Guild Wars 2

I wanted to make a Pro/Con Fractal thread for the new changes and also a place for suggestions for the new “Fractured” Content. This is a great place for questions concerning Fractals too like, “What happens to my existing AR once the update goes live?” Anyways, on to the list.

Pros:

Account Wide Fractal Levels—-Awesome!
Chest at the end of every Fractal level, not just even ones like the past.
Gold as well as loot.
New Fractals! Really looking forward to them!
Lowered level where Fractal Weapons can drop at (10)
Fixed Dredge Fractal to be in line (length-wise) with other Fractals.
Tiered the Fractals so that you don’t get 3 lengthier ones in a row (Hooray!)

Cons:
Fractal Weapons still require Transmutation Stones(?) Clarification needed EDIT: No Trans. Stn=ones needed after update! It’s a Pro now!
Level reset and leaderboards
No Ascended Fractal Armor or Ascended Fractal Weapons (only place Ascended is technically needed because of AR) EDIT: Ascended Armor when it arrives in the game, Fractal armor was not commented on

Questions I have:
Is there any plan to add unique Ascended Fractal Armor to the game that we can A.) get as drops, B.) Get from a currency like our pristine relics C.) Get from Fractal Relics or that we can trade fractal relics in for Pristine ones

Is there any chance of changing the Fractal weapons into “skins” or get them to be Ascended as drops? At the moment we have to use Trans stones on them and they are not ascended. It’s like, “Here’s this reward! Now spend money on a transmutation stone!” I absolutely adore the skins, it’s just kind of a backhanded reward at this point because we have to consume an item whereas other skins are an item and a stone at the same time.

I didn’t see any info on the Dredge Fractal changes that Colin outlined earlier this year. Is that happening? Are the fixes to the “invulnerable” Harpies being addressed as well? I saw that the wall was raised in the Jade Fractal and yet we still have really annoying bugs that have been in place since the Fractals came out. Would love to see those issues addressed.

I would also raise a suggestion that I posted elsewhere for people that made it past level 50: On the leaderboards it should say what level a player made it to and it should retroactively show what level they are from currently. So if a player made it to level 80, the leaderboard should reflect that.

Thanks for your time and thank you for this update. I can’t wait!

Other players please list your pros and cons below!

id say leader board is a pro

‘Also the difficulty scaling has been tweaked overall to create a slightly less difficult curve up to 50.’

So it looks like FoTM will be easier ?
Looks like the leaderboard will have everyone at #1 unless they count the number of times you have ‘grinded’ FoTM ?

TPMN.1483:

‘Also the difficulty scaling has been tweaked overall to create a slightly less difficult curve up to 50.’

So it looks like FoTM will be easier ?
Looks like the leaderboard will have everyone at #1 unless they count the number of times you have ‘grinded’ FoTM ?

It doesn’t matter… We all start at the bottom anyways….

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

We fixed a number of bugs and made lots of balance changes to existing fractals. Also the difficulty scaling has been tweaked overall to create a slightly less difficult curve up to 50.

The weapons are skins now.

Ascended armor is not in the game right now, but if it was, it would drop in the Fractals.

Implying there was a difficult curve to begin with?

Honestly, they were easy enough as they were, Fractals 40+ weren’t hard at all. So, now you capped it at lvl50 and made it even easier?

Not only that, but you’re just giving away Fractal weapons too? The better thing to do would have been restricting weapons to 30+ or 40+ so that people actually have some incentive to become better at the game instead of the casual terribad fest of a community we have now.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

We fixed a number of bugs and made lots of balance changes to existing fractals. Also the difficulty scaling has been tweaked overall to create a slightly less difficult curve up to 50.

The weapons are skins now.

Ascended armor is not in the game right now, but if it was, it would drop in the Fractals.

Except for the easier part….

!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Ascended armor is not in the game right now, but if it was, it would drop in the Fractals.

Does it means that ascended weapons will drop in fractals? They are in the game right now

bynkowski.9046:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Ascended armor is not in the game right now, but if it was, it would drop in the Fractals.

Does it means that ascended weapons will drop in fractals? They are in the game right now

Ascended weapons do drop in fractals, but very rare.

Kaiiku.2917:

bynkowski.9046:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Ascended armor is not in the game right now, but if it was, it would drop in the Fractals.

