FotM Hard Capped at 50+ (for now)
Why didn’t plan C work?
Already asked someone at ANet, they’ve intentionally capped it at 39 currently and 49 for those with amulet AR.
Unless the amulets grant somewhere in the range of 430 Agony Resistance, you aren’t going to live through the level 50 Jade Maw’s Agony.
Right now, the Agony is being re-applied if you are revived after being defeated, a simple and elegant fix to all of the exploits going on to bypass it. If you cannot live through Agony once, you will never live through it ever.
(edited by Nokaru.7831)
This has to be one of the most kittentarded changes they have ever made.
Each member of our team spent 900 gems on revive orbs to get to Fractals scale 80, because we enjoy the challenge.
All other dungeons have been nerfed.
Slowly starting to say farewell to this poor game.
“You will be playing the game the way that you want to play” Even in one sentence among all the promises that ANet claimed in their manifesto, ANet couldn’t fulfill it. Every way that players wanted to play had been blocked and players forced to go one way, aka ANet way or highway to another game.
TBH, this game is free right now. I already paid $60 for it so I stay and play. It was well worth the time I spent on this game for $60. However, if ANet releases an expansion, with all the kitten issues as this time, they would not receive a dime from me.
Just so you know…
You take no damage from agony with Renewed focus as guardian.
Tested.
So perhaps try that after you rid of the first 2 tentacles?
That’s 3 ticks of 10. When you’re that high, those remaining 7 ticks are more than enough to kill you, and if you die and res, you have to suffer the full 10 ticks all over again.
@Andulvar.4265 Just too much agony, we were able to keep him alive for a few seconds, though.
@Firegoth.6427 Renewed focus can only mitigate agony if activated before you receive the condition, and only for its duration. The same is true for Mist Form, which we did try, having the guardians heal with Light of Deliverance and even attempted using Signet of Mercy.
Doesn’t protection decrease the damage of the ticks as well?
I’m not 100% sure.
Is that bug, or intended change ?
I don’t believe protection has an effect, although even if it did, it would only essentially mitigate 3.333 ticks over the course of all 10. ~7 ticks is still more than enough to blast through any heals or other tricks.
I was reading the OPs post and I was like, “Wow, the same exact thing happened to me last night,” and then I realized that I was one of the guardians in that group! =D
Yes, ANet really did destroy fractals. I honestly loved playing with high level FotM players because they were skilled, disciplined, and were able to help you become a better player. I’ve tried other dungeons recently after finally taking a break from FotM and it’s amazing how much better of a player I am by playing FotM… but no more, it seems. Instead, we need to “require” everyone to show their equipment before joining, but that only is effective until FotM 30, at which point everyone [should] have 30 AR. Regardless, even if you never use random PuGs, advancing in this dungeon was really an amazing way to get better at playing the game, but, alas, no more.
This has become a problem now only because the recent patch fixed the gimmicks and exploits that are useful past 50+. Now let’s not talk about these fixes, we should take a step back and look at the Jade Maw agony mechanism from the beginning.
I do believe now that the original intention was capping the level at around 39 with the possible 30 AR, the idea is probably with more gear released you will be able to approach higher levels.
So this is not just a problem with this fix, it’s the problem with the very design of Jade Maw agony. We just ignored it because we could get around it, and that the Jade Maw fight isn’t really considered a hard fight by any stretch anyway, so people were fine with that.
And a post I made earlier regarding the topic:
Some personal input here.
My team and I are currently sitting at level 56 in fractals. We quite enjoyed the process of leveling up, and the rise in challenge moving past 50 is quite engaging. Since level 50+ we have been using revive orbs. So I guess I have to talk about the Jade Maw fight, and why I didn’t have so much problem with buying a few orbs before:
Jade Maw is never considered by us as a hard fight, in fact it is incredibly easy. So we don’t see it as a challenging part of moving up the level in fractals. My team basically came into an agreement that we will just pay 1g to whoever is buying an orb. The money didn’t quite bother us, and we see it just part of the expense of progressing. The Jade maw fight before has some issue. If we consider the most effective strategies to be exploits, (99%, ranger, orb), which I think they are, there aren’t really much other reliable strategies. This is why I don’t understand the system in the first place, being:
Why using such a nonsensible method to hard cap content?
