Guild Wars 2

After getting to level 100, i just want to share my thoughts about the fractal changes:

- Bossfights last way longer, and cannot just be bursted down within a few seconds. This is a good thing imo.

- On the other side, their hits are really really weak. Even on 90+ they hit weaker than they did on pre-hot lvl50. Even the new mobs in the jungle hit harder. This is not how highlevel fractal encounters should look like.

- Instabilities: It was announced, that we will get fractalspecific instabilities. However, this means in reality, that the instability stays the same for 10 levels. Also, some Instabilities are bad designed. E.g. removing boons on dodge roll. What is the point in this instability? It just makes the fight longer since we often do not have might or fury. It’s basically the same like just increasing the health of the boss, but does not add anything special to the fight. An instability should make the boss stronger and not the player weaker.
There were even some pretty good instabilities already datamined a long time ago, when the fractured patch came out. Like, “you cannot reflect projectiles” or “you cannot revive allies”. But instead, the instabilities we got are pretty boring for me.

-Direct dmg vs condi dmg: Before HoT, berserker and sinister gear was pretty balanced to each other. After three years you finally made condition damage viable and more or less equal to direct damage. But now, direct damage is pretty much dead in high level fractals. Whats the point of this, other than just forcing players to get new gear?

-Rewards: They are terrible. Unless there is a top secret drop that is really really rare and very expensive, those fractal boxes you get at the end of every fractal are actually just a goldsink. For some unknown reasons they can be sold at the trading post for good money atm, but this will change very soon. Also, it was announced that players have to do 3 specific fractals in order to get their daily chest. Instead, its just “complete 3 fractals above level 50”. In a few days, players will only do the three quickest/easiest levels for every day, and some fractals will never be done again.

Before HoT, i really loved fractals and spend almost my entire playtime inside of fractals. Also, i was really excited to finally be able to play harder levels. But now, i actually wish back the fractals how they were before the launch of HoT. Mai Trin on lvl100 was funny, though.

I also like how they made fights longer – this was a good change, they also should make bosses more dangerous imo. For example the last fractal lvl 100 Mai Trin was just boring due to her not doing any damage whatsoever and not being dangerous at all. We literally had no chance to wipe.

Rewards:

As stated before, liquid rewards are bad, but this is not even the worst part about fractal rewards. The fact is

GOLD FRACTAL WEAPONS ARE NOT EXCLUSIVE TO FRACTALS.

- you can buy encryptions of TP
- you can buy stabilizing matrices off TP (1 matrix = 2 keys)

It means that you do not need to run fractals to get fractal weapons. Anyone who has enough gold to gamble can get them faster than any fractal runner.

Pretty much every single instability on higher levels is designed to counter act the “zerkermeta” which is absolutely BS. They are fighting against thier whole combat system with these instabilities.

Not to mention even more RNG rewards gated behind masteries/gold sinks. I used to love doing fractals but the thought of doing them now just makes me nauseous.