Sixty5 wrote: »

Shields, resto back bar, ritual heal dot, breath of life.

In some ways it is easier, since you can play at range, making certain fights a cakewalk.

Also one other thing, those people tend to be good at the game.

Alcast 's build uses none of those skills. And double destro too! I'd really like to see a video of how it's done. Can you point me to one?

casparian wrote: »

How do they do it? By memorizing every single spawn and mechanic and killing things so fast that the mechanics don't occur.

That's what getting Flawless is about nowadays.

^^^

You'd be amazed how little defense you need when you barely take damage. Would not recommend to 90% of VMA farmers though, takes mastery of a class to do.

Sweep has downsides as its an channel and pretty slow.
Noticed that most templars don't use it. Like it on mine however as I heal it binds me, canceling it takes time if I need to heal.

stevepdodson_ESO888 wrote: »

bhagwad wrote: »

Sixty5 wrote: »

Shields, resto back bar, ritual heal dot, breath of life.

In some ways it is easier, since you can play at range, making certain fights a cakewalk.

Also one other thing, those people tend to be good at the game.

Alcast 's build uses none of those skills. And double destro too! I'd really like to see a video of how it's done. Can you point me to one?

here's a thought...try actually asking @Alcast, he does have a web site, posts on You Tube/Twitter and is on the ESO Forums sometimes and he is a helpful person who might just be able to answer you

I did ask him via a comment on his YouTube video. He hasn't responded yet....

Puncturing sweep scaling is off since Morrowind patch. Using that skill is a catch 22 - yes it heals you but also forces you to be melee, making you take more damage; the damage is also lackluster. I personally found it very hard to ditch it since it's so iconic for the class. I did went as far at ditching all spammable skills - yes, even force pulse (morphs) - and simply weaving HA, refreshing DoTs and Purifying Light and huzzah, my deaths have decreased a lot since not being melee most of the time means you will take way less damage.

My skill setup is as follows:

Front: Radiant Glory* | Purifying Light | Harness Magicka | Elemental Drain** | Inner Light || Empowering Sweep***
Back: Elemental Blockade | Blazing Spear | Ritual of Retribution | Vampire's Bane | Degeneration || Elemental Rage

Rotation is really simple: Elemental Drain -> LA -> Purifying Light -> bar swap -> Degeneration -> LA -> Vampire's Bane -> LA -> Ritual of Retribution -> LA -> Blazing Spear -> LA -> Elemental Blockade -> Bar Swap -> Purifying Light -> HA -> HA -> Purifying Light -> bar swap (repeat, reapply elemental drain every 2nd rotation). In group content you can drop Elemental Drain and replace with Force Pulse and weave that with the HA.

*Radiant Destruction damage scales very weakly with magicka pool, it only adds ~500 damage per tick at 100% magicka compared to 20% and most times you have to block cancel it when you have incoming damage; in practice Radiant Glory will come out on top, especially in vMA. Do not use on trash, since those will restore 3.6K magicka if killed with staff attacks - Destruction Expert passive.

**Will debuff the mobs for 5.3K resistance, Concentration LA passive is 4.9K, you have 0.1K native penetration; typically 2.7K from CP in spell erosion. So 13K penetration in total. Most mobs in vMA have 12.1K resistance and some bosses have up to 18.2K so you will have either full or very good penetration with Elemental Drain applied, allowing you to go with Apprentice mundus for maximum damage - that boosts your healing too. Also having a Destruction staff skill on your bar will grant you the bonus from Ancient Knowledge passive. Most importantly it returns 300 magicka per second as long as you do magic/elemental damage.

***Only slot it for the Piecing Spear passive, always use the back bar ultimate - Elenental Rage.

Healing comes from:
- Ritual of Retribution - huge radius, hard to miss
- Degeneration - as you constantly weave HA/LA
- Purifying Light - leaves puddles on affected enemies

Recommended gear sets, double lightning staves, ideally IA front, Maelstrom back but if you don't have, Julianos will work just fine:
- 5 Julianos 5 IA 1 Kena or Iceheart: the 5p IA debuff is really nice
- 5 Julianos 4 IA 2 Skoria: all your skills are DoTs so it will proc pretty reliably, sometimes too reliably - in Vault of Umbrage so be careful to not catch the shield casters on your Ritual of Retribution and accidentally proc Skoria on them. Skoria also gives you a bit more health allowing you to use Whichmother's Potent Brew safely or simply avoiding one-shot hits with health+magicka blue food.

