Guild Wars 2

I need to preface this. The Instability: Boon Thieves is a mistlock instability on high level fractals (81-100). Enemies can steal up to 5 boons every 20 seconds. Before the last major patch, this wasn’t really noticed because most people didn’t play past level 77.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mistlock_Instability:_Boon_Thieves

I primarily play on my engineer. As anybody who mains engineer can attest, combo fields are critical to the functioning of the class. Many of the engineer’s skills include finishers, particularly blast finishers. On my bar right now are at least 4 blast finishers which I use frequently for CC and DPS. Blast finishers can be great for stacking might, stealth, weakness, blasting healing, and a few other things.

Now, while I don’t play guardian too much, a large chunk of their skills are light fields. Some weapons, such as hammer, have light fields included in guardian’s autoattacks. Many light fields are integral for a guardian’s DPS, and some are useful for team survivability (such as wall of reflection).

The problem comes when you combine the two classes: Engineers with lots of blast finishers, and guardians with lots of light fields. The result is lots of retaliation buffs on people, by virtue of the two classes tendency for this combination. In normal play, this isn’t actually a problem, and is instead a good thing.

But in Fractals, we have the switcharoo from ANet. The Boon Thieves instability causes enemy AI to steal up to 5 of your team’s boons every 20 seconds whenever they hit a team member (which is quite frequently). The result is that when guardians and engineers play together, inevitably the bosses or minibosses get retaliation as a result. I’ve seen retaliation wipe a skilled team in less than five seconds, because retaliation is more effective against numerous small skills than heavy hitting skills.

This one instability has caused more arguing and bickering amongst skilled players than any other effect I’ve seen in the game. We have two classes that are literally pitted against each other due to this one instability — Engineers either have to give up blast finishers (which severely hampers kit usage and DPS rotations), or Guardians have to give up light fields (which severely hampers DPS, and often forces specific weapon usage). The teams that manage this problem the best tend to either have a guardian who only places light fields in carefully selected spots, or engineers who intentionally hamstring themselves by being overly cautious with their blast finishers.

ANet, you have created a situation in which two classes are in direct conflict with each other. As an engineer, I’m almost giddy when I don’t see a guardian on my fractal team. This is poor design — I should be happy to see people on my team, regardless of class. Please find a way to address this. Perhaps exclude retaliation from boon thieves or have boon thieves not apply to bosses/minibosses.

as an engineer, i just play reaper instead and corrupt the retal instead of generate it.

insanemaniac.2456:

as an engineer, i just play reaper instead and corrupt the retal instead of generate it.

But it’s kind of a problem when one of the classes simply cannot be in the party just because of negative synergy.

yeah it is. i still recommend rolling reaper. fotm stands for flavor of the month just as much as it stands for fractals.

Instability is fine, retaliation is main problem. When you have one boon on boss being more dangerous than ALL others put together – there is something very wrong.
In fact, this making guardian pretty much most unwanted class in T4, simply because his class mechanics.

Vagrant.7206:

I’ve seen retaliation wipe a skilled team in less than five seconds,

Just gonna point out, this is an oxymoron.

oh my god people have to dodge, a class with access to boonstrip is recommended AND you have to pay attention, how horrible.
The instability is fine as is, it was much more annoying before the rework.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Vagrant.7206:

I’ve seen retaliation wipe a skilled team in less than five seconds,

Just gonna point out, this is an oxymoron.

So you basically said DnT has no skill. GG mate, WP.

Tarasicodissa.7084:

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Vagrant.7206:

I’ve seen retaliation wipe a skilled team in less than five seconds,

Just gonna point out, this is an oxymoron.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyUKzArqRpE

So you basically said DnT has no skill. GG mate, WP.

Not that guy but yep. If you can’t even pay attention to the boons of a mob and kill yourself with something as cheap as FGS-rushing then yes, that’s pretty bad. Doesn’t matter what guild you are in.

All the people i play regulary with don’t really bother with boonstripping but just don’t use guardians anymore. Of course it’s not hard to lock at the boons of the boss, but it’s quite bad design imo if one class is just so screwed.

Yeah thing is skilled teams can still spam retal and kill stuff quickly, the point is to coordinate boonstrips/corrupts on bosses so that you pretty much get rid of it the instant it appears. If that doesn’t happen for you it’s rather ridiculous to yourself “skilled”.