This didn’t bother us all that much before, because like I said, this is an easy fight after all, we take the previous 3 fractals as the challenging part.
Now I just put our planned level 56 run tonight on hold because I heard from multiple sources that there are currently no way of getting past the Jade Maw fight. Fixing exploits and things that are considered as bugs are fine, but then this brings me back to the original question: Why such a weird kind of hard cap? We already know that fractal goes to at least level 80, why not just let the people willing to progress do so? If not, then wouldn’t it make more sense just to cap it at say 50, and then 60 and so on with the release of new gear?
I still fail to see the reason behind absolutely halting any progress. Unless level 80 was supposed to be only reached with full ascendent and ar, but then that was also ridiculous. I was anticipating some kind of valid mechanic to get around orbing and pet rezzing, so I do anticipate the current status is not what in intended.
But at the end of the day we haven’t really ever heard any official statements with the level of fractals and the intention of Jade Maw agony mechanic. Hope this time around we get some feedback.
EDIT 1: Got a tip from a friend who just finished 42 with 99%, seems like there are some false info flying around or it has been hotfixed in the build around half an hour ago.
This has to be one of the most kittentarded changes they have ever made.
Each member of our team spent 900 gems on revive orbs to get to Fractals scale 80, because we enjoy the challenge.
All other dungeons have been nerfed.Slowly starting to say farewell to this poor game.
>this!
signed
@Jzl.8715, You are completely correct. The agony mechanic on the Jade Maw should not be a hard cap on progression, especially when fractals are advertised as “infinite”. If they intended to have a cap, they should cap it, not make it impossible to progress. I think that a change to the Jade Maw should be made so that in some way, just as the fractals that came before it, skill relative to the difficulty scale plays a part.
@Merit.2479, Haha xD yeah, I was a little irritated we wasted all that time (and res orbs), so I thought I’d post on here in the off chance a dev might see it and be inspired to fix the Maw. Good run otherwise, though ^-^
This has to be one of the most kittentarded changes they have ever made.
Each member of our team spent 900 gems on revive orbs to get to Fractals scale 80, because we enjoy the challenge.
All other dungeons have been nerfed.Slowly starting to say farewell to this poor game.
Same. This “fix” killed all pve challenge. Startin lf spvp team.
Like it or not, it was never intended for anyone to get past 50. I don’t know how much more painfully obvious they could have made it (1172% HP/sec seems sufficiently high, and then the loot past 50 doesn’t get any better). ArenaNet doesn’t really patch dungeon breaking exploits that quickly, so just because you could get past Jade Maw, doesn’t mean you were supposed to.
However, I do agree that it was nice going past 50 and still having it scale up, getting a bit more challenging. Personally, I quite liked the dungeons at 80, as the trash itself was quite punishing in some places. I’m quite annoyed that there is a literal wall with absolutely no reasoning behind it, instead of having the agony ramp up so that it was no longer feasible to progress. I don’t really like Jade Maw to begin with either, as it’s not even really a boss, just an agony block.
As for people on this forum claiming that they were only going past 50 “for the challenge”, let me just say that every single player I pugged with past 60 refused to do anything as was probably intended. I understand that those were just pugs, and that some organized groups may have not exploited anything at all and got to 80, but I highly doubt it. I am not doubting that it is possible, because I know you can do it properly if you really try, but it was too easy to exploit everything that gave you the slightest bit of trouble, and I’m sure most did.
Did you spy kit on dredge (both the cage and the doors)?
Did you spy kit on the first bonfire in snowblind?
Did you stand on the tree on Mossman?
Did you break the Cliffside seal with AoE/Lifesteal?
If you say yes to any of these (and there are more, but you get the point, try not to get hung up on the details), then you weren’t doing it for the challenge, you were only doing the bare minimum so that your number could keep going up, and you were picking and choosing what you found worthy of doing legitimately.
The point I’m trying to make is that it’s easy to be angry at ArenaNet, but you have to take some responsibility for your own actions as well, especially when it’s really clear that you’re going past the point of “they probably don’t want me doing this yet”, whether you like their reasoning or not.
