Guild Wars 2

To start off, this is not directed towards the difficulty or scaling of this fractal. Some may have an issue with it at higher fractal levels, it has yet to hurt me as such.

Now, not all fractals have various paths built into them, but some of them are soo short and predictable that you never really feel like the game is different everytime you move forward. Here are some suggestions for this fractal to allow a little bit of variety as you repeat it.

Passively: While the blizzard is still active by the elemental, your mini map is blurred out.

Part 1: Climbing down the mountain side to the giant fire. Now for hte most part, people just jump down various spots and land safely to continue moving forward (even I do sometimes). 2 things for this should be done, 1 being increase the height of the climb down, to prevent people dropping off. Secondly at higher level fractals, various sections of these platforms will break once a player steps on them (platform breaks .5-1 second later as to be avoidable). The entire platform section will not break, only parts of them. However, if a player drops from a height (lets say, just at falling damage height) onto a platform, the entire section is at risk of collapsing making progress down the mountain side trickier.

Part 2: The fire pit. Really nothing should be changed here, it is fine as is IMHO.

Part 3: The elemental. Not too much to change here, however I believe at higher fractal levels, the elemental should teleport people further away from it, making it much harder to find their way back.

Part 4: Navigating the dark forest. The main part I wish really had variety. As it stands, hug the right wall and you get there. Pretty boring, and out of the possible hundred or so times I’ve done this fractal, only 1 group of mine actually wanted to kill the svanir in the forest. This forest should have a few changes.
– Larger, to allow more navigation. More paths, more hills/underpases. Some holes in the ground with svanir ambushes in them if you fall, just make navigating more threatening at higher levels. This isn’t aimed to lengthen the travel, but for the next part to be more suitable.
– The cave where the Boss resides, will be in various places. Hugging the right wall will not always lead you to the right cave.
-Empty caves that don’t have the boss will have veteran svanir inside. They won’t aggro you if you walk around the entrance to the cave but if you walk in thinking it’s the “right” cave, they will likely aggro. Approaching the entrance of the cave (being close by) will reveal if the boss is inside.
– While in the forest, your mini map has reduced size and a black smoke surrounds your location on the mini map. (Simply put, most of your mini map will be blackened out, a small radius around you and your party members’ location will still be visible.) This is to prevent people using the mini map to easily navigate the forest.

Part 5: Last but not least, the shaman. When people don’t use bugs, it can be a moderatle hard boss but for the most part it’s just same ol’ same ol’. He is slow, and predictable. To go along with various caves where you must find the right one with the boss inside, maybe different shamans. One could be the original.
-Another could be a ranger based shaman who uses veteran wolves as allies. Instead of teleporting up and releasing ice everywhere, once you kill the wolf(ves), he will appear on a ledge, and mimik the Frost Bow #⁴ Skill in a target area for a slightly longer duration. Simply put, it will hurt. After he channels that, he will summon an additional wolf and drop from the ledge. Each time this cycle goes by, it will summon another veteran wolf so in essence, you will need to kite the wolves and avoid killing them. To compensate, this cave will much bigger and have little to no walls blocking your path.
-Third and lastly, will be an Ice elemental. It will summon various ice explosions at times, smash the ground releasing a damaging chilling attack to any hit, and at specific points in its max health it will turn to snow and vanish. During this time, multiple mini ice elementals will come out of the walls and explode when reaching allies. Survive this short lasting attack and the elemental will appear once more.

Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy the Snowblind Fractal. But I think it could use more paths, and not necessarily my suggestions but there is room to add some exciting encounters in it rather than the straight shot through.