The problem is you have to adapt to how you play. If you can’t adapt this instability will be much harder.

Hammer guardians are the worst for this instability. As you pointed out with the light field is less than have the problem. The protection up times hammer guard gives bosses is huge. The boss fights take nearly 30% longer without boon strip.

So adapt.

Rayden.3695:

Yeah thing is skilled teams can still spam retal and kill stuff quickly, the point is to coordinate boonstrips/corrupts on bosses so that you pretty much get rid of it the instant it appears. If that doesn’t happen for you it’s rather ridiculous to yourself “skilled”.

Or you can not take retal generators and kill stuff even quicker. Less headache and faster kills. Win/win.

I main Engi as well but I don’t really run into this problem. I normally go with guildies and we counter the boon steal by having a necro that can corrupt boons or running a chronic that can strip boons. The problem with pug groups is that people aren’t always willing to change their class to help the team comp or the lack of multiclass user.

Andraus.3874:

The problem is you have to adapt to how you play. If you can’t adapt this instability will be much harder.

Hammer guardians are the worst for this instability. As you pointed out with the light field is less than have the problem. The protection up times hammer guard gives bosses is huge. The boss fights take nearly 30% longer without boon strip.

So adapt.

Here’s the thing. I do adapt.

The problem is that it is easier (for me) to not take a guardian in the first place. When PUGging, why shouldn’t I just exclude all guardians and make my life simpler? Instead of hoping for a boon stripping necro?

Engineers aren’t the only ones that can trigger the retaliation — any class with a blast finisher or leap finisher (light aura) can create retaliation. By excluding guardians (who are the primary producers of light fields), I can avoid the problem altogether. I’ve gotten into way too many arguments with guardians (who didn’t understand combo fields) to stop using light fields to even bother with the class as a whole.

And that’s the point of this thread. I have a perverse incentive to simply exclude a class from playing high level fractals with me. Not because I have anything against people who play that class, but because that class itself is a liability.

Vagrant.7206:

Andraus.3874:

The problem is you have to adapt to how you play. If you can’t adapt this instability will be much harder.

Hammer guardians are the worst for this instability. As you pointed out with the light field is less than have the problem. The protection up times hammer guard gives bosses is huge. The boss fights take nearly 30% longer without boon strip.

So adapt.

Here’s the thing. I do adapt.

The problem is that it is easier (for me) to not take a guardian in the first place. When PUGging, why shouldn’t I just exclude all guardians and make my life simpler? Instead of hoping for a boon stripping necro?

Engineers aren’t the only ones that can trigger the retaliation — any class with a blast finisher or leap finisher (light aura) can create retaliation. By excluding guardians (who are the primary producers of light fields), I can avoid the problem altogether.

And that’s the point of this thread. I have a perverse incentive to simply exclude a class from playing high level fractals with me. Not because I have anything against people who play that class, but because that class itself is a liability.

The guardian could also use a greatsword instead of a hammer.

As someone who mained a Guardian until HoT, I find it quite sad that the class constantly gets kitten on by Anet. Boon stealing is terrible for them since there goes the protection and retaliation, light fields are the biggest waste of space ever (why can’t the symbols now burn trait make them all fire fields?), and everything they really do is done better by another class. Guardians are left so far back that I don’t know why you would really bring them to begin with and that is compounded on with the fact that the game hates on them even further.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Vagrant.7206:

I’ve seen retaliation wipe a skilled team in less than five seconds,

Just gonna point out, this is an oxymoron.

Actually, it’s not. If you do AoE skills (such as fire bomb or napalm) that are persistent, you can have retaliation hurt you even when you’ve ceased attacking. The AoE attack continues to rack up retaliation on you. I’ve gone down from this before — I stacked fire bomb and napalm on a boss about a half second before he got retaliation from somewhere, and it downed me. I imagine necromancer wells and elementalist AoE spells can do the same thing.

Delayed effect damage can have this effect too — bomb kit suffers heavily from this problem, and I believe the thief’s pulmonary impact has this problem.

The guardian could also use a greatsword instead of a hammer.

Yes, and then they can’t use one of their weapon skills (symbol of wrath), thus hamstringing their DPS. The only guardian weapons I’ve seen that don’t feature some kind of light field on the weapon bar is a scepter, sword, or focus. That’s really constraining to guardian builds.

