Guild Wars 2

I’m close to giving up.
Countless of bugs, glitches.

• Anomaly spawns during the orb phase.
• Arkk attacking during the orb phase.
• Arkk attacking during the orb phase while Anomaly spawns.
• Anomaly spawns during Ark CC phase.
• Orb phase triggering twice.
• Two or three orbs on same person.
• Orbs tethered to dead team mates.
• Bomb and Green AOE on same person.
• Bomb killing team even if the player is in dome.
• Double orb phase.
• Fear eye triggering twice.
• Players getting stuck into floor.
• Anomaly spawning on inaccessible platform – between outer aoe between pillars.
• etc.

And a cherry on top of it all is the platform drop phase, which at this point, it seems to me that the boss is doable only if Arkk buggs out and it starts late – around 10-15%.

Even if Arena Net fixes the bugs and changes the floor drop phase to what it is intended to be triggered at (40%) I don’t see this fractal, especially CM, being played by the average pug groups on LFG, not at least much. Personally, as someone who plays Fractals regularly, after I get my title, I will stay away from this fractal.

All in all, first two bosses are fine and balanced, third boss glitch galore with mechanics stacked on mechanics with additional mechanics just for the sake of it.

As far as possible adjustments go, the only thing I personally believe that should be done is either removing Anomaly from platform drop phase or making platform drop phase be the last triggering at below 10 or 15%. This way Arkk still stays a lot more difficult than 99 CM final boss while staying doable to average experienced pug group.

I got mine cm done yesterday after 3rd attempts… I was going insane .. playing at 400ping I have to say.. I have never been put to a real test to play against my ping. First and second boss were ok. I can manage. Although some skill lags but no big deal. Third boss however is very very very cruel to us playing with high ping. I can not think I can get the leave no heroes tittle which I really wanted. Not unless something done to it.. I don’t want it to be nerf but at lease my special action skill work when I need it to and I don’t get skills and movement lags at end phase. (?_?;)

Nick.6972:

• Anomaly spawns during the orb phase.
• Anomaly spawns during Ark CC phase.
• Two or three orbs on same person.

Those seem intended, you can easily avoid it with communication.

• Bomb killing team even if the player is in dome.

The dome doesn’t spawn instantly after killing the anomaly. If you kill it right before the explosion it won’t protect you.

The things that need fixes the most are the disappearing floor and the green circle working correctly, after that you can actually fight him properly and decide if further action is needed.

• Arkk attacking during the orb phase.
• Arkk attacking during the orb phase while Anomaly spawns.
• Orb phase triggering twice.
• Orbs tethered to dead team mates.
• Bomb and Green AOE on same person.
• Double orb phase.

Never saw those bugs, killed him multiple times.

Anomaly should not be spawning during our b phase, as far as I know, that was confirmed on Reddit by devs. 2/3 phases at the same time is not intended. That can be mitigated using some weird tactics like slowing down DPS near correct % of Arkk, that doesn’t make the bug ok though, not at all.

As for other mentioned bugs, they’ve also been mentioned both here, and on Reddit and can be seen on YouTube.

I’m glad you never encountered any of it, but bug and mechanic RNG is not a good design – and I’m not talking about difficulty at all.

Nick.6972:

Anomaly should not be spawning during our b phase, as far as I know, that was confirmed on Reddit by devs. 2/3 phases at the same time is not intended. That can be mitigated using some weird tactics like slowing down DPS near correct % of Arkk, that doesn’t make the bug ok though, not at all.

I searched reddit i couldn’t find anything that it’s not intended. The fact that the first orb phase starts either at 80% or with the 4th anomaly makes it highly likely that overlapping mechanics are intended.

Why is slowing down DPS a wierd tactic? Because it didn’t exist in GW2 yet? It’s pretty common in other games.

There was a Reddit thread with compilation of CM Arkk bugs, I can look it up later on my home computer.

Also, as for slowing down DPS. It’s irrelevant that it’s common in other games – not everyone plays them, personally, GW2 is the only game I play.
If it’s intended design – slowing down of DPS, there should be some message, prompt or visible indication that if you’re party continues to DPS too much, it will trigger additional phase – something happening for seemingly no reason whatsoever is not a good design.

