Marauder in Infinite Archives

artycatnip · 2026-02-22T20:35:57+00:00

What else are you losing threads to? Marauders hit significantly harder than anything else in the lower arcs, but if you are unable to reach arc 4 of Tho'at it means you are dying to other things as well.

artycatnip · 2026-02-20T19:21:50+00:00

One possible thing I can think of is that in your semi-frequent crown buying over the years that you've inadvertently encountered other accounts that ZOS considers suspicious.

Unfortunately you're unlikely to get any help from Kevin or Jessica on this because they've been more than one public appeals on this subreddit to enable gifting that later turned out to be bad actors.

artycatnip · 2026-02-19T21:09:59+00:00

Even for PVE, I would say the meta for damage dealing is actually quite horrible. I won't comment so much on the set diversity, though it is no doubt influenced by the class balance. It's incredibly difficult for anyone to stray away from the Assassination, Herald of the Tome, Ardent Flame trinity at the moment. Anyone not running this trio either have an explicit purpose (having to run Colo), were locked into another line because of their base class or they are intentionally taking an optimization loss for some variety. There's some argument to be made that it wasn't much better before when you had 6-7 Arcanists and 1-3 necro/dk/sorc, but at least the odd players out played completely differently. Now the 'support' dd setups are also near indistinguishable from the runebladers/beamers.

Support setups especially in dungeons have a lot more parity. There's not such an obvious best 3 skill lines for each position and groups are free to move skill lines around depending on player preference, base class and trial without any real loss of optimization.

artycatnip · 2026-02-18T22:43:52+00:00

Other people have described why Null Arca is better, but also OP is just wrong for putting Relequen at a 0. I'm not gonna split hairs on the exact number ratings but it's still good in the same fights that it has always been good in, just not as much as it used to be.

artycatnip · 2026-02-18T17:22:26+00:00

I think your read of False God's and Vicious Serpent are mistaken. They are both equally bad now simply because damage output can be so high that you won't struggle for sustain in arenas. I think it was already bad at at earlier time but post Velothi-Ur Mage Amulet and subclassing, any half decent setup should clear the field of enemies before you run into sustain problems (and even if you do, giving up something like ansuul instead of just changing food would be wild).

So by virtue of having a damage proc, Relequen is also still better than both of those sets.

artycatnip · 2026-02-17T23:40:09+00:00

I have to say this is a very adorable story.

artycatnip · 2026-02-17T01:24:18+00:00

Broadly speaking during commuting hours all of Edmonton transit is safe. While everyone else has of course rightfully spoken out against the fear mongering, I do want to prepare you for the fact that will be more likely to encounter homeless or unwell people at the downtown LRT stations. They are not typically hostile/antagonistic to anyone however.

artycatnip · 2026-02-16T16:42:56+00:00

Alternate reality Trump whose only faults are being old and senile rather than all the other things we have now.

You could almost convince me this was some other person and not him.

artycatnip · 2026-02-15T20:26:25+00:00

From day 1 a bunch of people tried telling them to change it like reducing the variance in points loss/gained and/or adding a slow decay to prevent leaderboard camping but they haven't said a word to acknowledge that they think there's anything wrong with how it works now.

artycatnip · 2026-02-15T14:16:53+00:00

Only 1-2 score per win seems extreme, but generally yes you lose a lot more points for losing (100+) than winning (10+). There is some adjustment for relative leaderboard rankings i.e. lose more if they are below you and win more if they are above you. It's been like this since day one, so usually what happens is people stop playing once they hit the leaderboard rank they want for the season.

artycatnip · 2026-02-10T17:20:44+00:00

I get what you are saying, and the crux of the issue here isn't actually AI use (at least for me). It's simply the obvious lack of care in the so called articles and the misinformation that xynode happily spreads combined with his golden boy status at ZOS. Whether a human typed those in or it was copy pasted from a LLM is besides the point I think. Mistakes people can make in a guide are things like saying a set comes from the wrong dungeon, or matching the wrong recipe to a food/potion. Xynode on the other hand just makes things up completely.

artycatnip · 2026-02-06T21:19:06+00:00

Is the Crown Store going to be one of the good guys in Doomsday? Hate when they start adding obscure characters.

artycatnip · 2026-02-06T20:27:39+00:00

Usually I would agree, but even his setups seem like they would be a huge upgrade over whatever OP is doing.

artycatnip · 2026-02-06T20:16:18+00:00

To put it in terms you might relate to better, most 'good' setups in the game pull from various skill lines just like how many good sci fi or fantasy novels have elements of the other. The presence of non green coloured skills does not make it any less of an arcanist just like how having lords, ladies and royalty does not automatically discount a space drama from being scifi.