I must admit that I’haven’t seen this issue as a problem at Mai during my runs with pugs. There is only one real annoying thing while running lvl 100: Pugs not having enough AR.

Vagrant.7206:

The guardian could also use a greatsword instead of a hammer.

Yes, and then they can’t use one of their weapon skills (symbol of wrath), thus hamstringing their DPS.

What’s more, they cannot take Zeal too, their main dps traitline, or be very, very careful to not ever dip below 50% hp. Symbolic avenger is out either way, since it has no point if you don’t use symbols. Retribution trait from Radiance line goes too, for similar reason. So does Perfect Inscription (light aura, ouch).
You took Virtues traitline? Be very careful to keep virtues on passive always.

So, no mace, no hammer, gutted dps, gutted traitlines… In short, you’re forced into severely nerfed, weird builds that are so “effective” it’s really better just to switch to a different class for those fights.

I also rarely encounter this problem. That said, I also play reaper.

If it’s such a problem, why don’t you just not use blasts in combat with a guardian?

1. Simply paying attention to the status bar isn’t always enough. If you’re playing ele and you cast glyph or OL and then someone provides retal and it’s stolen by the boss, you’re screwed. It’s pretty much gonna kill you, and you did nothing wrong.

2. It’s easily avoided with boonstrip Mesmer or necro, or not taking a guardian.

3. It’s pretty kittenty that an entire class is completely locked out from high level fractals since a guardian that generates zero retal is basically useless given all the skills and traits that need to be removed/avoided.

Absurdo.8309:

I also rarely encounter this problem. That said, I also play reaper.

If it’s such a problem, why don’t you just not use blasts in combat with a guardian?

I can, but that hamstrings some of my DPS and CC’s (as well as might stacking). Even my heal (Healing Turret) can act as a blast finisher. And that’s assuming everybody else in the team is avoiding blast finishers or leap finishers, which is unlikely. I notice the problem more because I play engineer (which makes heavy use of combo fields), but other classes can generate the problem just as badly.

Ultimately, the responsibility lays at the feet of whoever’s putting light fields down, which is almost always the guardian.

That’s why my suggestion to ANet is to simply exclude retaliation from the list of boons stolen by enemies. Guardians can already get tripped up by a lot of stupid things, but this makes guardians a liability to the whole team.

They know that this instability is awful (and some others as well). In the last AMA I asked if it was a priority for them to work on fixing these, and they said that it was. I would expect some headway to be made on these in the coming seasonal patches.

leaps dont generate retal and auras cant be stolen

its been mentioned twice now and it isnt a thing

insanemaniac.2456:

leaps dont generate retal and auras cant be stolen

its been mentioned twice now and it isnt a thing

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Light_Aura

“When struck, you gain 2 seconds of retaliation. (Cooldown: 1s)”

Ummm….

TIL

i thought it was only the vuln.

edit: actually, thinking about it, its still silly to blame the retal from a light aura for anything at all. few leaps get used, light aura lasts a short time, boon thieves has a long cd, the retal duration is 2 sec. when a mob steals 2 sec of retal, you take 800-3200 retal damage from the 1-4 strikes youll get off before the retal disappears. that isnt gonna be significant. blasting light or gaining retal from guard traits or whatever will result in a dangerous situation like 100x more frrequently. ill stick with “light aura doesnt matter”.

I see dozens of guards/dh in the lfg and the groups are all asking “meta zerk”, " exp zerker" and more and almost no “condi”. Seems to me that only a few players have issues with guardians and/or higher fractal scalings.

I don’t know, boon thieves is annoying but it isn’t anywhere near as bad as it used to be. You know when you are elegible to have your boons stolen again (i.e. it shows the cooldown on your buff/debuff bar), so you can just not use blasts leading up to that point. Or just not use blasts at all…I think OP is greatly exaggerating the need to use blast finishers on engineer. Swap healing turret to medic gyro or just pick up the turret; don’t use big ol’ bomb; don’t use orbital strike or egun 4. You’re not even losing DPS if you’re playing condi. Not to mention a couple classes can just remove their boons anyway, making the whole issue irrelevant.

