Guild Wars 2

I invite everyone to share their thoughts on changes to old fractals here in this one thread. I did my daily today with all old fractals (good luck, or bad depending how you look at it), so I’ll go first.

Ascalon
- Didn’t notice much of anything big. NPCS might have been made a little beefier. Ascalonian Captain didn’t manage to down them. Our mesmer TW’ed the group of NPC’s and they pretty much killed Captain themselves.

Snowblind
- Boss health reduced, seemed to stick around longer to get smacked around before porting upwards. Big improvement here.
- Woods are actually dangerous now, seems you need stealth or time your run between the packs of mobs or you get mowed down. Nice change to an old part that was sort of a throwaway before.

Cliffside
- Boss health reduced. He needed it; far less tedious overall.
- Seemed easier overall, although that might just be running it at scale 30 rather than the 48 I used to do.
- People will hate me for pointing it out, but it’s just getting silly. The stun bug on the boss still works. My group was pretty dumbfounded.

Overall
- Seemed to be a bit better loot wise for that scale. I got two account bound exotics and a rare from the run, probably better than I was doing before at the same level. No one in group got a weapon (not bad or surprising, mind you) but I think all got infused rings.
- Gold rewards still don’t really compete with dungeons, but I won’t say no to gold.
- Got a bunch of empyreal stars from daily chest. Not thrilled about that, but if there’s a chance for the chest to drop dragonite, I’d be interested.
- Looking forward to making another run tomorrow, hope to see some of the new stuff. I love that one of my favorite parts of the game has gotten so much attention (except for stun bug on Cliffside, I mean, really?) after so long.

Aquatic Ruins
-Boss health seemed reduced (or maybe cages just help more now) otherwise not really any noticeable changes

Uncategorized “Harpy”
-No change really

Urban “Dredge”
-More trash mobs added at spawn point
-Dying on the pads is no more, it’ll kick you off them
-No pipes to stand on in champ room (but the champ is easier – didn’t see the one shot down skill at level 10 anyway)

Solid Ocean
-No changes noticed really

I’m interested if anyone has noticed a change in Cliffside if the hammer holder falls? Does it still bug out with a hammer floating in the air or does it actually respawn somewhere. I know this is about old fractals but the Molten Furnace Fractal is actually fun (not sure if intentional but there’s nodes in there too like the original dungeon). Mai Trin boss should just be renamed dodgefest. I like the fight but the cannon fire periods could have been reduced in length.

i did cliffside on lvl 18 and we fell a few times with the hammer and it spawned on the pedestal close to the checkpoint you respawn at, this i think was just at the part with the wind that you must wait for, noone fell at the wrist part. And yes the stun bug does still work. There seemed to be a lot more veterans at the fire trap part too.

on uncategorized i noticed there were a few less harpys and they did still go invuln but went off invul a lot quicker.

the aquatic ruins boss seems a bit harder, as it seems he can pull you from alot farther away to eat you, and you go skip downed and go straight dead if you dont escape. I don’t have alot of experience levels greater than 30, but even in the old 28’s i ran i dont remember seeing anyone go down to him.

Overall I really like that they seperated the levels out by difficulty, and seemed to fix a few bugs. But the new boss levels really makes me angry, mai trin ? maw ? molten alliance bosses. The solid ocean was just a nice sort of ‘cooldown’ and good way to farm loot if your team wanted to. Now if you don’t roll maw your in for a harrowing experience. Take the aetherblade boss fight, during the cannon phase if you happen to run/dodge to the wrong spot it ports you back to the middle of the cannon fire. I was on a level 8 fractal with pugs and we flew threw the first 3, but this boss fight took us 3 times as long as it took us to complete the other 3 fractals. Maybe its just that people don’t know the mechanics yet, but I forsee people rerolling until maw at certain levels of difficulty.

Sorry for the rant

At level 30.

Swamp : Saw nothing different.

Ascalon : The NPC react way better. They stick near you and engage more rapidly the mob in the streets. This is also good for the boss since they attack him rapidly and don’t wait anymore that we melee him a bit before joining the fight. Also at level 30 the Agony attack of the boss didn’t seem to affect the NPC or it affect them way less than before. We killed him in like 20 sec with a lot of help from the NPC. Overall it was more easy with the NPC reacting more quickly, but i fear a bit for higher level if the NPC just LEEROY in the Arena at the end. We were able to pull the first group, kill a second but then the NPC charged. Maybe it was a bad manoeuver on our part, i’m not sure. Gonna have to test a bit more.

Drege : Well everyone know by now. A bunch of Dredge at the spawn point, not a big deal just one more fight in the path. And you can’t die on you button anymore. This can be annoying for pugs but still you can do it with pretty much any combination of profession (but a thief always help). In a couple of weeks I’m sure that most of pugs will have learn how to do this part legit so it won’t be a problem anymore.

Jade Maw : Didn’t see anything different.

In Snowblind it seemed to my group that the last boss’ red circles were a little more random. You could still find a safe spot to stand but you had to wait until circles spawned to find it as it wasn’t in the usual place.

30+

Swamp: Trees are easier to climb. It seems there are less traps (of the bear variety).
Harpies: 2-3 Less Harpies. Some of the harpies are missing.
Dredge: Seems we got the heavily populated variety of he fractal. We got Bombs.
Ice: More mobs on your run to the cave? If you die, you get sent to the very start!

I really welcomed the addition of Molten alliance, Aetherblade, and Reactor to the rotation. It is quite welcome. Aetherblade will be CRUSHED once people figure out the second trap logic. It will be faster than swamp.

And of course, I love the instabilities! We only got to try 2: Mossman and Extended conditions. Conditions really was a let down, I mean, you always remove them anyways. Mossman was superbly fun! He appeared at the worst possible times. We had a blast calling him out every time he appeared!