Guild Wars 2

Hammerguard.9834:

When I heard that Anet had made changes to the dredge fractal, I thought it was understandable. Take out the exploits that allowed players to skip any of the content. But then I saw the champion dredge room and noticed that they even changed the pipe terrain and I eff’n lost it. Why the hell would they screw us over on a simple trick used all over the game (LoS)? Smart players using their environment to help defeat some enemies and they actually thought they should waste time and money TO “FIX” IT?! It was such a scumbag move in my opinion. Can’t wait to see how else they diseased fractals with their update.

The only pipe I know of in the clown-car room is the pipe that blocks all pathing and drops aggro? Otherwise the clown-car itself is LoS… and you just run in a circle, like clowns, and back-AoE the helpless Dredge and boss (and collect loot).

That room has zero difficulty to it unless you somehow stand-still and get OHKOed by the boss’s attack.

I like the endboss fight. Rabsovich is ok, though not very exciting. The bomb place thing is tedious. Not impossible, even not really difficult, but annoying, tedious. The switch/pressure plate part at the start is now even more annoying than before.

I do not want to be misunderstood: I ran it a few times and we were successful. We had runs where nobody died in it. It is not that difficult, but it is annoying and long. Cliffside or Uncategorized can be as long but they are much more entertaining.

I stopped doing fractals because of the dredge fractal. When I play I want to be entertained. I do not want to dread if the dredge fractal will pop up. Solution up to this patch: no fractals. Now, after this patch: hell, no fractals.

Way. Too. Long.

Additionally, it requires LESS mobs, not MORE.

Dogger.1867:

EVERYONE hates it.

Wanted to highlight this.
And to repeat myself: Still the most annoying fractal.

I went through the Dredge Fractal during this update, my team encountered no issues. In fact, that felt like one of the fastest Fractals I’ve completed, which is unusual because I always felt this Fractal was a bit long.
We discovered the buttons don’t allow dead bodies to keep them pressed, which I feel is fantastic. I abhor skipping and teammates operating like it’s open world, I usually refuse to stand on a button because no one will help me.

Boneheart.3561:

I went through the Dredge Fractal during this update, my team encountered no issues. In fact, that felt like one of the fastest Fractals I’ve completed, which is unusual because I always felt this Fractal was a bit long.
We discovered the buttons don’t allow dead bodies to keep them pressed, which I feel is fantastic. I abhor skipping and teammates operating like it’s open world, I usually refuse to stand on a button because no one will help me.

troll ?

Make Scarlet the reason behind everything.

Dyrus.6507:

Boneheart.3561:

I went through the Dredge Fractal during this update, my team encountered no issues. In fact, that felt like one of the fastest Fractals I’ve completed, which is unusual because I always felt this Fractal was a bit long.
We discovered the buttons don’t allow dead bodies to keep them pressed, which I feel is fantastic. I abhor skipping and teammates operating like it’s open world, I usually refuse to stand on a button because no one will help me.

troll ?

I heard that the only people frequenting the forums (mostly for any MMO) were those that just complained, while the satisfied customers simply played the game. While it seemed believable (mostly because I myself rarely browse here, while happily playing the game), it didn’t occur to me that a forum (or at the least a thread) could be so saturated with complaints that a post of satisfaction could be mistaken for malicious intent.

I like most of this fractal. I think just the amount of trash mobs should be reduced to speed it up a bit. The buttons room isn’t that challenging, but I feel that being forced to stay still is the thing people hate the most. The so called “clown car” is just another example of too-many-trash-mobs-timesink. Don’t nerf the boss, it’s fine as it is because it requires a mix of teamwork and individual skill which is very rare in GW2 (props for the reactor fractal, I love that one).

I think the fractal is fine as it at the moment and it’s mostly the PvE meta and the amount of trash mobs that makes it boring for most people.

I’d like to propose we structure our responses into constructive criticism and suggestions to help ANet. I suggest three sections to any posts

• Intro
• Overall thoughts
• Thoughts on current state & suggestions for future state

Kudos to DanteZero.9736 & Faedrivin.5382 who have done this!

So for me…

Intro
I love GW2 and do fractals as often as time permits; which means I’m up to personal level 25. I always run with PUGs.