I don’t think boon thieves needs to be removed altogether as it is easily manageable, even if it’s obnoxious. There just needs to be more instabilities applied over fewer scales in general, because currently the instabilities are promoting the exact same playstyle for 80% of the t4 fractals. The problem is made worse by the fact that the daily system encourages players to only do t4 fractals, so someone completing their dailies optimally will be playing with boon thieves active 80% of the time. If boon thieves was only on 85/90/95 or something I’m pretty sure that no one would care.

insanemaniac.2456:

leaps dont generate retal and auras cant be stolen

its been mentioned twice now and it isnt a thing

A leap in a light field grants light aura which generates retaliation when hit. That retaliation can then be stolen.

Vinceman.4572:

I see dozens of guards/dh in the lfg and the groups are all asking “meta zerk”, " exp zerker" and more and almost no “condi”. Seems to me that only a few players have issues with guardians and/or higher fractal scalings.

Most people use “zerk” as a general term for any fully offensive stat set that’s meta. Condi gear for condi classes, zerk or assassin for power classes. For really low levels and dungeons, condi is kinda usless, but in high levels condi classes are gonna be accepted just as happily by “zerk only” groups as any zerk player.

Not rly. Have a closer look at the groups. Most often ppl still playing the real old zerker stuff – here in EU. There are also enough groups with Reapers in it but it’s fun to see players still not adapting. It’s fine for me and it shows – like I already wrote – that ppl have no problems with retal on bosses – not even in pugs. So I think the whole discussion is a lil bit exaggerated.

The whole point of instabilities is to require you to make build and playstyle adjustemnts to counter them. If you refuse to adapt to instabilities, then you’re missing the whole point of high level fractals.

PopeUrban.2578:

The whole point of instabilities is to require you to make build and playstyle adjustemnts to counter them. If you refuse to adapt to instabilities, then you’re missing the whole point of high level fractals.

I think that virtually everyone would agree with this in principle, but requiring the same “build and playstyle adjustments” for 20 of the 25 t4 scales also seems to be off the mark. It’s not really “adapting” if it’s what you do 80% of the time.

Dinosaurs.8674:

PopeUrban.2578:

The whole point of instabilities is to require you to make build and playstyle adjustemnts to counter them. If you refuse to adapt to instabilities, then you’re missing the whole point of high level fractals.

I think that virtually everyone would agree with this in principle, but requiring the same “build and playstyle adjustments” for 20 of the 25 t4 scales also seems to be off the mark. It’s not really “adapting” if it’s what you do 80% of the time.

As a daredevil, I have zero problem with the instability that halves end regen. I fail to see how this is any different. I swap a few traits and utilities, by damage and defense is compromised, yet I can still complete the encounters. Certain instabilities will hit certain classes/builds harder than others. it is simply not possible to design an instability (or any content really) that treats the myriad number of builds available exactly equally. That’s why its group content. When your build is severely down, another one is covering for you.

Dinosaurs.8674:

I don’t know, boon thieves is annoying but it isn’t anywhere near as bad as it used to be. You know when you are elegible to have your boons stolen again (i.e. it shows the cooldown on your buff/debuff bar), so you can just not use blasts leading up to that point. Or just not use blasts at all…I think OP is greatly exaggerating the need to use blast finishers on engineer. Swap healing turret to medic gyro or just pick up the turret; don’t use big ol’ bomb; don’t use orbital strike or egun 4. You’re not even losing DPS if you’re playing condi. Not to mention a couple classes can just remove their boons anyway, making the whole issue irrelevant.

The blast finishers aren’t just for straight damage/condi. I use them to blast might, which increases the whole team’s DPS. Additionally, sometimes it’s hard to avoid using them — not blasting the healing turret lowers my overall healing, which can be dangerous.

I don’t think boon thieves needs to be removed altogether as it is easily manageable, even if it’s obnoxious. There just needs to be more instabilities applied over fewer scales in general, because currently the instabilities are promoting the exact same playstyle for 80% of the t4 fractals. The problem is made worse by the fact that the daily system encourages players to only do t4 fractals, so someone completing their dailies optimally will be playing with boon thieves active 80% of the time. If boon thieves was only on 85/90/95 or something I’m pretty sure that no one would care.

I don’t think it needs to be removed. Just needs retaliation excluded from the list of stealable boons.

The whole point of instabilities is to require you to make build and playstyle adjustemnts to counter them. If you refuse to adapt to instabilities, then you’re missing the whole point of high level fractals.

Nobody’s denying this. The last laugh is a great example of this — you have to be very careful how you play. But it hurts everyone evenly. The problem is one particular class gets singled out because the boons it generates are directly harming the entire group. The instability doesn’t just harm the one class either — it harms the entire team.