A mature response to this situation would be, “Well, I guess they were saving 50+ for later, regardless of their statements saying that it was an unlimited dungeon. I would hope that ArenaNet would tell us their plans about 50+, and let us know why they feel the need to have Jade Maw block progress. I quite enjoyed doing the higher levels, as it did increase the challenge that a player like myself cannot find elsewhere in the game”.
(edited by Pinch.4273)
The reason i’m kitten off at this is not only because I lost every argument I had for Anet against critics of FotM and Ascended Gear… that FotM offered skill progression and that you’re not dependent on the gear treadmill. With a required 400+ AR to get to high levels of Fractals, there is a even worse gear treadmill than any game ..not to mention those who were screaming about Gating.
You should drop the 400 number, it’s best not to think about it.
Agony goes from (with no AR): 48% (30) -> 72% (40) -> 1172% (50)
If they ever decide to let us past 50 legitimately, I can guarantee that they will reduce that final number. The agony progression makes sense up until that point. Keep in mind, that 1172% number is only on Jade Maw. Agony on every other boss stays at the 40-49 levels after 50 (72% a tick).
If you’re going to be mad about anything, be mad that Jade Maw is a wall. That is a legitimate complaint, and the one that everyone should be making.
(edited by Pinch.4273)
You should drop the 400 number, it’s best not to think about it.
Agony goes from (with no AR): 48% (30) -> 72% (40) -> 1172% (50)
If they ever decide to let us past 50 legitimately, I can guarantee that they will reduce that final number. The agony progression makes sense up until that point.
If you’re going to be mad about anything, be mad that Jade Maw is a wall.
As i stated I am mad that the Jade Maw agony is an undodgeable Trigger Event because it took away the whole premise that FotM was skill based. 2ndly, it’s not a 400+ I’m ticked off about, it’s really any number pass 30. Originally, AR was suppose to be a pair of training wheels for players to get up there in difficulty until they don’t need it anymore. Now we have to buy into the whole notion of grabbing +AR from here and there just to do anything in Fractals. It’s like the epitome of Gating. In other MMOs people did everything for that minor +stat in the gear treadmill just for the BELIEF that they will perform better or progress in higher lvl content. In GW2, it’s absolute truth.
I’m not going to be as nice as Arathorn… Whoever decided on this bottle neck was simply an idiot. This can be verified if they have any data on the amount of players doing FotM 40-80. The number of us was small before, and now it’s almost nonexistent. I’ve been doing Fractal 40-80 filters on gw2lfg.com now, and I see only the occasional blind attempt at 40-41. Good job Anet.
(edited by Stigma.7869)
This has to be one of the most kittentarded changes they have ever made.
Each member of our team spent 900 gems on revive orbs to get to Fractals scale 80, because we enjoy the challenge.
All other dungeons have been nerfed.Slowly starting to say farewell to this poor game.
Please tell me how using a cheap trick to progress = a challange. I’d say it is the opposite
@pinch
Well.. regarding on how people should maturely behave. Isn’t that what most people here have been saying…? Out of the shouting and ranting currently on the forum, people on this topic to me are the most civilized.
Arenanet never officially give any sort of statements regarding this, and initially they never stated any sort of hard cap. The main reason people didn’t like it is because the way that Jade Maw blocks the progress is so arbitrary in the first place. Like you said, there are many exploits in the game already, but most of those fights can be done normally, and also, they are by no means the only challenging part of the fractals. getting up from Jade Maw itself is an exploit, but as I argued earlier, the reason that we are fine with this is that the fight itself is easy.As for the challenge, it doesn’t really matter what the intention is. Overall the fights are a lot harder as you level up, and that’s the challenge. You can’t really negate that just by saying some few use certain exploits. And just climbing up that number itself might be considered as a drive for many people, and I personally don’t see anything wrong with that either.
Most people who are not happy with are the ones past 40 or 50. The simple reason is this: These people are the ones most invested, most prepared for this content. It’s probably the only thing that they are focusing on for the time being, and now it’s taken away.
