vMA Tips for Magblade

RaunHunter · March 2020

Hello!

I did vMA on my Magblade recently and it took me an entire day to finish it with at least over a hundred deaths. I was able to complete it on a PetSorc following Alcast's build in about 2 hours. So, what am I doing wrong on the Magblade? Vault of Umbrage (Arena 7) and Theatre of Despair (Arean 9) are particularly hard. If I get poisoned, I'm dead before I can get to the green pool. And on Arena 9, if I get knocked down from the top in Phase 2, it is near impossible to kill both the Clannfear and the Daedroth, while also dodging his Molten Breath. Somehow, the PetSorc survives all this fine, but not my Magblade.

Any tips are appreciated. My current build is as follows:

CP380

Gear:
Mother's Sorrow Inferno Staff (Legendary) - Precise - Shock
Mother's Sorrow Lightning Staff (Epic) - Defending - Absorb Magicka
Mother's Sorrow Jewellery (Epic) - Arcane - Spell Power
Iceheart Head (Epic) - Invigorating - Magicka
Iceheart Shoulder (Epic) - Divines - Magicka
Julianos Body (Epic) - Divines - Magicka

Skills:
Bar 1: Harness Magicka | Merciless Resolve | Swallow Soul | Sap Essence | Dark Shadow || Elemental Rage
Bar 2: Unstable Wall of Elements | Twisting Path | Elemental Drain | Siphoning Attacks | Consuming Trap || Soul Tether

remilafo · March 2020

Stage 7 has random elements to it and sometime you can't help but get poisoned. My tip here would be try standing as far as possible from any explosion plant and have ranged ability and ranged interrupt. This will make stage seven way easier.

Stage 9: The crematorial guards rotate very slowly while fire breathing you can just circle them to avoid damage. But you aren't tanky enough, you should be able to withstand their attack.

As generic advice most people builds for vma as not tanky enough. Yours is not either. Your build should allow you to make mistakes and not instantly die when a mistake is made.

RaunHunter · March 2020

I do circle the CremGuard when he is alone. But when there is a Clannfear as well, he headbutts me to death while I circle him. Not to mention the Necrotic Stab AoE that spawns under the CremGuard, which also oneshots. Perhaps you are right about building a bit more tanky. The PetSorc does have 23k HP, while Magblade only has 17k.

Thank you for your response. Is there any particular tanky set that you would recommend for the Magblade?

thorwyn · March 2020

Stage 7 has random elements to it and sometime you can't help but get poisoned. My tip here would be try standing as far as possible from any explosion plant and have ranged ability and ranged interrupt. This will make stage seven way easier.

You can pop annoying plants between or even during the rounds to avoid getting trapped. Also, never interrupt the Behemoth during his scream. That's an instant kill.

But when there is a Clannfear as well, he headbutts me to death while I circle him.

To be honest.. you should never be in a situation where you have to face CG and a Clannfear. The only scenario where this might happen is when you have to jump down from the circle above. At the beginning of the round, try to nuke the main boss to 70% as quickly as possible, avoiding the first CG spawn. If your dps is too low, kill the CG while the boss is still around.

Hotel6 · March 2020

Make your other weapon legendary aswell,it has huge effect,and change it to weapon damage enchant.

RaunHunter · March 2020

thorwyn wrote: »

To be honest.. you should never be in a situation where you have to face CG and a Clannfear. The only scenario where this might happen is when you have to jump down from the circle above. At the beginning of the round, try to nuke the main boss to 70% as quickly as possible, avoiding the first CG spawn. If your dps is too low, kill the CG while the boss is still around.

You are right. Ideally, this shouldn't happen because I shouldn't get pushed down. But I'm not perfect and sometimes I do get knocked down. When I do, it feels like I have zero chance. I don't have enough dps to get him to 70% before a CG spawn (or not enough practice with my dps rotation to accomplish that). So, a CG spawn is a certainty. I usually kill the first CG with the boss around without any issues. The problem comes when I get knocked down from the platform and there is a CG waiting for me downstairs along with a Clannfear.

Hotel6 wrote: »

Make your other weapon legendary aswell,it has huge effect,and change it to weapon damage enchant.

Thank you! I'll try that. I don't know if it will, but perhaps it might help me kill the CG and the Clannfear faster.

remilafo · March 2020

RaunHunter wrote: »

I do circle the CremGuard when he is alone. But when there is a Clannfear as well, he headbutts me to death while I circle him. Not to mention the Necrotic Stab AoE that spawns under the CremGuard, which also oneshots. Perhaps you are right about building a bit more tanky. The PetSorc does have 23k HP, while Magblade only has 17k.

Thank you for your response. Is there any particular tanky set that you would recommend for the Magblade?

Not really aside from plague doctor. But check out any "Tank" build here on the forums and adapt some of those strategies. Someone in my guild got vma done with "frozen watcher" + Ice furnace recently and it was hilarious... they won by holding block.

vma is forgiving enough that a large variety of builds can accomplish it. Only about 20-25K dps is needed (in my opinion) . Although it has been my personal experience that a strong defensive build makes the place way !!WAY!! easier. And by defensive i really mean anything, armor, healing, shields, movement they all can work.

I got flawless conqueror on two of my characters a MagSorc and a Magplar.

The sorc ran Plaque doctor and necro potency to get flawless with 42k magicka and 33k hp with a hardened ward for 19k ... it was rather easy actually.

The Magplar was much harder but even then i still went in with 31K HP.. and 12-15K radiant wards. when i got the flawless. I ran overwhelming surge and destruction mastery with her.

Getting a bigger health pool makes the whole experience more relaxing. A simply thing like changing your mundus stone to LORD will help with the HP pool.

Im currently working on flawless for a Magden.

Good luck.

