Guild Wars 2

ran a party through this instability that was built and designed around boon removal.

Necros and mesmers. and all their corruption and stripping glory.

you cannot strip them fast enough. you cannot corrupt them fast enough.

so what we did was…

ignored it entirely.

went back to our regular builds and proceeded to roll through it.

Blind spam and dodging is a thing.

rotten.9753:

Windsagio.1340:

But you haven’t tried it, and don’t quite get the build.

This is something we (well one of the others) figured out to try in the first 5 minutes of us doing the new fractals (doing the 50 right after HOT released). The Mesmer takes a fairly substantial dps drop because you’re not using damage phantasms, but the net party gain is enormous.

Of course the cleansing isn’t perfect, but it avoids the normal zerk party fury/retal/25 might/10 stability/protection/occasional aegis issue that you get in the 41-50 bracket otherwise.

~~~

Honestly this goes directly to my point. People never even tried to be creative in dealing with the instability, but instead tried to haedbutt it to death and then complain about it.

You also haven’t tried that.

You guys are hilarious. You’ll also feel silly when you read down further and realize there’s a skill your ‘proness’ aooarently doesn’t know about.

Windsagio.1340:

phys.7689:

Windsagio.1340:

dutchiez.7502:

There is no amount of boonstripping that can clear the boons a full zerk team generates on mobs with this instability. I haven’t tested it, but I am fairly confident in saying that a mesmer in zerk gear who is autoattacking with sword (which has a boon strip on the 3rd skill) would not be able to strip the boons it is generating with it’s own attacks.

The only way to “counter” this instability is to wear gear which does not have precision as a stat. This will mean your damage goes down the drain, any build that relies on on crit effects is extremely hampered (read: every build) and more importantly, everyone in your team will have to acquire a new set of ascended gear (armor, weapons, trinkets) just for the 20 levels that feature this instability.

Not what I would call great design.

But you haven’t tried it, and don’t quite get the build.

This is something we (well one of the others) figured out to try in the first 5 minutes of us doing the new fractals (doing the 50 right after HOT released). The Mesmer takes a fairly substantial dps drop because you’re not using damage phantasms, but the net party gain is enormous.

Of course the cleansing isn’t perfect, but it avoids the normal zerk party fury/retal/25 might/10 stability/protection/occasional aegis issue that you get in the 41-50 bracket otherwise.

~~~

Honestly this goes directly to my point. People never even tried to be creative in dealing with the instability, but instead tried to haedbutt it to death and then complain about it.

I have tried it, its pointless, null field is pulsing, mind stab is 1/3 strikes and arcane theivery has a cool down.

There is nothing you can do if even two people in your party have crit damage.

You’re gonna feel silly when you read lower down.

dude, go in there, try it, it is not worthwhile, i have done it, disenchanter attacks once every 3-4 seconds.
they get a boon with every single crit attack. There is no boon strip fast enough. You are better off ignoring it entirely and focusing on your normal builds.

Its not hard, its just not very effective to alter your playstyle for boon removal. Go, play the level, try it out, and then try it with your normal playstyle ignoring boons.

phys.7689:

Windsagio.1340:

phys.7689:

Windsagio.1340:

dutchiez.7502:

There is no amount of boonstripping that can clear the boons a full zerk team generates on mobs with this instability. I haven’t tested it, but I am fairly confident in saying that a mesmer in zerk gear who is autoattacking with sword (which has a boon strip on the 3rd skill) would not be able to strip the boons it is generating with it’s own attacks.

The only way to “counter” this instability is to wear gear which does not have precision as a stat. This will mean your damage goes down the drain, any build that relies on on crit effects is extremely hampered (read: every build) and more importantly, everyone in your team will have to acquire a new set of ascended gear (armor, weapons, trinkets) just for the 20 levels that feature this instability.

Not what I would call great design.

But you haven’t tried it, and don’t quite get the build.

This is something we (well one of the others) figured out to try in the first 5 minutes of us doing the new fractals (doing the 50 right after HOT released). The Mesmer takes a fairly substantial dps drop because you’re not using damage phantasms, but the net party gain is enormous.

