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vMA - Round 9 - Boss Fight Tips

imnotanother
imnotanother
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I am an Imperial Stam Nightblade trying to finish the last boss in the arena.

I am struggling with the Crystal phase and looking for some tips from any fellow stam blades.

My problem is I am running out of Stamina. My regen is just over 1,100 and my stamina is 38k. I am running siphoning attacks so I am not sure why I am having a hard time.

I get down to the last crystal with 25% but the DoT is so strong and the wall is always spawned so close so I have to run with it. Killing my resources and leaving me no stamina to use Vigor.

Damage doesn't seem to be the issue, just resources.
PS4: NA - AD PSN: imnotanother (Artell Lyeselle)
Stamina NightBlade 810+ CP - PvP/Trials/Dungeon Ready
  • Dracane
    Dracane
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    What sets are you wearing ? Your regen looks quite low.
    Everything I can advise you to do at this point, is trying to weave in some fully charged heavy attacks here and there. This should definately help with the sustain problems
    Auri-El is my lord,
    Trinimac is my shield,
    Magnus is my mind.
  • Shadesofkin
    Shadesofkin
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    Run counterclockwise, it's spinning fast enough you'll circle each other.

    Drop down after your second crystal to fight the Crematorial guard that's down there, yes that fight sucks, but it resets the timer on the floating wall.
    @shadesofkin -NA Server.
    Tier 2 Player.
    MagDK Main forever (even in the bad times)
  • xblackroxe
    xblackroxe
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    I am an Imperial Stam Nightblade trying to finish the last boss in the arena.

    I am struggling with the Crystal phase and looking for some tips from any fellow stam blades.

    My problem is I am running out of Stamina. My regen is just over 1,100 and my stamina is 38k. I am running siphoning attacks so I am not sure why I am having a hard time.

    I get down to the last crystal with 25% but the DoT is so strong and the wall is always spawned so close so I have to run with it. Killing my resources and leaving me no stamina to use Vigor.

    Damage doesn't seem to be the issue, just resources.

    Well I guess keep heavy attacking in between to keep ressources high or you could also jump down and kill the cremguard and restart the dot so you dont have to spam vigor that much.
    Member of HODOR

    Dro-m'Athra Destroyer
  • Vaoh
    Vaoh
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    Weave in Heavy Attacks. This'll give you a ton of resources.

    Block those light blue skull attacks that Voriak Solkyn casts at you (both in the crystal phase and sometimes afterward) but only when it's safe to save resources over dodge rolling.

    Run 1x Bloodspawn/1x Molag Kena or 2x Engine Guardian.

    • Highly recommend stacks your CPs into stamina cost reduction over stamina regeberation, because your recovery is already low, and stacking into cost reduction directly makes Siphoning Attacks more effective

    Maybe this'll help, but I need lots of your build info (gear/skill rotation/cp/etc) to help more.
  • caperon
    caperon
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    You can try changing your mundus to stamina regen. Its an easy change and can make a difference.

    Run allways counter clockwise to catch the walls, use to be faster. You have acces to major expedition using double take at magicka cost, that can help. Usually you kill 1 crystal before each explosion, if you are slower dot get too strong and walls go very fast. You can jump down to reset the dot and the wall velocity, but you will need to kill the crematorial and a priest while dodging aoe on your feet.

    While you are up, drop your dots on the crystals while you are runing behind the wall. Caltrops, endles hail, twin slashes, poison injection... That way you keep doing dmg even moving.

    All this are general recomendations, i finished just once on my stamblade for having the title, i run it with stam dk (easier with vicious ophidian), mag dk and mag templar.

    EDIT: I wouldnt recomend blocking as stamina build, dodge use to be quite cheap and you dont loose your stamina regen.
    Edited by caperon on July 31, 2016 7:29PM
  • imnotanother
    imnotanother
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    Thanks for these tips everyone.
    I am wearing 5x TBS, 5x Vipers Sting, and 1x Bllodspawn, 1x Kena.

    Bar 1: vigor, teleport strike, surprise attack, killers blade, steel tornado with veil of blades.

    Bar 2: vigor, focused aim, siphon attacks, arrow barrage, caltrops, veil of blades.
    PS4: NA - AD PSN: imnotanother (Artell Lyeselle)
    Stamina NightBlade 810+ CP - PvP/Trials/Dungeon Ready
  • Aspi90
    Aspi90
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    delete....


    Edited by Aspi90 on July 31, 2016 7:35PM
  • Dragonnord
    Dragonnord
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    Don't rush the fight. Just drop down to ground level after destroying the first crystal and have another crystal (or both crystals left) with less health. Once on first floor, kill the Crematorial Guard (mandatory or you'll get his DoT when you go back to the crystals) and then the Clannfear to go back to top level again (shield wall speed and DoT damage will reset).