Hey Cameron, maybe I overreacted yesterday a bit too much.

I absolutely love the new fractal, and I’m not asking for downgraded difficulty – the Challenge Mode should be challenging, especially scale 100.

Having collected my thoughts, I think it comes down to two things:

• The most common bugs that appear both here and on Reddit should be ironed out.
• Assuming Anomaly spawning during the CC/Orb phase is intentional, there should be some sort of a visible indicator for it.

It’s challenging with anomaly spawn during orb phase but it can be done still.. my issue is skill lag. Just assign one person to do anomaly .. the orb there’s plenty of time it’s painful but doable. After that CC. Someone can take extra cc to help release the pressure. Special action skill is cc .. last phase is painful with floor disappearing balls knock back at the same time but its fun.

My favorite is by far the bomb killing everyone even if in dome. Typically when this happens each bomb of the entire attempt will go off rather than just the fluke 1.

Talindra.4958:

It’s challenging with anomaly spawn during orb phase but it can be done still.. my issue is skill lag. Just assign one person to do anomaly .. the orb there’s plenty of time it’s painful but doable. After that CC. Someone can take extra cc to help release the pressure. Special action skill is cc .. last phase is painful with floor disappearing balls knock back at the same time but its fun.

It actually gets predictable enough that anomaly spawn during the orbs thing isn’t a shock, after a while. I also think it was intentional, and tbh it’s fine. Well maybe not exactly intentional, I mean anomaly spawn is timed at like every half min or somthin.. so maybe just something unintended? Either way its fine. I enjoy it a bit actually cos it remind me of the Cof p1 days when one person practice whacking the gate controller as it were a practice dummy, trying to perfect it and kill it faster each time. Though I feel improvement on the cm part is more of an unconscious, forced learning thing rather than the voluntary nature of the themed dungeon one.

In either case my group did experience some difficulty keeping up with this initially and then we kind of experimented with different assignments and roles for the phase part. So say I (as cps and 3rd leading dps) was assign to the one orb, then the druid was try to kill the ghost dude and we end up wiping cos not enough deeps in time on it. So they try reassign a random person say me to it, and said druid to take my spot in exchange. The upshot being that I had to tweak my condi rotation to manage to reliably kill the anomaly each time, since cps dps goes haywire when berserk on CD. So few wipes later and invariably I’d not be able to go berserk betwixt the fight phases, so I’d end up having to resort to patchwork solutions like sword f1 stack bleed -> cancel midway follow thru immediately with stab sword 3 to hastily finish off in time. It wasn’t pretty but well it got it done with acceptable amt of reliability.. so well just to show that change up tactic a slight bit on the interim phase to be able to slog through it

Oh man and btw u will hate me for say this maybe but I just only join on for the last boss on this cm, was good group tho but we still took a long time to be able to adapt.. can say near the end no one expect to got the kill, one guy is like ‘last 1 try for me’ but then idk how but we got a legit win on it after like 2 hours or somthin. So not near what u done experience but I will say that, no one was expecting to kill it lol. And I was on ts with them and they were basically cussing and putting down the mechanics of the fight the whole while of it :p

Adding another 3 hours. Still no kill. What I’ve noticed that it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to form a 100CM pug party , not even my PvE raiding/Fractal guild wants to do it.
In my opinion, if this becomes a Fractal that can’t be pugged, there’s a problem – 99CM groups are easily formed.

99cm groups are easily formed now after months tbf. Before it was a hell to get a group and a good group either. Also the more ppl get the title the less pugs going for the title will happen.

Nick.6972:

In my opinion, if this becomes a Fractal that can’t be pugged, there’s a problem – 99CM groups are easily formed.

Care to elaborate why it is a problem that a challenge mode can’t be played with PUGs easily? There is still the normal version if you want to play it. This content is meant to be challenging not to be cleared by your average PUG.

Think I got my 3rd to 4th kill on CM100 already, all with PUGs.

