[DEVS] -Extensive Feedback on Maelstrom Arena

Armitas · September 2016

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RichLambert
About a month ago when I left VMA in a rage I intended to submit feed back on the dungeon but there was no section in game for negative feedback...just positive feedback. After entering it again to test a potential bug with trading maelstrom weapons I again left in deep anger over the experience. Its not an enjoyable dungeon, at least once the newness and challenge of learning wears off. When that wears off the only thing left is the frustration of having to do it over and over again because the weapons it provides are substantially more powerful than anything else in the rest of the game. That and having to deal with the substantial amount of bugs, deficiencies, and RNG coded into the dungeon for each run. The maelstrom weapons are the core to getting high dps parses like 58k on sDK. If these weapons were not attached to VMA I am positive the metrics of VMA dungeon runs would plummet substantially with the exception of leaderboard rewards.

Weapons aside, here is why I hate the dungeon and why it made me rage quit the game for 3 months back when it came out on my mDK before the buffs, and during the memory leak and stam bug. I'll do this in 3 sections for clarity.

Combat Balance

First and foremost it's a frantic dps race from start to finish with the challenge being derived from conditional RNG. For example crossing frigid waters to stop a troll and being feared from the other side of the arena. Or having a mushroom pop up under you. Having a gold ghost spawn on a mob. Failure more often comes from conditions and situations that you don't have control over.
Resource management - With it being a dps race there is little room to provide for sustain. This will be better once the 2x max 1x recovery food comes out but that will only help stamina builds. Blocking and dodging have been substantially nerfed due to PvP leaving little room for reactive play. In VMA you have regular power attacks headed your way that if combined by the many other mobs will end in your death. You can't continue to block, dodge, bash, and break free, so it's really just about spamming heals. Especially heals that are also tied to your dps like burning embers or killers blade. So key components, like blocking and dodging that could provide exciting reactive gameplay are missing and instead overcome by dry offensive healing.
Interrupts - Most of the time they help and other times they hurt. With crushing shock you have a really useful ranged interrupt that is good almost all of the time except when you don't want to interrupt, such as the screaming phase of the poison level. Your main source of ranged dps, which you need under the shield is now a hindrance because you don't want to actually interrupt this boss.
Shields - To run shields you have to have a lot of magicka, and to have a lot of magicka you can't have a lot of health. Shields don't provide the kind of simultaneous offense and defense like say vigor or offensive heals, they need to be on long enough and substantial enough to switch to damage. I don't think your decision to change their duration to 6s was wrong for magicka shields but here in VMA it does become monotonous to have to continually weave in shields between our dps rather than shield stack and dps for a longer duration. You can do VMA just fine with shields the way they are now but it's an annoying way to get through it. I would be more enjoyable to shield up, dps for a bit then re-shield instead of going back and forth regularly because if it's not up you are instantly dead.

Bugs, NPC cheating, and deficient game mechanics

Animation Cancelling - Mobs are doing their damage before their animation. Often times you die to nothing with no indication other than your death log. This is absolutely enraging. Sometimes there is no animation at all, sometime it appears that the animation is cut short.
Block needs to happen immediately
Getting CC'd while dodging
Getting CC'd again while in the intro animation of a prior CC.
Not being able to break free from a CC in a reasonable amount of time, especially fear like in the frozen rink.
Targeting cross hairs that are not accurate. For example targeting a Troll with a gap closer and a clear screen and gap closing to something in your periphery.
Hit boxes interfering with critical mechanics. Trying to target a critical mob for an interrupt or kill that is nestled into another hit box in a timely manner.
Shields often providing their effect at the end of their animation
Mobs whose run speed is equivalent to your run speed no matter how high your run speed is.

