SirDuckman wrote: »

For me, so far, about 2 sittings for a few hours each and still trying. Got him down to 8% last night and ran out of magicka twice. It was time to quit when I noticed I was getting sloppy.

Looking forward to that 2H charge weapon for my Sorc. LOL. I'l go back at it again when I finish it the first time.

The loot table only sucks when it comes to what you're specifically looking for ...

I've never found a sharp destro - but I have found multiple sharp 2 handers (Maul, and 2 GS's), 2 sharp daggers, 2 sharp bows, and lots of potent nirncrux from deconning nirn weapons. And I've only cleared maelstrom maybe 80-100 times at this point.

My stam alts are loving my "bad luck" ... my magicka main, not so much.

Turelus wrote: »

Actually got my first (second and third) clears over the weekend. Working on my 4th right now.

Final boss the first time I lost count to be honest, in total I blew over 200 soul gems learning through the entire arena.
Runs two and three were about 2 hour runs with less than a hundred deaths but still a lot. Current run I am just about to go to the Vault of Umbrage and have some lives left, lost a couple to stupid mistakes and four or five to that damn ice zone.

The one nice thing is I am seeing that I'm getting better with each run, I am pretty sure I won't ever get the no deaths though.

You will.
I still haven't gotten flawless but I've come damn close (twice I was at argonian boss 15/15 and DC'd ... relogged 14/15 at the wayshrine ... TWICE that happened. And once I had the dumbest death ever in Spiral Shadows and ended up finishing like 12 or 13/15)

Took me 13 hours+ to clear maelstrom my first time - was over 2 hours per clear for my next 10-15 runs ... but somewhere around the 15th run you start just breezing through stuff.

Takes me an hour or less now and almost always finish with at least 8-10 lives.

I've cleared every individual round flawlessly multiple times - just a matter of putting it all together in one magical run now.

But at first just clearing it seems daunting - then getting it to an hour seems impossible - then flawless looks out of reach - but the arena is all about experience - the more you run it, the faster and easier everything goes. Literally anyone (imo) can get flawless if they run it enough. That said - I'm still working on mine.

My problem is the sorc leaderboards are so stacked, I doubt I'll ever make a dent there. You can't even sniff the bottom of the board as a sorc if you're under like 530k-540k or something like that. Basically flawless with no sigils and speedrunning ...

A lot it took me two whole days after maelstrom was released to beat it and it still takes 45-50 mins to run now.

Well for me it way maybe 20 death there, most of my first deaths was on the 7th stage and on the 5th stage. Gosh I still suck on those two.

I'd say about an hour and a half with MagBlade. 30-40 deaths. Out of total 200 for the first completion.

Sorry for the minor necro (but I don't see the need to make another post on the topic).

Finally got my first vMA clear last night. Did the arena in 5 sittings:

Stage 1-5: 20 deaths
Stage 6: 10 deaths
Stage 7: 15 deaths
Stage 8: 1 death
Stage 9: 60 deaths (3hours)

I was about to give up but decided to try 5 more times. Made it on the 4th attempt - never managed to get all the golden ghosts but managed to burn him in the end. I had 2% health and was just spamming my ward and LA. Might have made some animalistic sounds when it was over.

Was so jacked up after the endeavour I couldn't sleep until 3 am this morning

lardvader wrote: »

Sorry for the minor necro (but I don't see the need to make another post on the topic).

Finally got my first vMA clear last night. Did the arena in 5 sittings:

Stage 1-5: 20 deaths
Stage 6: 10 deaths
Stage 7: 15 deaths
Stage 8: 1 death
Stage 9: 60 deaths (3hours)

I was about to give up but decided to try 5 more times. Made it on the 4th attempt - never managed to get all the golden ghosts but managed to burn him in the end. I had 2% health and was just spamming my ward and LA. Might have made some animalistic sounds when it was over.

Was so jacked up after the endeavour I couldn't sleep until 3 am this morning

Come down from the crsystals, interrupt , grab the first ghost going to him and then lay dots on boss watching mechanics and getting ghosts until explosion. Pop explosion then burn and round is done

People who have never been in there before do this now, from start to finish in like 3-4 hours.

When it was released I spent roughly 2 weeks going through about:

R1 - 50 Lives (Used to teleport 3 times, 3!!)
R2 - 200 Lives (Had to use the *only damage one until it's dead so you never have 3 out* tactic)
R3 - 300 Lives (Stranglers were a ballache pulling you about the joint and there were glitches)
R4 - 20 Lives (Was running around and killing adds on the boss fight instead of nuking)
R5 - >500 Lives (My lives used to expire here A LOT)
R6 - ~100 (Once I realised the totems stunned adds and started keeping track of them it got a lot easier)
R7 - 100 Lives (I wasn't aware enough of plants and got killed by them all the time, noobs call that bad RNG but it's not)
R8 - 20 Lives (I actually one shot this boss but had trouble with W4, the whole wave)
R9 - 200 Lives (Crem guard was owning me and I was usually seeing 2 before the boss went up)

It's probably more than that all in all, but either way it's a lot of lives and half the time I was only getting on to the later stages with half of my lives left.