John_Falstaff · March 2020

I don't know, I didn't need such a big health pool on magblade for flawless. I went in with about 19k health, Mother's Sorrow, imperfect (at the time) False God's. The only thing I changed compared to usual setup is: shield on front bar, Ele Drain, tri-stat food I typically use on tank, and Grundwulf to compensate for lack of regen on food. Larger stamina pool gives you some leeway if you want to be more mobile, break free and whatnot, and Grundwulf adds a touch of sustain on stamina side on top of that. But even then it shouldn't be necessary, I just wanted some comfort.

zvavi · March 2020

Like john said, magblade doesnt need much, if you are dying more to poison, it means that you were panicking more, and not focused on watching your feet. That means, try to relax more, dont over exhaust yourself, wall of elements and twisting path on spawn, then spam swallow soul.

Just try to relax more, and watch your feet.

xWarbrain · March 2020

remilafo wrote: »

Im currently working on flawless for a Magden.

Good luck.

Not to derail, but I finally got it on Magden a week or two ago, my first Flawless ever too.

The biggest change I made from previous attempts was Crystalized Slab & Chudan instead of Ice Fortress & Iceheart or Grothdaar. With Iceheart nerf I wanted to try something different, glad I did.

The set up I used is here:

https://youtu.be/hlzVJEpLXKQ

kylewwefan · March 2020

It sounds like you’re just learning how to play magblade. Congratulations! It will be easier the next time through.

Magblade has a much steeper learning curve than PetSorc and looks like your setup is not quite right yet.

Make your backbar infused with a weapon damage/ spell damage enchant and front bar precise or infused with an absorb magic enchant.

My bars are like this:

Front bar: swallow soul, degeneration, impale, merciless, inner light Ult soul harvest
Back bar: wall of elements, twisting path, necrotic orb, siphoning attacks, inner light Ult Barrier

I prefer to use tripots rather than spell power pots.

I use barrier ultimate way more than offensive Ult.

Light attack like your life depends on it. You’ll start getting better with merciless procs. You start learning the arena better and when to Ult, how many hits it’s gonna take to kill a mob and move on to the next; which ones are priority; pick up a sigil etc.

Asardes · March 2020

This is my build, I use dropped pots because I'm too stingy to waste crafted ones on vMA or dungeons since I'm not going for score: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=187757.

Also having 2 MS staves is too expensive (even if I got a 2nd one I would just sell it) so I use the set on the body, and go with BSW on front bar, Julianos is probably close to that when it comes to damage, but you have a 2nd one already just keep it - after you get Maelstrom inferno you can just re-enchant the 2nd MS one with Prismatic and use it in fights against Daedra/Undead. So the gear setup is decent. On my clear I din't feel the need to use Harness Magicka, the heals from Siphoning and Swallow Soul were more than enough, if you feel that isn't cutting it, you can go for Refreshing Path instead of Twisting on top of those, but you'll lose some damage.

Iceheart got nerfed somewhat this patch, and I wasn't using it even before, so I'm not sure if it's still worth it. I prefer Skoria because it's very reliable (5 DoT abilities) and gives me 1K HP allowing me to run Witchmother's Potent Brew and still have decent HP ~17K. You only have to take care in Stage 7 not to DoT the mages and lose the shield from a proc killing them. Other decent sets are Grothdarr - for stages with lots of trash, and also Silmecraw is a good option because you get Minor Berserk permanently and 4% spell critical, which is always good on NB.

code65536 · March 2020

My non-Asylum staff setup

Front bar: Swallow, Impale, [Flex Spot], Merciless, Inner Light, Soul Harvest
Back bar: Dampen Magic, Twisting Patch, Unstable Wall, Siphoning Attacks, [Flex Spot], Elemental Rage

For the front-bar flex spot, I would use Degeneration for the Major Sorcery (since I use "trash" magicka pots). Could use Mystic Orbs instead if you are using expensive spell pots, but I really don't recommend that kind of expense. For the back-bar flex spot, I'll typically have Channeled Acceleration or Ele Drain, depending on the stage. In your case, Consuming Trap could be useful for that flex spot.

First, you should front-bar Soul Harvest. It's just there for the slot passive, and it's a damn good slot passive: 10 ultimate every time you kill something is just too good to pass up and is arguably the magblade's main advantage in vMA.

Second, I really don't think your shade is worth it. The stat boost from Inner Light will help you more.

Third, I don't think Sap is worth it. Most of the time, the enemies don't really clump up enough for that to be worth it. Just single-target things down.

Fourth, Impale is nice. Why? Because it's cheaper than Swallow and you get magicka back if you use an assassination ability to kill them. You won't use Impale all the time, since enemies don't have that much health and you'll often kill them with Swallow before they have to chance to get under 25%, but if you're able to, using Impale does help with sustain.

Fifth, Ele Drain isn't that useful and I use it only in a few spots (like the stage 7 boss or the final boss). Most of vMA is killing trash, and they have so little health that casting Ele on them just slows you down. Since you're not using False God's, Consuming Trap is a good option for helping with sustain if you need it, but I personally wouldn't run both Consuming and Ele.

Finally, use the Lover Mundus. Precise+Shadow is what you'd use in group content. But for vMA, Infused+Lover is the stronger combo. I wouldn't go out of my way to get an Infused front-bar staff just for vMA (unless you happen to already have one handy), but changing Mundus is free.

RaunHunter · March 2020

Hey guys, just wanted to thank you all for your tips. I finally managed to finish vMA again on my Magblade; happy to say it was a lot more comfortable this time.

It took a lot of experimenting, with all the ideas you guys gave me. Changing to Slimecraw and switching my abilities to what @code65536 suggested finally worked. I also finally learned to circle the CremGuard correctly, even with the Clannfear around.