Effort and Reward

The probability that you will be rewarded for doing this dungeon is still very slim, even with a guaranteed weapon. Here is the lists of possible weapons, there are 11.
- Restoration staff
- Inferno staff
- Lightning staff
- Ice staff
- Axe
- Sword
- Mace
- 2handed Axe
- 2handed Mace
- 2handed Sword
- Bow
For each weapon there are 8 possible traits of which only 1 is generally preferred. So I think thats what 1 out of 88 chance to get your weapon? And if you don't get that weapon you received no reward for your effort as the set items are not best in slot.
Repair costs. If you are farming this quickly you are going to die, and that is going to cost you, even if you don't die, it's going to cost you on repairs.
Potion costs. If you are farming this you are going through stacks of trash pots and dps pots for bosses.
Unless you get the maelstrom weapon you are looking for you have lost 40-60mins of your day, stacks of pots that will need to be financially replaced, and a handful of gold even on your best run.
Deaths cost soul gems or a fairly lengthy ride back
You can't sell any of your rewards to recoup the costs
CP reset costs ( poster addition)
The only way to financially come out on top in this dungeon is to put a swear jar in front of someone doing it.

Making it better.
Combat - Bring back reactive game play. Give us a discount to defensive maneuvers like bash, dodge and block while in VMA. Let it be more than a dps/hps gogogogo race. Let us play more reactively within reason. In addition to the reactive cost reduction add a slight buff to shield size in VMA so that we can dps under them longer. Both of these changes with not only make it more fun but will help overcome some of the failures due to conditional and situational RNG without breaking the lair mechanics. Reduce situational and conditional RNG mechanics by reevaluating the red aoe countdown timers and mob CC range. Finally make interrupts such that they are always a benefit. You sacrifice dps for them so they should always be a benefit.

Additionally I think VMA being such an intensive dungeon creates an unnecessary point of balance. Right now you have to balance between three aspects of the game, PvP (group and 1v1), PvE dps, and VMA which is like a mixture of both. Lets take burning embers as an example. You buffed the heck out of it so that mDK's could meet the dps-healing requirement of the DPS race in VMA. However it's so strong that dragon blood is anemic and useless in comparison. And likely so strong that you can't buff dragonsblood which is needed for PvP. Just tweak the combat and let us play with more reactive defense like more blocking, and dodging and more tolerable RNG and we might not need such intensive skills (like embers) that hold the rest of the class back just to be competitive in VMA.

Bugs - Fix the animation cancelling. Increase server response time. Give temporary CC immunity while in a CC animation phase so that another CC cannot start on top of a current CC animation. Leave the actual CC immunity where it is...at the end of the CC, just protect us from additional CC while we are waiting for our general CC immunity. Don't let mobs cheat by matching your run speed, that removes strategy. Give us the option to use the old targeting notifiers before we received the more immersive white auras. Overall make efforts to reduce the level frustration in this dungeon that is derived outside of the intended design of the fight.

Rewards - Make Maelstrom sets tradable. Make local rezes free. Make each chest reward 400gold on vet, half that on normal. Remove repair costs in the dungeon. Make VMA only pots at a low cost. Give us tokens so we can purchase the weapon we want rather than run it 300x and never get rewarded. Make each normal chest reward 1 token, each vet chest reward 2 tokens. Make the final chest reward 5 if normal, 10 if vet with a modifier based on the final score. Reward even more tokens to those who win the leader board weeklies. Add RNG weapon containers to the token vendor. Add alchemy ingredients to the token vendor so we can farm maelstrom for other things besides weapons. Make it so fun to do that every player in this game does it on some difficulty as a daily along with their writs and pledges.

Thank you for your time and consideration over such a long post. Please pass this along to the appropriate developers and hopefully you will consider at least some of these changes.

Community please feel free to add your thoughts, tweaks, hates, etc.

Pandorii · September 2016

This is really thorough @Armitas =D I haven't tried VMSA many times, because I'm not a fan of getting frustrated over a video game. I did try it yesterday again, and I have three observations/opinions I might like to add.

First, it takes too long. My friends who farm it and have it down to a science, run it in about 1-1.5 hrs. Most dungeons aren't even that long, and my attention span in much shorter if I'm doing something of high intensity by myself. Since I'm learning, it's taking much much longer than that. Why so many stages?