    Start "fighting" the crystals again and repeat the process if needed.

    Also, since there is no rush, mix heavy attacks when hitting the crystals.

    I completed vMA with a Stamina DK Nord with 30k stamina and 1.3k stam reg.

    Good luck!
    Edited by Dragonnord on July 31, 2016 8:01PM
    SERVER: NA | PLATFORM: PC | OS: Windows 10 | CLIENT: Steam | ESO PLUS: Yes
  • Jaronking
    Jaronking
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    I am an Imperial Stam Nightblade trying to finish the last boss in the arena.

    I am struggling with the Crystal phase and looking for some tips from any fellow stam blades.

    My problem is I am running out of Stamina. My regen is just over 1,100 and my stamina is 38k. I am running siphoning attacks so I am not sure why I am having a hard time.

    I get down to the last crystal with 25% but the DoT is so strong and the wall is always spawned so close so I have to run with it. Killing my resources and leaving me no stamina to use Vigor.

    Damage doesn't seem to be the issue, just resources.
    If that's the case I say forget about the wall and just burn it down.More than likely you have good DPs you will be Able to destroy the crystal before he done with the wall cycle slam thing.So I say just forget about the wall on the last go and just destroy it .You will be knocked down and be on the finally phase.I usually use the shield sigil than and while he do the spear thing and throw your dots on him and pick up the gold ghosts.he take damage while your free to kill the adds.Keep getting the ghost and when the crem guard comes stun him and burst him down keep picking up the ghost while your fighting the boss and your be fine.
  • kadar
    kadar
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    Thanks for these tips everyone.
    I am wearing 5x TBS, 5x Vipers Sting, and 1x Bllodspawn, 1x Kena.

    Bar 1: vigor, teleport strike, surprise attack, killers blade, steel tornado with veil of blades.

    Bar 2: vigor, focused aim, siphon attacks, arrow barrage, caltrops, veil of blades.
    @imnotanother Looks pretty good, I run a similar setup myself. Just a few things I'm thinking off the bat:

    I would consider swapping our focused aim for Poison injection. This is great for all situations, but specifically in round 9, it will give you another way to damage the Crystals while moving. Throw caltrops (if you have the stam), Endless Hail, and Injection on the Crystal that you can't get to because of the wall movement.

    For more stamina regen, swap out one Vigor slot for Relentless Focus. 8% damage done, and 10% stamina regen is too good to pass up in vMA. And you shouldn't need Vigor on both bars after you've practiced a bit.

    Also, you can slot Soul Harvest on your DW bar. You're not actually going to be using this Ultimate. It just sits there and soaks up Ultimate so you can drop your Veil on like every single pull if you want. I've found this to be very effective. Either that, or slot Flawless Dawnbreaker on damage bar. There's not really an advantage to having any ability on both bars.
    Edited by kadar on July 31, 2016 7:54PM
  • imnotanother
    imnotanother
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    The counter clockwise tip is a good one.
    I am going put poison injection in place of focused aim.

    Slowing it down and dropping down is a great tip too. I felt slightly ahead of normal pace because the boss was jumping mechanics, at times, and messing my timing up.
    PS4: NA - AD PSN: imnotanother (Artell Lyeselle)
    Stamina NightBlade 810+ CP - PvP/Trials/Dungeon Ready
  • Izaki
    Izaki
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    caperon wrote: »
    You can try changing your mundus to stamina regen. Its an easy change and can make a difference.

    Run allways counter clockwise to catch the walls, use to be faster. You have acces to major expedition using double take at magicka cost, that can help. Usually you kill 1 crystal before each explosion, if you are slower dot get too strong and walls go very fast. You can jump down to reset the dot and the wall velocity, but you will need to kill the crematorial and a priest while dodging aoe on your feet.

    While you are up, drop your dots on the crystals while you are runing behind the wall. Caltrops, endles hail, twin slashes, poison injection... That way you keep doing dmg even moving.

    All this are general recomendations, i finished just once on my stamblade for having the title, i run it with stam dk (easier with vicious ophidian), mag dk and mag templar.

    EDIT: I wouldnt recomend blocking as stamina build, dodge use to be quite cheap and you dont loose your stamina regen.