From what I see, most of the time, the few who have killed Arkk would rather form their own lfg with title/pots/food, so if you aren’t within this group, you’ll usually end up pugging with the many others who haven’t completed it.

For this group of pugs, (and I am one of them), to be honest, there is nothing you can do except do more practise, practise and practise. I’ve initiated so many Arkk battles that its already natural on what to do in between the phases – which includes:

- always waiting for anomaly respawn
- understanding where’s the best place to stand
- when to drop your wells so everyone receives it
- what his cannon/hammer/staff attacks are
- what attacks can block the orange orbs, and what doesn’t reflect them
- and how you can jump/launch through almost every attack (including the death AOE if you fail all 4 orbs-towers phase)

It’s a learning curve, but if you dedicate yourself to learning it, even if you watch videos, you’ll get there eventually. Now, this is on the personal level. If we wish for the whole pug base for CM fractals to go through and understand this learning curve, I’d say maybe 1-2 months would be a good time frame. I’m fairly optimistic that this will be puggable and winnable daily after that time frame.

Nick.6972:

Adding another 3 hours. Still no kill. What I’ve noticed that it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to form a 100CM pug party , not even my PvE raiding/Fractal guild wants to do it.
In my opinion, if this becomes a Fractal that can’t be pugged, there’s a problem – 99CM groups are easily formed.

in total of my hours in cm id say.. 3-4 hours with my first team.. which is really training (killed 1st and 2nd boss) everyone new. second attempt with friends 1st and second boss easy already, 3rd boss spent couple of hours. third attempt refresh 3 food. so its under 1.5 hours we got it. still I feel traumatized enough to return hahaha… probably wait till everyone is pro already then will come back to do more :P if it weren’t because of my 400 ping and skill lags.. I will attempt again on daily

zealex.9410:

99cm groups are easily formed now after months tbf. Before it was a hell to get a group and a good group either. Also the more ppl get the title the less pugs going for the title will happen.

99cm could also be carried hard, even at release. Thus a lot more people got their titles early which allowed more groups to form and be out there running it.

For ShatO CM, the “Must have title” LFG meta is already setting in, and probably like 90% less people have the title than they did Unclean at this point of Nightmare’s release. Which makes competition for those group slots very intense, and it’s going to get increasingly more difficult to get in a group as time goes on.

narcx.3570:

zealex.9410:

99cm groups are easily formed now after months tbf. Before it was a hell to get a group and a good group either. Also the more ppl get the title the less pugs going for the title will happen.

99cm could also be carried hard, even at release. Thus a lot more people got their titles early which allowed more groups to form and be out there running it.

For ShatO CM, the “Must have title” LFG meta is already setting in, and probably like 90% less people have the title than they did Unclean at this point of Nightmare’s release. Which makes competition for those group slots very intense, and it’s going to get increasingly more difficult to get in a group as time goes on.

But much like with raids ppl can still go make an lfg group and put w/e requirements they so wish. Im compairing it to raid lfg’s because lets be honest its a 5 man raid.

Any ways if you done have the title thats cool make an lfg asking for ppl that have ckeared 99cm multiple times and try to push it from there.

Disclaimer: I think the fight is fine for the difficulty once the bugs get fixed. I have killed him 5 times already.

I want to add another bug to the list of annoyances. When you get under 15% and everything goes insane, Arkk will do an eye attack and during it he will shoot out the multiple ball attack. The bug is the fact that he doesn’t display the balls above him because the eye blocks the animation (plus the fact that you’re looking away and not at the boss to begin with), so you just end up eating the attack to the face if the floor is making you stand right beside him. This is the only attack in the entire fight that seems completely unfair once you have practice with the fight.

I joined a group yesterday stuck on him, and first pull we got him down to 5% when Arkk proceeded to do this and nuke 3 of us out instantly.

I’m really perplexed as to how some people have killed Ark on 100CM already more than “x” times.

Today I spent 3 more hours with a team on 4 other people who have done 100CM – who have the title, and yet we still couldt beat the boss or get him down to even 20%.

Is there some ultra specific team composition one must use?
Getting to 40% mark is easy, but afterwards everyone just start dying.
I don’t know what I could be missing at this point, some secret tech that makes everything easier?