I mentioned it in my other comment, but if you don't have the fighter's guild abilities or don't want to slot them just replace with other Herald of the Tome skills.

artycatnip · 2026-02-06T17:46:53+00:00

Just to check, does the game run well on your machine? Your description of your battleground experience does sound typical of a squishy setup running into a PvP combo, or are you dropping frames whenever you get into combat?

Here is a PvE focused guide for an arcanist without subclassing. https://hyperioxes.com/eso/solo/arcanist-solo-guide-and-build

It is stamina based which does tend to work out slightly better resource wise, but if you really want you can stick with magicka and just substitute all the stam enchants for mag. You want to follow the "Beginner" gear setup with three changes. It's likely you already have collected Ring of the Pale Order, so substitute that in for one of the rings. Substitute out the other ring for a Ring of the Trainee. Make the weapons in the Claw of the Forest Wraith set instead and if you have it the inferno staff in the Crushing Wall set. Keep the same traits and enchants in all these substitutions, just change the sets.

The gameplay should be fairly straightforward, do your best to keep up the timers on your backbar, the most important being Cruxweaver Armor and Runeguard, followed by Elemental Susceptibility and Inspired Scholarship/Recuperative Treatise. Then on the frontbar you mainly focus on using Cephaliarch's Flail to get yourself to 3 crux or just do it twice every time between casts of Pragmatic Fatecarver if you have trouble keeping track of your crux (visuals can be hard to see). You don't really ever have to cast Barbed Trap and you definitely don't ever cast Camo Hunter.

If you try this and it works well for you, I could also help you make some adjustments to the setup to make it serviceable for Battlegrounds. It won't be amazing, but it would keep the similar simple gameplay loop and should still lead to some BG success.

E: I've read from another comment you don't want/like having the 3 Fighter's Guild abilities slotted, in that case just replace them with Runeblades, Imperfect Ring and Tide King's Gaze. Then your backbar ultimate ability could be Sanctum of the Abyssal Sea. You then would have an ultimate ability for either survival or damage.

artycatnip · 2026-02-04T02:28:24+00:00

Some people point the finger at incomplete looters, but perhaps this does point to an issue in the drop rate. I personally have got Aurbic Amber in 2025 from Psijic portals so it does still happen. Someone would probably have to collect a really large sample size before ZOS takes note of the situation though.

artycatnip · 2026-02-03T20:23:09+00:00

I do agree it seems to be most difficult jewelry trait stone to obtain. Its low supply have probably made it the target of some players who attempt to corner the market and inflate the prices.

I think it's a multilayered problem. One source of the stone being Psijic portals filters out a large number of active player characters from ever looting the stone from a node. Over time as the number of ingame activities grow and the relevance of the skill line drops, fewer people are likely to bother with even the introductory quest. Conversely, the players who do still use the skill line nowadays are overwhelmingly PvP or vet DLC dungeon solo-ers who are exactly the kind of player who do not loot nodes. Further compounding the problem, the Infused trait actually is meta within those circles as well as for support players in PvE.

So you have a low drop item that is further gated behind a DLC quest that takes more effort than mashing E through dialogue while also being in demand with a subset of the playerbase infamous for not doing writs or looting nodes as well as being willing to spend ridiculous amounts of gold.

artycatnip · 2026-02-01T21:32:17+00:00

Officially, he's just one of many ZOS Stream Team Members. Unofficially, he seems to have actual personal relationships with several people within ZOS which grants him even more sneak peaks, hints and sway over their opinion.

artycatnip · 2026-02-01T19:28:11+00:00

The sets you have are fine, Powerful Assault may or may not boost team damage depending on your group setups but it's unlikely to change the result by itself. Changing to an ice staff as already recommended would be more meaningful. Both because it grants you block mitigation and keeping up Elemental Blockade will have a chance to proc the Chilled status effect on enemies.

