I'm at the argonian behemoth right now and I'm really not enjoying it. Ignoring the fact that the game is in a really frustrating state (desyncing and all that), I just don't understand how this is a reasonable level of difficulty. Anything short of perfection results in a one-shot, and even when you do everything you're supposed to, RNG may delete you by spawning a flower at your feet (even when no venomcallers are present!). I want to do this from a legitimate standpoint, but it's getting to the point I'm thinking of looking up ways to cheese it, because the game certainly isn't playing fair. I may have to go fight Darkeater Midir for a refreshingly relaxing experience.

it all comes down to the players skill and knowledge of the arena. It just takes time. Keep at it.

If you're going to Maelstrom Arena on Vet first time, it will be hell. Better try it a couple of times on Normal first, to get used to the mechanics and see what abilities will be useful in the arena and what won't. If you thought the Argonian Behemoth is terrible (and it is a terrible stage, I agree) wait until you get to the final boss stage.
Once you get the feel for it on Normal that you can do it mostly quickly and efficiently, move to Vet, knowing that it will be harder than Normal with bosses not only through more health / damage of enemies, but also some have additional scripts, or those scripts on Normal which could be mostly ignored, get to the point of dangerous / deadly on Vet.

Forums will be full of hardcore players who can do it with their eyes closed, but it is really is hard content, something most people won't admit, the increasing nerf wave after nerf wave is probably nearing that number to 95%

One thing though, I feel trial gear and gear you need for this content is different, you need a bit more survivability than in a trial with healer friends and such.

TeamSeinfeld wrote: »

...I think I went through hundreds of soul gems on that stage alone...

do not, i repeat DO NOT use your soul gems. respawn at the wayshrine. it takes only a couple of seconds to jump on a horse and get to the entrance, roughly the same time as you spend in the "ghost form" when you use a soul gem. a waste of soul gems, if you ask me..

and i would not recommend "learning" the arena by doing it on normal first. things die so fast you will not learn any mechanics at all. trust me, i did the same thing. went through the nMA several times and thought "hell yeah! i'm ready, bring it on". and kept on dying again and again. took me about 10 days to get to the last stage (Theatre of Despair) and there i got stuck for several months. i was convinced it was simply not possible to do. could not understand people with "The Flawless Conqueror" title. that was simply beyond the realm of reality. at least i thought so. and now i am one of them Flawless Conquerors. and i agree with the statement that it's all about knowing the mechanics and spawn points. it's a lot easier when you kill enemies right after they spawn..

one thing that is not being mentioned that much, but it helped me a lot is target priority. most players focus on what is in front of them, but that is a sure way to get killed. ranged enemies MUST die first or they will mess up your day..

I enjoy difficult content. I'm glad it's there. I wish we had more content that was as difficult as vma, especially since eso has horizontal progression system.

Unless you’re really low CP it should be pretty easy. Damage output so high these days. Check your mechanics against a guide, and then make sure you’re using a good setup both gear and CP. You could have some trouble around CP300 but once you hit 500 the rest is just practice. Even that poison level shouldn’t be too bad. I don’t honestly die to RNG on that stage all that’s much. Mostly just dumb mistakes.

Also, kids these days. Remember when you had to beat games all in one go and on top of that you had this mini screen to look at and had to pretty much memorize every single mechanic in the whole game lol. Makes vMA look like a walk in the park.

I use my petsorc and flawless it with no sigils most of the time, but with this event there's been all sorts of weird lag that might give me a death or two. It takes me about 47 minutes with 2 deaths and it's so boring. I'm considering buying the Maelstrom motif pages so I don't have to keep running it once a day during this event.

Bloodraven187 wrote: »

with how difficult this content is I am curious how many people (pn na) have actually done this to completion, even just to have their polymorph. Even in vet trial capable setup and skill I can't get past the argonian behemoth in stage 7. And considering it really doesn't help you be better in anything else outside of this arena there is no legitimate reason to make this content to the point where what feels like 95% or more of the playerbase is incapable of doing it. It is the single most frustrating and unfun part of this game , to most of us from what I can tell (fishing and watching the damn hammer in Cyro go to the highest pop faction and see them destroy everything from the other 2 with 0 skill required being high up there too). So I am curious how many people are actually doing it. And how many give up or just never bother trying to get past nMA.

It would take a lot more than some ugly-looking motifs to get me back into VMA.

It's one of the most unfun and frustrating places in the game for me too. It's basically a tour though all the worse kinds of game design i can think of and serves as an instruction manual on how to make your game annoying.

It's fun content, but the grind for the weapons is a chore. I still don't have an inferno staff. I don't mind dungeon farming since you can run every dungeon in 10-15 minutes. vMA takes me an hour though.

The lag/bugs also make it more frustrating than it needs to be. Most of my deaths are due to desync issues.

1st time took me 6 hrs. That was about a year ago. Now i do it in 40 mins without even trying. I know there's people doing it in 27-28 mins which seems unreal to me.

Like all pve content, it is only difficult until you learn the mechanics. Everyone should be able to do it if they put effort into it.

JumpmanLane wrote: »

Don’t you bash the behemoth? Been a while since I did it on vet. Did it on normal last night and burned through the behemoth.

Bashing only works on normal