Our team wasn’t bad, we could dodge, manage DPS to avoid anomalies in orb phase, mitigate incoming damage with heals, kill the 2 mini boss, but when the 40% Mark hits, everyone just wipes.

Nick.6972:

I don’t know what I could be missing at this point, some secret tech that makes everything easier?

Best groups I’ve had have been the following: Chrono, PS warrior (condi or non), 2 DPS, and a Guardian healer. So basically raid meta comp but swapping the druid for a guardian. The reason being is the guardian brings so much aegis/stability that you can start to ignore mechanics and dodging (though still do just in case).

Ignore mechanics?

“Retreat!” – block red orbs?
“Stand Your Ground!” – avoid gravity circles?

Interesting, worth giving a try tomorrow.

Nick.6972:

Ignore mechanics?

“Retreat!” – block red orbs?
“Stand Your Ground!” – avoid gravity circles?

Interesting, worth giving a try tomorrow.

You can jump over both btw. Wel jump and move from orbs.

I honestly don’t get how people can find this fun. I think the last encounter is one of the most irritating, poorly designed and least fun boss I can remember playing in any mmo. I won’t bother with that fractal ever again.

Azoqu.8917:

Disclaimer: I think the fight is fine for the difficulty once the bugs get fixed. I have killed him 5 times already.

I want to add another bug to the list of annoyances. When you get under 15% and everything goes insane, Arkk will do an eye attack and during it he will shoot out the multiple ball attack. The bug is the fact that he doesn’t display the balls above him because the eye blocks the animation (plus the fact that you’re looking away and not at the boss to begin with), so you just end up eating the attack to the face if the floor is making you stand right beside him. This is the only attack in the entire fight that seems completely unfair once you have practice with the fight.

I joined a group yesterday stuck on him, and first pull we got him down to 5% when Arkk proceeded to do this and nuke 3 of us out instantly.

Exact thing happened to me. Maybe we’re in the same party then. But yes, no one can tell that the orbs are going to come out because we don’t see any hint of the animation at all. Sometimes the enrage on top of Arkk’s head comes out too big also, and we have no idea what attacks are coming next.

Nick.6972:

Ignore mechanics?

“Retreat!” – block red orbs?
“Stand Your Ground!” – avoid gravity circles?

Interesting, worth giving a try tomorrow.

A guardian is good training wheels for pugs, but I’ve come across groups of people who don’t appreciate the guard’s importance during the < 40% platform phase and just complain he’s not meta.

When I’m on my guard, I trait for Valor to distribute aegis to team mates when blocked, and bring on a shield for the extra aegis on shield 4. It’s really good to help strengthen the survivability of team mates, but in all honesty, if team mates can’t learn to survive without this help, it won’t help them improve the moment a guard is not in the party.

What about reflects for red orbs? Should Wall Of Reflection also be taken? It seems really unreliable. Should other professions in party take care of that?

Also I’ve been thinking – on below 40% phase – should everyone stick closely together?

Nick.6972:

What about reflects for red orbs? Should Wall Of Reflection also be taken? It seems really unreliable. Should other professions in party take care of that?

Also I’ve been thinking – on below 40% phase – should everyone stick closely together?

Feedback and warr of reflection should be casted on you or the group position and not the boss. That because the projectiles travel from a higher point and they ignore feedback.

As for <40% i really suggest you see clears on this. Iv seen ppl that split abot to ensure no one will get 1shotted by orbs or ppl that just bring 2 necros and trivialise the boss by poison cloud and melee range it.

Finally managed to win Arkk on 100CM. Platform drop phase started after the last Orb phase, which made everything somewhat easier.
Also, thanks for the advice on Guardian.

Nick.6972:

Finally managed to win Arkk on 100CM. Platform drop phase started after the last Orb phase, which made everything somewhat easier.
Also, thanks for the advice on Guardian.

Now for leaves no hore behind

First 2 bosses are extremely easy to do with good team. Assumign they iron out all the bugs on Arkk, it becomes more possible to do.