VMA Arena Difficulty

ESOMark · May 2017

Was wondering hats are everyone's thoughts on the order of difficulty of each round?

I have only completed 1, 2, and 3 with my stam dk and was thinking which rounds I will need to keep the rage inside.

Also wondering would making a brand new sorc be better than trying to finish vma with my cp 365 Khajit dk?

Thanks everyone!

D0ntevenL1ft · May 2017

First time VMA took me countless hours and that was on a magsorc; Stam DK i can't even imagine.

1-5 are hardly even stages i find. Save the rage for 5-9 (excluding stage 8), with emphasis on stage 7, and extreme emphasis on final boss round first play through.

Although now that I've completed VMA countless times (10 times this weekend alone), the final stage is one of the easiest, with stage 7 being where most of my deaths occur.

Lukums1 · May 2017

After completing vMA score running on all classes mag and stam and over 1000 + runs to myself.

This is what I found.

Stam dk is super dooper easy I'm currently flawless and hitting around 510-520k runs. Top 20-30 on average weekly.

The loadout is this:

Rapids / Claw / Blade cloak / nox breath / rearming / REND
poison / endless / harden armor / caltrops / vigor / MAGMA shell

Caltrops can be removed for evil hunter saving on reagents for pots.

The tricky rounds are 5-7 where sigil hitting has to be generally spot on or using wings, but wings is too unreliable when you're learning so I tell people just to mitigate through it by using harden/cloak trust me it works fine.

Khajit on you're dk will be the biggest challenge but not impossible you'll have to use 5000 health food / 487 regen food I understand that puts you low but it's 100% fine completing vma on 19k stam as a joke and it was more than fine with Dk.

It comes down to mostly gear, but I'd watch my twitch video guide 2 on my page even though Im using stam sorc I explain rounds as I would on any race/class/stam/mag.

Hopefully this advice helps you as many others have feel free to pm me to ask for 1 on 1 help I'll do what I can to assist you.

You could always roll a stam sorc and face %&!@ the arena, but dk isn't too bad once you understand the fundermentals and also

better sticking with it for weekly rewards people still suck donkey balls as dk's in the arena

Luke

HarlotsLoki · May 2017

Stage 5 will give you rage, a lot of hard hitting adds combined with a lot of range damage. Bring your reflective scales.

Stage 7 is the worst for stamina, if those poison plants touch you and you aren't practically on top of one of the cleansing sites, you are dead. The rng in that stage is unforgiving for stamina classes.

Stage 8 has a few unpleasant mob spawns. The mini boss hits hard and can animation cancel, which leads to some ***, but you can just heal through it. I also find that the stage is prone to desyncs on the fire spinners, making them unbashable, which in most cases leads to a death. I've had two flawless runs ruined by that today.

Final stage is all mechanics. Once you learn them you will breeze through it, but when you don't know them it's pretty unforgiving as a wrong move will see you fighting at a severe disadvantage or in most cases, dead.

As for class switching, that's entirely up to you. I'd recommend you run through it with your DK and see how you do. You need to learn the mechanics, spawn locations and switch from a reactive playstyle to a pre-emptive one; Eg you know what is coming and take steps to mitigate the danger rather than being hit by a truck and then reacting.

If it proves too much for the DK I'd consider switching it up. Magblade, mag sorc and stam sorc are all pretty decent in vMA, so you have plenty of options.

Good luck and welcome to the grind.

BNOC · May 2017

HarlotsLoki wrote: »

Stage 7 is the worst for stamina, if those poison plants touch you and you aren't practically on top of one of the cleansing sites, you are dead. The rng in that stage is unforgiving for stamina classes.

This simply isn't true, people talk about RNG but honestly, it's 1 in 100 runs that a plant spawns on top of you when you're inside a bubble (The summoner has to spawn before the boss does an enraged scream and it has to proc a new wave of plant spawns, so it's VERY rare)

It's simply mistakes and awareness that get people on R7.

