Guild Wars 2

As it is now the Harpy Fractal ranging from 10 and above has 2 parts that are fail mechanic. Both involve leaping from platform to platform while having balls hurled at you. In theory this mechanic in the Fractal is a good design. In practice it is not. The reason for this is it impossible to see the AOE circles when the electric balls are hurled at anyone. And when 3 Harpys are firing Electric balls no manner of Reflective CD will counteract their abilities. Because of this the mechanic is absolutely broken for the platforms and almost always involves falling a lot and wasting time on something that can not be skilled by (Excluding massive OP dps or back to back invis bypass.)
If you are determined to use this fail mechanic at least increase ascended material chance on Harpies to balance the amount of time wasted. (which can be more than all the other Fractals combined)
The real solution is either add something that counters the balls like the Dwayna Tears for the fan part or remove the electric balls being thrown. Spending a massive amount of time trying to get to the top of the platforms when there is no real surefire strategy to accomplish the task is just fail and disrespectful to us players.

You could just stay in melee range and only argo what needs to be argo’d. If your careful this should be no problem. 1 Guardian has wall/shield/stand your ground and that should easily get you threw this with no problem, if you have a theif/mes its all the more easier.

Problem is that most people stand back and range while attacking targets that do not need to be argo’d causing balls in yo face.

Melee along with reflects, blocks, stability will get you through without any falling. It is hard to organize with a pug, but groups do make it through without falling. This is actually one of the shorter, easier fractals.

Easy enough as long as you have the foresight to equip a reflect/absorb/stability or have at least one guardian/thief with their eyes open.

It is a tedious fractal and the mechanic is stupid, I agree. It was funny at lvl10 when you started getting knocked off the platforms. It stops being funny entirely at lvl11.
If you are having trouble (poor group makeup or bads that refuse to swap weapons/skills etc) you can try standing on the edges of the platform and just watch the opposite edge for part of the red circle so you know its coming. This is only useful if you get targeted however. You can also try turning graphics right down to the lowest to get rid of the bloom effect so you can see the incoming balls.

sapientCrow.8796:

Spending a massive amount of time trying to get to the top of the platforms when there is no real surefire strategy to accomplish the task is just fail and disrespectful to us players.

This has to be a joke.

You’re doing fotm, so you will likely have a guardian in your group – problem solved right there. Do it one by one – you can range them through the platforms at the start location as well – use ground based AOE attacks.
Reflection skills and stability, along with a group that has an iota of patience makes it more trivial than it already is. It’s seriously not hard, ever.

Merlot.8567:

sapientCrow.8796:

Spending a massive amount of time trying to get to the top of the platforms when there is no real surefire strategy to accomplish the task is just fail and disrespectful to us players.

This has to be a joke.

You’re doing fotm, so you will likely have a guardian in your group – problem solved right there. Do it one by one – you can range them through the platforms at the start location as well – use ground based AOE attacks.
Reflection skills and stability, along with a group that has an iota of patience makes it more trivial than it already is. It’s seriously not hard, ever.

Ugh. . .I hate when people do that. In my experience that’s more likely to make them go invulnerable. That being said, reflection and stability really are king in this dungeon by a long shot.

uncategorized fractal is just fine

pullnointer.1476:

uncategorized fractal is just fine

not really, at 40+ those aoe balls stop becoming a concern.

Harpy barrages can 1 shot people

This is only an issue at the start where harpies sit directly above you. It is is pretty hard to not aggro all of them and they periodically go invul while continuing to shoot all the way down to the spawn point.
This place needs a terrain fix. The harpies themselves are fine.

loseridoit.2756:

pullnointer.1476:

uncategorized fractal is just fine

not really, at 40+ those aoe balls stop becoming a concern.

Harpy barrages can 1 shot people

good. why were you expecting 40+ to be a breeze?

pullnointer.1476:

loseridoit.2756:

pullnointer.1476:

uncategorized fractal is just fine

not really, at 40+ those aoe balls stop becoming a concern.

Harpy barrages can 1 shot people

good. why were you expecting 40+ to be a breeze?

killing harpies is a breeze. However, the first harpy encounter is a pain. There are limited dodge roll areas. There are tons of LOS issues and resetting issue. To make times worse, I actually got hit by and blue ball to avoid a harpy barrage a few times.

These problem dont exist in the seconds encounter because there are more manageable safe areas and breathing room

I did not experience any problems with the harpies. One mesmer is obviously enough to prevent all harpies from knocking back.

I don’t run fractals that often to have a “you’re just being bad at the game” comment.

I do however agree that the design of AoE rings on platforms where you cant see them kind of defeats the point of them being there.

Having to take them on one by one is an artificial difficulty and time sink in itself.

Don’t get me started on the in game vertical FoV as well as camera problems. Those alone make trying to “spot” the balls an even bigger nuisance than they need to be.

At the first part you can first just simply kill the that first harpyy, then kill the second one. After that you can shoot them from few “holes” between platforms and aoe their platfroms from below or just pick stability/invu/stealh skills and run to top and kill from there slowly.

Second part is simple also. Now a little shock if you did not yet know. Harpies do not use their knockback on their target if it is in meleerange. So first there is 1separate harpy= kill it how ever you like. Next there is 2 hapries chained.= you can for example pull/launch them as close each other as you can and just kill them in melee range and its simple as that, or use reflects obivously.
Then theres another separate harpy to be killed alone.
Then there is 3 of them chained. Again you can try pullin 2 of them together and reflect thirds attacks or someone can go to him and try to draw its aggro or cc it.
Finally you have to beat last 4 of them together. You could again pull some of them together or use reflects or just make it to top and kill them simply up there.

I’ve never had an issue with not seeing the circle. You may not be able to see the circle on your platform, but if you make sure you are paying attention to nearby platforms too, you should be able to see the circle regularly.

Also pay attention to the geometry of the platforms. You can often dodge roll forward or backward in a pinch or just make a jump. Personally I go for stability since I have an unhealthy tendency to hurl myself into the void