Veteran maelstorm arena tips

aaron_campion · January 2018

Can someone help me out. I really want a maelstorm staff. Ive been attempting this arena on my mag sorc running burning spellweave set and jewlery of willpower. Im currently cp386.

Am i a high enough cp?
What gear and skills should i ideally need?

Nestor · January 2018

You mean besides the weeks and months of practice and trial runs before you prevail?

Watch videos of someone else running to learn the mechanics, because that is what you need a handle on. That and resource management.

davey1107 · January 2018

I won’t confess to be a VMSA expert, but that might be more useful because I can discuss my challenges and not offer advice like “just slot soul assault and it’s easy mode.” Ugh. Lol.

First I rely on a lot of research from the actual experts. Alcasthq.commhas a maelstrom section that’s useful. And Joy is a superstar for keeping this updated for years:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/233356/joys-now-updated-morrowind-guide-to-beating-maelstrom-arena/p1

Some general tips to get you started:

1. You might want more Champion Points. Feel free to start MA, but I might recommend weekly psijic runs to grind those points...every one counts in the damnable arena. Don’t feel you have to grind them all at once...the arena might take you weeks or months to conquer the first time. I took breaks of weeks between levels, then I’d go back to it when I was ready for a challenge.

2. VMSA arena is (more than ever) about resource management. The second you run dry, you are dead. Alcast runs Seducer because of this. If you grind public dungeons for CPs (or run undaunted solo...this will be good practice), then try running as fast as you can while keeping magic up at all times. Getting the pattern down as to how you can keep your offense and defense running while always keeping magic available is the most essential skill.

3. As you progress further, the levels are more and more mechanics-driven. You have to learn them and play to beat them...and they’re quite complicated. In the middle there’s an ice ogre level. To beat the boss you have to measure your damage to her...not too little, but not too much. While that’s going on you hav to handle adds in a specific order or they’ll one shot you, and you have to position yourself on specific islands at specific times...or they’ll one shot you. One mistake and you are dead.

Read and learn the mechanics in advance. If you hit a wall...and you will...don’t try to push through it with brute strength or new gear or swearing at the tv. Those won’t work. You will have to adapt and change your approach so that you can win within the mechanics of that level.

4. Have fun, but buy some gym shoes. The arena is going to push your adrenaline through the roof, and there will be moments that it puts you into a white hot rage, lol. If you die twenty times in a row and feel like punching someone, go for a run. Get some air. Burn off that jittery angry energy and then approach the level again. The ice ogre level took me like 300 times to beat. Some of them will seem unwinnable, then one trial run or another and suddenly you’ll have your timing down and you’ll beat it.

Checkmath · January 2018

most important are the mechanics of each arena. every arena has some kind of traps and mechanism to overcome them.
alcast has some good tips on his website, or go and visit deltias website. you can also watch some vMSA videos with comments to learn more about each arena.
after you know the mechanics, i would suggest to go into normal MSA to see them in real time, there you can practise and look out for the spawn times of special mobs and stuff.
if your dps is good, you shouldnt have that much problems, when you can avoid one-shot mechanisms and if you know, when you have to do what.
then its just learning by doing and trying again and again till you master every stage.
additionally, as a sorc, you can try to slot your pots, they do also damage and sometimes draw aggro of enemies.

GrigorijMalahevich · January 2018

BSW and willpower are full damage set for your first clear I would recommend you to run sustain sets.

Because lets face it, you run DPS sets but probably can’t sustain 25k dps in 3kk dummy, so you will not skip any mechanics with your DPS, so just run sustain sets and learn to prioritise targets.

If I was you, I would run seducer with lich with a lot of damage abilities or julianos with vengeance of the leech or best set for starters - necropotence with willpower and 2 pets, just blockade and heavy attack everything, no need to even slot frags...

Take your time

aaron_campion · January 2018

Ive managed to get a drome of toxic shock. But now stuck. Getting 1 hit by the knives and moving really slow

r3turn2s3nd3r · January 2018

aaron_campion wrote: »

Ive managed to get a drome of toxic shock. But now stuck. Getting 1 hit by the knives and moving really slow

The snare (slow) is from the strangler plants. They must die ASAP when they spawn. They are on a timer, you just have to learn to anticipate them. They have 4 possible spawn locations, behind each of the 3 'islands and the 4th is in the middle of them all. Do not let them stack up or it's game over.

Lukums1 · January 2018

@aaron_campion

Lukums to the rescue!

Do this:

Julianos + Willpower (or IA jewels if you have) + LLambris (if you have) NOT GROTHDAR.

CP allocation (which I'll check at your CP points) - confirm tonight.

The main one will be red tree:

60-70 into thick skin + 50 hardy + 50-60 elemental defender
No bastion no other rubbish. I understand you might not have exactly that but even across the board you'd be fine.

If you really get on struggle street shout out and I'll spend time with you one on one to get this done for you.

Also destro ulti front bar - SUPPRESSION FIELD back bar.
Suppression field does the following:

STUN group mobs for substantial amount of time.
It stops the ogres enraging on round 7
It stops Crem guards breathing fire in your face
It stops BOSS adds on level 2 (boss round) sitting down allowing you to further DPS

It is a massive survive tool which not many use and SHOULD (especially beginners)

Cheers mate!

Luke

Kuramas9tails · January 2018

You can succeed with that low of CP. I seen it happen and when you do beat it at that level, you will have more reason to be proud of yourself. The main thing is learning mechanics. The more you can avoid damage, the better you will be. It took me 2 months to beat my first run and less than 2 hours on my second run. I can now beat it on my Mageblade and MagSorc.

If you are on the toxic round now, kill the plants asap. Have a range attack/gap closer for this. The rounds will only get harder from here so watch videos, learn mechanics, see what rotations others are using and see if it will help you. That's how I learned to light attack weave because I watched someone in a video doing it and it was a game changer.

aaron_campion · January 2018

Thanks for all the info guys. Think i need to change my cp allocation. Maybe try to get a few more cp points. Currently at 400 now

Vapirko · January 2018

Listen to Lukums or Joy Division, both have great guides. Other than that it’s just try and try and try. I died so many freakin times my first time through and that was at like cp600. Idk a lot of people say it’s easiest on magicka, but I find stam sorc to be easiest. At any rate just keep going. Really figure out why you’re dying and then work out how not to. Get used to dropping ground aoe on spawn point and then moving on to dps another add with single target damage and then come back and finish off the first enemy if need be. For toxic shock always take down those stranger plants first, and a good idea in vMA is to always get rid of ranges opponents first while kiting others. Ranged opponents tend to hit the hardest and have one shots. Good luck. Sometimes it’s all about taking a break. I got to the last round and then quit for two months because I just couldn’t get passed it. Then I came back and beat it in a couple of hours. Then I beat the whole thing in a couple of hours. Then I got my first leaderboard score. Now I can pretty much leisurely make my way through. And that’s after like maybe 10 m-15 total runs. At this point I got the bow, lightning staff so I’m pretty much good. Got the daggers too in case those make a comeback. There’s not much incentive to run it nowadays beyond a challenge. Oh gold out your wpns if you haven’t. That helps a lot. And run gold damage glyphs on jewelry. Everything else you can go for purple.

Partomax · January 2018

Die.
Die over and over again.

On my first run I died 100 times, and that was on the last round of the 9th arena alone.

DoctorESO · January 2018

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