Second, I like mechanics not artificial challenges. I made up that word for it. I hate when there's an environmental effect that blinds you (I'm thinking of the ice stage with the snow winds). I really don't think it's healthy to try to strain my eyes to see through the fog.

Third, it's more costly to run VMSA when you are learning than when you're a pro. Maybe some will argue this is how it should be, but I spent a lot of gold on equipment repair from all my wipes, further discouraging me from trying to run it again. So it's creating a sort of cost curve, where only until you're over that curve does VMSA feel less painful.

Please don't try to dispute my opinions. I'm the type of person who doesn't really get a thrill from running difficult content. What would I do if I could get a vmsa weapon? I'd run PvE stuff. I'm not trying to be as good as anyone so I can beat anyone. I just want to have access to the best in-game weapons to do better against NPCs.

kongkim · September 2016

"Rewards - Make Maelstrom sets tradable."

Im all in for this one. The sets are not better than others and never used. But would be fun to play around with. And still they are so damn hard to get.

Loves_guars · September 2016

Just a noob opinion here, are those weapon really that necessary? I went to try the Arena, didn't like it due the fact that you have to go with specific gear/build and respecing for every round. I don't know why exactly, I love changing my strategies in other games and coming back for the fight. But in this game it costs me a lot to get my build and don't feel like changing it (except maybe some abilities).
Also respecing CPs for every round almost feels like cheating to me.
Overall, I didn't like it and won't return even if they said you can't go to trials without those weapons (LOL?). Besides it requires a DLC that I won't buy.

Khairiah · September 2016

cecibergesnrb18_ESO wrote: »

Just a noob opinion here, are those weapon really that necessary? I went to try the Arena, didn't like it due the fact that you have to go with specific gear/build and respecing for every round. I don't know why exactly, I love changing my strategies in other games and coming back for the fight. But in this game it costs me a lot to get my build and don't feel like changing it (except maybe some abilities).
Also respecing CPs for every round almost feels like cheating to me.
Overall, I didn't like it and won't return even if they said you can't go to trials without those weapons (LOL?). Besides it requires a DLC that I won't buy.

But you dont need to change gear/cps between each round.. Ive only just finnished it myself on my StamSorc using AndyS setup. Yes is took a while to finnish and yes ive watched videos and read guides and what. I got a Decisive Bow, which im more than happy about. I know I will run it again and that the time taken will be cut down by alot.

Yes and No to adding a token system.. NO tokens should be awarded in normal mode since the difference between normal and vet is so big.

Mashille · September 2016

I don't do VMA hardly ever. I gave up on getting a Weapon I want and it's just Sooo Boring. I can't stand doing it as for how dull it is and many times I think ZOS confuses difficulty with throwing a million AOE's on the ground every second.

visionality · September 2016

Thanks for that post, mirrors a lot of my own thoughts. In fact, I feel it's a shame that Maelstrom right now is such a one-directions, one-type-of-build-only arena which is not allowing for any creative strategy. You have to make a char with the right build, learn the mechanics by heart, battle your way through. Open the chest, get disappointed.

I'm not asking for an easier vDSA - but does it really have to be that unresponsive, invariable and unrewarding?

Armitas · September 2016

Khairiah wrote: »

Yes and No to adding a token system.. NO tokens should be awarded in normal mode since the difference between normal and vet is so big.

My initial thought here is to make Maelstrom into a solo dungeon daily for crafting mats if nothing else is needed from it. I have seen it work really well in other games and gives you an alternative to long hours of harvesting. So instead of hours farming flowers or hides you could just speed through some normal runs and buy them or store them up for a rainy day or another toon.

You could go two routes here by making different tokens for normal and vet. You could either make it so normal tokens only buy consumables and crafting mats with vet tokens being down convertible or you could just make it take a whoooole bunch of normal tokens for maelstrom weapons. With the right normal cost and the performance modifier and leader board reward from vet you could really set any preferred point at which it is likely that someone will be able to purchase a weapon from normal tokens.