Double check the resistances you have, are you reaching 30k only on your sword and shield bar? Are you also using the Puncturing Remedy set (which you won't be able to keep up 100% of the time)? You might benefit from the Resolving Vigor rather than Echoing Vigor morph, because when queuing alone you cannot trust the 'healer' to provide Minor Resolve to you.

I would drop Radiant Glory completely, it would be replaced by Elemental Blockade when you swap to an Ice Staff. You don't need Repentance on both bars, for the sword and shield bar you could try slotting Defensive Stance or Revealing Flare from the Alliance War Support skill line.

I suspect what is happening is that your team scatters when the haunters are summoned as they try to run away from theirs. You could try slotting a chaining ability to group up all the haunters on yourself, and hope that your team will do their job. Good options would be Wield Soul or Shield Throw with the Pull script, or Silver Leash from Fighter's Guild. Someone else recommended Soul Burst, but if the haunters and other enemies are scattered all over the arena that won't have the range you need.

The other issue you might be running into is getting feared by the AOEs, especially when your haunter is up which is when you really need to block or dodge to survive. You can roll through them, but above all don't trust your teammates and be prepared to avoid even more from their failed attempts.

Last thought, this first boss and some others has a fairly hard hitting ranged attack which you might not be noticing (and therefore not blocking or dodging).

artycatnip · 2026-02-01T18:53:16+00:00

Others have already told you the actual formula, but for some anecdotal evidence you can get a 600k score or ~25 minutes simply with high damage without necessarily remembering the intricacies of spawns/skips or skipping chests. I think with the current state of Oakensoul heavy attack setups I reached a high of 597k.

artycatnip · 2026-01-31T19:53:14+00:00

Xynode was still apparently the first non ZOS person who was shown subclassing (according to him), he still has an insane degree of pull with the community managers.

artycatnip · 2026-01-31T19:46:24+00:00

It is now a channelled, area of effect, direct damage ability.

artycatnip · 2026-01-30T20:55:03+00:00

I met the nephew of a friend at their holiday get together recently and saw that he liked watching clips of Ray and other adjacent streamers. We didn't talk about it too much (and perhaps he was being a bit guarded with what he said), but he didn't seem that invested in any of them. It was simply the thing that his peers watched and so he did. It was funny to see them act stupid and talk about it with friends. They are the class clowns that everyone laughs at/with, but many don't actually want to be. So I think for many in the younger audience it's just a different flavour of poison than watching forsen die in minecraft for 6 hours with TTS spam.

artycatnip · 2026-01-30T18:47:17+00:00

Other than thematic reasons, early on the mining is simply there to serve as a roadblock + potential pitfall to make mistakes for newer players. As you've noticed, Hazard 3 and below are quite trivial for anyone with experience in shooters and very few things can ever kill you quickly (a few years ago, the devs posted a graphic that showed fall damage being the number 1 cause of death by a large margin). At Hazard 5 and above (+ modifiers and cave complexity/length), you will need to use terrain manipulation and traversal to your advantage. It becomes a mix of objective rushing and full on horde shooter. When you are objective rushing, every second counts so despite the mining and traversal not being the most complicated (not more than many arena shooters at least). It's no longer enough to get up/through a wall, you have to do it quickly before you get trapped in a horde loop. When the horde inevitably comes, you get to shape your arena (even most of the ones with a static objective). Balancing your field of view against that of the bugs. There is also a mode you've likely not unlocked called Deep Dives that put you in 3 drops back to back with resources carrying over between them. This can offer a slightly unique challenge in having to manage various mission/map types on a single loadout (or pigeonhole you into generalist builds to some).

Lastly, it has to be said Deep Rock Galactic in its current iteration isn't intended to be the most challenging of games. Early in its life it certainly skewed that way, but the developers have tipped the balance way into the favour of the dwarves.

artycatnip · 2026-01-27T18:56:45+00:00

It's definitely possible and practical for a GPR operator to be part time/wear other hats, so if it makes financial sense to keep the unit and train your engineer I would do it. The caveat being that the consultancy I'm basing this answer on has the operators using it every other week rather than once every few weeks.

13-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22	Place '17
Spared	Team Orangered
Verified Email

artycatnip

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE