The Armour:

2 Grothdarr

5 Necropotence

4 Infallible Mage

For my normal dungeon/trials build I go with Ilambris monster helm, but for vMA I found you need more control. Because Grothdarr is always centered it allows you to chase down the ranged adds and have the melee adds come to you. Just stand there heavy attacking and shielding while you burn down the adds. For a few stages it can be a little bit of a hindrance (Argonian Behemoth Boss, specifically the Minders) but you just have to be careful and control your movements.

If you don’t have infallible or don’t want to farm Aetherian Archive or whatever you can run this instead:

2 Grothdarr

5 Necropotence or 5 Torug’s Pact

3 Willpower (Make sure it’s Arcane and enchanted for damage.)

1 Shock Stave (Any set)

You want your Armour to be in Divines. You also want your main staff to be a Infused shock stave. Your secondary stave can be anything but I prefer 2 shock staves. Front bar must be Infused trait with a shock enchantment.

Mundus Stone:

The Lover.

Normally I like my classic Apprentice mundus for that sweet sweet damage. But no. For vMA you need penetration to cut through the adds and melt the bosses. Makes the Arena a lot easier.

This is how my stats look for Maelstrom with a mix of gold and purple pieces (and with Witch Mother’s food). While you don’t need to gold out your armour I would recommend golding out your weapons (or even just your main bar). You will notice a difference in your damage. It isn’t visible but my penetration is 4k+ with this set up and that’s more than enough to melt everything you come up against in Maelstrom. I like to give myself a little more health than needed for any mistakes I make and also to make myself more tanky. This is for my High Elf Sorcerer, so if you’re playing a different race your stats may look different. Just make sure you have a lot of magic for shields and enchant into enough health that you find comfortable.

I recommend running Witch Mother’s Potent Brew to keep your magic recovery up.

If you missed out on this recipe on Halloween then run one of the simple blue recipes like this instead…

Skills:

Front Bar

Blockade of Storms

Volatile Familiar

Twilight Matriarch

Hardened Ward

Bound Aegis or Inner Light

Ultimate - Destruction Staff Ultimate: Elemental Rage

Back Bar

Crushing Shock

Volatile Familiar

Twilight Matriarch

Boundless Storm

Bound Aegis or Inner Light

Ultimate - Destruction Staff Ultimate: Elemental Rage

The idea behind this build is you ward up, volatile familiar, blockade of storms, heavy attack all while prioritizing the ranged adds and melting everything. If you need healing you hit the twilight for heal and only switch bars if you need an interrupt or speed buff (but you wont need to switch bars until stage 6: Rink of Frozen Blood for the frost trolls).

Champion Points:

BLUE:

Apprentice:

Spell Erosion 33

Elemental Expert 49

Elfborn 40

Atronach:

Staff Expert 19

Master-At-Arms 18

Ritual:

Thaumaturge 81

RED:

Steed:

Ironclad 10

Spell Shield 10

Lady:

Hardy 49

Elemental Defender 50

Thick Skinned 40

Lord:

Bastion 81

GREEN:

Tower:

Warlord 47

Lover:

Tenacity 76

Arcanist 56

Shadow:

Tumbling 30

Shadow Ward 31

Since everything you’re doing is damage over time and heavy attacks you want to power it up as much as you can. You also want to make sure that your shields are strong too.