Overall thoughts

• I would love to be able to get through 4 fractals in 60min with a standard PUG. I can appreciate fractals 30+ would take longer
• It would be great if the dredge fractal could be completed in 20min by dev team; avg completion for others at 30min
• I would like (as Faedrivin.5382 suggested) splitting the fractal in two

Thoughts on current state & suggestions for future state:
1) Gates – I don’t mind either killing through this or doing the JP to get in (and I really like the idea of having a JP alternative!). It’s sad though when a team mate can’t get into the next section… I’d make it so once the gate to the 2 pressure pads & control panel room opens, the other gates stay open. This however would be the second bit of the fractal I’d remove to reduce the average completion time.
2) Pressure pads & switch – I like the idea, just most PUGs I was in struggled. Perhaps introduce a clear mechanic e.g. similar to the giant fractal with respawning groups on either arm. A PUG could kill all but 1 on 1 side, then lure to the other side and keep 1 alive there… then kite those two around? That way you could keep the latest change and make people need to be alive on the switches
3) I could happily see these two routes removed from the fractal. This would be my first choice for shortening the fractal
3a) Right route with bombs – I haven’t been in a party that can do this well (although I believe they exist). I’d prefer less (or a lot slower) respawning mobs and/or mobs that can’t remove the bombs once they’re placed so we can do it without relying on stealth. Would be great if the bombs respawned faster.
3b) Left route with cannons – I have always found this one fun, although long. Perhaps less respawning mobs.
4) Rabo & clown car – Again, my PUGs usually spend a lot of time (and deaths) here. I’d love to be able to fight the boss and the spawns from the clown car at the same time, but that tactic has never worked for my PUGs. Perhaps reduce the number of spawns so we can? This would help reduce the overall time in this room
5) End boss fights – Fantastic! Please keep it the same

Thanks for listening ANet!

I don’t get the point of having so many trash mobs at the bombing gate.

I would at least reduce the bomb respawn timer/increase bomb damage, reduce the clown car spawns, and fix the invincible spawns on clown car. Lots of unnecessary waiting.

^^^

There’s nothing to “fix” about the invincible spawns – they intend them to be that way. It used to be that you could DPS them right out of the car, so people generally just stacked on the car. It was changed a few months ago so that at 30+ more than five will be alive at a time, causing you to hit the AOE limit and make the whole thing take longer.

It’s a small thing but I point it out because I feel the need to show where some of the frustration is coming from – every time it is changed it is changed specifically to make it take longer. Dying on buttons was only arguably an exploit at most, the pipe things really didn’t seem to be. But really, AOE’ing the clown car required their attention to fix? With all the glaring ridiculous stuff and total lack of balance in there they thought, “Gee, the dredge need to be arbitrarily invulnerable for a few seconds because this part is too short”? It’s really annoying to people who have been doing this stuff a while because the dredge fractal has been neglected for a year or so, and when changes come they are inevitably in the direction of making it take longer.

I Hate dredges, i hate dredge fractal, it’s terrible, it’s bugged, it sucks. I’d fire whoever designed it. That person has no place in the game industry. I like last boss though.

I haven’t played Dredge since the Fractal changes, so apologies if any of these points have been addressed in Fractured.

The panel bit at the start: this needs re-working. Having to use stealth/go round the back/have people die on switches etc. is just tedious. Just make it so that once you kill the Dredge, they don’t respawn for 60 seconds or something and you’re free to use the panel.

The bits where you bomb doors (both of them) have far too many mobs. Again, it’s not fun. It’s just tedious.

The clown car bit – again, too many mobs. It takes too long. It’s not fun. It doesn’t require skill. It’s just annoying.

The final bosses – fine by me.

I could get over the horrendous hordes of dredge that continually spawn seemingly everywhere, even though it only serves to prolong an already excessively long fractal. I could even somewhat get over the bomb phase, as impossible as it is to complete it by fighting. And the final bosses are actually quite good.

But the part that makes me hate this fractal with passion is the control panel pressure pad room: either remove the easily interrupted 20-second channel and make it into something more along the lines of the “3 simultaneous console presses” puzzles, or drastically reduce the amount of dredge so that it is actually possible to pull them off the person at the panel.

But as it stands, yes, this fractal is by far the worst one in the entire dungeon and always manages to ruin the fun it otherwise provides.

In my opinion, the major problem with the Dredge Fractal is the dredge.

Every mob is immune to blind. Every mob negates that one method of control within the game. Guardians or thieves are almost necessary for projectile blocking skills, but a major form of CC that they can apply is just useless.

Almost every mob has massive, multi-hit AoE:

• Oscillators shoot a fork of sliding AoE that can wipe parties.
• Resonators’ AoE is at least a single line of multi-hit AoE, so you can side step it. That is, if you could see one of the attacks among the twelve rolling towards you because there are always a horde of enemies.
• Excavators not only evade during tunneling (so that you can’t interrupt them, nice counterplay there), they have a delayed AoE knockdown when they surface. Again, not an issue with one, but unavoidable when you have to dodge through every other attack.
• Bombers throw bombs on you. Not on a cooldown mind you, they just throw bombs on you as their autoattack.