MaxwellC · September 2016

The difficulty has to be present; I do for one am tired of the RNG mechanics vMSA provides like mushrooms spawning in mind casters (like seriously can we stop that) or getting hit even though I'm behind the boss thus insta kiling me,etc. Bash/Dodge/Block all have CP you can allocate to reduce the cost of blocking,dodging, and bashing so that is up to you to allocate the CP if you so need it and shouldn't be a thing in vMSA.

The same thing applies with shields, I mean you can literally stack 3 shields if you're not a sorc and DPS just fine under them. My Mag DK as an example I can stack igneous shield,healing ward, and harness magicka for 3 shields if I'm in a oh snap situation although the reduction to the shields timer as a form of balance was badly thought out especially with shields based off of max health (lol GG balance). If you want your shield to be stronger then allocate CP into shields there's no need to give such a handicap for completing Veteran Maelstrom Arena. I do agree with the reduction of situational and conditional RNG mechs if you're referring to mushrooms spawning in the minder then I totally agree that needs to be changed.

Embers was buffed but in PvP that doesn't do anything the buff is only good for PvE. I've played as a Mag DK and can say for certain it doesn't help if I spam that on a target who knows what they're doing. I've fought many Mag DK as a Stam DK and even if they spammed embers on me it will not matter I will smash through their heals to the point they have to consistently rely on it or attempt to flee. Dragon's blood needs to be changed into an entirely different skill because healing based off of max health loss is just poorly implemented and needs to be rethought of. Embers + dragon's blood is strong but it isn't OP I mean seriously Mag DK struggles in vMSA because we have such few high damaging abilities in-comparison to other classes.

If you're talking about animation cancelling from players than I can't agree I prefer using that and would love to keep using it. I definitely agree with the CC B.S since mobs even bosses will CC me into another CC because I didn't manage my resource correctly thus not giving me enough stamina to break free. I also have the dremora mobs in the last wave (ones with the shields) who run like a champ through caltrops like lol that needs to be changed asap.

Maelstrom sets should be tradedable just not weapons I refuse to have that become trade-able at-least until a new solo content like vMSA props up or another content like vDSA props up. I think the reward for vet should be like 20k (once per week though). I definitely support the tokkens because I'm tired of my 100+ run with no maul with sharp on it. It needs to be just as hard on vet no matter what the difficulty shouldn't be changed because it's actually easy. I've completed a flawless run on my Stam DK and Mag DK (both times I wasn't even going for it until stage 8 kicked in n I realised that I was close to getting it).

timidobserver · September 2016

My only issue with Maelstrom is that it costs to do it because there is no way to profit from doing it. Between pots and repairs it gets expensive. That is why I immediately stopped doing it after I get all of the items I want in the proper traits. Though given the changes on the PTS that remove all valuable items from trials and dungeons, I guess that making endgame PvE content into a gold sink with no way to earn gold back from doing content is intended.

SirAndy · September 2016

Armitas wrote: »

... @ZOS_RichLambert ...

DPShiro · September 2016

I like it, and it's fun to try out new builds in there to see how it works under pressure.
It also makes you a much better player in the process.

But I agree that the RNG on traits and weapon types is early bad, we should have a token system and be able to trade in unwanted weapons for tokens.

I would actually welcome a buff, or hard mode for VMA.

Armitas · September 2016

MaxwellCrystal wrote: »

Bash/Dodge/Block all have CP you can allocate to reduce the cost of blocking,dodging, and bashing so that is up to you to allocate the CP if you so need it and shouldn't be a thing in vMSA.

If you're talking about animation cancelling from players than I can't agree I prefer using that and would love to keep using it.

That is true about CP but it costs 3k in and out for every run. As a mDK I would use shields for VMA but I wouldn't use them in PvP preferring HA and blocking instead. So for me that's a 6k entrance fee to a frustrating ride with likely no reward.

I mean the enemies are animation cancelling. Like they walk up to you with no animation and you die and your death log shows rapid strikes. Sometimes they don't animate and other times the animation isn't in sync with the damage. Someone made a post with a video of it. If anyone knows where that video is please post it here. Found it.

