Drop a nova (you need the damage mit)and biting jabs everything, Ideally, the spider and the sphere will die in your nova. Once the boss starts moving again, resume the jabs.
• Note: If the boss is not below 40% you are probably in trouble. If the sphere survives the jabs + nova, try to biting jabs it and the boss at same time.
• When the boss stops and the add spawns, I line of sight it because if you kill the two-hander quick (she does not have much health), finishing the boss is easy. She streaks and uppercuts, I don't like leaving her alive.
• Do nothing but DPS the boss after she dies

You are probably going to hate stage 5. The first round isn't that difficult, but the second round you will have *a lot* of adds that really test your survivability and DPS. This stage take a lot of adjustment and it really help to know when the adds spawn and takes some practice developing a technique to deal with them (you will need the defense buff to help with range until you get accustomed it stage).
My advice:

• You are stuck on islands and you need to be in the middle of them killing trolls; this makes the ranged adds who stand in the water your most dangerous opponents by far.
• I eclipse any mages / nerieds. Nothing you can do with archers (you will hate them)
• The best technique I have found with dealing with archers is to kite stuff toward the back of your island, entice them to get closer and then swing to the other side hoping you can catch them with a puncturing sweep.
• You are often going to have 4 or 5 things in the middle of your island. Jab-jab-jab-jab-jab-jab.
• The frost atronach in round two is a difficult opponent because it is hard to kite. The two giants in round three are much easier to kite (and thus kill)
• I like Nova more than meteor here because larger area coverage means you can get annoying ranged adds in it (which reduces their damage against you).
• The boss fight is a DPS race. You got about two and a half minutes to kill her before she destroys your ice islands. You need double your DPS. When she stomps your island, its a one-shot if you are on it (learn the tell). You *have* to kill the trolls smashing the islands this round. Use meteor here because there aren't that many adds (you will hate the archers if you don't deal with them).

You always put so much time and effort in writing long posts to help people.
I admire that.

Reorx_Holybeard wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

The more I try and die, the more I am convinced the arena is really biased toward high dps builds. You have to kill stuff fast or you will get overwhelmed by trash. I haven't finished it yet, but I can give you advice on the rounds that you are struggling with:

• You don't need mutagen; just puncturing sweep spam stuff.

...

Great tips, thanks! I think I needed mutagen as my DPS was low enough that Sweeps was *not* enough to keep me healed a lot of the time. For example, with the Lamia boss in round 3 I couldn't keep up with her hits with just Sweeps. That and all the jumping/moving around means I needed something to keep me topped up and I thought it better to use a 20 second HoT once and instead of BoL and use the time to cast ranged damage spell instead.

Definitely some great tips here that will take a while to try out. I'm not sure I have the time, patience or gold to give it more than one good attempt a week at this point.

What's killing you that round is RNG. If you get yanked, have to deal with that auto-stun that takes forever to break, the unnecessarily long global cooldown (it's like the old toppling charge!), a 10K lightning surge from the water, while a ranged lamia 8ks you, the random red poison circle that is always under you, the OP flying daggers, etc., that 1.5K per tick isn't going to save you.

I'm not saying it can't potentially help. I am saying that that spell is very inefficient for end-game content and every time you cast it, you are losing DPS *and* since you are using a restoration staff instead of 2 swords or sword + shield, you are losing a lot of spellpower / magicka which means you are losing DPS the entire fight (which will make your sweeps + healing ritual heal more).

From my experience, and this is from someone with a bad race with a PvP build so YMMV, every round in the arena is actually hard (even the "easy" ones) until you learn the mechanics, then it becomes doable and you will wonder how it was you died 50 times before. It will test your patience and I don't think that trying it once a week is conducive to beating it if that is something you really want to do. I'll tell you right now, even the second stage was wipe city until I figured out harness magicka shields against the blades (not quite sure why) and you have to burst down the boss centuarians in the order they spawn (and be comfortable just allowing the blades to hit you). The boss fight against the huge spider in round 4 is even a better example. Tried to do it by killing those little sentries, LOS the boss when the green went away, deal with adds first. Wipe, wipe, wipe, wipe, wipe. Then I tried burn. So much easier.

Joy_Division wrote: »

What's killing you that round is RNG. If you get yanked, have to deal with that auto-stun that takes forever to break, the unnecessarily long global cooldown (it's like the old toppling charge!), a 10K lightning surge from the water, while a ranged lamia 8ks you, the random red poison circle that is always under you, the OP flying daggers, etc., that 1.5K per tick isn't going to save you.

I'm not saying it can't potentially help. I am saying that that spell is very inefficient for end-game content and every time you cast it, you are losing DPS *and* since you are using a restoration staff instead of 2 swords or sword + shield, you are losing a lot of spellpower / magicka which means you are losing DPS the entire fight (which will make your sweeps + healing ritual heal more).

You're right that Mutagen won't save me from damage spikes but I like it for a few reasons:

• Its 20 sec cast time means I can fire and forget it. I'll always have a little HoT on me which means I don't have to worry about taking small amounts of damage when I'm moving around and not sweeping. Since its only every 20 sec I would think there is little DPS lost in casting it.
• Its cheaper than BoL for the same amount of heal which is important when I'm borderline on magic regen. So I can cast Mutagen once for 1400 magic or BoL twice for 6000 magic to get the same heal (a bit more for x2 BoL actually) which is a big difference.

Ideally I wouldn't need Mutagen and we'll see if increasing my DPS a bit can't make sweeps more effective as a self-heal.