Of course the cleansing isn’t perfect, but it avoids the normal zerk party fury/retal/25 might/10 stability/protection/occasional aegis issue that you get in the 41-50 bracket otherwise.

~~~

Honestly this goes directly to my point. People never even tried to be creative in dealing with the instability, but instead tried to haedbutt it to death and then complain about it.

I have tried it, its pointless, null field is pulsing, mind stab is 1/3 strikes and arcane theivery has a cool down.

There is nothing you can do if even two people in your party have crit damage.

You’re gonna feel silly when you read lower down.

dude, go in there, try it, it is not worthwhile, i have done it, disenchanter attacks once every 3-4 seconds.
they get a boon with every single crit attack. There is no boon strip fast enough. You are better off ignoring it entirely and focusing on your normal builds.

Its not hard, its just not very effective to alter your playstyle for boon removal. Go, play the level, try it out, and then try it with your normal playstyle ignoring boons.

I have you goofball, in fact we did it again tonight to get a guy that just came back his 50 fractal for the fractal chests.

The fact that you guys don’t think this will work and are SOOOOO sure that it won’t work and so sure I"m lying is freaking hilarious.

And again, its to the point of how circle-jerk stagnant this community is. They can’t even imagine something different, and they don’t know the classes at all outside of the accepted builds.

edit: In fairness it could be that my charming personality makes people automatically reject what I have to say out of hand

I ran a few fractals at a low level with friends, while it is fun thanks to the single fractal change I do recognize that the rewards are pretty bad.

Every time I had opened a fractal chest I spent 20 silver and generally got anywhere from 10 silver to 20 silver total in liquid coin and sellable materials. When I got a daily chest I got a ring which had stats that I had no use for and the salvaging for that one thing costs 1 WHOLE GOLD. Imo salvaging should never cost that much, you’re taking a risk and in the end I only got 2 stabilizing matrix (20 silver a pop).

I was only mildly annoyed since it was a low level fractal and I treated it as a fun night with friends that didn’t need a monetary reward…HOWEVER there is really no excuse as to why the rewards are so crappy after “moving” the rewards from dungeons to fractals. Fractals need to be a good source of income at least nearly on par with the HoT maps and silverwastes.

In addition to this the upper level fractal debuffs seem really unfair as well as how the scaling works. You remove boons on dodge? Enemy Toughness is so high that you need to use a condi build or spend at least 20 minutes on just the boss? That isn’t fun and is just replacing the lengthy 4 fractal chain with 1 that lasts way too long. I’m all for the top levels of fractals being challenging, but not exceedingly hard and definitely not required if you want a half decent reward. I heard the drop rates of ascended chests are way down too which is a huge disappointment. I was under the impression that the expansion would make fractals more rewarding compared to the past, not less.

Windsagio.1340:

I have you goofball, in fact we did it again tonight to get a guy that just came back his 50 fractal for the fractal chests.

The fact that you guys don’t think this will work and are SOOOOO sure that it won’t work and so sure I"m lying is freaking hilarious.

Of course it works in your party with ~4% crit chance. Disenchanters are enough for that, we realise that. However, we’re talking about parties that have up to 100% crit chance.

Windsagio.1340:

phys.7689:

Windsagio.1340:

phys.7689:

Windsagio.1340:

dutchiez.7502:

There is no amount of boonstripping that can clear the boons a full zerk team generates on mobs with this instability. I haven’t tested it, but I am fairly confident in saying that a mesmer in zerk gear who is autoattacking with sword (which has a boon strip on the 3rd skill) would not be able to strip the boons it is generating with it’s own attacks.

The only way to “counter” this instability is to wear gear which does not have precision as a stat. This will mean your damage goes down the drain, any build that relies on on crit effects is extremely hampered (read: every build) and more importantly, everyone in your team will have to acquire a new set of ascended gear (armor, weapons, trinkets) just for the 20 levels that feature this instability.

Not what I would call great design.

But you haven’t tried it, and don’t quite get the build.

This is something we (well one of the others) figured out to try in the first 5 minutes of us doing the new fractals (doing the 50 right after HOT released). The Mesmer takes a fairly substantial dps drop because you’re not using damage phantasms, but the net party gain is enormous.

Of course the cleansing isn’t perfect, but it avoids the normal zerk party fury/retal/25 might/10 stability/protection/occasional aegis issue that you get in the 41-50 bracket otherwise.

~~~

Honestly this goes directly to my point. People never even tried to be creative in dealing with the instability, but instead tried to haedbutt it to death and then complain about it.

I have tried it, its pointless, null field is pulsing, mind stab is 1/3 strikes and arcane theivery has a cool down.

There is nothing you can do if even two people in your party have crit damage.

You’re gonna feel silly when you read lower down.

dude, go in there, try it, it is not worthwhile, i have done it, disenchanter attacks once every 3-4 seconds.
they get a boon with every single crit attack. There is no boon strip fast enough. You are better off ignoring it entirely and focusing on your normal builds.

Its not hard, its just not very effective to alter your playstyle for boon removal. Go, play the level, try it out, and then try it with your normal playstyle ignoring boons.