A special mention is Channeled Ficus. I tried running it but it's not that good since fights tend to be quite dynamic, and you will not be able to stay on it and take advantage of the regen.

casparian wrote: »

How do they do it? By memorizing every single spawn and mechanic and killing things so fast that the mechanics don't occur.

That's what getting Flawless is about nowadays.

This, exactly this. I'm not denigrating anybody's skill, especially if ritual alone is enough for their heals. But ^ that's the big factor in VMA.

LiquidPony wrote: »

Seems like maybe his skill loadout is not accurate?

He says "If you want to slot Breath of Life, go for it, I would recommend swapping out Ritual of Retribution for it" ... but Ritual of Retribution is not on either of the bars he has in the vMA build.

Ritual of Retribution would be a nice HoT, when combined with Purifying Light and Harness, should do the trick.

I really have trouble imagining how either Ritual or Purifying (or both!) can quickly raise up your health in an emergency. Both those HoTs tick only once every 2 secs. What's going to happen when you're down to 2k health and there are mobs incoming? We need some kind of emergency major heal that can be spammed while also doing damage. For Templars, that is sweeps.

I can understand workarounds like slotting a resto staff, using healing ward, or mutagen. But we need something am I right? We can't just walk into vMA with 2 secs apart 3k heals!

For perspective, I get 18k DPS just sweeping single target. That's 6.3k health per second. Against a mob, it multiplies in power. By comparison, ritual or purifying heals only for 1.5k per second. That's four times lower than sweeps. I have difficulty seeing it happen.

I'd really love to watch a video of a magplar doing vMA without sweeps, just to see how they survive. I could get some ideas too!

LiquidPony wrote: »

bhagwad wrote: »

LiquidPony wrote: »

Seems like maybe his skill loadout is not accurate?

He says "If you want to slot Breath of Life, go for it, I would recommend swapping out Ritual of Retribution for it" ... but Ritual of Retribution is not on either of the bars he has in the vMA build.

Ritual of Retribution would be a nice HoT, when combined with Purifying Light and Harness, should do the trick.

I really have trouble imagining how either Ritual or Purifying (or both!) can quickly raise up your health in an emergency. Both those HoTs tick only once every 2 secs. What's going to happen when you're down to 2k health and there are mobs incoming? We need some kind of emergency major heal that can be spammed while also doing damage. For Templars, that is sweeps.

I can understand workarounds like slotting a resto staff, using healing ward, or mutagen. But we need something am I right? We can't just walk into vMA with 2 secs apart 3k heals!

For perspective, I get 18k DPS just sweeping single target. That's 6.3k health per second. Against a mob, it multiplies in power. By comparison, ritual or purifying heals only for 1.5k per second. That's four times lower than sweeps. I have difficulty seeing it happen.

I'd really love to watch a video of a magplar doing vMA without sweeps, just to see how they survive. I could get some ideas too!

Why do you need an "emergency major heal" when you have a shield?

Shields fall off all the time for any number of reasons. No matter how well you know the arena, random stuff is going to happen that will take out chunks of your health. Have to be prepared for those!

bhagwad wrote: »

Alcast's magplar build for vMA leaves out sweeps and replaces it with force shock. And I recently had a discussion on the forum with someone who got 2 flawless vMA runs as a magplar without using sweeps.

But I don't understand how. Sweeps is the only skill we have that does damage and heals at the same time. We're not a sorcerer who can heavy attack with DoTs and let surge heal us. The second person I linked to, uses extended ritual as their only heal skill! How? I rely almost exclusively on sweeps in vMA to keep myself alive. With a crematorium guard breathing on me, it's only because of sweeps that I can live. With 3-4 guys in front of me, sweeps prevents me from dying. When I'm on low health and need to kill something, sweeps is the only skill I have.

