Guild Wars 2

So after the reset to levels I instantly found my self with a friend doing lv30 fractals. And on the third fractal we gotten dredge, I have not found any tuning to this that would make it less frustrating then it was before. The sad thing is that I have seen people complain about this fractal again and again while arenanet does not seem to react. Some groups running 5 berserker warriors or warriors and guardians might not have any problem, but pick up groups will too often have too many power/toughness/vitality characters who can not clear the room well enough. Not to mention the dredge knocking you off platforms as well as knocking you off to the middle making you fall bellow arena. After that having encounters that just involve killing 50 dredge or suicide bomb run.

For all I know its just my ignorance. Please, do tell me if its just me and the dredge dungeon is actually not as bad as I make it sound. Do people actually enjoy that fractal?

They are happy to fix bugs that assist the player while brushing bugs that hurt the player off for ‘later’ updates.

I agree that it would be better if every one would kill respawning dredge to actually control the amount of them, but not all groups can muster that damage, the amount of time I see 4 people doing less damage then 1x berserker warrior is uncanny. 3k auto attacks from berserk, 500 auto attacks from power/toughness/vitality. Not all groups able to clear them.

Some times I wonder what the point of having other gear was in the game? Things like dredge bombs are tailored to a full zerker group with insanely high DPS.

Ventrue.5731:

I agree that it would be better if every one would kill respawning dredge to actually control the amount of them, but not all groups can muster that damage, the amount of time I see 4 people doing less damage then 1x berserker warrior is uncanny. 3k auto attacks from berserk, 500 auto attacks from power/toughness/vitality. Not all groups able to clear them.

You just have to know the mechanic.

I believe (as I watched the video a bit ago) there is a group that resets based on time, then there are groups that spawn based on how many bombs hit the door. I believe a group spawns every 2 bombs. So the strategy I saw was to do 3 bombs, kill the spawns, then drop the last 4 quickly (total of 7 takes the door down)

If you’re running PVT in Dredge Fractal, that’s a player issue, NOT a design issue!

“Learn to play”.

You don’t need insanely high DPS, but a least run something with an ounce of damage, like Knight’s.

Kain Francois.4328:

If you’re running PVT in Dredge Fractal, that’s a player issue, NOT a design issue!

“Learn to play”.

You don’t need insanely high DPS, but a least run something with an ounce of damage, like Knight’s.

Or…U can run FULL PVT gear then put all ur traits into power, prec, crit damage

Full PVT, even with traits, still does too little damage. Save it for WvW, and run something with Power and Precision. (Third stat doesn’t matter as much.)

I enjoy the fractal. I often prefer it as I can usually get good drops and it’s how I got most of my shards to upgrade rings.

Kain Francois.4328:

If you’re running PVT in Dredge Fractal, that’s a player issue, NOT a design issue!

“Learn to play”.

You don’t need insanely high DPS, but a least run something with an ounce of damage, like Knight’s.

I am a guardian with knights, I also leveled a full zerker warrior and thief that I run other dungeons with, friend I do stuff with is zerker warrior with 0 defensive talents. How do I learn to play to a point that turns my party members into knights? I was not complaining that I don’t do any damage because I have no offensive stats, I am saying there too many defensive people in this game, and you often get groups were they are all in put together in 1 group. I had runs with out my friend, as a knight guardian I don’t even compare my dps to zerk warrior, and I had people in my group who were full defensive. There is no inspect element or dps meter, there is no way I can LEARN TO PLAY this part of the game except to stop puging. But I can’t, all except one of my friends who tried this game quit.

Ventrue.5731:

Kain Francois.4328:

If you’re running PVT in Dredge Fractal, that’s a player issue, NOT a design issue!

“Learn to play”.

You don’t need insanely high DPS, but a least run something with an ounce of damage, like Knight’s.

I am a guardian with knights, I also leveled a full zerker warrior and thief that I run other dungeons with, friend I do stuff with is zerker warrior with 0 defensive talents. How do I learn to play to a point that turns my party members into knights? I was not complaining that I don’t do any damage because I have no offensive stats, I am saying there too many defensive people in this game, and you often get groups were they are all in put together in 1 group. I had runs with out my friend, as a knight guardian I don’t even compare my dps to zerk warrior, and I had people in my group who were full defensive. There is no inspect element or dps meter, there is no way I can LEARN TO PLAY this part of the game except to stop puging. But I can’t, all except one of my friends who tried this game quit.

This is the point when you realize that you have outgrown the quality of pugs. You wish to hone your skills further and tackle more challenging content, but low quality of the average pugs hold you back. I’d advise you to find more dungeon oriented guilds who are more on your level and share your goal of clearing harder content more quickly.

it got worse….-_-

One of us died on the button in the 2 button room and the door closed.
But the one using that thing behind the door didn’t get interrupted so we still did it.. I guess thats a bug :p

And do dredge pickup the bombs now or something at the door blasting part?
I had to put a sanctuary on them to keep them from removing them ;o

“And do dredge pickup the bombs now or something at the door blasting part?”