I have you goofball, in fact we did it again tonight to get a guy that just came back his 50 fractal for the fractal chests.

The fact that you guys don’t think this will work and are SOOOOO sure that it won’t work and so sure I"m lying is freaking hilarious.

How many players in your team run zerker or assassin gear and crit-based builds?

Windsagio.1340:

And again, its to the point of how circle-jerk stagnant this community is. They can’t even imagine something different, and they don’t know the classes at all outside of the accepted builds.

edit: In fairness it could be that my charming personality makes people automatically reject what I have to say out of hand

no, its that you are not listening.
there is straight up mathematics.
even with a team of people with like 50% crit, and boon removal, you are not better off than just powering through.

Im not the meta guy, im the do whatever works guy, but you cant realistically expect people to get whole new gear sets for 10 levels of fractals, especially when they probably just spent 2 gold getting new infusions for their current gear.

lets be clear i am not saying its impossible, i am saying its rarely ever better. The only time it was useful was if i did like arcane theivery to try to get stability off for a stun, but even then, if you are unlucky, it will refresh before you can break the bar.

its very doable, it just doesnt create a viable alternate playstyle that doesnt require changing your gear.

to be clear:
if you know what you are doing you will win
if 3 people have 50% crit rate, you will generate more boons per second than your party can remove.
if you alter your party to ignor boon strips in favor of reflects, blinds, might/dps(standard) it will generally be just as easy, if not easier.

If you are saying people need to change out of their crit gear, well thats really not feasible for a lot of players, and is thus a bad design mechanic.
Most people dont have space or resources to get new fractal gear for every 10 levels

Ropechef.6192:

ran a party through this instability that was built and designed around boon removal.

Necros and mesmers. and all their corruption and stripping glory.

you cannot strip them fast enough. you cannot corrupt them fast enough.

so what we did was…

ignored it entirely.

went back to our regular builds and proceeded to roll through it.

Blind spam and dodging is a thing.

Exactly this. Had a Necro (me) and a Mesmer in a pug who actually went with Sword and Null Field. IT JUST DIDN’T HELP. I even dropped Decimate Defenses for all it was worth and it didn’t do a thing.

A mesmer can remove 3.3 boons per second with traited Null Field (+ CS), 3 traited Disenchanters and sword auto. Boon rip on shatter might help but you would have to give up something for it.

Unfortunately if we assume near 100% critical chance for the mesmer and Disenchanters, they would generate 2.5 boons per second (2.25 if Disenchanters have only 80% critical chance).

However there is a really easy way to not have any boons on the enemy. Don’t hit him at all.

It seems very likely that the best (i.e. most efficient) way to deal with this (and other) instabilities is to ignore the mechanics and power through. It’ll probably be faster than having a specialized boon removal party comp. Which indicates bad design.

I agree with the OP here – fractals are in an abysmal place right now – the rewards are even more incoherent and bad.
Fractal skins – previously something that was only associated with FOTM and could only be obtained in FOTM have been allowed to come on the TP.

I have nothing against people having fractal skins – I was one of the first supporters of a token system to eliminate RNG from their acquisition – yet I firmly believe that you should play fractals in order to get them.
Even the fractal selling before this patch was more decent then what we have now – at least then you had to actually go in the fractal and see what it’s like inside before you had your shot at your desired skin.

There was mention of gold going away from dungeons and into fractals and other “supported” instanced content – yet that has not happened.
Furthermore – I’ve seen a lot of people claiming that reward drops have been nerfed ( ascended) and I wouldn’t put it past Anet to do exactly that.

All in all – fractals are in a sad state right now – the few good changes are overshadowed by the terrible ones – and it just seems sad that every time Anet touch fractals they fix one thing or two and break a dozen more.

It’s a very unfortunate moment when as a player all I want is that the developers never touch my preferred content in the game because their track record is of such a nature that almost certainly if they change it they’re going to break it in some way and ruin it.

An engineer generates 3 boon every second with grenade attacks, let alone adding in firebomb and napalm. Or you know, 4 other party members.

It’s on crit not on hit. I suspect the idea was to have people run PVT or dire and slowly work your way without landing a more than occasional crit. However as people have pointed out in this thread, not many people have a full second set of armor, and even fewer and willing to use it.

For a non – maxed crit rate party, boon strip/corruption works fine. However if all 5 players are sitting at 100% crit rate, boon strip will not be able to keep the targets clean unless your entire group is composed of GS camping reapers.