    Thats big DPS loss though. Thief + Shadow (cause you really should be using Twice Born Star) all the way. Siphonning Attacks + a few heavy attacks here and there have carried me through. Damage is priority

    But appart from that the rest is great advice !
    Edited by Izaki on July 31, 2016 7:58PM
    @ Izaki #PCEU
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  • Bisenberger96
    Bisenberger96
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    Run 5 night mother's, 2 blood spawn (all stam enchants) (tbs is only good in organized 12 man raids, otherwise it is one of the worst dps sets you can have; viper's sting is only useful in pure single target, and even then it's not bis), 2 sharpened leki's daggers with weapon damage and crushing enchants, and endurance jewelry with 2 stam regen enchants and 1 weapon damage enchant. Use shadow mundus. You'll notice a dps/sustain/surv improvement with this setup.

    If you feel the dot on stage 9 is getting too strong, voluntarily jump down and kill the crematorial and clanfear again (you may want to grab a sigil as you'll probably be running low on resources at this point, up to you). When you go back up, you'll notice the dot has reset, but the crystals will still be in the same state you left them in.

    Also, take teleport strike off your bar 1 and replace it with deadly cloak for aoe mitigation and a decent aoe dot or with rearming trap for a strong single target dot and crit damage boost. Use soul harvest for your ulti on this bar so you can build ultimate fast to drop veil of blades on your second bar when needed. Take vigor and focused aim off your bar 2 and replace vigor with relentless focus for more damage and stam regen and focused aim for poison injection, a hefty single target dot.
    Edited by Bisenberger96 on July 31, 2016 9:49PM
  • ArtOfShred
    ArtOfShred
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    My suggestion is if you're having trouble with resources just hop down in the middle of the crystal phase. Get 1.5 or 2 of the crystals down and then hop down and kill the crematorial guard (precast vigor and be ready because that rude daedric dude comes right at you). You can weave in some heavies and even have time to sit and regen a little bit this way. Its better to have have two crystal phases than fight the boss with 20% stamina afterward.
  • LadyLethalla
    LadyLethalla
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    I completed Normal on Saturday, with no deaths in the last two rounds. Can someone please tell me, what's the difference between Normal and Vet MA? I know it 's harder but how, exactly? Is it number of enemies? More health points? Both? Different mechanics?

    Also what would you suggest is the minimum CP for Vet?


    Thanks :)

    x-TallyCat-x // PC EU DC - For the Covenant! // ESO Platinum trophy - 16th May 2017Proud member of the Aetherium Alliance.Melbourne Australia - the land of Potato Internet.WTB ESO OCEANIC SERVER
  • Vaoh
    Vaoh
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    I completed Normal on Saturday, with no deaths in the last two rounds. Can someone please tell me, what's the difference between Normal and Vet MA? I know it 's harder but how, exactly? Is it number of enemies? More health points? Both? Different mechanics?

    Also what would you suggest is the minimum CP for Vet?


    Thanks :)

    Veteran Mode:
    • More health on enemies
    • More damage dealt to you by enemies
    • Many mechanics you shrugged off in Normal become disastrous in Veteran (poison bulb, ice platform break, etc).
    • Veteran Maelstrom Arena is 100% a different beast from Normal Maelstrom Arena.
    • Normal Maelstrom Arena will barely prepare you for Veteran Maelstrom Arena.
    • Purple-Gold CP160 gear is required
    • You must have a firm grasp on how your character plays and good reaction time to stand a chance.
    • 300CP is the "must have" amount.
    • 300-400CP is the "you can do it now" range,
    • 400-500CP is the "CPs are not an excuse" range.
  • LadyLethalla
    LadyLethalla
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    Thanks @Doncellius .

    But if Normal is "barely" prep for Vet, surely repeating it will help me learn the mechanics?
    x-TallyCat-x // PC EU DC - For the Covenant! // ESO Platinum trophy - 16th May 2017Proud member of the Aetherium Alliance.Melbourne Australia - the land of Potato Internet.WTB ESO OCEANIC SERVER
  • imnotanother
    imnotanother
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    Thanks again everyone for the tips.
    I know once I get those crystals down, the rest of the fight will only take a minute.
    PS4: NA - AD PSN: imnotanother (Artell Lyeselle)
    Stamina NightBlade 810+ CP - PvP/Trials/Dungeon Ready
  • kadar
    kadar
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    (tbs is only good in organized 12 man raids, otherwise it is one of the worst dps sets you can have
    That's... not true. I recently replaced my Hundings 5 pc with TBS. TBS using Thief/Shadow provides higher crit than Hundings (~7% at legendary quality), and the same Stamina + extra Health and Magicka, useful in vMA. While you're right it's better in Trials, my DPS has not gone down since switching.
  • Bisenberger96
    Bisenberger96
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    (tbs is only good in organized 12 man raids, otherwise it is one of the worst dps sets you can have
    That's... not true. I recently replaced my Hundings 5 pc with TBS. TBS using Thief/Shadow provides higher crit than Hundings (~7% at legendary quality), and the same Stamina + extra Health and Magicka, useful in vMA. While you're right it's better in Trials, my DPS has not gone down since switching.