This is the most kitten ing factor of the dredge in my opinion, as there is almost no counter to it. If the AoEs only hit you once, it would be fine, but they are the “shockwaves” that can hit you multiple times depending on how you are moving. If you don’t dodge toward the enemies you will usually take at least one hit from the wave. You can’t effectively build tanky in Fractals, so this AoE spam (that isn’t evident in other fractals from trash pulls) will repeatedly wipe parties. This either results in parties just running through mobs (a sure sign of poor dungeon design) or having to slowly, repeatedly pull small groups away. That’s assuming they aren’t some of the mobs that respawn…

Mobs have multiple forms of CC and conditions:

• As sad before, Excavators AoE knockdown as well as bleeding (not that bad) and vulnerability (stacks quickly and painfully).
• Oscillators knockback, because getting to them through the fields of AoE wasn’t difficult enough.
• Disaggregators daze for a very long time, and there are multiples of them in every pull.
• Resonators have a knockdown.
• Reverberants bleed and stack a large amount of vulnerability.
• Strazars have a knockdown (noticing a theme of hard CC?).

The repeated CC makes it impossible to dodge everything, so you will invariably be disabled in some way, setting you up for some of that lovely incoming damage.

AoE boon stacking:

• Disaggregators are the only offenders here, but the fractal abuses them so much that they provide major issues. When they play their gong, they give Protection, Might and Swiftness to all nearby dredge. So now the party’s damage is 33% less effective, and the enemies all deal even more damage (because that was necessary). Not only are these boons applied, they are continuously applied. You can’t even steal/destroy/convert the boons because they will be reapplied in 0.25 seconds.

If your party has adequate reflects/blocks and stability, you can get around most of the damage and CC… For as long as those skills last, which isn’t long. Guess what, the dredge are not only masters of DPS and control, they’re also all tanks! Having to constantly cycle defensive abilities among party members just to stay alive to even get to the bosses is ridiculous.

Infinite spawning compounds the issues with the trash mobs, and the sheer number of them that are in the Fractal makes little sense. Why do we get a dozen beefy NPCs in Ascalonian and nothing to help in Dredge where there are even more mobs? DO NOT REMOVE THE NPCS FROM ASCALONIAN!

The button puzzle, bomb ferrying, laser rush and clown car would be leagues easier, even with the absurd number of mobs, if those mobs weren’t AoE CC machines with boons always stacked on them.

That being said, respawning is still a damaging issue, but it could be dealt with if the numbers were simply toned down. The mob density and length of space you have to walk is just needless padding that I can’t understand why it hasn’t been removed or toned down. Thaumanova has mobs spawn in groups of 6 at the most; why does Dredge spawn dozens?

Dredge are annoying enough to face in small numbers, when players have to trudge through unending hordes of them, waiting for them to exit the bus before we can get through a door, it becomes the least enjoyable, most dodged and most difficult experience possible.

Yall may be missing the point. The worst thing about the dredge is the sound they make. Since there are so many of them, this sound is constantly echoed throughout the whole experience.

You know the sound I’m talking about. Cmon now.

I concur that the Dredge Fractal has too much “padding”.

“Padding” is something I define as tedious because it’s not putting a new twist on something I already know.

The initial puzzle for example is fine. It requires coordination and timing. Not easy without TS, but fair.

Blowing up the door is somewhat tedious depending on your class setup. But at least it gives Thieves a way to shine and allows you to used skills in ways you might not normally use them. I agree that there are still too many Dredge and they respawn too much.

The following Boss Fight and Clown Car on the other hand are just useless padding. The Boss doesn’t have a single interesting mechanic and killing waves of Dredge isn’t cool either. It’s not like we haven’t been doing that for the entire duration of the fractal.

The following elementals and the endboss are fine again. They have an interesting mechanic and a fair, but not unreasonable amount of HP.

The other big offender in terms of padding are the Harpies in the Asura Fractal. Imo they are worse than Dredge because the fractal is so buggy (random deaths) and the constant unfair knockbacks cost much more time. Killing a dozen of these Harpies every time gets old really quickly.

Havana.8625:

AKGeo.6048:

And if you can run all four of those paths in the time it takes you to do one dredge fractal, I don’t want to run fractals with you.

I could say something nasty back, but I won’t. There’s enough of that on these forums. I will say that if those 4 paths sound time consuming to you then I’d like to run them with you and show you how to speedclear them . They are super fast and give 1.26g each! I’d rather teach than have to avoid running something with someone.

I’ll admit, I’m one of those dredge avoiders you speak of. It’s really faster to start over most times than it is to do dredge. I honestly would like to run fractals with you cause I’d like to see how you run through dredge (though I don’t believe it’s as fast as you think) and if any of the other fractals seem long or difficult, I think I can make them seem not that way.

First off…I don’t like speed clearing dungeons. To me, dungeons are a way to relaxingly play some slightly more challenging content with my guildies. We know them, they’re predictable, and we can allocate specific amounts of time to doing what we do. And I DESPISE skipping dungeon trash. I’ve bailed on pugs because they insisted on skipping as much as they possibly could. If you want to speed clear, advertise it, and I won’t join.

Secondly, I don’t have a single issue with any of the fractals seeming long or difficult. Not a one.

The worst part I hate about the dredge fractal is pretty much the start of it. If you can’t get past the first part, you’ve wasted your time.