I played this game a lot with one of my friend. The current state of the dungeon difficulty and mindset of dungeon population makes it no longer a challenge for us. We can breeze though most of them that we did countless times, so fractals is where we find that sense of challenge for the past months or so. Once we hit 40+ it was hard to find people to group up, so we gathered a few skilled player and made a semi static team based on our composition preference. We devised strategies for each encounter for each fight, now everyone knows exactly what to do in each fight. My friend and I also prepared many different consumables for every person for each fractals. It was an engaging process and friends were made along the way.
We have to admit that fractals is the only place where this sense of coherent group progression can remain for a long time. And now that if the fact is we can’t do it anymore, I think these people have all the reason they need to be upset.
I don’t believe I’ve seen any posts specifically regarding Jade Maw 50+ here. Every post has either been about how they’re really high level and bragging, or people unconstructively complaining about how Jade Maw is so unfair.
I’m not trying to discredit everyone either, I just find it funny that people claim to do things for the challenge, when they are likely skipping trash encounters that can be challenging themselves. If you could spy kit and break volcano, or cliffside, would people do it? I tend to think so.
And I’m not disagreeing that the game needs to be harder. I think it’s too easy as well, and high level Fractals was the only way to really get something that might have been considered hard to an organized group.
To be fair, the title of the post is clearly directed towards the change in the Jade Maw mechanic. Same as most recent mechanics regarding fractal capping.
This has to be one of the most kittentarded changes they have ever made.
Each member of our team spent 900 gems on revive orbs to get to Fractals scale 80, because we enjoy the challenge.
All other dungeons have been nerfed.Slowly starting to say farewell to this poor game.
Please tell me how using a cheap trick to progress = a challange. I’d say it is the opposite
You make no sense. You completely disregarded the skill and effort it took to get up to 40+ or 50+ Fractals to begin with.. and only end up at the last boss fight for an undodgeable, unblockable, unreflectable, unhealable KO attack. This in essence goes against every combat mechanic that GW2 was grounded on.
The problem is not using “tricks” to progress, granted some people were using Anet approved gems to buy Pay2Win revive orbs. The root problem was the fact that the Jade Maw agony attack is a undodgeable Trigger event… now it’s a trigger event stuck in an infinite loop…
I wonder how much money Anet made last night just from people trying out revive orbs on Jade Maw’s infinite Agony.
(edited by Stigma.7869)
Just be glad you’ve actually made it past level 1… I’m stuck there due to either awful pug groups or game bugs (last competent team I ran with got to third fractal easy enough only to have the game kick us all to Lions Arch and reset the kitten thing)
waited a month to try fractals again after getting fed up with endless teams abandoning due to disconnects and such and the underlying issues some of us have are still present
Just be glad you’ve actually made it past level 1… I’m stuck there due to either awful pug groups or game bugs (last competent team I ran with got to third fractal easy enough only to have the game kick us all to Lions Arch and reset the kitten thing)
waited a month to try fractals again after getting fed up with endless teams abandoning due to disconnects and such and the underlying issues some of us have are still present
Well the good side of things from this patch is that “most” exploits are fixed, and the partying and joining system works like all other dungeons. If you get dc or exit for any reason u can just go back in to join the team. Furthermore, you can also revive yourself at check point when your team is out of combat. Makes things a whole lot easier actually.
Props to the excellent programming work Anet, but I still hate you for your design decisions with Fractals.
unfortunately doesn’t work if your all randomly kicked to lions arch I’ve about given up on fractals, not because there particularly hard to start with, but they have so many darn flaws.
Videos of Fractals 67-69
Guess it’s not impossible. They even 4 man 67.
Videos of Fractals 67-69
Guess it’s not impossible. They even 4 man 67.
Do you even know what this thread is about?
This has to be one of the most kittentarded changes they have ever made.
Each member of our team spent 900 gems on revive orbs to get to Fractals scale 80, because we enjoy the challenge.
All other dungeons have been nerfed.Slowly starting to say farewell to this poor game.
Please tell me how using a cheap trick to progress = a challange. I’d say it is the opposite
Jade Maw never was a skill challange. So if you used the so called exploits there, who cares?
Unfortunatly slaying him is mandatory to progress and to add more challenge to the other fractals- which is now impossible.
Anet just reduced his endgame pve content, which was already lousy before that fix.