Simple solution to make the tier more strategy oriented is adding an ICD on boon generation. About 0.25-0.5 seconds would suffice to keep the boon stripping viable.

rotten.9753:

Windsagio.1340:

I have you goofball, in fact we did it again tonight to get a guy that just came back his 50 fractal for the fractal chests.

The fact that you guys don’t think this will work and are SOOOOO sure that it won’t work and so sure I"m lying is freaking hilarious.

Of course it works in your party with ~4% crit chance. Disenchanters are enough for that, we realise that. However, we’re talking about parties that have up to 100% crit chance.

Man you’re really doubling down. Why is this so inconceivable to you?

Thank you though, just continually accusing me of lying about it was getting trying (I mean what would I have to gain?)

To answer your (implied) question, we do run zerk/assasin/sinister for the same reasons most people do. As a general rule, it is just faster.

Yeah, the pushback is good, it helps me formulate exactly the issue with you guys arguments (on this specific subjet);

When you crit, you generate a boon. The boons are immediately dumped into one of 11 buckets (possibly 9, it’s hard to tell if resistance and quickness get applied). Each boon strip empties 1 ore more buckets. In just about all cases we don’t care about how full buckets are, the game certainly doesn’t.

Now some interesting effects of this:
1) Aegis cannot be mitigated in any way, but also resolves itself (because it gets resolved immediately) This converts to a ~9% chance for any crit to cause the next hit to be blocked..
2) Extra applications of protection, regen, vigor, fury, retaliation, and swiftness are to essentially 0 effect. The boon is on, and that’s all that matters – any extra applications (beyond a bare minimum) are wasted and can be disregarded.
3) Regen, swiftness, fury and vigor are dead buckets. We don’t care, if we never got to stripping them we’d be extremely happy. So really is fury, at least at the current difficulty rates: The bosses just don’t hit that hard, even with crits.
4) I don’t know the specific rules (and couldn’t find any when looking) but there seems to be an order for boon stripping. Specifically, regen and retal look to be the last stripped. I’m very not sure of this point
5) Retaliation is very annoying for some classes, and is also very hard to strip (see point 4)
6) Might isn’t a big deal (again low damage output is an issue), and if you’re stripping efficiently you’ll tend to see it at 4-8 stacks which is trivial.
~~~~

7) Ultimately what boon stripping is all about in this case is removing stacks of stability, and especially protection. Stability is nice (although there are gimmicks to break bosses through stability), but protection is the real deal here, and it seems pretty easy to keep it at a very low uptime. Stripping becomes a 33% damage buff for the whole party for most of the fight. The mesmer loses approximately 50% damage from their phantasms to do this, but it is by FAR a net positive.

~~~

SO: The TL;DR takeaway. As I said from the start, you’ll probably see the boss carrying an average of 2-3 different types of boons. Most of them we don’t care about at all. What you’ll also see is an extremely low protection uptime, which is a massive buff to the entire party. Also, the effective boon application is MUCH lower than the raw crit rate, because most of the boons go into wasted buckets.

edited for an ommision about fury. Thanks Wethospu!

Could you maybe record a quick video of a bossfight where the boss only averages 2-3 different boons? Would be nice to see some confirmation of your claims.

dutchiez.7502:

Could you maybe record a quick video of a bossfight where the boss only averages 2-3 different boons? Would be nice to see some confirmation of your claims.