IMO, the only rounds that can cause rage at first are

R5 Wave 3 - It's a lot of adds to learn to deal with but with wings you'll faceroll that.
R5 Boss - When your dps is too high and you trigger too many add spawns at one time.

R8 Wave 4 - It starts with two casters that need to die or be interrupted else you'll die real quick.
R8 Wave 4 Mini Boss - Nothing to worry about but will drop a Standard on you at some point and you need to get out of that quick time.

R9 Wave 5 Ash Titan - This is easy, but if your DPS is low you'll get knocked back and flame walls will follow, they'll stun you if they hit you and 3 adds spawn along side it (roughly) so there's that.

This arena was designed with 300CP in mind and without all of the gear sets and things we have today, it's not even close to how difficult it was originally, skipping mechanics back then wasn't really an option.

The defence sigil is your friend for nearly all 'tricky' parts.

ESOMark · May 2017

Thanks for all the advice everyone, I think I might just grind it out with my stam dk. Last question, do you guys think once I get to late 400's and early 500's co it will become easier.

magictucktuck · May 2017

your first time is ALWAYS hard. i am flawless on 3 characters and i will tell you the hardest class i have done it on is my stamina DK. BUT its still very doable you just have less self healing than other classes. and my first time through i got stuck on 5 the ice stage. once i beat 5 i breezed to stage 9 final boss and got stuck there.

you can for sure do it on you DK! don't get discouraged its always hard the first time, and when i say DK is harder i guess really its harder in terms of getting a high score or no death, mainly because the heals. but when your not worried about dying and just going for a clear they are fine as they do pretty good damage.

Lukums1 · May 2017

ESOMark wrote: »

Thanks for all the advice everyone, I think I might just grind it out with my stam dk. Last question, do you guys think once I get to late 400's and early 500's co it will become easier.

Done it on a 300 cp via shareplay with blue gear stam dk... it's fine IF

You know how and when to use sigils.

Anything above 350 you're safe this also comes down to CP placement.

nickl413 · May 2017

I've also done it on stam and mag of each class (not near as many runs as lukams though) and ironically found stam dk to be the hardest. Go figure. Maybe I am just terrible at stam dk.

If I had to put them in order of easiest to hardest it would go like this:

Mag sorc
Mag nb
Stam sorc
Maglpar
Stam nb
Stamplar
Mag dk
Stam dk

My first try was a stamplar. Spent hours and hours and hours banging my head against the wall. Reached the final boss and just could not beat him. I probably spent 10 hours in that fight. I finally rolled a stam sorc and clear the arena in less time than my stamplar typally spent trying to kill one boss.

Anyway if you are trying to decide whether to reroll or not for an easier first clear, I recommend doing so if you are one of the bottom 4 in my list.

ESOMark · May 2017

@Lukums1 any recommendations where to put cp? Also what should my rotation be with blade cloak because I was using rendir slashes before?

BNOC · May 2017

ESOMark wrote: »

@Lukums1 any recommendations where to put cp? Also what should my rotation be with blade cloak because I was using rendir slashes before?

This build was good for 592k score - You're down some CP so adjust accordingly.
http://aetherius.ru/uploads/monthly_2016_12/_vma_dk.png.f7d5ba4e68fc369029fc25a730fccc27.png

You can pretty much do it with any CP if you're experienced, I was doing FQ runs at 200CP in 7 Light training (no guilds, no ms etc) It's actualy really easy content, as long as you're paying attention and like Lukums said, using the sigils correctly.

ESOMark · May 2017

Have one more question! With food max health and stam I'm looking at 18k health 27k stam and 1600 stam recovery, is 1600 good enough or should I go max health and max recov to get 18k health with 22k stam and 2k recovery

Lukums1 · May 2017

18k and 27k with 1600 is fine way above than what you need champ easy easy especially when you'll be using defensive sigil to mitigate use of skills with group mobs

see how you go