They’ve done that for a long time. It’s quite hard to tell what’s going on though as if your group mates do different things those guys can be hardly seen, can pick up the bombs, can wander to the bottom following you, so I’ve never entirely worked them out. If they pick up one bomb they can’t hold a second, but if you kill them they will respawn empty handed.

I spent a good 2 hours there yesterday with a group consisting of 2 Guards, 2 Warriors and my Necro. Eventually two characters logged on their thief alts to complete the puzzle and if I wasn’t the one who opened the fractal I’m sure I would have been kicked..

Seriously the longest fractal in existence which requires a specific set up of classes these days it seems. I’m glad we were all very relaxed, I can see people rage quitting when the fractal appears in random PUGs.

In short, I disagree.

I ran fractals last night (lvl 10) with a guildy and some PUG’s. We got dredge on our third fractal. It didn’t go real well at first. Had one guy who had never done fractals before and my guildy who was leveling his ele (he eventually had to switch over to his lvl 80 guard). After losing some bads and gaining a thief and another warrior who knew what they were doing, it was smooth sailing the rest of the way.

I won’t complain about the fractal because I don’t think it’s that bad other than the length, which as has been said many times before, it’s just disproportionately long compared to most of the other fractals. One thing that made me mad last night was the aggro mechanics though. I was literally 100b’ing a vet dredge in the face and somehow he was still aggro’d on the guy on the console, not allowing him to do it.

Some changes we noticed:

1) I think they actually added more dredge at the beginning. I feel like there were 20 dredge patrolling by the spawn and up on the first platform.

2) Before you could die on the switches. Last night, when people were dying, they were blowing us off the switches.

3) Had someone show me another spot to glitch into the room without having to do the first 2 switches. I don’t think it’s worth the headache and time of doing it, but seriously anet, another glitched spot that people can skip on the same fractal?

The dredge patrols at the start were on-again off-again, sometimes they were there, sometimes not.

The removal of all the methods of not suiciding just to advance to the end of the FIRST PORTION of the fractal is poor form. Instead of doing what GW1 did and encouraged creativity, the devs for GW2 take offense to people bypassing their so-called “hard work” and remove all the ways people could EVEN LEGITIMATELY bypass those first two door switches. Jumping over an open-top cage? Nah. Using portals to blink people in? Nope. Use items created for specific purposes in-game, that cost karma or coins in order to complete those specific tasks? Nada. Suicide, incur armor damage and encourage class bigotry to those who can perform specific roles? Sure.

Anet: If you’re going to go to great lengths to make the game more frustrating in some regards, at least balance out the rest of it so it at least resembles some form of fun. The dredge fractal is the single reason most players who choose not to play fractals made that choice. And it’s only gotten more and more frustrating with every update.

I beg to differ, my PVT minion Master necro does around 4 to 5k in a full cycle of dagger hits and minion smacks. With no minions up I still hit about 2k and some change with a full dagger rotation. 460×460×1280

None of this is counting siphon damage which is about 34 a hit, per minion and dagger smack. It’s also not counting stat food or bloodlust buff on my dagger being stacked

On top of that having 29k HP and 1.9k toughness usually means i’m the last one up and i’ve finished several bosses by myself after the group died, unlike a full berserker who has a stiff fart blow their way to topple them

WereDragon.6083:

I beg to differ, my PVT minion Master necro does around 4 to 5k in a full cycle of dagger hits and minion smacks. With no minions up I still hit about 2k and some change with a full dagger rotation. 460×460×1280

None of this is counting siphon damage which is about 34 a hit, per minion and dagger smack. It’s also not counting stat food or bloodlust buff on my dagger being stacked

On top of that having 29k HP and 1.9k toughness usually means i’m the last one up and i’ve finished several bosses by myself after the group died, unlike a full berserker who has a stiff fart blow their way to topple them

not everyone has an option to play a bunker due to class mechanic restrictions..

At least at the moment some people who use less than optimal armor/gear can be convinced to change.

Once Ascended armor comes, those who choose not to craft Ascended zerker gear will likely never change their gear again — so the DPS problem is only going to get worse.

I agree. They said that, overall, each fractals have been made easier than it was. For dredge, it actually has become even more tedious. The number of dredges spawned are unnecessarily high. Anet contended that it was designed for game time of 15-30 mins, citing their test team. They forget the fact that their test team are well-coordinated groups and there is such a concept as random pugs that most likely do not have such coordination level.

WereDragon.6083:

I beg to differ, my PVT minion Master necro does around 4 to 5k in a full cycle of dagger hits and minion smacks. With no minions up I still hit about 2k and some change with a full dagger rotation. 460×460×1280

None of this is counting siphon damage which is about 34 a hit, per minion and dagger smack. It’s also not counting stat food or bloodlust buff on my dagger being stacked

On top of that having 29k HP and 1.9k toughness usually means i’m the last one up and i’ve finished several bosses by myself after the group died, unlike a full berserker who has a stiff fart blow their way to topple them

4-5k on a CYCLE is not impressive damage. 2k on a rotation? I’m not one to exclude classes from group play but before you knock a zerker, make sure you’re even playing in the same league of damage. Let’s not knock a player who’s dropping your entire two “rotations” worth of damage in a single hit.