If I have a reason to dip back into the 40’s bracket I’ll see about it (recc daiy or helping someone else with a 50). Don’t have recording set up, but I’m betting one of my friends does.

~~~

Does the above make more sense as to why it’s easier than people theorycraft to suppress the boons though (esp. the ones that matter?)?

Bosses and elites can’t crit so fury is pointless.

Wethospu.6437:

Bosses and elites can’t crit so fury is pointless.

Heh I never noticed that. Thanks for the correction

I always run my mes in high lvl fracs, primarily due to their utility and the fact that most I run with prefer running tankier classes.

I was primarily using disenchanter and shatters to remove boons, but tried to save them for when stacks of particular boons got high, even with chronomancer you can’t keep em off for long. BUT when you do remove the stabs/protection, during that time your parties dps spikes, and helps cut the time down, even just a little bit.

There’s no point removing low stacks, but if protection gets to 25….. lol

Is it perfect? no, the instability lacking any internal CD makes it silly indeed.
Plus, most of us run zerker, a few of us had full condi builds as well.

I considered using a spare soldiers set on my guard n tryin it with that, but seems too bothersome, so we’ll just power through, doing what we can to mitigate SOME of the boons:/

Easy to do, just takes more time.

Well the point of the breakdown above is this:

If you reduce protection uptime by more than 10-15% (numbers are squishy, not sure of the exact breakdown) then it’s a net DPS gain for the party

The mesmer loses ~half their damage, but ever hit with no protection is a 33% damage gain for everyone.

So, if that prot % uptime stays low, it’s substantially faster.

When Colin says they need to iterate on the issues with rewards, he mean that they need to actually add rewards, right? An iteration would imply there was already some base reward established that needed fine tuning.

Most of the rewards come/came from selling agony infusions and encryptions. At the moment both prices are getting lower. So definitely some sort of a reiteration is needed.

Conflating “Cash” with “Rewards” is a mistake I think.

that point aside, last I checked encryptations are 25s (min 20 as the vendor cost) and +1 infusions were about 6s. If you sell at that, I think it’s 1.2g and up if you sell everything once you’re out of the fractal (depending a LOT on scale as both the count of encryptations and the count of infusions goes up based on level. You get a LOT less for 1-10s for instance)

my current level is 94 which is cliffside.. insanely spastic btw, but as others have stated i would never go back and do that one again, as the rewards for high level fractals suck.. i have farmed different levels, and the lower levels are far more rewarding, sometimes i get 2 account bound exotics doing an ez pz 40 i lose count of the rares i get, then i farm level 83 swamp man.. and i get absolutely nothing, and i dont even get a rare on the extreme high levels, the loot system is totally broken.. devs plz.. thats the entire reason im waiting half an hour to form a group.. everybody knows “at this time” that the loot system is broken at high 60-100 levels

plz fix or fractals will die

Currently, +1 agony Infusions are 3.64s buy and 4.24s sell and Fractal Encryptions are 15.01s buy and 22.5s sell. Both are steadily falling. Source: 1 Agony Infusions. Fractal Encryptions

The problem with all the rewards depending on the Trade post is that it leaves them subject to supply/demand cycles. In this case, it has created a huge oversupply of +1 agony infusions, which kills the value of the boxes. Also, every other tradeable item in the boxes has plummeted in value since the encryption’s inception. Point is you are getting less than 1g per fractal after Tp taxes even if you sell all of your boxes on the trading post which is a nerf from the previous and much maligned gold given per completing a fractal.

We are not equating “cash” with “reward.” This is only one aspect of the reward problem and so far the one we have the most evidence to show is problematic. In addition, the rough, preliminary evidence leads, but does not conclude that ascended weapon and armor drop rates have been heavily nerfed per box. Source: King Fractal Research It should be noted that even if the chances were the same as before HoT it would still be a nerf due to the reduction of the number of boxes which give ascended items. Finally, there is the epidemic problem with fractals that it is more worth your time to do the lowest levels of a tier than the higher level ones. One of the key promises of the Blog Post introducing Fractals was greater rewards and that promise has not been fulfilled.

DrEckers.2039:

Currently, +1 agony Infusions are 3.64s buy and 4.24s sell and Fractal Encryptions are 15.01s buy and 22.5s sell. Both are steadily falling. Source: 1 Agony Infusions. Fractal Encryptions

The problem with all the rewards depending on the Trade post is that it leaves them subject to supply/demand cycles. In this case, it has created a huge oversupply of +1 agony infusions, which kills the value of the boxes. Also, every other tradeable item in the boxes has plummeted in value since the encryption’s inception. Point is you are getting less than 1g per fractal after Tp taxes even if you sell all of your boxes on the trading post which is a nerf from the previous and much maligned gold given per completing a fractal.

We are not equating “cash” with “reward.” This is only one aspect of the reward problem and so far the one we have the most evidence to show is problematic. In addition, the rough, preliminary evidence leads, but does not conclude that ascended weapon and armor drop rates have been heavily nerfed per box. Source: King Fractal Research It should be noted that even if the chances were the same as before HoT it would still be a nerf due to the reduction of the number of boxes which give ascended items. Finally, there is the epidemic problem with fractals that it is more worth your time to do the lowest levels of a tier than the higher level ones. One of the key promises of the Blog Post introducing Fractals was greater rewards and that promise has not been fulfilled.