Regarding embers, what I mean is that when VMA came out few mDK's could do it, so they buffed embers to give us a stronger dps-heal for VMA (I logically assume). You are right it's not enough for PvP but it "might" be (not certain) too much with Dragonblood so that may be why they refuse to buff our DB heal. Speculating on that. But the point being is that VMA makes for a third hard balance point that puts another set of strict limitations when it comes to balancing.

DPShiro · September 2016

Also enemies don't animation cancel, it's lag and it just looks that way.

And the problem you seem to have with resource management and other things is clearly a l2p issue.
For example, you don't need shields at all if you learn the mechanics properly.

Acid_Glow · September 2016

@Armitas I agree with you all the way except for trade-able weapons and didn't @ZOS_RichLambert say he didn't want to change anything in a video couple months back because he wants people to keep working for it which sucks RNG stupid design.

Armitas · September 2016

DPShiro wrote: »

Also enemies don't animation cancel, it's lag and it just looks that way.

And the problem you seem to have with resource management and other things is clearly a l2p issue.
For example, you don't need shields at all if you learn the mechanics properly.

It isn't any apparent lag. If someone post the video of it iirc fps and latency are fine.

That wasn't what I said. I said it would make for a better experience to have reactives rather than dry healing over damage. You either need shields or healing or reactives. Of course you don't need shields, but if that is the survival mechanic you choose instead of strong heals, or you are stuck with healing ward, then it's a part of your survival and a part of your experience. You can get through it on heals alone, but that is not very interesting which is why I called it dry.

Armitas · September 2016

YautjaLanu wrote: »

@Armitas I agree with you all the way except for trade-able weapons and didn't @ZOS_RichLambert say he didn't want to change anything in a video couple months back because he wants people to keep working for it which sucks RNG stupid design.

Just the maelstrom sets are tradable, like elemental succession. Not the weapons.

Rich, if you want people to keep doing the dungeon then this way they will actually feel good about doing it rather than dread logging in. 10 years from now they will still do Maelstrom because it gives rewards that will be relevant no matter what the CP cap is because crafting mats will always be relevant. I love this game but your dungeon is so frustrating it drove me to rage quit the whole game for 3 months.

PurifedBladez · September 2016

I got *** by the loot system hard in vma.. my friend on the other hand has been showered with gifts after like 10 runs. I just want to quit lol.

code65536 · September 2016

I agree with parts of this post. A few specific points that I wanted to comment on...

Armitas wrote: »

First and foremost it's a frantic dps race from start to finish with the challenge being derived from conditional RNG. For example crossing frigid waters to stop a troll and being feared from the other side of the arena. Or having a mushroom pop up under you. Having a gold ghost spawn on a mob. Failure more often comes from conditions and situations that you don't have control over.

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. My guess is that they wanted things to be different each run. But instead of making each run interesting, all it does it introduce frustration from things that are out of our control.

This will be better once the 2x max 1x recovery food comes out but that will only help stamina builds.

This is coming out only for magicka in October--stamina has no equivalent in either of the 2 sets of new recipes. And even then, the substantially reduced potency of the max stats is a pretty serious tradeoff. In any case, resources are an issue when you're learning the arena, but once you've gotten the hang of it, it won't be because you will be making much better use of your resources (less resources spent correcting mistakes and faster kills means fewer resources spent on dealing damage).

You can do VMA just fine with shields the way they are now but it's an annoying way to get through it. I would be more enjoyable to shield up, dps for a bit then re-shield instead of going back and forth regularly because if it's not up you are instantly dead.

I run vMA as magicka without my shield up most of the time. There are a few specific places where I will preemptively shield (e.g., when the 3 archers spawn in Stage 7), but for the most part, I reactively shield only when necessary. You definitely don't need shields up at all times (nor would you want it, since there is such a high opportunity cost to doing so).

Animation Cancelling - Mobs are doing their damage before their animation. Often times you die to nothing with no indication other than your death log. This is absolutely enraging. Sometimes there is no animation at all, sometime it appears that the animation is cut short.

