Guild Wars 2

Detailed comments about Fractals of the Mists

Overall, I love the concept and the feeling. Great job. My comments come from the perspective of a level 46 fractal player and are intended to apply to all fractal difficulty levels. My primary concern is that some fractals are strongly disfavored relative to others. Many of these disfavored fractals are simply way too time-consuming, while a few of them have fights that are too hard. In particular, some of the boss fights are a bit of a “snooze fest” where everyone knows what to do and executes for period of time that is long enough to demonstrate mastery of the fight, but the bosses have so much hp that the fight gets genuinely boring. And, as a general comment, the loot increase in the 30s, and 40s is just absolutely nails-on-the-chalkboard hideously bad; 30s are harder than 20s and 40s are harder than 30s and the loot needs to clearly reflect that. Let’s talk about the individual fractals in detail, in whatever order my caffeinated brain picks:
1. Grawl:
a. Veteran shamans spawn too fast and run too fast. Profession CC is (rightfully) limited for pvp, and I think this part expects too much communication between a group. Unless all 5 people know each other and are communicating in a voice program, chaining CCs.
b. I’d like to see the vampire bats grouped up right where the 1st bat is, and a cinematic where they appear out of nowhere and race down that tunnel towards the group. I think this would be theatrical. The rest of the place until the boss would be empty.
c. Imbued Shaman: The lava elementals are just too many and too much damage; in my experience this is by far the #1 “ragequit” fight. I’d like to see this phase encourage the party to group up (boss should stop his agony arrow for X seconds after eles spawn) in order to aoe down the eles as a counterpoint to the general strategy of spreading out. This would make the fight more dependent on learning and practicing the movements rather than just a panic of projectile deflection + healing + running around + etc. It’s a good fight, it just needs to be tuned and it needs to have some overall plan to the encounter.
2. Cliffside: This fractal is just too long.
a. The cinematic needs to make it clear why these people are bad and need to be killed. Have the cinematic include a shot of the boss talking to an avatar of Zhaitan or something.
b. The 1st boss fight and the ankle seals need to be condensed and the 1st boss needs his health cut in half. When the party fights him on the ground, at 10% hp (10% of the already reduced 50% hp) he should teleport up to the ankle seal and summon a single non-veteran cultist. It needs to be at 10% hp because his moves are strong in a tight fighting space. The single cultist keeps respawning until the seal is broken; this makes it exactly clear, for new players, what to do and is fast enough for experienced players. Also, the ankle seal needs to break in 1 hit. Thus, all the mechanics are explained in an efficient manner.
c. The set of planks before the arm seals needs to be removed. The various planks are a great idea, but this set has no special mechanic and just slows everything down too much.
3. Harpies: Ok, we get it. Platforms + knockback = annoying.
a. That said, leave all the harpies in
b. Flame Shaman needs to have his hp cut by 50% and ettin’s hp cut by 25%. They just slow everything down too much.
c. The hp on all the asura’s golems should be cut by 10%. This is just for pacing; the alternative is to speed up the harpies by removing some.
4. Old Ascalon: LOVE LOVE LOVE IT. But please stop the NPCs from rushing the siege gear while 3 packs of ghosts are still alive >.<
5. Swamp: Great twist on the general idea of a dungeon (e.g. pull pack, kill, pull pack, kill, etc.).
a. Adding 10-15 seconds to the wisps would be nice, but that’s just me
b. Add more light and contrast to the trees that pop up to block passage; they are very dark and it’s hard to tell where good jumping spots are. A little goes a long way.
c. Cut Mossman’s hp by 20% and Bloomhunger’s hp by 30%. On this fractal, the “boss” is the swamp itself.
6. Underwater: Cut Jellyfish Beast’s hp by 30%. Good design and mechanic, just takes too long.