that data is fairly dissapointing
anet really needs to stop changing drop rates without telling us how the rates have changed, especially on daily lock outs. It will take months of data before they can notice bugs, unless someone (john smith) specifically pulls the data.

and are they even tracking how reward level effects it? (if it does)

It will also thus take months for peoples feedback to be heard.

suffice to say, armor rate should be at least 10%, but id say probably something like 20% for people who hit 100.

point is, they need to say what their intended rates are, especially when changing rates, as well as what can drop what, and how fractal level effects chances

I don’t think any company in any realm of gaming (let alone MMOs) does that.

Grinding Gear Games gives a lot of feedback to their players about how they change things, they recently buffed the t1 item droprate (Best items in the game) the increased the drop rate, multiplying it by 4. The main developer has been on multiple podcasts since explaining everything about how he perceives the tier system in that game, how he observes players progress and how it affects their decision about where they put focus in their game. It’s just sad to compare GGG’s godly player-dev interaction to gw2. GGG is an indie company that makes the game Path of Exile all you need to do is go to their website and look at the recent changes or the forums, you’ll stop defending all the kittenty decisions anet makes. Hell GGG actually apologizes when they mess up and fixes stuff immediately. Reminder that this is an indie company while gw2 is a triple A game, except POE is regarded as the best game in the genre, although it has several flaws.

I only played wildstar a little but if you compare their communication it’s also miles ahead of gw2.

Windsagio.1340:

I don’t think any company in any realm of gaming (let alone MMOs) does that.

actually many companies put drop rate data in the API. aka easily avalaible fairly quickly. Wow. ffxi ffxiv definately had that data ready

phys.7689:

Windsagio.1340:

I don’t think any company in any realm of gaming (let alone MMOs) does that.

actually many companies put drop rate data in the API. aka easily avalaible fairly quickly. Wow. ffxi ffxiv definately had that data ready

If I didn’t assume you were as lazy as I am, I’d ask for a link for that assertion ><

As it is, I don’t think either of us care enough

I think even Warframe, a game known as pure grindfest to many, had droprates openly available, at least for a certain timeframe.

Korean (and I think in some other countries too) companies are actually required to list drop rates by law, at least as long as it’s something which can be bought with real money, though that obviously wouldn’t even apply in our case.

There are devs who do that, but it’s far from being normal for them to do so.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

I think even Warframe, a game known as pure grindfest to many, had droprates openly available, at least for a certain timeframe.

Korean (and I think in some other countries too) companies are actually required to list drop rates by law, at least as long as it’s something which can be bought with real money, though that obviously wouldn’t even apply in our case.

There are devs who do that, but it’s far from being normal for them to do so.

GW2 is available for purchase in Korea, right? So this law should apply, no?

I think that law doesn’t work the way you think it does. I might actually look it up now (once I’m not at work, its too much research for here) and find out.

Lord Kuru.3685:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

I think even Warframe, a game known as pure grindfest to many, had droprates openly available, at least for a certain timeframe.

Korean (and I think in some other countries too) companies are actually required to list drop rates by law, at least as long as it’s something which can be bought with real money, though that obviously wouldn’t even apply in our case.

There are devs who do that, but it’s far from being normal for them to do so.

GW2 is available for purchase in Korea, right? So this law should apply, no?

Even if it would, it would only apply to gambling-items bought with real money (i.e. basically only dye kits and black lion keys) and on top of that they’d only be required to put out the drop rates for Korea, which means they could very well be different from ours.

phys.7689:

DrEckers.2039:

Currently, +1 agony Infusions are 3.64s buy and 4.24s sell and Fractal Encryptions are 15.01s buy and 22.5s sell. Both are steadily falling. Source: 1 Agony Infusions. Fractal Encryptions

The problem with all the rewards depending on the Trade post is that it leaves them subject to supply/demand cycles. In this case, it has created a huge oversupply of +1 agony infusions, which kills the value of the boxes. Also, every other tradeable item in the boxes has plummeted in value since the encryption’s inception. Point is you are getting less than 1g per fractal after Tp taxes even if you sell all of your boxes on the trading post which is a nerf from the previous and much maligned gold given per completing a fractal.

We are not equating “cash” with “reward.” This is only one aspect of the reward problem and so far the one we have the most evidence to show is problematic. In addition, the rough, preliminary evidence leads, but does not conclude that ascended weapon and armor drop rates have been heavily nerfed per box. Source: King Fractal Research It should be noted that even if the chances were the same as before HoT it would still be a nerf due to the reduction of the number of boxes which give ascended items. Finally, there is the epidemic problem with fractals that it is more worth your time to do the lowest levels of a tier than the higher level ones. One of the key promises of the Blog Post introducing Fractals was greater rewards and that promise has not been fulfilled.