Does it means that ascended weapons will drop in fractals? They are in the game right now

Ascended weapons do drop in fractals, but very rare.

oh so its like with precursors they drop very rare but I will never drop one, OK

I actually got one randomly.
They’re muuuuch easier than precursors to get, theoretically, since their odds are more in favor.

The only issue is that it’s a box of any ascended weapon but its with their fixed stats.

I.e. you get a box to choose a weapon with Settler’s stats.

Basically you don’t choose the stats…

maybe it will be point based with number of points added = level of fractal you did or weighted exponentially depending on the difficulty. However, it be funny to see a squad of 5 always rank 1 or competing squads of formers competing for rank 1 spots.

So are you saying level 48 is easier now, or is it just a “smoother” curve up to 50?

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

…The weapons are skins now…

Does this imply they are also tradeable or able to be listed on the Trade Post? Or will they remain accountbound?

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

We fixed a number of bugs and made lots of balance changes to existing fractals.

So the dredge clown car has been brought in line (read: drastically reduced in number) and the hp of the champs in uncategorized is now 1/10th of what it was before?

These were the reasons these fractals were trash and people rerolled.

bynkowski.9046:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Ascended armor is not in the game right now, but if it was, it would drop in the Fractals.

Does it means that ascended weapons will drop in fractals? They are in the game right now

On the preview page it specifically mentions ascended weapon drops. Not sure if this will mean different drops from the ascended chance already in the fracs.

Brutal Arts.6307:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

We fixed a number of bugs and made lots of balance changes to existing fractals.

So the dredge clown car has been brought in line (read: drastically reduced in number) and the hp of the champs in uncategorized is now 1/10th of what it was before?

These were the reasons these fractals were trash and people rerolled.

Not only this, Dredge is a complete waste of time except for the Heavy Miners bags that occasionally drop. They are just so ridiculously time consuming to say swamp or water. As for uncategorized, this one is fairly easy and I don’t see a reason to nerf the champ HP in melee they all go down rather quickly. I really don’t see why people hate Uncategorized. If anything Cliffside could use a few tweaks

pro : doesn’t matter because….

cons: They took away somthing invested loads of time and Money and worked hard for. they take 81 rewards Level from me to only give me 30 back. no Matter what a game is doing.. if they start taking a way things Player earned and worked hard for… you just can’t trust em… they could with same arguments take away legendaries / pvp ranks / wvw ranks .

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

pro : doesn’t matter because….

cons: They took away somthing invested loads of time and Money and worked hard for. they take 81 rewards Level from me to only give me 30 back. no Matter what a game is doing.. if they start taking a way things Player earned and worked hard for… you just can’t trust em… they could with same arguments take away legendaries / pvp ranks / wvw ranks .

patrikan, I have seen that you have posted this in myriad threads. We all get it. Can you please stop mentioning it? I want to keep this thread confined to what you like about Fractals and what you dislike. No need to keep repeating ad nauseam your feeling on the issue. You have done it enough now. Thanks.

I don’t suppose there’s any plans to make Fractal skins tradable? The only one I really have my eye on is the Fractal Sword. It’d be a great shame if I got another skin and all I could do was trash it. At least with the old weapons, one could merch them or throw them at Zommoros.

I for one am very disappointed, Anet.

You had set a challenge for people, and a reward (though RNG based) for their efforts and their time.
Rather than go ahead and expand on current difficulties and rewards, you’ve dumbed it down and really devalued a very unique part of the game.
These fractal weapons were the “envy and adulation” of other players.
Seeing someone with a fractal weapon, researching and finding out just how much work was involved made this on par with uniqueness of legendaries.
Yes the RNG sucked and getting the weapon you wanted could be a never coming thing.
But how is that any different from precursors?
Now I’m not saying they should be trade able, but there are other methods to acquisition that would better suite than to make them an even earlier drop.
These need to be something earned. Something that players who put HOURS into your game deserve.

You set a cap for players for a reason.
If you didn’t want them going past 50 in the first place, you should’ve set the cap at 50.
Don’t put it at 80, let players burn out at it, then kill all their time and hard work, team co-ordination and organisation with a level reduction.
We like a challenge and you just rained on their parades.
(For the record I stopped at 49, I am not being biased.)