How can templars restore 15k health in a few seconds without sweeps, without BoL, or some other kind of continuous burst heal? Can anyone point me to a video that shows me how it's done? Alcast has vMA videos, but he uses sweeps in that, so...

This discussion was in context of my explaining why I need to use Witchmother's for magicka recovery since I have to use sweeps all the time to stay alive. And the person I linked to, says they use heavy attacks/force pulse instead. But how does this strategy provide the continuous and strong healing that we need to stay alive in vMA?

Would love to be exposed to some new ideas here and try vMA without sweeps on my Magplar.

People who know the arena very well don't need heals because they can kill threats before they materialize.

People who don't need heals.

Puncturing Sweeps is a great skill for beginning the game and it does a pretty good job on trash mobs, but it's not that gret DPS and you can get the same damage using a range spammable.

If you rely on exclusively sweeps to keep yourself alive, it can be done, but your DPS will be low. Templars have great DoTs. Blazing Spear, Wall of Elements, Reflective Light - all AoE - kill stuff almost passively.

In short, you don't need continuous strong healing if you kills the bad guys before they put a lot of damage on you. That's how Alcast and other players with 500+K scores do it.

Most incoming damage in vMA is magic/elemental, so sustaining Harness Magicka is not an issue. Simply refresh once it's down and you won't need much heals. Also HoTs are better than burst heals since they keep you topped out at all times. Having multiple of those is better than burst heals. I tried Honor the Dead - which is actually the morph I use right now since there's no place for Breath of Life in my group healer build anymore since the changes - and it sucks badly. Ritual of Retribution, Degeneration and Purifying Light work much better and buff and/or do damage at the same time.

bhagwad wrote: »

LiquidPony wrote: »

bhagwad wrote: »

LiquidPony wrote: »

bhagwad wrote: »

LiquidPony wrote: »

Seems like maybe his skill loadout is not accurate?

He says "If you want to slot Breath of Life, go for it, I would recommend swapping out Ritual of Retribution for it" ... but Ritual of Retribution is not on either of the bars he has in the vMA build.

Ritual of Retribution would be a nice HoT, when combined with Purifying Light and Harness, should do the trick.

I really have trouble imagining how either Ritual or Purifying (or both!) can quickly raise up your health in an emergency. Both those HoTs tick only once every 2 secs. What's going to happen when you're down to 2k health and there are mobs incoming? We need some kind of emergency major heal that can be spammed while also doing damage. For Templars, that is sweeps.

I can understand workarounds like slotting a resto staff, using healing ward, or mutagen. But we need something am I right? We can't just walk into vMA with 2 secs apart 3k heals!

For perspective, I get 18k DPS just sweeping single target. That's 6.3k health per second. Against a mob, it multiplies in power. By comparison, ritual or purifying heals only for 1.5k per second. That's four times lower than sweeps. I have difficulty seeing it happen.

I'd really love to watch a video of a magplar doing vMA without sweeps, just to see how they survive. I could get some ideas too!

Why do you need an "emergency major heal" when you have a shield?

Shields fall off all the time for any number of reasons. No matter how well you know the arena, random stuff is going to happen that will take out chunks of your health. Have to be prepared for those!

Err ... what? You make it sound like shields just randomly disappear. Shields go down when incoming damage takes them down.

And what "random stuff" happens that takes out chunks of your health? If you really know vMA well, there's hardly anything random about it.

Shield up and let your HoTs bring your health up while you kill stuff. Hell, I run it on my magblade with only the heals from Funnel Health and Siphoning Attacks and don't have any issues.

Indeed, if what you're saying is true, then you wouldn't even need funnel health. Just put a HoT with a resto staff, have harness magicka and you should be able to do just fine as a magblade. Funnel health is for the nightblade, what sweeps is to the Templar, or surge is for sorcerers.

I don't run nightblades but if I remember, funnel health heals you for 25% of total damage done every 2 seconds or something (correct me if I'm wrong). It's like sweeps, but from range! So if your damage output is a conservative 23k per second, you're healing for 11.5k every 2 seconds passively without using any extra magicka (unlike sweeps which is a specific attack). Compare that to ritual which heals you for 3-4k every 2 seconds. With the additional constraint that you have to remain in the marked out area. There's no comparison.