I just find it quite ridiculous, you have the stay on the panels and ABSORB the hits that fly your way. You only have so many blocks, reflects, invuls available to you. After those are gone, you’re gonna melt.

I don’t even know how some classes are meant to survive those attacks like ranger, or such. The worst part is when you are on one of the panels and there are about 4 ranged dredges all blasting into you, you can only only reflect so much.

Not to mention this beginning section of the dredge fractal is somewhat highly focused on that idea that you should have the right classes to proceed the first part, so in a random pug group, you might not get the best class set up in your group.

This part is probably the main thing out of all of the fractals that annoys me, where you need perfection and that is something you never expect in a pug group.

I don’t do fractals anymore simply because there’s no way I’m going to sit through a dredge fractal.

It’s extremely worrying that Arenanet thought the dredge fractal was ok. I honestly think Arenanet are so disconnected as to what the players and want and good design at this point that there is no point expecting Arenanet to produce good content.

I’ve always defended Arenanet but at this point they haven’t proven themselves capable.

Ace.1726:

I don’t do fractals anymore simply because there’s no way I’m going to sit through a dredge fractal.

It’s extremely worrying that Arenanet thought the dredge fractal was ok. I honestly think Arenanet are so disconnected as to what the players and want and good design at this point that there is no point expecting Arenanet to produce good content.

I’ve always defended Arenanet but at this point they haven’t proven themselves capable.

I really like running dungeons (I don’t usually have time for raids) and for me the fractals are like dungeons, and that makes them good in my eyes. The Dredge fractal, however, sucks just because of the mechanics of a few annoying fights. I actually like the clown car and the final battle, but the parts in between are very tedious and not entertaining in the least. Not really what people look for in a game, in my opinion.

If they were going to remove the ability for our dead bodies to activate switches the least they could have done is remove the 4556667 dredges and replace it with one thoug guy in order that 2 people could kite and the other one deal with the 3rd button.

btw normally when dredge fractal starts for 1st our party leave the to the observatory

The gates, I hate the gates and the behavior it creates in the pug community to overcome the obstacle. We run glitches to get over the wall and we have to wait much longer than necessary for our fellow pugs who are poor jumpers.

My suggestions:

1. remove the first two “switches” from the first section, leave the vets on the outside, and on the inside there are 2-3 vets that respawn and nothing else. Also dead bodies still activate switches

2. When you’re bombing or using the turret guns there should be small waves of dredge that attack you instead of 1 group of 800, small enough so the people not bombing/gunning can hold them off without requiring any group stealth. Everything leading up to the gun part is great, bombs dont really have any lead up.

3. Clown car should pop out the regular dredge first then once all of those are dead the champ and 1 vet come out. Number of waves could be reduced a bit too, although I like the loot from this section

Signed.

This fractal should have been designed one of two ways:
Puzzle Room straight to elemental/dredge suit and end.
Bomb/Cannon Doors straight to Rabsovich and end.

To have all four feels like some dev intern team showing off at our expense. Its not even the difficulty level, its just unnecessarily stupid kittening long with lots of infiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinity respawn trash mobs for no reason.

My opinion on dredge from doing 48 for last half year almost evey day

1) Too many dredge – they hit like trucks in lower (30~) up to 48, and there are way to many of them all over the place that take ages to kill even with a full zerk team that in any other part just clear fractal fast.

2) Buttons at the start need to be reduced – its even longer than before the patch beucase of last two reset i suggest for last part having 2 players standing on each button for 10 sec and surviving that way each can get support to survive increasing even making dredge abit stronger there is better than what it is now.

3) left side to dredge mid boss – abit less dredge spwaning along the way takes way to long beucase they are realy powerfull and pulling too many will wipe you no matter how good you are.

4) dredge right side aka bombs – too many dredge, bombs disapearing even when guards put hammer skill 5 or sanctuary, and most important bombs need to respwan at once after are used or gone all the waiting make it much longer.

5) Dredge mid boss – the intial pull is fine , but killing waves after waves slowly takes alot and alot of time i dont care about the bags i prefer to finish fractal faster, waves need to be reduced to 2-3 after boss and nothing more it takes too long as it is.

After that everything need to be kept the same since its simple enough.

On a persnoal note on fractal change i realy like the new instability but you didnt addresed none of the issues in term of rewards (that gold reward is a joke) and rings shards and all those relics are still useless for players who does alot of fractal and stacking up. Above all else i read on reddit that there are no fractal weapon container in the game at this time, are you lying to us or just talking in a general way so we can think what we want?

fractal was overlooked quite alot and players that do fractal alot were insulted quite abit by the lack of changes.