You took trading away from a lot of items so that work had to be done.
We have a lot of fractal relics, pristine and non.
These would be a much better (alternate/additional) way of acquiring these weapons.
You could even make the weapon chests you bought with relics an RNG thing, it would give people who aren’t lucky enough for the drop to still have a shot and getting something for all those runs.
You have a weapon and armour vendor for all the other dungeons, with unique skins.
A fractal version would be cool so long as the cost and rewards reflected the time and ability required for the 3-4 part dungeon sequence.

I sincerely hope if no changes are made between the update notes and release, that you at least throw compensation to those who hammered fractals before you candy it up with what will be a new common skin.

This update will give you many more interested in fractals, but as someone who only logs on for this content now, you will lose at least 1 player from the entire game.

@Bagel: According to Anthony in another thread, Fractal weapons ALWAYS had a chance to drop from level 10 – 20. There has been no change to the drop-rate of Fractals Weapons at all. There are only two differences:

1. They are now skins rather than weapons.
2. At higher levels (20 – 30, but may be 30+), there is a rare chance to get a Fractal box where you can choose the skin you want, similar to the Ascended boxes.

Zaxares,
I also saw the post regarding fractal weapons dropping from level 10.
However with so little evidence of this happening to the point where it isn’t even on wiki, makes it almost non-existence in terms of actual drops. When considering player research has concluded the drop rate for level 40-50 is around 46%.

1. The skins rather than weapons fact could not phase me less.
They are max damage and few gold to swap a weapon or re- mod a weapon is nothing compared to what this update is doing.
2. I’m not quite sure why you are giving me this point when my post is clearly not in favour of making it easier for people to acquire the skins.

I neglected including any comments about the weapon box because this is perfectly fine, provided the level at which these boxes drop are significantly high, and in addition to fractal weapons themselves dropping. Much like ascended weapon boxes.

Bagel.4598:

Seeing someone with a fractal weapon, researching and finding out just how much work was involved made this on par with uniqueness of legendaries.

Errr, what? Beating a level 20 fractal once is on par with a legendary? lol

panzer.6034:

Bagel.4598:

Seeing someone with a fractal weapon, researching and finding out just how much work was involved made this on par with uniqueness of legendaries.

Errr, what? Beating a level 20 fractal once is on par with a legendary? lol

Seeing someone with a fractal weapon, researching and finding out just how much work was involved made this on par with uniqueness of legendaries.

Allow me to elaborate,
You could pull out your credit card and buy a legendary, you could buy your precursor and build your legendary in time.
But there was NO guarantee you’d ever dual wield Fractal swords.

Bagel.4598:

panzer.6034:

Bagel.4598:

Seeing someone with a fractal weapon, researching and finding out just how much work was involved made this on par with uniqueness of legendaries.

Errr, what? Beating a level 20 fractal once is on par with a legendary? lol

Seeing someone with a fractal weapon, researching and finding out just how much work was involved made this on par with uniqueness of legendaries.

Allow me to elaborate,
You could pull out your credit card and buy a legendary, you could buy your precursor and build your legendary in time.
But there was NO guarantee you’d ever dual wield Fractal swords.

And i know people with bank tabs full of fractal weapons. How many people do you know with bank tabs full of legendaries?

panzer.6034:

Bagel.4598:

panzer.6034:

Bagel.4598:

Seeing someone with a fractal weapon, researching and finding out just how much work was involved made this on par with uniqueness of legendaries.

Errr, what? Beating a level 20 fractal once is on par with a legendary? lol

Seeing someone with a fractal weapon, researching and finding out just how much work was involved made this on par with uniqueness of legendaries.

Allow me to elaborate,
You could pull out your credit card and buy a legendary, you could buy your precursor and build your legendary in time.
But there was NO guarantee you’d ever dual wield Fractal swords.

And i know people with bank tabs full of fractal weapons. How many people do you know with bank tabs full of legendaries?

I know people with every single legendary.
I also know there are people who have done fractals for months and received no sword.
I also know of people who have done 500 runs and received 1 weapon.
Some are lucky, some are unlucky.
The weapons are special, they are unique, they are unlike any other skin in the game.
I am comparing the uniqueness. Not the value, not the quantity.
Do you understand now?

Proz:

- Account Wide personal reward level
- More agony infusion slots
- Daily chest reward
- Gold loot
- Thurmanova fractal (new)
- Fractal skins

Conz:

- Difficulty reset to 30
- AR still not account wide

Cons:
Fractal weapon at level 10?
why not selling them for 1 silver in lions arch?

