Guild Wars 2

NOTE: I had originally done this in a single post but the forum restrictions have caused me to need to split this into four posts. If it appears not as neat, that’s why.

There seems to be a great number of misconceptions about this fractal. Players are calling for various parts to be nerfed or for the entire fractal to be broken up. I disagree with this. The problems that players are having are due to several reasons which I will address.

General Issues

Below are some general issues not related entirely to the fractal itself. I have broken these into two categories.

Dredge Fractal-Specific Mechanics Issues

Below are a few of the areas that players struggle with inside the fractal itself. I will not talk about the dredge car as I completely agree that it’s an unnecessary time sink and something should be done to improve it. It offers absolutely no challenge to players.

I know that the dredge fractal debacle is a very sensitive subject to some. Hopefully I was clear and concise enough while being sympathetic to those players that struggle for various reasons. I absolutely hate it when things are unnecessarily nerfed. I’m sure you can relate when it comes to the class balances that occur every several months or so when your desired build is no longer as functional as it used to be.

This thread was to consolidate the majority of my opinions about this fractal that have been spread out over the various threads in this sub-forum. I am against a full out nerf on the fractal that quite a number of players are vocal before which is why you saw me commenting in so many of those threads. I’ve seen games lose all fun because the challenge was removed to make it easier for newer players.

I have some suggestions that I could see that would make the fractals a little easier while still retaining the challenge.

I will likely not respond further in this thread as I do not have much else to comment on. If I do, it’s because I felt I may have needed to clarify something. I do ask that people please stay respectful and attempt to make constructive comments. I would also implore players to try out the alternative ways that I mentioned and when you come across something that seems difficult to stop and try to figure out how to overcome it. A player named Obal has YouTube videos demonstrating these various methods. If enough players learn to do these then you may just see that the fractal may not be nearly as bad as it originally appeared.

Thank you for those that took the time to read and understand what I was trying to say.

Ayrilana.1396:

Bomb Room

What players do not realize is that only about five dredge respawn infinitely.

It’s not that I don’t believe you but I would like to see a video of this on scale 40+ to see which dredge are constantly respawning. If it’s just some minor ones that’s fine, but if it’s Veteran Strazars and Oscilators thats a whole other thing.

I can do fractal and did fractal at any level…

And what i see here is the usual justifications of bad design just proved wrong with next patch.

At the beginning people opened these L2P posts explaining that the right tactic was to use the invisibility consumables…..

Then people assumed jumping in was intended (hard to believe).

Finally the right tactic was dying on switches.

Now is clearing one side.

Now since cliffside fractal was said many times to not being designed to leave 1 alive, let me doubt they intended a side to be clear…
(this was said many times when devs broke the fractal in their attempt to fix irrelevant minor bugs….and took a year to fix it).

Mostly because there is nothing hinting at that…..its as logic as was doing the “jumping puzzle” to avoid it.

Then lets speak about the bomb part.
Your tactic requires wasting 2 hours on this fractal alone….if its intended its even worse than being unbalanced.

Reflectable Attacks:
They glitch through reflects to hit after reflect walls and only then bounce back.
And they also have a nice “melee” mid range aoe Attacks.

Forgive me but this is the usual thread trying to justify design mistakes of fractals.
And maybe its because of these threads, that fractal are in the current situation…

Isn’t dredge shockwave absorbable (eg. Shield of Absorption, Sanctuary), but not reflectable?

LordByron.8369:

I can do fractal and did fractal at any level…

Yes, as well as many others. What’s the purpose of this statement? Are you trying to base skill and experience with fractals on the fact that you’ve reached the higher levels? If so, please realize that there are quite a number of players who have reached rank 50 and cannot play well. Fractal level alone does not demonstrate skill and/or experience. I linked a thread in my post(s) where players complained about the quality of players they found in high level fractals.

LordByron.8369:

And what i see here is the usual justifications of bad design just proved wrong with next patch.

And what are your justifications for why it’s bad design? Basically all I see here is a blanket statement about something you may or may not have actually read with no argument or constructive meaning.

LordByron.8369:

At the beginning people opened these L2P posts explaining that the right tactic was to use the invisibility consumables…..

Then people assumed jumping in was intended (hard to believe).

Finally the right tactic was dying on switches.

Now is clearing one side.

Ignoring the obvious fallacy with your argument here, I’ll go ahead and respond to this. Strategies evolve over time and some challenges have many ways that you can do something. These are player driven and some became obsolete due to changes made by the devs because they trivialized the challenge.