The part that I dislike the most on dredge is the bombs. I feel like the only way to do it relatively smoothly is to either commit suicide or bring/swap a thief with long duration stealth. Even when I swap to my thief, practically 100% of the time, at least one group member dies on each bombing run. The only way to do this section is to die, especially when the dredge start picking up the bombs and deactivating them because no one is fighting them. The whole thing is a very unenjoyable process for me. If I had to choose any of these sections,

1. Control room

2. Bombs/mining cannon.

3. Rabsovich and clown car.

4. Legendary Mining Suit/Ice Elemental.

I would pick the bombs/ cannon every day of the week. At least the clown car gives some easy loot and doesn’t require death to succeed.

Short background, my old PRL was 39 because I couldn’t dodge agony well enough at 40+, 330 levels done.

I’ve read through most of the posts here, and I must say, there are a couple good suggestions (if you can sift through all the QQ posts). Here are my thoughts on fractals: (using warren.5497’s structure idea! (sorta) :P haha)

Intro:

Let’s face it, we all love this game. We’ve poured hundreds of hours in (I’m at 1400+ with several weeks/months breaks at a time along the way), and so we’re all invested in the game’s success and positive development. I know some people just don’t get that and live to complain about every little thing that isn’t just right, but when you look at things like this, you have to step back and realize that we’ve got a great game here, guys.

That being said, my following thoughts are my opinions regarding fractals. I usually play with PUG groups for dailies, and play with my buddies when we’re all on. My buddies and I are really good at fractals (we met when we realized we were all trying to push to lvl 50+ before the 1/18/13 patch that put a hard cap at 50 last year) and since fractals sucked after that, we just farmed together to get legendaries and such. Now the fun begins again though, and here’s why:

Overall Thoughts:

While I love it and have a lot of fun playing, I think that Guild Wars 2 is an incredibly easy game. Originally, I thought that fractals would fill that ‘niche’ roll for players who wanted a challenge, and I think they fulfill this goal to an extent.
Anything that makes this game more difficult is fantastic in my book. Now, there should obviously be a balance as to difficulty/reward, and in that respect there’s a lot of room for improvement, but that brings me to thoughts on the current state.

Thoughts on current state & suggestions for future state:

Fractured! was a fantastic update for fractals as a whole. The instabilities add difficulty (the data mined ones also look fantastic!!). I also loved the addition of boss fight rotations instead of just the maw. This is actually what I thought would be part of fractals originally when they first came out, and always thought it would be a great addition. The rewards were only marginally improved; the tonic is cool, I guess, and I like the idea of ascended weapons dropping (I think I saw that?).

You never really needed agony resist at all, so I like the instability that makes AR actually halfway necessary. Just wanted to throw this comment in here lol.

Now as for the fractals themselves. I agree that the Dredge fractal is longer and more difficult for most groups than the other fractals.

In that sense, I have a couple suggestions for ANet:

1) All fractals should be of relatively similar length/difficulty to avoid so much hate toward one aspect of a great dungeon. As such, a decision should be made to either shorten the Dredge fractal, make it easier, OR Increase the length and/or difficulty of the other fractals.

2) Depending on the design decision from #1, make it clear to the community one way or the other. Fractals are intended to fill the niche roll of higher level difficult content that does not currently exist in Guild Wars 2, or it does not. Either way, a definitive statement should be made.
**********************************************************************************

Continued from my previous post:

If the Dredge fractal is nerfed one way or another, then I have no further comments, except my disappointment. However, if the other fractals were to be buffed, and possibly make fractals difficult, here are my suggestions to the community:

These suggestions are made assuming that you either have difficulty with the current content, or future content makes it difficult for experienced players

1) Humble yourself. This game is easy, but it’s okay to have content where a mistake can kill you. When this occurs, instead of thinking there is a problem with the game because you can faceroll everything else, start by examining your own strategy of gameplay.

2) Examine your own strategy of gameplay. If you can handle the majority of high level fractals easily, but consistently have difficulty with particular fights or objectives (Dredge!), or fractals are just downright difficult for you as a whole, then there is ALWAYS SOMETHING you can do to improve. I stick to the philosophy “You can’t do any dps when you’re dead”. My suggestion is to first research the boss or objective you have difficulty with (youtube is great, but a specific post on forums as to the strategy for a particular part is good, too). When you have done that, examine your build. It is OKAY if you can’t do fractals 100% zerker glass cannon. If you are dying at all, I suggest you build super tanky. Once you build as tanky as possible, then you can gradually experiment with more dps in a wide variety of ways on every class. Just remember: If you die, you are gimping your team, so the first objective should be not to die. DPS is always secondary to that fact. This point is so long because it’s easily the most important. One caveat: you could also be dying because other people die first, which just makes it difficult because sometimes you want to res, and there are also less targets for whatever killed that person. If you are not the one that’s always dying, add other people who don’t die to your friends list! You’d be surprised how big of an impact this makes on clear speed and difficulty.

3) Reread point #2 about eight more times.

Suggestions:

Remove the infinite spawning. It is un-needed and it shows a lack of creativity.
Rethink that button room. Either reduce the time to open the door, or reduce the enemies.

I’m sure these are the two most common complaints, I’m just adding mine to the pile.