It just makes the only rare NON gold/gem related weapon from the most rare to the most common.

Not to mention you are AGAIN ruining all progression of dedicated fractal players….

Can i have precursors and Black Lion skins with the same % at fotm 10?
-.-

Please consider leaving current droprates from lvl 20 and introducing 4X1 mystic forge recipe….

Its not fair Handling rare skins to everyone…..
Or make them tradable…at least we get some compensation for playing high level fractals instead of Champ trains/cof1…..

Pro:
daily chest
gold
new fractals
fractal skins
account wide personal level

con:
“Fractals are now weighted according to their length and difficulty. Easier fractals will always show up earlier in the run, with more difficult ones coming later.”

yes this is a con. Very few if any people like certain fractals, and pretty much no one liked seeing them last. I know theyve rebalanced difficulty. But im incredibly wary of situations where I get a bad PuG who manages to do the 2 easy fractals, only to slam into a cliffside and not be able to finish (wasting everyone’s time)

Anet saw there were fractals we didnt really like, and decided to make them show up more often, and in an order we didnt want them to appear in? Dat logic.

“back to 30”

Obvious.

“Thaumanova Reactor Fractal”

People voted this over Abaddon? I still dont get it. We all know the inquest blew it up guys. Hell you can already visit it ingame right now.

“To assist you in your ventures into the mists, a new agony resist infusion slot has been added to all infused rings and backpacks.”

Anyone who didnt have an innate infusion is back to square one?
Now you must rely on more RNG to gain agony res, rather than being able to purchase it? Also how does this affect WvW infusions? Will I lose those from my gear?

I think this needs a little more explanation. because at the moment it does not sound very good.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

We fixed a number of bugs and made lots of balance changes to existing fractals. Also the difficulty scaling has been tweaked overall to create a slightly less difficult curve up to 50.

The weapons are skins now.

Ascended armor is not in the game right now, but if it was, it would drop in the Fractals.

So that means no Ascended armors for fracs update?

Do not worry, guardiand and elementalists will show on the leaderboards the most, maybe with warriors up there as well, other professions will be decent or poor leaderboards will hopefully get arenanet to see the imbalance of professions in PvE dungeons/fractals

Flash.6912:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

We fixed a number of bugs and made lots of balance changes to existing fractals. Also the difficulty scaling has been tweaked overall to create a slightly less difficult curve up to 50.

The weapons are skins now.

Ascended armor is not in the game right now, but if it was, it would drop in the Fractals.

So that means no Ascended armors for fracs update?

They haven’t announced ascended armor crafting yet, so he could not say more than this. I read this as a hint that it is coming with the next patch, not the other way around. Makes complete sense to me anyway, since the core of the ascended tier started with FotM. How can you start a leaderboard and change the rules of the game (ie introduce ascended armor with better stats and infusion slots) midway?

Buttercup.5871:

Flash.6912:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

We fixed a number of bugs and made lots of balance changes to existing fractals. Also the difficulty scaling has been tweaked overall to create a slightly less difficult curve up to 50.

The weapons are skins now.

Ascended armor is not in the game right now, but if it was, it would drop in the Fractals.

So that means no Ascended armors for fracs update?

They haven’t announced ascended armor crafting yet, so he could not say more than this. I read this as a hint that it is coming with the next patch, not the other way around. Makes complete sense to me anyway, since the core of the ascended tier started with FotM. How can you start a leaderboard and change the rules of the game (ie introduce ascended armor with better stats and infusion slots) midway?

Totally agree with this sentiment. When Ascended Armor comes out, it will drop in the Fractals. I hadn’t thought about how Ascended Armor changes the leaderboard, but then again, I think a leaderboard was not the way to go. Ascended Fractal Armor drops were the way to go to show off how you were in the “lead” in Fractals. The leaders of the fractals need to be able to show that off in game, not on some website outside of Tyria.

LordByron.8369:

Cons:
Fractal weapon at level 10?
why not selling them for 1 silver in lions arch?

It just makes the only rare NON gold/gem related weapon from the most rare to the most common.

Not to mention you are AGAIN ruining all progression of dedicated fractal players….

Can i have precursors and Black Lion skins with the same % at fotm 10?
-.-

Please consider leaving current droprates from lvl 20 and introducing 4X1 mystic forge recipe….