Videos of Fractals 67-69
Guess it’s not impossible. They even 4 man 67.
Do you even know what this thread is about?
Yes, the agony damage. It’s a pain I get it, but other people have gotten through it.
To be fair, the title of the post is clearly directed towards the change in the Jade Maw mechanic. Same as most recent mechanics regarding fractal capping.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear, but I wasn’t really directing my posts at the first post of the thread, but rather to some of the responses in general I’ve been seeing regarding this topic.
This thread itself is a good place to have a discussion about what’s going on, because it started off on good points.
Videos of Fractals 67-69
Guess it’s not impossible. They even 4 man 67.
Do you even know what this thread is about?
Yes, the agony damage. It’s a pain I get it, but other people have gotten through it.
I’ve been hearing mixed conclusions regarding rezzing at Jade Maw. If that has been fixed since last night someone please tell me. Your stream doesn’t work.
I never post on forums but this kitten really got on me.
Fractals is almost the only thing that keeps me playing GW2, why on earth Anet doesnt let me play high fractals.Not because the CRAP loot, we dont get legendaries every run kitten Why do u ruin the fun of ppl that want a challenge ( this game is so ez mode..) when they don’t do ANY harm. Instead of raising cap of 80 (u can bugfix and do it in one evening), no lets hardcap at 50 i dont see any logic there.
What i’m left now in pve? Sucky dungeons? DR Farm? Daily?
Angry level 80 mesmer.
Videos of Fractals 67-69
Guess it’s not impossible. They even 4 man 67.
Did you do 68 today? Have you even gone in today?
Videos of Fractals 67-69
Guess it’s not impossible. They even 4 man 67.
Do you even know what this thread is about?
Yes, the agony damage. It’s a pain I get it, but other people have gotten through it.
ok, 2 things: 1) the video at around 2hr15min, what do I see? 99% res, also more importantly 2) Date of record: Jan 27th. I think you should read the post thoroughly again
Videos of Fractals 67-69
Guess it’s not impossible. They even 4 man 67.
Do you even know what this thread is about?
Yes, the agony damage. It’s a pain I get it, but other people have gotten through it.
ok, 2 things: 1) the video at around 2hr15min, what do I see? 99% res, also more importantly 2) Date of record: Jan 27th. I think you should read the post thoroughly again
Nice catch the date was exactly what I wanted to look for if the stream worked for me.
The jade maw patch is basically Anet’s way of telling us that “rezzing after agony is an exploit so f… you”
Now all high lvl players are boycotting fotm
@Kurr.4179 The agony damage isn’t the problem. Every boss starts hitting pretty hard at level 40+. The difference is that with every other boss, the agony is avoidable, not just a wall that you either can or cannot pass. As others have stated, this makes FotM now an equipment check rather than a skill check.
@Pinch.4273 I actually specifically mentioned my discontent with the Jade Maw mechanics, and I think you’re confusing the issue a bit. Sure, the dungeon has many bugs and exploits by which you can progress in an unintended fashion. Many, many players have used these exploits, however, it doesn’t detract from the feeling of accomplishment in achieving a higher level. And although you’re correct in that it decreases their challenge, I think we can all agree that as far as PvE content goes, Fractals of the Mists were by far the most difficult. Skilled players don’t need exploits to progress, but humans naturally follow the path of least resistance – it’s faster or easier. That isn’t my complaint, though. ANet can fix all the bugs and exploits they want, ‘increasing’ difficulty per say, but a skilled group of players will always be able outperform the content until such point that it really does become too difficult. They fixed a lot of bugs in the last update, as I soon found out myself. My run on level 54 that I described above took a little longer. Just a little. Rabsovich made the dredge more challenging to complete, as you could no longer just pull him out and kill him to get him out of the way. But as I mentioned earlier, the Fractals themselves aren’t the problem. An unavoidable wall of insta-death at the Jade Maw, however, does not coincide with what I thought ANet was going for with Fractals of the Mists when they implemented the dungeon. There is no longer progression, it’s another “complete this path for its daily and you’re done” dungeon. That’s what I really don’t like.