I have been turned off of fractals permanently. I understand they are meant to be challenging, but some of the ways ANet has done it is just poor in my books. Infinite spawning and invulnerable minions to me are just lazy. If you are unable to create challenging content without having to cheat like that, then I recommend you review your design process.

I know that certain fights require a level of strategy to them, but I shouldn’t have to be an expert tactician just so I can finish a fractal. I just attempted the Aetherblade boss with an experienced group and we got our kitten handed to us. We couldn’t even finish the fractal.

Now, before people say “oh well, you just need experience” or “if you don’t like it, don’t do it” yes, I’m aware of this. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to do things over and over. I expect some challenge in the content, but if I get steamrolled right out of the door then I don’t bother with it. The rewards aren’t worth my time or frustration.

So I’m sorry to say, but ANet, you’ve turned me off even more of your content.

Before the update to fractals, my 48 group took about 12 minutes, on average, of constant DPS, to kill all the dredge in the cart. 12 minutes of pressing 1. Over and over again. To the point where the game glitches out and you can’t attack anything. Your animations are working, your skills are chaining, but no numbers are showing up and nothing is losing health.

No, we don’t fight them where they spawn, cause they are invulnerable for the first 3 seconds, but fight them at the back of the car and pull them with guardian staff, etc. The best part: we actually look forward to the clown car. Its the easiest part of the fractal and gives us lots of free miner’s bags!

I also have a thief, who’s sole purpose has become running a stealth build to place bombs on the bomb path. Yep, those class roles are really shining here!

Please fix Dredge. Don’t make it such a chore. Remove a bunch of the infinite spawns and let us breath without shoving dredge down our throats around every corner.

@Ammorth.3604: I’ve noticed a lot of people thinking they need a thief, but my group of buddies have actually never used a thief in fractals, we like our mains so we stick with them lol. I’m sure you could solo the bombs with any class, but I personally do it on my guardian just fine.

Edit: there were two "actually"’s

My friends and I are doing lower level fractals, but we still dread the dredge! We have always made it through, but it is significantly longer and more frustrating than any other fractal. I hate to think what it will be like with the button change.

In my opinion one fractal should not be much longer and more difficult than the others. Especially when that fractal is not something the players can choose to donor avoid. When the great majority of players hate one of your encounters in particular, then that encounter should be tuned to address those concerns. It should not be tuned to exacerbate them. I know we players can be a whiny exasperating bunch, but the developers should not take their frustrations out on us via the punishing dredge fractal, which is kind of what the buffs to it felt like lol.

To do content that isn’t rewarding gold or item wise like Fractals it has to be fun and/or challenging. Right now nearly every fractal is fun and offers a challenge.

Dredge isn’t fun and isn’t challenging and worst of all we as players can’t ignore it like an explorable dungeon path no one does, if we run fractals there’s always a chance we’ll get the universally loathed Dredge. We know from comments devs have made it fits poorly with the current fractal setup, it should have been cut in half and had the infinite spawning mobs removed or had their timing adjusted. As for the clown car, lets us at least destroy it while they spawn.

If the team is being stressed with time issues atleast disable it for the time being, it’s a shame new players are having to deal with this dungeon.

Even if the rewards were actually tuned properly I wouldn’t do this dungeon if it increased the daily gold by 5g.

My personal opinion on “Underground Facility Fractal” aka Dredge fractal – split it into two fractals, a regular fractal that ends at Champion Rabsovich and a boss fractal.

1st Fractal

• Mechanics remain the same up to Rabsovich, buttons, panel, hallways (with some balancing issues fixed*)
• Rabsovich is now the final boss, a legendary and the clown car has been removed.
• Rabsovich now spawns two veterans instead of just one, and has agony on his massive damage wind up attack (damage lowered slightly so it’s not a death sentence).
• This makes the fractal length and difficulty relatively on par with most other fractals. I would probably switch it with the harpy fractal, making it a mid length and harpy a long length.

2nd Fractal

• This would be a new boss fractal
• Still a chance to get either boss (who have mechanics that are very interesting and require coordinated team work)
• Fractal starts with the clown car (with some balancing issues fixed*)
• Hallway is the same, agony check on entering room
• The boss fights are already on par with the other boss fractals in my opinion but to make it more interesting, have one of the “lava” buckets blow up at every 25% interval, so that the last 25% becomes more close quarter dangerous combat. Add an agony check at each 25% if you need to.

Balance issues
Panel Room

• Obviously there’s something wrong with the panel room if many groups end up defeated or needed to die on the buttons to progress.
• Simply increasing the time between spawns would alleviate the problem greatly, allowing a good group to clear the room, let the fifth player in, get in position/heal up and start the panel before the next spawn appears.