7. Dredge: Just way too time consuming.
a. Remove the dredge at the very beginning.
b. I’d like to see a strategy for the main room other than “die on the buttons and stealth the panel.” Suggestion: add 2 harps or static generators or something right after the door to the main room. Each one plays and then has a cooldown; the 2 cooldowns overlap by about 3 seconds. As long as one harp/generator is being played/activated, the dredge in the main room will not attack. This gives the other 2 non-button players something to do and encourages communication – if both use them at the same time, the whole group will have all the dredges to fight for say 15-20 seconds until they cooldown.
c. The dredge need to despawn down to a solid 1 pack fight after the door is bombed. This just takes too long.
d. The little hallway up to the final boss room, I would like to see all the stragglers condensed into 1 good pack to fight. They should all appear in a cinematic (this fractal lacks a sense of theatre): the dredge can appear in an armored car, and the ice eles could drop from the ceiling like icicles that broke from the ceiling.
e. If that isn’t a good cinematic, then the Champion dredge boss (the armored car one) could appear in a cinematic of the car driving up, he jumps out and roars or something, and then uses his big damage move to break some rocks – illustrating that this is a move you want to avoid.
8. Svarnir / ice fractal:
a. The archers’ move that makes red circles on the ground is too strong. Make the circles smaller or decrease the damage.
b. On the large fire, I’d like to see some kind of decoy strategy here. How about if the players throw a torch, the mobs will chase it and put it out as their top priority (I’m trying to echo the concept of the fight in CM where the players race barrels to the gate to blow it up; I always start by throwing 1 barrel far away for them to chase initially). This will encourage communication and strategy.
c. Prevent the corrupted ice crystal from doing its knockdown move, or drastically increase the move’s recharge time, while the veteran elementals are in combat. Between frostbite, ice projectiles, the red circle move, and knockbacks, it’s just too much.
d. Keep the “chase the torch” mechanic for the mobs between the Ice Crystal and the final boss; this encourages more teamwork.
e. Reduce the final boss’s hp by 30%. Just too long of a fight.
I don’t believe I have missed any, but if so I’ll come back and edit.

way too much info to read in that format lol, too tired, but most people LOVE the dredge for the amount a dredge loot mobs dropped, no need to nerf the only good thing about the fractal :P.

edited: actually want to say, i was harsh by saying that the loot was the only good thing about the dredge fractal, because the dredge fractal is one of the best fractals in my opinion.

great post, long, but good and food for thought. I like most of it and what i don’t like is really just my opinion coupled with personal preference. i really just enjoyed reading it

Personally, I think they should just add more ‘paths’, sort of like how the underwater fractal has the glowie-plants or the dolphin path. Just play with the whole instance so maybe it’s not as cut and dry as ‘insert fork here’ but have whole different objectives.

I’d like to see the hps on the boss at the end of ice fractal reduced. (Your weakness makes me laugh!)

I think it’s the most boring boss fight in all of guild wars 2. Extremely easy but takes like 10+ minutes because he’s got so much hps at high difficulty levels and it just drags when he hops onto the hill and stalls for 30 seconds goofing around with easily avoidable red circles. I used to think the jellyfish fractal boss was boring but this one is so much worse. Has a group ever wiped to this boss? Might as well just reach the room empty then put a big 15 minute timer on the screen so at least we can alt tab out for a while.

I know it’s one of the shorter fractals so maybe time can be added elsewhere in the fractal. Beating on this punching bag boss with heavily padded hps is no fun though.

Cliffside fractal is too long. The initial boss fight at the entrance should just be outright removed. He isn’t stopping anyone from doing anything. Or at least dramatically lower his hps (the boss at the end can remain as is).

1) dredge:
first part requires spykits….its not a good design.

Also its too long overall.

2) lava:
Agree on veterans, they are too hard at higher lvls.
Lava shaman….A boss that requires to have guardians/ele/mesmer or glitch it to Death?
No thanks
His lava Arrow should be avoidable on reaction and not because you know how to cheat AI….
Its not track & field….(and thinking of all those “pro” saying….just evade the Arrow -.-).

3)Cliffside:
Arm seals are a bugfest….they are far too difficult with veterans giving you 15 stacks or more of vulnerability….
And if you miss, first room adepts follows you forever and to leave combat you have to go 2 floors under….<_<
The only way to do that is leaving a room alive…..well i think its understandable why this is wrong.
Also 1st boss encounter is more difficult than second, and archdiviner hits you when rolling…
Not to mention his agony shot will oneshot anything in melee because it hits you 5X instead of 1X as intended.