This happens to me very rarely, and it's not consistent with respect to when or where it happens. I chalk it up to performance: processing on my end, server being slow due to load, momentary connection problems, etc.

Block needs to happen immediately

This is not an issue specific to vMA. I've died so many times to the Warrior's shield throw, even though my finger is firmly pressing the right mouse button the instant I see the red telegraph warning and even though my stamina bar is over half full. And this is something I've run into everywhere. That said, most of the time, it works. But it doesn't work often enough that it's frustrating. Anyway, as annoying as this issue is, it's not a vMA issue.

Getting CC'd while dodging
Getting CC'd again while in the intro animation of a prior CC.

Agony can't be blocked or dodged--only interrupted. Aside from that , though, I haven't noticed what you describe.

Targeting cross hairs that are not accurate. For example targeting a Troll with a gap closer and a clear screen and gap closing to something in your periphery.
Hit boxes interfering with critical mechanics. Trying to target a critical mob for an interrupt or kill that is nestled into another hit box in a timely manner.

I've died on Stage 5 multiple times because of this, when the boss and troll are basically standing on top of each other on the same platform. My attempts to kill the troll hit the boss. My attempts to bash the troll hit the boss.

For each weapon there are 8 possible traits of which only 1 is generally preferred. So I think thats what 1 out of 88 chance to get your weapon? And if you don't get that weapon you received no reward for your effort as the set items are not best in slot.

Once upon a time, there were 3 desirable DPS traits for magicka weapons. Nirnhoned got nerfed from best to a distant third. Precise, which used to be competitive with Sharpened, got left behind in the dust when Sharpened got buffed sky-high. The biggest problem is that the DB "rebalancing" of the traits led to even less trait diversity and less trait balance. Fix that, and the weapon grind won't seem as bad.

Repair costs. If you are farming this quickly you are going to die, and that is going to cost you, even if you don't die, it's going to cost you on repairs.

You come out ahead if you never die. And you break even around... like 5 deaths or something (it's been a while since I did a gold tally). This is assuming that you loot every chest. I want those soul gems, purple decon mats, and the repair cost reimbursement. I don't run vMA competitively, so it never made sense for me to save a few seconds by skipping the chests.

Potion costs. If you are farming this you are going through stacks of trash pots and dps pots for bosses.

Yea, this sucks.

Bring back reactive game play.

The reason there isn't reactive gameplay isn't due to the cost of such actions (though it doesn't help the matter). It's because it's simply more efficient and faster to kill stuff before they can cause any problems for you. And since most spawns are have pre-determined locations and triggers, you need to be reactive only for the first few times you run it. Once you know what's coming up ahead, you won't be reacting much.

Belicourt · September 2016

"@ZOS_RichLambert say he didn't want to change anything in a video couple months back because he wants people to keep working for it which sucks RNG stupid design."

This is a quote of a quote i know, but i come to play eso to unwind and have a few challenges along the way, not study for a video game test...

Doctordarkspawn · September 2016

You forgot something under combat.

Tanks: "The inherent DPS race nature of this makes this inherently unfriendly to anyone not running a semi optimized DPS build, when the challenge could come from reactive gameplay."

Could be put under combat improvements, but you get the point. NO I WILL NOT SHUT UP ABOUT IT.

NewBlacksmurf · September 2016

Yeah it's too long and too frustrating for a solo encounter.
Other points are valid as well in the OP and the second comment

Adding tho...
Why is no solo only content designed for healers too?

It's really not a good idea to have solo only content in an mmo but if u do....can all three roles have a real chance to complete in role?

Cogo · September 2016

Armitas wrote: »

Rewards - Make Maelstrom sets tradable. Make local rezes free. Make each chest reward 400gold on vet, half that on normal. Remove repair costs in the dungeon. Make VMA only pots at a low cost. Give us more stuff for no effort

I read your post and you have some valid interesting suggestions.