    Run a few self-buffed blood spawn tests using hunding's and twice born star separately. Hunding's will outperform. The health and magicka boost tbs offers are wasted set bonuses for stam compared to the weapon crit, stamina boost, and 300 weapon damage HR offers when it comes to dps (and dps in vma is king; the faster you kill things, the less time they have to kill you :)) . The only justification for using tbs in vma would be to allow vigor or other self heals to crit more often.
    The reason why tbs is effective in trials is because of aggressive warhorn, which increases crit strike damage by an immense amount, adding enough value to tbs to outperform hunding's or other sets that don't offer group buffs. This is why tbs is not good in solo and questionable in 4 man situations, as there is no constant aggressive warhorn going out. In addition to this, tbs is only bis if alkosh, night mother's, sunderflame, and morag tong are being used by other raid party members already, as these sets offer support for the group as a whole and will allow for more group dps than if everyone ran tbs.
    Regardless of all this (and to get the thread back on track again), neither hunding's nor tbs are as good as night mother's when running vma, which is what I recommended in the first place. Nm puts out a bit more dps than hunding's, which does in fact outperform tbs in solo situations such as vma.
    Edited by Bisenberger96 on August 1, 2016 3:22AM
  • Burning_Talons
    Burning_Talons
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    Well you see. Atheon is a pretty tough boss. Just make sure the shield guy knows what he is doing
  • Totalitarian
    Totalitarian
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    But if Normal is "barely" prep for Vet, surely repeating it will help me learn the mechanics?

    It can.

    The things you learn from normal Maelstrom Arena that transfers over to vet mode are the enemy spawn points and the enemies to expect.

    As mentioned, on normal mode you can breeze through the mechanics, so it might be better to watch a vMA walkthrough to learn the mechanics instead.

    It is certainly worth it to run normal Maelstrom Arena several times before attempting veteran mode. I would say that if you can regulary beat normal mode with 0 to 1 deaths to enemies, minimal resource issues, and can run it in under an hour, you can try vMA expecting a result other than pitiful failure.
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  • kadar
    kadar
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    (tbs is only good in organized 12 man raids, otherwise it is one of the worst dps sets you can have
    That's... not true. I recently replaced my Hundings 5 pc with TBS. TBS using Thief/Shadow provides higher crit than Hundings (~7% at legendary quality), and the same Stamina + extra Health and Magicka, useful in vMA. While you're right it's better in Trials, my DPS has not gone down since switching.

    Run a few self-buffed blood spawn tests using hunding's and twice born star separately. Hunding's will outperform. The health and magicka boost tbs offers are wasted set bonuses for stam compared to the weapon crit, stamina boost, and 300 weapon damage HR offers when it comes to dps (and dps in vma is king; the faster you kill things, the less time they have to kill you :)) . The only justification for using tbs in vma would be to allow vigor or other self heals to crit more often.
    The reason why tbs is effective in trials is because of aggressive warhorn, which increases crit strike damage by an immense amount, adding enough value to tbs to outperform hunding's or other sets that don't offer group buffs. This is why tbs is not good in solo and questionable in 4 man situations, as there is no constant aggressive warhorn going out. In addition to this, tbs is only bis if alkosh, night mother's, sunderflame, and morag tong are being used by other raid party members already, as these sets offer support for the group as a whole and will allow for more group dps than if everyone ran tbs.
    Regardless of all this (and to get the thread back on track again), neither hunding's nor tbs are as good as night mother's when running vma, which is what I recommended in the first place. Nm puts out a bit more dps than hunding's, which does in fact outperform tbs in solo situations such as vma.

    Yeah, I haven't done a side by side comparison, but I have run both Hundings and TBS in vMA, which is what this topic is about. I just set a new record on my Stamina NB wearing TBS: 525k.
    The fact is, you're trading 300 weapon damage from Hundings for ~7% crit, and a Health/Magicka bonus with TBS. For my build, and many Stamblades, crit > weapon damage. Secondarily, the Health and Magicka bonus cannot be given an exact mathematical value for solo content like vMA. I'm responding to the statement that TBS is "one of the worst dps sets," which it is certainly not.

    If you'd like to post some solo DPS comparison parses between NM and TBS, I'm sure the OP (and myself) would find that useful. :)
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