As for random stuff, any number of mechanics. Ghosts bumping into you from behind on stage 9. Random poison flower spawns on stage 7. Even the spinning blades on stage 2 - no way you can keep track of all of them, all the time. Even stage 6 has random webspinner and spider daedra spaws that can catch you on the wrong foot. RNG is RNG.

In fact, one of the posters above @Joy_Division is clearly very experience with vMA and has written a guide. He also mentions that there is random incoming damage that you simply need to be prepared for, and that can often be unavoidable.

Or just view any of Alcast's videos with vMA and you can hear him regularly curse when something unexpected occurs, and he's close to death. On one point at stage 6, with a magsorc he got lucky with a hoarvar spawn next to a webbed pillar which stunned the boss. Without that he would have been screwed.

So if these experienced guys are in agreement that there is random incoming damage that you have to be prepared for, I believe them.

Edit: I also just went to Youtube and typed in "vma magplar flawless", and filtered results for the past one year. Every single one of the top 10 videos had the templars using puncturing sweeps. Clearly, they feel that the heal is too valuable to give up. But according to you, they should be able to predict everything and can just get by with anticipating damage and killing stuff before it can hurt them.

I would really, really like to see a video of a magicka templar getting a flawless vma run without sweeps. Just as a proof of concept. This debate we're having shouldn't even be necessary. Just show me that it works and you will be proven right!

I think you're reading too much into Alcast's build. He a great and knowledgeable player, but for a long time played stamina and DK so he's not an expert on Templars. Also, his build came as a result of the new Asylum weapon, with which is was possible to get higher DPS than sweeps, so that's why it's on his website. And he says in all his videos that his build is just a suggestion, if it doesn't work, he recommends that you change it.

For VMA on anyone who isn't a total expert, I think he would absolutely recommend using Sweeps instead of force pulse because the former is a more versatile spell, which is what most people who do vMA need. Can Alcast do VMA without sweeps? I suspect yes, and easily. Does that mean others should copy and paste his build? No, adjust accordingly. His build is for max DPS, if you feel you need more HoTs, then put on Sweeps.

If I said "random" damage in my guide, it was meant more so from a beginnings perspective (for which my guide caters to) as a lot of damage will seem random to them. Perhaps unexpected is a better word. In any event, most, if not all, damage in vMA is purposeful and predictable. As long as you stay on top of DPS and kill things quickly, much of that damage can be prevented or mitigated without resorting to expensive heals or without using a conservative, slow DPS+heals approach.

Just thinking of my own runs, I would say Sweeps isn't usually a key skill. It's convenient to cleave the add on boss stage 1. It is quite useful Vs. Lamia boss stage 3. I think stage 5 is where it shines the most. After that, someone can certainly get by without it all the way up to the last stage. Sure the Cremo guards are scary, but either a gold ghost explosion or ultimate can take them down without Sweeps. People with a high score burn the last boss before a Cremo guard spawns.

Better question, what do you enjoy more? Why does everyone follow the cult of Alcast?

bhagwad wrote:

I don't run nightblades but if I remember, funnel health heals you for 25% of total damage done every 2 seconds or something (correct me if I'm wrong). It's like sweeps, but from range! So if your damage output is a conservative 23k per second, you're healing for 11.5k every 2 seconds passively without using any extra magicka (unlike sweeps which is a specific attack). Compare that to ritual which heals you for 3-4k every 2 seconds. With the additional constraint that you have to remain in the marked out area. There's no comparison.

There's something very wrong with your math there. My funnel health averages 16k on a stationary dummy with ele drain applied and an uninterrupted rotation. 25% of that is 4k. It's by no means a burst heal. Also because it's a spammable, every cast resets the heal. If I don't crit and only hit for 9k then I'm only getting 2.2k heal ticks. And as you said, it's only every 2 seconds, just like ritual.

The heal from funnel health is as passive as the heal from sweeps. Both require a specific skill to be cast in order to initiate a heal based on amount of damage dealt by said skill.

Ritual is a giant 12m radius circle. Very rarely do you have to move out of that large an area in VMA. Plus you get minor mending for standing in it and up to 4 seconds after leaving. When you finish a round you just move to the next important portal spawn and plop a ritual there.