You guys really avoid picking up guardian only because of the boon strip? Lol

I play with hammer even for the tougher encounters and yet somehow I don’t get my fields blasted.

Vinceman.4572:

Not rly. Have a closer look at the groups. Most often ppl still playing the real old zerker stuff – here in EU. There are also enough groups with Reapers in it but it’s fun to see players still not adapting. It’s fine for me and it shows – like I already wrote – that ppl have no problems with retal on bosses – not even in pugs. So I think the whole discussion is a lil bit exaggerated.

That’s not what I was talking about. Yeah, I play zerk on most of my classes as well. This is because I dungeon mostly and it’s not worthwhile for me to make an extra set of armor/weapons/trinkets on all of my classes. Zerk might not be as efficient as condi in really high levels, but it’s not bad either. What I was saying, is that people happily welcome condi classes if they happen upon them. And zerkers play alongside condi in high levels.
Also infusing all your equipment up to 150 can be a bit difficult, especially for newer players, which is why I don’t exclude anyone from FotM runs. Zerk, condi, reapers, guardians, everything is fine as long as the person plays decently and is willing to change his build if he’s asked to. And yeah, you’re right, this discussion is probably a bit exaggerated. I think most people feel like I do and won’t exclude guardians from FotM unless they’re really really bad and stubborn about their build/playstyle.

They are negligent/incompetent/unwilling at balancing PvE.

Look at their incredibly dumb decisions.

Instead of buffing condition specs to compete in DPS with power specs, they went and increased toughness on mobs.

The net effect is that condition specs close enough in DPS to power specs now completely eclipse them.

My damage on a power build in high level fractals feels halved. Meanwhile my necromancer or engineer are doing metric tons of DPS on the boss with no problems.

This stupid decision double dips on the incredibly high HP pools of mobs and bosses at the higher fractal scales.

So now you went from 2-3 elementalist parties to 2-3 necromancer parties. Such wonderful PvE design when you don’t bother to make DPS across all classes competitive and instead leave huge gaps in performance to fester.

All because of their garbage e-sports centered class balance. SPVP is all that matters to them.

Isn’t higher fractals supposed to be more challenging? The challenge here is to synchronise boon revomal in your team with the enemy… Its a good thing

PopeUrban.2578:

Dinosaurs.8674:

PopeUrban.2578:

The whole point of instabilities is to require you to make build and playstyle adjustemnts to counter them. If you refuse to adapt to instabilities, then you’re missing the whole point of high level fractals.

I think that virtually everyone would agree with this in principle, but requiring the same “build and playstyle adjustments” for 20 of the 25 t4 scales also seems to be off the mark. It’s not really “adapting” if it’s what you do 80% of the time.

As a daredevil, I have zero problem with the instability that halves end regen. I fail to see how this is any different. I swap a few traits and utilities, by damage and defense is compromised, yet I can still complete the encounters. Certain instabilities will hit certain classes/builds harder than others. it is simply not possible to design an instability (or any content really) that treats the myriad number of builds available exactly equally. That’s why its group content. When your build is severely down, another one is covering for you.

I’m not saying it’s inappropriate to have certain classes/playstyles be impacted more by certain instabilities, or even that they need to be “fair” in any sense. I’m saying that it’s stupid and lazy to have the same instability for every one of the last 20 scales, especially when those 20 scales encompass 80% of fotm play for players who only do dailies (which is most people).

You say “when your build is severely down, another one is covering for you”. Yeah, and for scales 81-100 if your build/class sucks against boon thieves then you have to be covered by something else. In general there’s no problem with having to switch builds to face various challenges, and obviously it isn’t impossible to get through t4 fotm with guardian or other classes bad against boon thieves. But even if you can complete the encounter, it gets old when your favorite class/build is subpar for almost everything you do in fractals, and it gets old steamrolling with the exact same comp every single time because of the way instabilities for t4 scales are set up.

If it were up to me there would be a different instability (or set of instabilities) for every scale in t4, or else the instabilities for each would be randomized daily.

I main guardian and this class has so many light field generators and pumps so many boons that people are simply not taking them in t4’s anymore. Sure I can roll out the reaper or thief or mez, but I would love to see a trait added for guards that causes all light fields to be converted to some other flavor. That alone would mitigate the problem and make the class viable again. Then if you also avoid using virtues, you could minimize the direct generation of retal.