Spamming stealth consumables did just this as you could essentially bypassed the entire challenge. The jumping portion was removed because it was an obvious exploit. Dying on the switches was a lesser version of the stealth consumables as that too did trivialize the challenge.

There’s no correlation between clearing one side and these that you listed as they’re not the same. The method I mentioned requires the team to work together and does not abuse exploits, consumables, and trivialize the content.

LordByron.8369:

Now since cliffside fractal was said many times to not being designed to leave 1 alive, let me doubt they intended a side to be clear…
(this was said many times when devs broke the fractal in their attempt to fix irrelevant minor bugs….and took a year to fix it).

Mostly because there is nothing hinting at that…..its as logic as was doing the “jumping puzzle” to avoid it.

First off, using exploits because it appeared logical is not a valid reason nor is it an excuse to use them.

Please link me the proof of your claim about cliffside. If you link a video, please include exactly where it is within the video. In the future, when you make a claim like this, please provide factual evidence. I only brought cliffside into the thread because they had very similar methodology.

I also want to clarify that I am not stating that clearing one side is intended. There’s absolutely no way anyone could know unless a dev specifically said it wasn’t for that specific fractal. Lack of evidence can never be proof that something can or cannot be true.

LordByron.8369:

Then lets speak about the bomb part.
Your tactic requires wasting 2 hours on this fractal alone….if its intended its even worse than being unbalanced.

Strawman argument with your exaggeration in this statement. It takes 10 minutes for a group that know what they’re doing while it may take 15 for your average pug. It’s quite obvious that your making a claim about this without having actually tried it (another fallacy).

LordByron.8369:

Reflectable Attacks:
They glitch through reflects to hit after reflect walls and only then bounce back.
And they also have a nice “melee” mid range aoe Attacks.

Could you clarify the first sentence about them glitching through reflects? I stated that they kind of partially pass through the wall already so I don’t see your point with this statement.

Now regarding your last sentence. So what you’re practically saying is that reflects, which only reflect projectiles, do not reflect AoE attacks? What’s your point? When I mentioned wall of reflection and temporal curtain I would have thought it would be implied that I was referring to projectile attacks. It’s even mentioned in the tool tip. I’ll add that bit above to clarify it for you. I bolded it as well. I apologize for not being clear enough in my original post.

LordByron.8369:

Forgive me but this is the usual thread trying to justify design mistakes of fractals.
And maybe its because of these threads, that fractal are in the current situation…

Once again, provide me proof that the fractal has design mistakes.

Brutal Arts.6307:

Ayrilana.1396:

Bomb Room

What players do not realize is that only about five dredge respawn infinitely.

It’s not that I don’t believe you but I would like to see a video of this on scale 40+ to see which dredge are constantly respawning. If it’s just some minor ones that’s fine, but if it’s Veteran Strazars and Oscilators thats a whole other thing.

I mentioned at the end of my post(s) that there was someone who has videos of how to do the methods at the high levels I looked at it and is looks like the respawns are regular mobs. I watched it as they were at the top of the ramp after clearing everything. For Strazars in general, it’s best to have stability or at the very least stun breakers.

Konrad.9587:

Isn’t dredge shockwave absorbable (eg. Shield of Absorption, Sanctuary), but not reflectable?

It’s actually both. I just got through testing it with shield of the avenger and sanctuary.

I can say that I knew all of this already. Besides, though I could be wrong -and I often am- I don’t think that you get dazed by hitting disaggregators while they’re hitting their gong. They have their own daze attack.
I’ll check next time I get dredge. If you get it before I do, correct me if I’m wrong or edit your post accordingly.

Rabsovish has two blocking stances. One of them dazes you on hit.

For people that mostly pug any content that requires coordination is badly designed.

FenrirSlakt.3692:

I can say that I knew all of this already. Besides, though I could be wrong -and I often am- I don’t think that you get dazed by hitting disaggregators while they’re hitting their gong. They have their own daze attack.
I’ll check next time I get dredge. If you get it before I do, correct me if I’m wrong or edit your post accordingly.

Rabsovish has two blocking stances. One of them dazes you on hit.

I normally use stability regardless when I’m fighting them. I always noticed being dazed when they were hitting their gong but maybe those were just coincidences with that other attack you mentioned.

haviz.1340:

For people that mostly pug any content that requires coordination is badly designed.