4) Swamp:
Mossman seems a thief in www, ignores evasion, hits while stealthed (culling?) its really really bad……
And this is a new problem because before last Patches was fine……

5) water:
Boss is boring >.<, Dolphins and lights are fun.

Fractals taught me what is wrong with this game management.
Fix minor bugs that favor players and ignore forever huge one that makes some runs impossible or hugely unfun……

Please try to think that players are not DEV enemies sometimes……we are here because we love the game….

LordByron.8369:

1)
Its not track & field….(and thinking of all those “pro” saying….just evade the Arrow -.-).

and what’s wrong with evading the arrow?

ADADADADADADA at 900-1200 range

isn t what i would call skill……

Arrow is almost impossible to evade “on reaction”….

looks like I can make an impossible thing then…
maybe you have slow reactions but actually imo it’s not so hard to dodge the arrow.. just watch the animation of the shaman

papryk.6273:

looks like I can make an impossible thing then…
maybe you have slow reactions but actually imo it’s not so hard to dodge the arrow.. just watch the animation of the shaman

you can just live near the server with a 40" monitor…truth is most players just use ADADADADADAD (look vids).

Also realize this is an online game….
As an ex competitive fighting gamer, with a gaming ISP, i know what can be considered “reactable” and what is not….(and trust me the reaction time is quite easy to balance because there isn t a significan t difference when you take everything in account).

Not to say how many things people says on forum, but when you actually meet them in game…..“asokdhfjaoècfj LAG xaskigpqisgbcdf BUG kàajàsjdfèa Broken KB”…..

it’s not that the arrow is an instant hit…the shaman have a particular animation before firing the arrow and if you stay at max range (900-1200) it is rather easy to dodge….and you dont need a 40 inch screen…even a 100ms connection shouldn’t be a problem.

If you dont want to dodge it bring some skills to reflect the arrow. ask for that a mesmer or guardian in your party.

ps. if you want I can make a vid of me dodging the arrow the next time i do a fractal…maybe in the weekend.

a 2 second zoom of supposed animation of shaman Arrow would be enough to prove who between us is right.

i still don t think its reactable but such vid would be just enough…..

also they have to fix mossman asap <.< its really tedious atm.

18:10 here

i’d say you imagined that animation……
Its clearly almost impossible to see due to the bad model and the colour itself…..
Also its really fast…..

And considering what you say (ring xxx class) makes me think you don t know what you are talking of.

This game in PvE shouldn t have class requirements….the moment that you have necessity of class X or Y to proceed is when there are serious balance issues…

yeah ofc I dont know what I am talking of….and this is just my imagination that I am dodging the arrow.
have a good day sir.
bye

l2r <====

Also realize this is an online game….
As an ex competitive fighting gamer, with a gaming ISP, i know what can be considered “reactable” and what is not….(and trust me the reaction time is quite easy to balance because there isn t a significan t difference when you take everything in account).

See animation in vid….also look at how messed up is the screen to notice (as you seem to intend) the shaman moving his arm…..

Depsite you say u can(i doub t that but..yet):
that vid+ evidence of basically any single high lvl fotm vid of that fight its significant that people don t dodge it.

Either ADADADADADADA or use reflection/absorb (<==not accessible to every class to keep it up 100% you need 2 guardians at least)

Also quite tired of people that when speaking of EVIDENT issue have to come in the forum to tell how good they are….
That shot is not properly reactable as agony shot should be.
We don t care if you can finish lvl 80 naked….its not what we are discussing….

I don’t care what u can see or not in the video
I play fractals almost everyday, I made xx times the shaman and I know that the arrow can be dodged.
Did I said I am so good or awesome? No. I was just thinking that that dodging it is something normal that everybody does, because I dont see anything hard to do it.
Maybe that’s not me who is good but maybe you are just bad? or you have slow reactions? There is nothing wrong with it. Nobody can be uber pro at everything.
but stop saying that the arrow can’t be dodge.