The V.8759:

Isn’t higher fractals supposed to be more challenging? The challenge here is to synchronise boon revomal in your team with the enemy… Its a good thing

Nobody’s arguing that it’s supposed to be more challenging.

The problem is that one particular class gets shafted by this particular instability, and makes them a liability to everyone else. It doesn’t just shaft the person playing that class, it can shaft their entire team for even having them on the team.

You guys really avoid picking up guardian only because of the boon strip? Lol
I play with hammer even for the tougher encounters and yet somehow I don’t get my fields blasted.

It’s not the boon strip. I can deal with boon stripping all day.

It’s the retaliation that gets stolen, and the fact that guardians are the primary source of retaliation. I don’t know how many guardians I’ve had to argue with to stop putting light fields on the bosses. It ends up being a greater liability taking a guardian over some other class.

The V.8759:

Isn’t higher fractals supposed to be more challenging? The challenge here is to synchronise boon revomal in your team with the enemy… Its a good thing

Except it’s much easier to just, you know, don’t take the guard. Problem solved.

Dinosaurs.8674:

PopeUrban.2578:

Dinosaurs.8674:

PopeUrban.2578:

The whole point of instabilities is to require you to make build and playstyle adjustemnts to counter them. If you refuse to adapt to instabilities, then you’re missing the whole point of high level fractals.

I think that virtually everyone would agree with this in principle, but requiring the same “build and playstyle adjustments” for 20 of the 25 t4 scales also seems to be off the mark. It’s not really “adapting” if it’s what you do 80% of the time.

As a daredevil, I have zero problem with the instability that halves end regen. I fail to see how this is any different. I swap a few traits and utilities, by damage and defense is compromised, yet I can still complete the encounters. Certain instabilities will hit certain classes/builds harder than others. it is simply not possible to design an instability (or any content really) that treats the myriad number of builds available exactly equally. That’s why its group content. When your build is severely down, another one is covering for you.

I’m not saying it’s inappropriate to have certain classes/playstyles be impacted more by certain instabilities, or even that they need to be “fair” in any sense. I’m saying that it’s stupid and lazy to have the same instability for every one of the last 20 scales, especially when those 20 scales encompass 80% of fotm play for players who only do dailies (which is most people).

You say “when your build is severely down, another one is covering for you”. Yeah, and for scales 81-100 if your build/class sucks against boon thieves then you have to be covered by something else. In general there’s no problem with having to switch builds to face various challenges, and obviously it isn’t impossible to get through t4 fotm with guardian or other classes bad against boon thieves. But even if you can complete the encounter, it gets old when your favorite class/build is subpar for almost everything you do in fractals, and it gets old steamrolling with the exact same comp every single time because of the way instabilities for t4 scales are set up.

If it were up to me there would be a different instability (or set of instabilities) for every scale in t4, or else the instabilities for each would be randomized daily.

Absolutely true, and furthermore a lot of the new instabilities are just plain less interesting than the old ones. Boon this, condition that, but we’re missing the interesting ones. In fact, here’s a reddit thing where I collected (and invented) a bunch from a couple separate threads.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3wv4ak/collected_compendium_of_player_designed_fractal/

I’d much prefer a system in which instabilities were tiered by difficulty, and the fractal level simly adjusted the difficulty tier and number of instabilities present. having the same one for 10-20 fractals is a bit dull no matter what the balance is like.

Fractals are about randomness after all, shouldn’t the instabilities reflect that?

PopeUrban.2578:

Dinosaurs.8674:

PopeUrban.2578:

Dinosaurs.8674:

PopeUrban.2578:

The whole point of instabilities is to require you to make build and playstyle adjustemnts to counter them. If you refuse to adapt to instabilities, then you’re missing the whole point of high level fractals.

I think that virtually everyone would agree with this in principle, but requiring the same “build and playstyle adjustments” for 20 of the 25 t4 scales also seems to be off the mark. It’s not really “adapting” if it’s what you do 80% of the time.

As a daredevil, I have zero problem with the instability that halves end regen. I fail to see how this is any different. I swap a few traits and utilities, by damage and defense is compromised, yet I can still complete the encounters. Certain instabilities will hit certain classes/builds harder than others. it is simply not possible to design an instability (or any content really) that treats the myriad number of builds available exactly equally. That’s why its group content. When your build is severely down, another one is covering for you.