WereDragon.6083:

I beg to differ, my PVT minion Master necro does around 4 to 5k in a full cycle of dagger hits and minion smacks. With no minions up I still hit about 2k and some change with a full dagger rotation. 460×460×1280

None of this is counting siphon damage which is about 34 a hit, per minion and dagger smack. It’s also not counting stat food or bloodlust buff on my dagger being stacked

On top of that having 29k HP and 1.9k toughness usually means i’m the last one up and i’ve finished several bosses by myself after the group died, unlike a full berserker who has a stiff fart blow their way to topple them

This post has so much fail in it that the thread is on the verge of implosion.

My zerker warrior who “Dies from farts in the wind” will put out more DPS in 15 seconds then your minion necro will for 15 minutes. High toughness and HP mean so little in dungeons when a high percentage of boss attacks can wipe that out in 1-2 shots anyway. But, I guess it is pretty hard to die when camping at 1200 range while us silly zerker’s do all the work of taking away the boss’s HP.

It’s folks like that… Not only completely ignorant of the current game mechanics, but also so filled with hate. It certainly has to come from lack of understanding. There’s no way someone can seriously sit at a 4k dps rotation with “34 siphon damage” and complain about players dealing damage.

It’s not necros, it’s ignorant players who love nothing more than remaining ignorant.

I can see why people think that anet don’t play their own game. Only anet would claim that removing the ability to suicide on the buttons made the fractal easier, lol.

Dredge with the lvl34 no crits mistlock lolololololol.

There are a lot of “Learn to Play” responses when people discuss dredge, and yes it CAN be done at high levels, but the issue is every other fractal (including the new ones) can be done in much less time. It’s a lot longer than the others. “Get a Fast Team” responses can be countered with, the fast team will be even faster at the other fractals because they are already short!

In any case, if there was one change Anet should have made to FotM it is this: Make Dredge Fractal shorter.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Once Ascended armor comes, those who choose not to craft Ascended zerker gear will likely never change their gear again — so the DPS problem is only going to get worse.

Agree strongly. Right now I carry multiple armor sets on the three professions I play most often. Once Ascended armor comes, it’s going to be hard enough to outfit each of those characters with just one set. Nevermind a choice in ascended armors. The problem will get worse as we will be tightly bound to our stats.

Dying on the buttons made life a little easier, I am surprised Anet thought this was something that needed attention asap. and be fixed. On the other hand we can still blink through the cage or get on top to drop down into the cage… This does not compute with me; I am genuinely confused about this.

About the hordes of respawning trash mobs and the clowncar… I’m not even gonna go there.

I am a casual fractal player, only went to 30+ fotm 4 times since the release and got dredge 3 times as third fractal. Two of those times people just quit after a while, because it just takes way too long. I am already contemplating to sticking to 20+ until I get my shield and then call it quits.

Chris RJ.1843:

4-5k on a CYCLE is not impressive damage. 2k on a rotation? I’m not one to exclude classes from group play but before you knock a zerker, make sure you’re even playing in the same league of damage. Let’s not knock a player who’s dropping your entire two “rotations” worth of damage in a single hit.

Ikr, don’t blame the necro though. For a while I thought my hybrid necro did great dmg in pve (cos I wanted it to be true). But after a lot of testing, I’d have to say pretty much all my other toons leave my necro in the dust. Kinda sucks.

Havana.8625:

There are a lot of “Learn to Play” responses when people discuss dredge, and yes it CAN be done at high levels, but the issue is every other fractal (including the new ones) can be done in much less time. It’s a lot longer than the others. “Get a Fast Team” responses can be countered with, the fast team will be even faster at the other fractals because they are already short!

In any case, if there was one change Anet should have made to FotM it is this: Make Dredge Fractal shorter.

Yeah, a number of the things take a long, long time even if you do them correctly. I did it at 34 (no crits haha don’t get me started on that) and we had a strategy for the bomb part – have guards use sanctuary or line of warding on the bombs so the dredge wouldn’t pick them up. That’s what your supposed to do if you don’t have a thief as far as I can tell. We did it correctly as a team, still took forever. Bombs take forever to respawn. Have to clear a stupid number of dredge when it’s over. Rabsovich HP still haywire. Still had to wait forever for all the clown car mobs.

That was after the stupid gate part. And then there is the end boss. Geez – they can have one stupid long part, but not all in the same fractal.

It’s been pretty obvious to me since this fractal was introduced that they only tested it up to lv. 20. There’s simply no way the developers saw the amount of mobs that spawn at later levels and thought it was OK — unless they don’t understand fundamental game mechanics like AOE cap and dredge’s immunity to blind.

It’s doable and much easier than people let on, but I’m certain it’s all a happy accident.