Fractals that require coordination:

• Swamp (wisps)
• Cliffside (hammer)
• Thaumanova (lightning room)
• Harpy (Batteries/fan for golem mini boss)
• Mai Trin (to remove her stacks)

A few dungeons:

• CoE P1 (Console after golem)
• CoE P3 (destroyer)
• CoF P1 (gate controller)

So based on your blanket statement that anything that requires coordination is badly designed then all of these must be badly designed. After all, they require some form of coordination. Teq, Wurm, Marionette, and all large scale living stories are badly designed as well since they require coordination that involves pugs.

I would go as far as saying that people that did wurm with Teamspeak (3rd party program) cheated a bit because it’s supposed to be completed by a coordinated zerg without using 3rd party programs.

Sorry, but that’s how I see it. Every content should be doable by everyone and even a tiny bit of required coordination contradicts that. Hence, none of the content should require any kind of coordination. After all, you’re supposed to pug in mmos.

When you show people how coordinated teams do dredge fractal, it’s usually met with “lol, ts”.

FenrirSlakt.3692:

I can say that I knew all of this already. Besides, though I could be wrong -and I often am- I don’t think that you get dazed by hitting disaggregators while they’re hitting their gong. They have their own daze attack.
I’ll check next time I get dredge. If you get it before I do, correct me if I’m wrong or edit your post accordingly.

Rabsovish has two blocking stances. One of them dazes you on hit.

You are correct. However Rabs has only one blocking stance. The other one heals him and spawns a veteran Disaggregator (if not alive) but you can freely attack him.

Ayrilana.1396:

LordByron.8369:

I can do fractal and did fractal at any level…

Yes, as well as many others. What’s the purpose of this statement? Are you trying to base skill and experience with fractals on the fact that you’ve reached the higher levels? If so, please realize that there are quite a number of players who have reached rank 50 and cannot play well. Fractal level alone does not demonstrate skill and/or experience. I linked a thread in my post(s) where players complained about the quality of players they found in high level fractals.

The purpose is to avoid l2p answers like this exact thread ….i could add fractals is possibly the part of the game i played most….
And i add also i can pug

And what are your justifications for why it’s bad design? Basically all I see here is a blanket statement about something you may or may not have actually read with no argument or constructive meaning.

no answer needed look at cdi…..

Strategies evolve over time and some challenges have many ways that you can do something. These are player driven and some became obsolete due to changes made by the devs because they trivialized the challenge.

The thread speaks of INTENDED strategy and not workarounds….
And there is NO proof the strategy described was intended….
As i already said last 4 times the “intended strategy” resulted being an exploit.

As could be Killing some to prevent having to face the Whole bunch.
As it was called the arm seals in cliffside…but since its another devbatable design it was finally adapted to what players asked…..

There’s no correlation between clearing one side and these that you listed as they’re not the same. The method I mentioned requires the team to work together and does not abuse exploits, consumables, and trivialize the content.

If you followed fractal history you would see it…see what i wrote above…

Second…no i won t link anything….this forum search function is broken and if you don t trust me its your problem many players knows what i am talking about…

Prove me that Killing some to prevent spawn is more legit than was dying on switches.

P.S. for the cordination thing the game should be designed like coe1.
That is not letting a single player out of 5 ruin a run…..players should be able to carry at least 1 player…

I always wonder how a content was intended to complete but since I lack a crystal ball I’m never certain. However, not killing mobs so they don’t respawn is in line with other similar mechanics.

LordByron.8369:

The purpose is to avoid l2p answers like this exact thread ….i could add fractals is possibly the part of the game i played most….
And i add also i can pug

Aside from what was in my Player/Team Issues section, the majority of the post was not l2p. I was trying to alleviate some of the issues that people were having by stating that there was another way or what they currently believed was incorrect. I did not do what you see in post l2p posts where someone just makes a blanket statement and calls it good. It’s always better to give advice and guidance.

LordByron.8369:

And what are your justifications for why it’s bad design? Basically all I see here is a blanket statement about something you may or may not have actually read with no argument or constructive meaning.

no answer needed look at cdi…..

Yeah and I’ve addressed the majority of them. All I see if you making blanket statements that it’s bad design without any reasons why and examples to support your claim.

LordByron.8369:

The thread speaks of INTENDED strategy and not workarounds….
And there is NO proof the strategy described was intended….
As i already said last 4 times the “intended strategy” resulted being an exploit.