I’m not saying it’s inappropriate to have certain classes/playstyles be impacted more by certain instabilities, or even that they need to be “fair” in any sense. I’m saying that it’s stupid and lazy to have the same instability for every one of the last 20 scales, especially when those 20 scales encompass 80% of fotm play for players who only do dailies (which is most people).

You say “when your build is severely down, another one is covering for you”. Yeah, and for scales 81-100 if your build/class sucks against boon thieves then you have to be covered by something else. In general there’s no problem with having to switch builds to face various challenges, and obviously it isn’t impossible to get through t4 fotm with guardian or other classes bad against boon thieves. But even if you can complete the encounter, it gets old when your favorite class/build is subpar for almost everything you do in fractals, and it gets old steamrolling with the exact same comp every single time because of the way instabilities for t4 scales are set up.

If it were up to me there would be a different instability (or set of instabilities) for every scale in t4, or else the instabilities for each would be randomized daily.

Absolutely true, and furthermore a lot of the new instabilities are just plain less interesting than the old ones. Boon this, condition that, but we’re missing the interesting ones. In fact, here’s a reddit thing where I collected (and invented) a bunch from a couple separate threads.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3wv4ak/collected_compendium_of_player_designed_fractal/

I’d much prefer a system in which instabilities were tiered by difficulty, and the fractal level simly adjusted the difficulty tier and number of instabilities present. having the same one for 10-20 fractals is a bit dull no matter what the balance is like.

Fractals are about randomness after all, shouldn’t the instabilities reflect that?

Some of those are really clever, others are horrifyingly unbalanced.

Vagrant.7206:

PopeUrban.2578:

Dinosaurs.8674:

PopeUrban.2578:

Dinosaurs.8674:

PopeUrban.2578:

The whole point of instabilities is to require you to make build and playstyle adjustemnts to counter them. If you refuse to adapt to instabilities, then you’re missing the whole point of high level fractals.

I think that virtually everyone would agree with this in principle, but requiring the same “build and playstyle adjustments” for 20 of the 25 t4 scales also seems to be off the mark. It’s not really “adapting” if it’s what you do 80% of the time.

As a daredevil, I have zero problem with the instability that halves end regen. I fail to see how this is any different. I swap a few traits and utilities, by damage and defense is compromised, yet I can still complete the encounters. Certain instabilities will hit certain classes/builds harder than others. it is simply not possible to design an instability (or any content really) that treats the myriad number of builds available exactly equally. That’s why its group content. When your build is severely down, another one is covering for you.

I’m not saying it’s inappropriate to have certain classes/playstyles be impacted more by certain instabilities, or even that they need to be “fair” in any sense. I’m saying that it’s stupid and lazy to have the same instability for every one of the last 20 scales, especially when those 20 scales encompass 80% of fotm play for players who only do dailies (which is most people).

You say “when your build is severely down, another one is covering for you”. Yeah, and for scales 81-100 if your build/class sucks against boon thieves then you have to be covered by something else. In general there’s no problem with having to switch builds to face various challenges, and obviously it isn’t impossible to get through t4 fotm with guardian or other classes bad against boon thieves. But even if you can complete the encounter, it gets old when your favorite class/build is subpar for almost everything you do in fractals, and it gets old steamrolling with the exact same comp every single time because of the way instabilities for t4 scales are set up.

If it were up to me there would be a different instability (or set of instabilities) for every scale in t4, or else the instabilities for each would be randomized daily.

Absolutely true, and furthermore a lot of the new instabilities are just plain less interesting than the old ones. Boon this, condition that, but we’re missing the interesting ones. In fact, here’s a reddit thing where I collected (and invented) a bunch from a couple separate threads.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3wv4ak/collected_compendium_of_player_designed_fractal/

I’d much prefer a system in which instabilities were tiered by difficulty, and the fractal level simly adjusted the difficulty tier and number of instabilities present. having the same one for 10-20 fractals is a bit dull no matter what the balance is like.

Fractals are about randomness after all, shouldn’t the instabilities reflect that?

Some of those are really clever, others are horrifyingly unbalanced.

I can’t claim credit for all of them, but in a certain sense I think some instabilities really should be horribly unbalanced, assuming that you have enough you’re virtually guaranteed different sets each day for dailies.