that data is fairly dissapointing
anet really needs to stop changing drop rates without telling us how the rates have changed, especially on daily lock outs. It will take months of data before they can notice bugs, unless someone (john smith) specifically pulls the data.

and are they even tracking how reward level effects it? (if it does)

It will also thus take months for peoples feedback to be heard.

suffice to say, armor rate should be at least 10%, but id say probably something like 20% for people who hit 100.

point is, they need to say what their intended rates are, especially when changing rates, as well as what can drop what, and how fractal level effects chances

The problem here is that Anet is aware they can do whatever they want with the drop rates and the majority of players will most likely not know any better since very few of those who play visit the forums or actually bother to look for any research into the matter.

It is most likely true that the nerf that came for ascended drops is somehow related to them wanting people to be a part of this huge “economy change” that’s been hitting the game recently.
I also think a lot of ascended drops are intended to be moved at the end of Raids and thus were taken out of fractals.

Because – you see if both Raids ( 10 man instanced content) and Fractals (5 man instanced content) both gave out Ascended then people would most likely do both and get a lot of ascended – and that’s a big no-no in Anet’s book.

Harper.4173:

phys.7689:

DrEckers.2039:

Currently, +1 agony Infusions are 3.64s buy and 4.24s sell and Fractal Encryptions are 15.01s buy and 22.5s sell. Both are steadily falling. Source: 1 Agony Infusions. Fractal Encryptions

The problem with all the rewards depending on the Trade post is that it leaves them subject to supply/demand cycles. In this case, it has created a huge oversupply of +1 agony infusions, which kills the value of the boxes. Also, every other tradeable item in the boxes has plummeted in value since the encryption’s inception. Point is you are getting less than 1g per fractal after Tp taxes even if you sell all of your boxes on the trading post which is a nerf from the previous and much maligned gold given per completing a fractal.

We are not equating “cash” with “reward.” This is only one aspect of the reward problem and so far the one we have the most evidence to show is problematic. In addition, the rough, preliminary evidence leads, but does not conclude that ascended weapon and armor drop rates have been heavily nerfed per box. Source: King Fractal Research It should be noted that even if the chances were the same as before HoT it would still be a nerf due to the reduction of the number of boxes which give ascended items. Finally, there is the epidemic problem with fractals that it is more worth your time to do the lowest levels of a tier than the higher level ones. One of the key promises of the Blog Post introducing Fractals was greater rewards and that promise has not been fulfilled.

that data is fairly dissapointing
anet really needs to stop changing drop rates without telling us how the rates have changed, especially on daily lock outs. It will take months of data before they can notice bugs, unless someone (john smith) specifically pulls the data.

and are they even tracking how reward level effects it? (if it does)

It will also thus take months for peoples feedback to be heard.

suffice to say, armor rate should be at least 10%, but id say probably something like 20% for people who hit 100.

point is, they need to say what their intended rates are, especially when changing rates, as well as what can drop what, and how fractal level effects chances

The problem here is that Anet is aware they can do whatever they want with the drop rates and the majority of players will most likely not know any better since very few of those who play visit the forums or actually bother to look for any research into the matter.

It is most likely true that the nerf that came for ascended drops is somehow related to them wanting people to be a part of this huge “economy change” that’s been hitting the game recently.
I also think a lot of ascended drops are intended to be moved at the end of Raids and thus were taken out of fractals.

Because – you see if both Raids ( 10 man instanced content) and Fractals (5 man instanced content) both gave out Ascended then people would most likely do both and get a lot of ascended – and that’s a big no-no in Anet’s book.

This is likely true, but it is still the wrong answer, because they built a system where fractals has more of an ascended requirement now than raids will, due to agony. You simply need armor slots or agony will kill you. By making it need max level agony, they assured that now ascended must be a part of fractal progression.

Then the whole flaw that raids is simply not accesible to many players just by the virtue of needing 10 players, when nothing else in the game is built that way.

anyhow, yeah Im sure they did decide to move fractal rewards, the problem is its a really bad idea, it would actually be better to give raids other rewards, since most people will end up being expected to have it already regardless.

Harper.4173:

you see if both Raids ( 10 man instanced content) and Fractals (5 man instanced content) both gave out Ascended then people would most likely do both and get a lot of ascended – and that’s a big no-no in Anet’s book.

On the other hand they’ve added an ascended weapon/armor sink – balls of dark energy are required for the legendary back item, and likely for legendary armor too. So these could be balanced.

Useful things to take once you get past 80.