(Most of that actually is not directed specifically at you, as you agree in many ways, your posts just got me on one train of thought and I digressed lol)
I wanted to bring up a good point that others here have pointed out. Every agony move is avoidable in fractals, except for Jade Maw. Granted, people may have “got to 80” doing exploits (I myself admit doing them once in a while), but I don’t disagree with patching the system to remove an exploit. If Anet said, “Hey, stop exploiting or we’ll take away FotM 50+,” I guarantee you that nobody 50+ would have exploited again. And if Jade Maw agony was avoidable, then people would play that normally too. Cheating is just not worth losing good content for. However, now that we can’t even progress past 50, it’s really the ultimate form of punishment (besides banning, I guess) to the regular FotM player. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that ANet didn’t cap FotM at 50+ just to punish us, I just think they wanted to add more fractal levels and not to reach the end before “enjoying the content as we envisioned it.” It clearly is unfair to the players, I’m usually ok with what ANet does, even if it nerfs skills and the like, as long as the content is still accessible. But now, short of getting odd number fractals from high level FotMers willing to be paid to do it just so we can progress is quite evil indeed on ANets part.
Well put, Merit.
Videos of Fractals 67-69
Guess it’s not impossible. They even 4 man 67.
Did you do 68 today? Have you even gone in today?
No we played before the patch.
Videos of Fractals 67-69
Guess it’s not impossible. They even 4 man 67.
Did you do 68 today? Have you even gone in today?
No we played before the patch.
Feel free to do 70 today. Let me know how that turns out. I’d like you to stream that too.
So many replies in this thread by people lacking comprehension or logic.
Oh well, the more attention this issue gets, the better.
Give us back our high level fractals!
@DancingPenguins.9875 Ziazis was essentially providing confirmation that Kurr’s argument was invalid.
@DancingPenguins.9875 Ziazis was essentially providing confirmation that Kurr’s argument was invalid.
Now now, no need to spoil the fun. It would be nice to have recorded evidence of exactly what goes on at the Maw after the patch. Well, it’s also nice to see their reactions on maw too.
I don’t mind the idea of a cap In itself- my only problem is that it was advertised as a dungeon that gets infnitely harder.
In other words, it’d make sense if there was a soft cap due to the sheer impossibility of killing all the mobs or being overwhelmed by adds… But a hard cap due to agony resist isn’t what I was expecting with fotm.
In other words, the progression past 50 will now be staggered based on the max amount of agony resist obtainable. There’s nothin wrong with this in itself – it’s only frustrating because that doesn’t live up to how fotm was advertised before it was launched.
Edit: I guess I should rephrase: progression past the hard cap isn’t impossible (you can still progress by doing odd number fractals). But the max level daily reward chest is hard capped except for one method that I know of: 99% rez method
(edited by Shlamorel.8714)
For those criticizing the exploiting of Jade Maw, I’d like to point out that the Agony damage is quite literally impossible to live through, and I sincerely doubt it was done accidentally this way. You can’t blame people for trying to find a way around it.
Here’s some perspective. These are damage values before Agony Resistance:
Level 10: 12% health a tick.
Level 20: 24% health a tick.
Level 30: 48% health a tick.
Level 40: 72% health a tick.
Level 50: 1172% health a tick.
It could have continued to scale up and the players progressing through Fractals would have though, “Oh well. I guess we need more gear. It doesn’t exist yet, but one day it will!” It would have been something to work towards and look forward to. However, the damage jumps up to a brick wall to halt progression completely.
I don’t mind the idea of a cap In itself- my only problem is that it was advertised as a dungeon that gets infnitely harder.
In other words, it’d make sense if there was a soft cap due to the sheer impossibility of killing all the mobs or being overwhelmed by adds… But a hard cap due to agony resist isn’t what I was expecting with fotm.
In other words, the progression past 50 will now be staggered based on the max amount of agony resist obtainable. There’s nothin wrong with this in itself – it’s only frustrating because that doesn’t live up to how fotm was advertised before it was launched.
Edit: I guess I should rephrase: progression past the hard cap isn’t impossible (you can still progress by doing odd number fractals). But the max level daily reward chest is hard capped except for one method that I know of: 99% rez method
Does 99% still work under normal circumstances?