Are we looking at the same thread. I’m well aware of my posts and I never stated that any of my methods were intended. I even stated such in a previous response to a post of yours. So please drop the strawman arguments and stop misrepresenting what my intentions were on here. Thank you.

LordByron.8369:

There’s no correlation between clearing one side and these that you listed as they’re not the same. The method I mentioned requires the team to work together and does not abuse exploits, consumables, and trivialize the content.

If you followed fractal history you would see it…see what i wrote above…

Second…no i won t link anything….this forum search function is broken and if you don t trust me its your problem many players knows what i am talking about…

I have and that was news to me as I have never heard about it. It’s also very convenient that you can’t produce a link to back up your claim. I’ll give you a little leeway in this and hold your argument in limbo (neither right nor wrong) until you can produce your credible evidence.

LordByron.8369:

Prove me that Killing some to prevent spawn is more legit than was dying on switches.

As I stated before, there’s no way to prove that something is legit or not unless a Dev specifically states that it is. However, I can accurately answer your challenge.

When you die on a panel, you trivialize the challenge as the survival of the two people on the are no longer at risk of causing the event to fail (as in you have to start over with the console). With killing just one side, you’re using your knowledge of how mobs spawn while protecting those on the panels. If you fail to kite them, or they lose aggro, you run the risk of failing. The former essentially essentially had little to no risk.

There’s also the fact that it still exists and was not patched out like the dying on the panels was. I’ll point out again that this does not mean that clearing one side is legit for reasons I’m already mentioned but it does imply that it’s more legit than dying on the panels.

LordByron.8369:

P.S. for the cordination thing the game should be designed like coe1.
That is not letting a single player out of 5 ruin a run…..players should be able to carry at least 1 player…

Well depending on how you do the console in P1, a single player can ruin a run. I don’t see what challenges can ruin a run more than anything in CoE P1 so please elaborate on that.

Also, your statement that I bolded, those two parts do not go together and they’re not mutually inclusive. Whether or not you carry someone does not mean that your run is ruined.

Thanks for this. It is appalling how the devs put one instance of knowing how your class works in a dungeons system of 19 fractals and people just lose their cat.

I’ve said before, if you can’t list like 12 seconds or so of immunity to dredge attacks, you have no idea how to play your own class.

The dredge fractal takes too long because too many people are horrifically incompetent.

@Ayrilana i can t argue with somone denying something is bad designed when even the devs admit it….

Fluffball comes along…in 1 year this farctal got to this point due to comments like those…while saying other players are bad it just shows the inability to pug the fractal suggesting that:

either the fractal is wrong or the player unable to pug has a limited view of it to be with his friend/favourite professions…..

I know ANYTHING is as easy as boring if you Always run the same team, reason why i pug.

Useful thing to find “custom” workarounds for pugs:
1) entering the switch room and staying near the door won t trigger aggro
2) portal (you can have 5 players in the room before aggroing with a proper use of portal).
3) stealth

Bomb door:
Dying can remove aggro on bombs
Portal can do the same expecially if you manage to reach the door stealthed.

turrets room:
Ground aoe can hit them out of range without spawning infinite dredges.
the door will spawn dredge at fixed intervals, if you have a msmer, mass invi will just take you 90% of door if correctly timed, if you have 2 TW + mass invi will get to 100%.
If you have a thief shadow refuge is enough.

COntrary to fluffball believeing if you try to just reflect Attacks you will die in 3 seconds to melee Attacks+daze guardians btw can reflect + cc saving a couple seconds.

and many stuff like that.

The point is any tactic is heavily profession dependent…and at higher level guardian is mandatory…..making the difference between oneshot and 2 shot.

That is enough of a reason to change it.

The only thing anet admitted to is that this shard is too long, not that it is badly designed.

haviz.1340:

The only thing anet admitted to is that this shard is too long, not that it is badly designed.

Perhaps not the design itself, but there’s something about the design that can potentially make it too long.

Fluffball.8307:

Thanks for this. It is appalling how the devs put one instance of knowing how your class works in a dungeons system of 19 fractals and people just lose their cat.

I’ve said before, if you can’t list like 12 seconds or so of immunity to dredge attacks, you have no idea how to play your own class.

The dredge fractal takes too long because too many people are horrifically incompetent.