Full healing power druids: Sustain is very useful on some instances past 90
Full nomads tank/heal guard: Very useful for tanking certain encounters
Sini/Viper: Rangers, necros, engis very useful to take. Burn warriors and guards w ork very well too.

Do not run berserker if you are playing a damage output role. If you run berserker past 80 get your head checked. Direct damage falls off so hard because of toughness scaling. Condi > berserker but I still see people asking for berserker only past 90. Berserker = almost kick worthy once you get past 80 or so.

Oh Snapalope.1378:

Useful things to take once you get past 80.

Full healing power druids: Sustain is very useful on some instances past 90
Full nomads tank/heal guard: Very useful for tanking certain encounters
Sini/Viper: Rangers, necros, engis very useful to take. Burn warriors and guards w ork very well too.

Do not run berserker if you are playing a damage output role. If you run berserker past 80 get your head checked. Direct damage falls off so hard because of toughness scaling. Condi > berserker but I still see people asking for berserker only past 90. Berserker = almost kick worthy once you get past 80 or so.

Lmao
Yeah sure and full HP Druids and Nomad Guards are so useful in content where enemies hit like wet noodles and a offensively laid out necro with blood magic would already bring enough heal via lifeleech while still having some decent dps. Or, you know, water fields.

People still run berserker in 80+ because they do not have full ascended condi sets and/or don’t even have viable condi-builds on their class. A person equipped in full berserker will still help getting through a fight faster than a full hp druid or a nomad guard pfft. Of course, condis would be preferred, but yeah it’s unreasonable to expect everyone to have full sinister/viper sets when most people went with full berserker over the course of the years because it just worked. Besides, some classes would severely cripple themselves by changing their berserker gear to condi gear (or their wallet if they change back and forth)

Just make more sets. When raids come out, condi, tanking, healing will have a role. Not a bad idea to start hoarding multiple gear sets. The druid is just more for general sustain on 90+ when agony in tight corridors prevent any sort of healing. It’s not needed but can make thing s a lot easier. I’ve seen druids carry people on 90+ just by keeping the team alive.

Oh Snapalope.1378:

Just make more sets. When raids come out, condi, tanking, healing will have a role. Not a bad idea to start hoarding multiple gear sets. The druid is just more for general sustain on 90+ when agony in tight corridors prevent any sort of healing. It’s not needed but can make thing s a lot easier. I’ve seen druids carry people on 90+ just by keeping the team alive.

“Just make more sets”. lol
Sadly, this isn’t a thing easily done with time gates everywhere, nerfed rewards and higher ascended prices than before. Would be nice if it was, but alas it’s not.

A lot of people were smart enough to see that this is coming miles away that anet want to bury the berserker meta into the ground and prepared more armor sets for this before the expansion. Some people didn’t I guess.

Oh Snapalope.1378:

A lot of people were smart enough to see that this is coming miles away that anet want to bury the berserker meta into the ground and prepared more armor sets for this before the expansion. Some people didn’t I guess.

Well, I for my part didn’t play for a year, so I didn’t really have much chance to prepare myself for this. Still my fault I guess, but yeah.
Besides that, this is the laziest way to “kill” the berserker meta there is and it just turns the berserker into a condi-meta for fractals, which actually excludes a lot more people. Even more so now that we got to the point that both direct damage and condis are viable after the changes on them.

It goes beyond just more armor. Only a few classes have competitive condi builds, engi, Ranger and Guard. The rest of us are still better off in Zerk gear in every other game content besides fractals. So, we are creating a set of ascended armor just for one part of the game that should be “iterated” soon. Thats some real good advice Snap.

sini/viper berserker works.

Proof: http://i.imgur.com/aC0tr9v.jpg

In my opinion part of the game is gearing for a variety of play styles. They tried to bury the one gear type meta and make other types of gear more viable. I think the intention is good but it’s not idealy implemented.

Berserker has uses still. Some bosses and maps has bad targets for condi such as dredge.

The funny thing all the classes that pugs will kick in “elitist runs” before expansion, like necro and ranger, are the top tier picks now. It’s retribution in a way I guess?

Clearly you have a different meaning of top tier. Plus the only reason condi isn’t good in dredge is because they’re too lazy to fix the bug with condi scaling, they put it in the patch notes and expected no one to notice I guess?

Oh Snapalope.1378:

sini/viper berserker works.

Proof: http://i.imgur.com/aC0tr9v.jpg

In my opinion part of the game is gearing for a variety of play styles. They tried to bury the one gear type meta and make other types of gear more viable. I think the intention is good but it’s not idealy implemented.

Berserker has uses still. Some bosses and maps has bad targets for condi such as dredge.

The funny thing all the classes that pugs will kick in “elitist runs” before expansion, like necro and ranger, are the top tier picks now. It’s retribution in a way I guess?

that is illogical:

everyone complains one set is best for most fights that matter
solution: lets make another set best for most fights that matter

what should be the case is direct damage is a certain style of play, and condition is a certain style of play. If this is their implementation, they probably never should have separated condition damage and power.