However, you totally lost me with your reward opinion.
You seam to have missed the whole idea with having a high end solo event, that's the hardest in game.
Rewards are for those who earned it. Also, the rewards aren't something you pick and choose after 1 victory. This isn't a farm.

This is the Best of the best, with rewards you can not get, unless you earned it.
The fact that there are lots of different BEST IN GAME ITEMS, only makes these more valuable and if you are not happy with your outstanding reward, go earn another one!

haunted1994F · September 2016

Simple, NO PAIN NO GAIN, we all been there the frustration. . . .but don't just cry or give up cuz its 100% completable.

and btw L2P

but I agree, loot sux RNG sux, even 100% drop sux, BETTER TOKEN SYSTEM

phaseadept · September 2016

I play the game to have fun, not to treat it like a BAR exam.

The whole "earned" deal is silly. vMSA is designed for a DPS focused play style, with self-heals, etc. This rendering most other content pointless (like needing a tank, or a healer). Kind of kills the point of having any other class diversity.

code65536 · September 2016

Cogo wrote: »

Armitas wrote: »

Rewards - Make Maelstrom sets tradable. Make local rezes free. Make each chest reward 400gold on vet, half that on normal. Remove repair costs in the dungeon. Make VMA only pots at a low cost. Give us more stuff for no effort

I read your post and you have some valid interesting suggestions.

However, you totally lost me with your reward opinion.
You seam to have missed the whole idea with having a high end solo event, that's the hardest in game.
Rewards are for those who earned it. Also, the rewards aren't something you pick and choose after 1 victory. This isn't a farm.

This is the Best of the best, with rewards you can not get, unless you earned it.
The fact that there are lots of different BEST IN GAME ITEMS, only makes these more valuable and if you are not happy with your outstanding reward, go earn another one!

Notice how "sets" is bolded? We're not talking vMA weapons. We're talking about decon trash like Glorious Defender or Succession. Winterborn and, in a few specific cases, Permafrost, are the only two sets that aren't completely useless. The vDSA sets are not bound, after all.

Wrecking_Blow_Spam · September 2016

phaseadept wrote: »

I play the game to have fun, not to treat it like a BAR exam.

The whole "earned" deal is silly. vMSA is designed for a DPS focused play style, with self-heals, etc. This rendering most other content pointless (like needing a tank, or a healer). Kind of kills the point of having any other class diversity.

Generally speaking all the "Best" players are stormproof or Flawless Conqueror.

In Pvp all the best players I've faced happen to have the title Flawless, I've faced many a noob tribune etc with no such title who doesn't even offer a fight, they drop instantly.

This seems the same for group PVE content. Most VMA healers/ tanks are much better than those who've not completed VMA.

Not being biased but on Xbox One this is the truth.
Not in all cases but in most cases.

FriedEggSandwich · September 2016

Vamp sorc with 15.7k hp here. Yes it's a dps race, but that will happen if your score is time-based. They need to find a new scoring system to fix that.

Resource management is fine, at least on sorc; I have given no thought to regen and it sits at about 1k, but I only ever run oom when I spend too long weaving light attacks and forget to throw in some fully charged heavies. I just pop a spell pot when that happens, or use overload for a bit.

There are only 2 mobs that absolutely need interrupting in vMA; the mages in stage 8 (just because there's multiple of them) and the final boss, all others can be dps'd down before their channel completes. Drop crushing shock and use force pulse instead.

I only actually need to use my shield when I have a hard-hitting melee range mob in my face that can hit me for my whole hp. All other damage is either avoidable or possible to heal though with surge and high crit damage. Even shatter is avoidable. I believe it's actually possible to do with no ward, but I'm not ready to try yet. What I'm trying to say is I'm fine with my 6s ward.

Your list of bugs I completely agree with, it was just your initial paragraph of gripes that I didn't feel were completely justified. It needs to be tough. But yeah they need to fix the break-free delay, the cc animation immediately into another cc animation, hitboxes (spider boss in seht's flywheel), lag/packet loss or whatever causes those fatal hang-ups where you get stuck in an animation or can't cast heavy attacks or whatever, and all the other annoying bugs you mentioned.

phaseadept · September 2016

Wrecking_Blow_Spam wrote: »

phaseadept wrote: »

I play the game to have fun, not to treat it like a BAR exam.

