Guild Wars 2

We were lucky enough on our run that we had a necro who could directly hit the seal on lv20 while we wiped mobs around him, because otherwise the encounter is impossible at lv20 where mobs do not despawn upon using the hammer to hit the seal, unlike lv10.

Some paths you may want to examine as well for lv20 is the rate and sequence at which all these veteran mobs spawn, and how many of those mobs should be veteran.

But the fractal DOES seem to be functioning properly on the lv10-19 tier.

Other fractals you might want to look at is the Asura one, where after killing the 4 golems in the final phase you get no cutscene and thus no prompt to be able to proceed. Harpies also need to be examined on their knockback attack at lv10+, because other than stacking guardians or classes with group stability, they fire their balls too quick, too many harpies at a time (since they’re so close to each other for aggro, so spreading them out or reducing their aggro range might help), and the balls in tandem with a rapid fire that can bring an elementalist with 1600 toughness and 19k hp down to 3-4k HP on platforms he can’t dodge in is too much.

The chanters don’t despawn at 20 because fractals get harder as you get higher. There are ways to do it but i think the encounter is a bit overtuned as well.

The harpy knock back is easy to dodge you just have to pay attention. Stay at range, the most you well ever pull if careful is 2 at a time but usually 1. Don’t bother looking for the red circle because 8 times out of 10 you can’t see it anyway. Instead look at the harpy and when you see a giant blue ball get shot from her bow simply jump to a different platform, you have plenty of time even at 900 range.

rickets.1386:

The chanters don’t despawn at 20 because fractals get harder as you get higher. There are ways to do it but i think the encounter is a bit overtuned as well.

The harpy knock back is easy to dodge you just have to pay attention. Stay at range, the most you well ever pull if careful is 2 at a time but usually 1. Don’t bother looking for the red circle because 8 times out of 10 you can’t see it anyway. Instead look at the harpy and when you see a giant blue ball get shot from her bow simply jump to a different platform, you have plenty of time even at 900 range.

Not just chanters. The veterans keep respawning infinitely even when the boss becomes active, so it’s not like you’re culling mobs and then getting back to the boss.

You will have to fight in the current iteration both the boss with a heavy hitting agony aoe, the agony red circle spam restricting the area you can stay in, on top of his random pulling and hardhitting melee. All this while 5+ veterans, that are RANGED (so they autoattack your group to death from long distance) are machinegunning your group.

It’s obviously a broken encounter, because the increase in difficulty is obviously the appearance of several veteran mobs instead of normal ones like lv10. That’s OK, upgrade the mobs, but making you fight the boss and infinite of those upgraded, hardhitting high health mobs at the same time is not very doable short of stacking guardians.

Harpies can shoot you from different levels. Yes, you can dodge at max range, assuming you don’t get crippled midjump and fall like a rock. But, you know, this game has something called melee classes. Classes like the elementalist can’t even switch range at will, so you’re asking them to take the burden of even playing on another weaponset for an entire fractal just because this game has a fixation with punishing melee specs and rewarding ranged specs that hump the fringes.

Tell your elementalist friend to get a rare staff off the tp for 35 silver.

Cliffside last boss is bugged, we all know it.

Cliffside is not impossible. It’s broken – yes, but doable so you dont have to restart if you get it as 2nd or 3rd frac.
I solod the final boss yesterday at 21 on my Elementalist. The part from 75% to 50% boss hp is the hardest due to pbAoE Agony.

There is a safe room at the top right where adds dont follow but the boss does. I pulled him there and walked out of his wells (important walk and not dodge). The wells need 3 seconds to apply agony so you have plenty of time unless you walk backwards which you shouldnt do. You can counter his pull with stability or projectile reflect/absorb. Dont have to waste dodge on that either, it does barely any dmg.
On the pull follows to 80% the pbAoE agony and that is the part you need to dodge (i had 15 resist), he uses it like once every 8 seconds so vigor isnt even needed.

So saying Cliffside is imposssible is just false, tho i would like to get a statement from anet if the adds not despawning is intended as partial higher difficulty, im not sure on that.

In regards to your harpy issue: try projectile reflect. I personally just use focus offhand on my Ele and watch them shred themselves with the rapid fire when i reflect (earth 4) and use Air 4 for groupwide immunity to their knockback+ rapid fire. Mist Form, Armor of Earth, Obsidian Flesh to avoid more knockbacks.
Only excuse to fall down there is not paying attention or getting unlucky with cripple midair.

On a last side note i want to say that melee is not overly punished in fractals. You get more dmg and control option in exchange for shorter reaction time to dodge – seems fair to me. Dagger/dagger ele is so much fun for me that i play it most of the time in fractals. Out of the top of my head i switch to focus for the old tom, harpies, last volcano boss, last cliffside boss and the tree in the swamp.

Cliffside is perfectly doable by pulling boss into the room. When I do cliffside my group usually has someone sit by the boss when he is dazed while the rest go to kill a chanter, hit the seal, and get out of there.

His 75%-50% form is brutal on Lv.20+! It’s not unusual for him to do a bunch of AoEs which can easily down your party members, then do the pull+AoE combo which can down multiple party members instantly. I think the important thing is to try to run out of those AoE fields instead of using up your dodges, because you’ll need em for the attack that comes after his pull!

Harpies are tricky but doable with minimal knockoffs. One strategy I like to use is stand in an area (like the edge of a platform) where you are likely to see an edge of the red circle appear on an adjacent platform (so, standing on the center of any platform is a bad idea!). Then when you see it just jump over to another platform and you won’t get hit by the attack. Sometimes you will get hit by a bolt without seeing the circle but it’s a method i’ve been using all the time and it usually works.

well 75-50% form seems bugged as well
Huge AoE agony 4-5 times in a row is too much, u cannot even ress any downed before he does at least other 2 aoe…

Something that helped me a lot in Cliffside is noticing that in the 75%-50% phase the boss gains protection about 1s before the pbaoe attack every time making it easy to time the dodges. See protection -> dodge.