Bomb Hallway

• How this hasn’t been touched I don’t quite understand. There is almost no way to do this without stealth. It used to be possible but more spawns keep being added. Is this hallway not supposed to be possible without a thief or multiple mesmers?
• Fixes: Dredge respawn only when a bomb goes off on the door. This forces team coordination for all five bombs to be dropped at once, then the group fights it’s way back down for more bombs. Fully destroying the door could require at least two full hallway clears.

Clown Car

• The issue that the game seems to break and you can only damage one or two dredge at once has been brought up before and needs to be addressed.
• It’s great for farming – but boring. Having a set number of dredge (say something like you’d currently encounter in the low 20 levels) would be fine and on par with other boss fractals.
• Perhaps removing the car and having the dredge run in from the door would be better? Or even from various directions to make it harder to ball up the dredge.

I think dredge could be much better if these issues are addressed. As others have said, it’s simply too long to match with any of the other fractals. It’s quite literally long enough to be two complete fractals.

At the very least a quick fix that gives an extra bonus rewards for this level until it can be properly fixed would give people a reason to feel satisfied for completing the fractal. Perhaps a bouncy chest with a guaranteed rare or two in it?

Reward from dredge is much improved I’m getting 25% more bags per level. Also 8 rares and tone of ectos from those. Did it in 30mins and wasn’t very hard also. I think they increased # of mobs while decreasing there strength.

Well, I’m probably going to be the first to ever do this on these forums, but I officially retract my earlier positions (post-patch, anyway) and change my views on this dungeon altogether.

Considering that it’s required that individual players split up and stand on buttons in order to open up the first puzzle room, and this is while being assaulted by a number of hard-hitting dredge, it’s become commonplace to bypass these two switches in a number of ways. Well, I just sat there waiting for the last 20 minutes while players were trying to get to my location in order to START that room.

Now, this might have just been a poor team, and in some regards the blame should stop there. But the fact that the team NEEDED to know this method (I won’t call it an exploit, because the open top of the cage is obviously meant to be jumped into, even with the previous fix) and be able to complete it on a timely basis is the problem.

Yes, get rid of the first two buttons altogether. Make it a decent fight to get to the room. I’ll be happy there.

Bombs…I think the mobs should be scaled down a little bit, sure. But it’s nowhere near the importance of that first room’s mechanic.

I’m done with fractals until these changes are made. There’s simply no excuse for these problems, especially when their existence has made the majority of the playerbase unable to reliably complete this dungeon in a reasonable time frame. Oh, also considering that Dredge seems to be the #1 pick for the third fractal.

AKGeo.6048:

Well, I’m probably going to be the first to ever do this on these forums, but I officially retract my earlier positions (post-patch, anyway) and change my views on this dungeon altogether.

Considering that it’s required that individual players split up and stand on buttons in order to open up the first puzzle room, and this is while being assaulted by a number of hard-hitting dredge, it’s become commonplace to bypass these two switches in a number of ways. Well, I just sat there waiting for the last 20 minutes while players were trying to get to my location in order to START that room.

Now, this might have just been a poor team, and in some regards the blame should stop there. But the fact that the team NEEDED to know this method (I won’t call it an exploit, because the open top of the cage is obviously meant to be jumped into, even with the previous fix) and be able to complete it on a timely basis is the problem.

Yes, get rid of the first two buttons altogether. Make it a decent fight to get to the room. I’ll be happy there.

Bombs…I think the mobs should be scaled down a little bit, sure. But it’s nowhere near the importance of that first room’s mechanic.

I’m done with fractals until these changes are made. There’s simply no excuse for these problems, especially when their existence has made the majority of the playerbase unable to reliably complete this dungeon in a reasonable time frame. Oh, also considering that Dredge seems to be the #1 pick for the third fractal.

Someone doesn’t know how to use ash legion spy kits

Not just here but on reddit and other gaming forums alot of old players ask “did they fix dredge yet”

rip

If you are hoping every time not to get this fractal , there is something wrong with it . Difficult is one thing , tedious is another .

Background: I got to personal reward level 40 (41 maybe?) pre-patch and to the best of my recollection I have somewhere between 300 and 400 fractals completed altogether.

I read the first two pages of the thread, and I agree with many of the posts re: the unnecessary length and difficulty, but also cleverness of the puzzles. One thing I don’t see mentioned much but which also contributes to my intense dislike of this fractal (especially at the end of a run!) is the natural properties of dredge as a class of enemies, which are further compounded by their massive numbers in this setting.

Their perma-protection and the seemingly hit-or-miss nature of projectile reflection of their attacks, coupled with their natural immunity to blindness makes certain classes feel all but useless in the opening puzzle. (As a thief not traited for stealth, my primary survival mechanism is AoE blind with occasional projectile dissipation walls, but I understand that engineers also rely heavily on blindness.)

I will also second the notions of 1) chopping off the final boss fight as a boss fractal on its own, 2) reducing the number of dredge in the clown car, and 3) reworking the hallway (especially the bombs) so that they don’t feel so futile.