The whole "earned" deal is silly. vMSA is designed for a DPS focused play style, with self-heals, etc. This rendering most other content pointless (like needing a tank, or a healer). Kind of kills the point of having any other class diversity.

Generally speaking all the "Best" players are stormproof or Flawless Conqueror.

In Pvp all the best players I've faced happen to have the title Flawless, I've faced many a noob tribune etc with no such title who doesn't even offer a fight, they drop instantly.

This seems the same for group PVE content. Most VMA healers/ tanks are much better than those who've not completed VMA.

Not being biased but on Xbox One this is the truth.
Not in all cases but in most cases.

That kind of reinforces what I'm trying to say. . . the play style required renders the need for teamwork in other group content outside of trials pointless and trivial.

Not to mention one has to buy a DLC in order to even try it.

Armitas · September 2016

Cogo wrote: »

Armitas wrote: »

Rewards - Make Maelstrom sets tradable. Make local rezes free. Make each chest reward 400gold on vet, half that on normal. Remove repair costs in the dungeon. Make VMA only pots at a low cost. Give us more stuff for no effort

I read your post and you have some valid interesting suggestions.

However, you totally lost me with your reward opinion.
You seam to have missed the whole idea with having a high end solo event, that's the hardest in game.
Rewards are for those who earned it. Also, the rewards aren't something you pick and choose after 1 victory. This isn't a farm.

This is the Best of the best, with rewards you can not get, unless you earned it.
The fact that there are lots of different BEST IN GAME ITEMS, only makes these more valuable and if you are not happy with your outstanding reward, go earn another one!

A token system would the only system where you can actually earn it. You are not earning it now, you are simply doing it over and over again looking for a specific reward that is statistically not being given. You are going to work and spending your money on lottery tickets. This is the only way you actually earn it.

The difficulty of veteran is intact, the only difference is you can now play more reactivly if you wish or you can continue to just heal through it. I would prefer the twitch combat rather than rote memorization and massive dps to avoid it all together. The only intent here is to add to the methods of doing it. I know the intent is to farm it one way, but the point here is to make it at least somewhat interesting.

Armitas · September 2016

FriedEggSandwich wrote: »

There are only 2 mobs that absolutely need interrupting in vMA; the mages in stage 8 (just because there's multiple of them) and the final boss, all others can be dps'd down before their channel completes. Drop crushing shock and use force pulse instead.

I only actually need to use my shield when I have a hard-hitting melee range mob in my face that can hit me for my whole hp. All other damage is either avoidable or possible to heal though with surge and high crit damage. Even shatter is avoidable. I believe it's actually possible to do with no ward, but I'm not ready to try yet. What I'm trying to say is I'm fine with my 6s ward.

For the interrupts I'm actually thinking of stage 7. If I have crushing shock instead of force pulse and I run under the mage bubble I lose my range nuke because that will interrupt the scream and remove my chance at dpsing the boss while protected. I have force pulse so it doesn't effect me personally but it was one of the things I noticed back when it came out.

In the past people would double stack shields and they could dps inside it for a bit, now that it's much more difficult to do people are shielding more reactivly and healing as well. The idea here is to just be able to hit a shield and dps under it a bit longer rather than having to hopscotch between shield dps shield dps. Just another option besides dry healing. I know you don't have to do that now once you memorize the dungeon but that is basically what has made it so dull. You don't get to play in the dungeon, you get to perform a waltz...step by step through every part of it.

So basically my intent in increasing the reactives is to make it so you can either perform the waltz over and over again if you want. Or you can play reactivity to the situation which will be different each time. Maybe it's the PvP in me that wants more reactive game play in there. I want the combat itself to be a challenge, not memorizing a dance; and I know a lot of people do like the dance so I want both styles in there.