I agree, when I did this at 49 in guild, the fact that some of us downed from invulnerable dredge coming out of the clown car is because we are horrifically incompetent. it doesn’t matter how good your DPS is, that event is just an enormous time gate designed to prolong the fractal.

Just a few corrections regarding dredge mechanics:

The daze from the Disaggregators comes from their gong bash skill (similar animation of shield bash), not from hitting them while they play the gong.

Their alleged “perma-protection” only happens because people do not interrupt them when they play the gong. Each time he hits the gong he gives Protection, Regeneration, Swiftness and Might to nearby dredge for 7 seconds. Since he hits the gong 4 times, if you don’t interrupt him he will give a total of 28 seconds of protection and the others abovementioned buffs. If your group does not have a decent boon removal skill such as Null Field, just use warrior’s tremor or some other CC as soon as he starts the skill to minimize the protection uptime.

As for Dredge’s CC, they actually have the following:

-Stun from Dredge Mining Suits (he stuns you, then hits you three times)
-Daze from Disaggregators
-Knockdown from Exacavators (the ones that dig)
-Knockback from Oscillators (only if someone is in melee range)
-AoE launch from Resonators (only if someone is in melee range)

Boon removal is unreliable due to the rate at which they re-apply the boons. And the fact that so many spawn and remain invuln that its impossible to properly interrupt all of them.

But yes CC helps a lot at surviving that encounter. Doesnt make it any less tedious and boring though.

You should focus on killing the disaggregators first. Without them, the dredge do not get protection buffs.

And what if they are the ones remaining invuln?

That’s only with the dredge car which does need to be fixed in some way.

Ayrilana.1396:

That’s only with the dredge car which does need to be fixed in some way.

I thought thats what we were talking about. I didnt know anyone had problems with any of the other groups. :P

I assumed so but I wanted to state it to make sure.

LordByron.8369:

COntrary to fluffball believeing if you try to just reflect Attacks you will die in 3 seconds to melee Attacks+daze guardians btw can reflect + cc saving a couple seconds.

Your grammar is bad enough I can’t figure out you’re trying to say, but I never made any mention of reflecting attacks. You should know how to render yourself invulnerable to the dredge attacks for a fairly lengthy time, whether that’s stealth, blocks, invulnerabilities, etc. EVERY class has ways to do this without retraiting.

Fluffball.8307:

EVERY class has ways to do this without retraiting.

Not true. One class cant even do it with retraiting. That doesnt mean they cant survive though.

spoj.9672:

Fluffball.8307:

EVERY class has ways to do this without retraiting.

Not true. One class cant even do it with retraiting. That doesnt mean they cant survive though.

Presumably you’re talking about necro. They do have a lot of ways to mitigate the damage. Fear, weakness, largest health pool, minions causing attacks to point away from the necro, etc. That’s what I meant by every class has a way to survive, not specifically invulnerability.

Fractals are supposed to be mini dungeons. Dredge is longer than most explorables. Not to mention the mechanics of it is just tedious and annoying. It’s not a l2p issue, it’s more of a matter of fun vs not fun.

DeathPanel.8362:

Fractals are supposed to be mini dungeons. Dredge is longer than most explorables. Not to mention the mechanics of it is just tedious and annoying. It’s not a l2p issue, it’s more of a matter of fun vs not fun.

I can’t complain if people think it’s too long (I disagree), but I see complaints about it being too difficult. The buttons are a prime example; most PUGs think it’s completely impossible to stand on a button unless you are a bunker guardian. That is a L2P issue.

It also increases the length of time for an extremely easy section because no one has any idea how to change their utilities out and the party wipes. If people play well (buttons on first try, don’t constantly party wipe on bombs), it’s really not that long and you are well compensated with drops. You’ll get over a gold in metal and miner’s bags alone.

The really funny part is how long people used to take to try to edge the party along any of the “jumping puzzle” type shortcuts, with people falling to their deaths or not making jumps, when it would have taken mere seconds just to stand on the buttons.

Well, confirmed. Disaggregators don’t apply daze if you hit them while they’re beating their gongs. It’s a separate ability altogether.

Should edit the OP to avoid spreading misconceptions. :P

FenrirSlakt.3692:

Well, confirmed. Disaggregators don’t apply daze if you hit them while they’re beating their gongs. It’s a separate ability altogether.

Should edit the OP to avoid spreading misconceptions. :P

Will do. Meant to do that a few days ago.

Unless you have trust issue, you can always check gw2dungeons.net