Its not fair Handling rare skins to everyone…..
Or make them tradable…at least we get some compensation for playing high level fractals instead of Champ trains/cof1…..

I know you are a little slow but the fractal skins ALWAYS dropped in 10+, the % chance is just super low. You might actually ALREADY have the same chance to get a precursor as to get a fractal wep in level 10. You need to learn how to read properly.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

We fixed a number of bugs and made lots of balance changes to existing fractals. Also the difficulty scaling has been tweaked overall to create a slightly less difficult curve up to 50.

If they are going to be easier then why are you cutting our levels back to 30 then?
We don’t want or care about leaderboards this is PvE. I’d like to be opted out of that. I have yet to even hear anything positive about the leaderboards in PvP anyway. Why does a dungeon need them? This is dumb.

displacedTitan.6897:

LordByron.8369:

Cons:
Fractal weapon at level 10?
why not selling them for 1 silver in lions arch?

It just makes the only rare NON gold/gem related weapon from the most rare to the most common.

Not to mention you are AGAIN ruining all progression of dedicated fractal players….

Can i have precursors and Black Lion skins with the same % at fotm 10?
-.-

Please consider leaving current droprates from lvl 20 and introducing 4X1 mystic forge recipe….

Its not fair Handling rare skins to everyone…..
Or make them tradable…at least we get some compensation for playing high level fractals instead of Champ trains/cof1…..

I know you are a little slow but the fractal skins ALWAYS dropped in 10+, the % chance is just super low. You might actually ALREADY have the same chance to get a precursor as to get a fractal wep in level 10. You need to learn how to read properly.

Just logged in to say the exact same thing until I saw you already did. Ahah

Shpongle.6025:

Proz:

Conz:

- Difficulty reset to 30
- AR still not account wide

Are you serious? AR not being account bound is a Con? Let’s also make all gear stats account wide while at it…

Nah, seriously, it’s an UPGRADE applied to an ITEM. It will always be bound to the character who wields it. I would see NO purpose at it being account bound.

Oh, and getting AR on alts is really easy, you can get at least 1 +5 AR Versatile Infusion each run (they only cost 75 Fractal Relics) and it’s not like it’s hard infusing rings. You can get at least 35 easily (2 rings, 2 accessories, 1 amulet), which is enough for level 1-39.

Seriously, most cons noted here (except the reset to 30) are silly…

There’s just only one con to really add here:
The boss chest (chest for completing a fractal) is still daily.

……..They…..do know that this particular time-gated reward is the reason why people stopped doing fractals, right?

Master Yi.6129:

There’s just only one con to really add here:
The boss chest (chest for completing a fractal) is still daily.

……..They…..do know that this particular time-gated reward is the reason why people stopped doing fractals, right?

It’s daily… per 10 levels. You can do 4 fractals, not counting 1-9 (18, 28, 38, 48), which should take you between 5 to 6 hours. If you need to do more, then maybe you should also see other parts of the game.

Another con I thought of: Rewards that are Exotic out of chests are account bound. This needs to change.

Pros:

1. Everything already listed; almost every new addition. Awesome.

Cons:

1. Taking away peoples progression, ouch.

2. Stopping progression at level 50 on a content update which gives you the ability to obtain infinite AR. This is when you increase the progression, not decrease it.

3. Most importantly, in my opinion, there are not enough new rewards added in this patch. The gold is nice, yes, but it is not as much gold as you could obtain in a single dungeon run in1/3 of the time. The AR ‘baby’ infusions are cool, but just not exciting enough. I believe more skins should be added. They should be added either to the vendor for Relics, or new (unique) sets of skins should be added to the daily chests for every 10 or 20 levels of progression. I know this is subjective, but I find the current skins to be very unappealing looking, only made appealing by how difficult it was to obtain the ones you wanted. They were interesting when they first came out, but through living story update after living story update much better looking skins have come out since the release of Fractals. If you want us to really care about fractal progression, we need a better reason to do the higher levels. We need different/more skins. Dare I say armor skins? Wait, nvm, you only want us to find new armor skins in the gem store, and virtually no where else : / Whatever… different weapon skins then.

*Ascended armor not being an incentive in this scenario because it can be crafted, only drops in boxes with a high chance of oddball stats you would never use, and has already been found to be hideous looking… by everyone.