Fafnir.5124:

AKGeo.6048:

Well, I’m probably going to be the first to ever do this on these forums, but I officially retract my earlier positions (post-patch, anyway) and change my views on this dungeon altogether.

Considering that it’s required that individual players split up and stand on buttons in order to open up the first puzzle room, and this is while being assaulted by a number of hard-hitting dredge, it’s become commonplace to bypass these two switches in a number of ways. Well, I just sat there waiting for the last 20 minutes while players were trying to get to my location in order to START that room.

Now, this might have just been a poor team, and in some regards the blame should stop there. But the fact that the team NEEDED to know this method (I won’t call it an exploit, because the open top of the cage is obviously meant to be jumped into, even with the previous fix) and be able to complete it on a timely basis is the problem.

Yes, get rid of the first two buttons altogether. Make it a decent fight to get to the room. I’ll be happy there.

Bombs…I think the mobs should be scaled down a little bit, sure. But it’s nowhere near the importance of that first room’s mechanic.

I’m done with fractals until these changes are made. There’s simply no excuse for these problems, especially when their existence has made the majority of the playerbase unable to reliably complete this dungeon in a reasonable time frame. Oh, also considering that Dredge seems to be the #1 pick for the third fractal.

Someone doesn’t know how to use ash legion spy kits

I do, I just prefer not to.

Dredge fractal single handedly puts me off doing fractals at all. It’s not that it’s hard. It’s that it’s long, stressful with pick ups and just generally feels like a chore not something I would do for fun. I would be happy with less obnoxious spawns or that whole first part with the pads to be removed.

There is nothing wrong with the control panel phase. Please leave it alone. Its one of the few instances in the game that require at least a modicum of communication and teamwork. If you know how to do it right, no one even has to die. (And “right” does not involve ash legion spy kits).

The problem is with the middle 2 phases.

Turret Path: No real issues. DPS and you’re done. Decrease some of the mobs maybe.
Bomb Path: Eliminate it entirely leaving just the turret path; or decrease the bomb spawn timer and decrease the number of mob spawns by 30%.

Clown car: I love my 50+ heavy miner bags, but I’d rather not sit there mindlessly auto-attacking for 7-10 mins. Reduce the mob spawn scaling 30-40%.

Oh, and those mobs that are sometimes, but not always, on the ground and on the catwalks at the beginning? They need to go die in a grease fire.

I have always thought of fractals as 3 mini dungeons, but dredge seems to take longer than most paths in normal dungeons (not to mention it being more difficult)

As someone who hasn’t spent a huge amount of time in fractals (lvl 11) I an still unsure how you are actually meant to do the button puzzle…

Tentonhammr.7849:

There is nothing wrong with the control panel phase. Please leave it alone. Its one of the few instances in the game that require at least a modicum of communication and teamwork. If you know how to do it right, no one even has to die. (And “right” does not involve ash legion spy kits).

What, having two people run up and clear the first button while the three others run through the gate, two of them clear the second button while the first two and the third of the second group go in and clear most of each side buttons, open that third gate for the second button’s two who then take aggro of the adds that pop up when the third of the third group uses the panel to open the final door?

Yeah, it’s about as troublesome to make work in-game as it is to type it out on the forum. Apparently for you, fractals should be only done by guild groups with VOIP but inaccessible to pugs? How about Anet’s original stance of praising and awarding originality and out-of-the-box thinking? What harm is it doing to the game allowing us to bypass those first two buttons altogether?

The things that really are hurting the economy in this game are going unchecked, and are even orchestrated by Anet themselves. T2-4 material prices skyrocketing, making it financially unfeasible for newer players to level up their crafting, requiring them to pay those who CAN craft on the TP for their level-appropriate gear, or farm farm farm hopeful to get an ideal-stat dropped piece.

And before anyone can comment on my last point: the game is not only about level 80s.

Fix the first bit so we dont have to die inorder to get past the first 3 doors -.-
Reduce the amount of dredge that spawn with the bombs/drill part .. and make their respawn timer 10 seconds longer or something.

Groonz.7825:

The worst part I hate about the dredge fractal is pretty much the start of it. If you can’t get past the first part, you’ve wasted your time.

I just find it quite ridiculous, you have the stay on the panels and ABSORB the hits that fly your way. You only have so many blocks, reflects, invuls available to you. After those are gone, you’re gonna melt.

I don’t even know how some classes are meant to survive those attacks like ranger, or such. The worst part is when you are on one of the panels and there are about 4 ranged dredges all blasting into you, you can only only reflect so much.

Not to mention this beginning section of the dredge fractal is somewhat highly focused on that idea that you should have the right classes to proceed the first part, so in a random pug group, you might not get the best class set up in your group.

This part is probably the main thing out of all of the fractals that annoys me, where you need perfection and that is something you never expect in a pug group.

Where is your partner during all this? Your group has five people, that affords you and the other teammate holding a button each a partner. If you don’t want to communicate this to your team, just leave.