Guild Wars 2

Let’s focus on some mechanics this time around, shall we?

Part 1: Fractals needs a revamp and it on Reddit. This is where the reward changes were talked about.

Since I haven’t done a 48 fractal since April, a bit (or a lot) of my knowledge and experience might be out of date, which is why I avoided mechanics in my first post. Go ahead and correct or add things in if something has changed.

The other reason is this turned out to be really long list.

Aquatic Ruins Fractal (aka Underwater Dolphin Fractal)

Jellyfish Boss Mechanic

The main mechanic here seems to revolve around dragging the Jellyfish to electric cages to do more damage, though it is poorly communicated. Instead:

• The Jellyfish would start with a large stack of armor similar to the Karka Queen meta event in Southsun, and as you drag the Jellyfish to an electrified cage, the stacks decrease, allowing players to do a significantly greater amount of damage as the fight goes on.

Its really fun to see larger and larger numbers as the enemy gets closer to death.

Jellyfish Boss Abilities

• Being eaten currently only extends the time it takes to kill in a frustrating way. Remove the Jellyfish’s invulnerability state when eating someone, and have him instead gain back armor stacks for each pulse you are in his belly.
• Being downed while being eaten instantly restores multiple stacks while spitting you out.
• At higher fractal levels, the Jellyfish gains the ability to pull players to him before initiating an electric twirl (the one that stuns) similar to Lt. Grast’s from Ascalonian Catacombs.

Cliffside Fractal (aka Giant Stone Man Fractal)

When fractals first came out, this was one of my favourite fractals. The entire thing feels like one gigantic boss fight with multiple stages, in which your strategies change for each seal you are suppose to break.

Nothing much really needs to change, but I have a dream where stacking is a legit strategy and not just a bug.

Initial Fight With Cultist Boss

• Reduce boss Health alot (since you fight him twice and he drops no loot).
• At higher levels of fractals, he gains access to a ground slam attack that causes a wave of damage similar to the Molten Facility ground hammers. It can be jumped over, or more reliably dodged through. It causes agony.
• His knockdown attack becomes a 360 degree knockdown spin at higher levels if it is not already.

Final Boss Mechanics

• Reduce boss health a little.
• During the fight, you are surrounded by a Dome of Light centered on the boss. When outside of that dome, you take agony damage. At higher levels, this dome is smaller. As his phases progress, this dome shrinks. When the boss is disoriented and drops the hammer, the bubble disappears. Remove Boss’ ability to cause an agony explosion when less than 50% health.
• When players are “stacked” on top of the boss (within 25-50 range), the boss has a chance to stumble on his normal attacks and only do glancing blow damage.
• If 4 players are “stacked” on the boss when the seal takes damage from the hammer, the boss takes 10% damage.

Final Boss Abilities

• Boss gains invulnerability for the period when he is recovering his hammer.
• No change to agony wells.
• At higher levels, boss gains access to a ground slam attack similar to the first one. This ground slam attack will be interrupted before the windup finishes if 5 players are stacked.
• At higher levels, his knockdown becomes a 360 spin, but does not cause knockdown or knockback if 5 players are stacked.
• The Boss no longer has an AoE agony explosion ability because of Dome of Light.
• The boss no longer jails players (too buggy, might put player outside of dome).
• The boss stops creating agony wells below 25%.

I like stacking on the boss so much that I would love it if it became the actual mechanic of the fight. Alternatively, just give him invulnerability when recovering his hammer and keep the fight as is, if that would fix it.

Snowblind Fractal (aka Your Weakness Makes Me Laugh Fractal)

Snow!

Boss Shaman’s Mechanics

• He no longer teleports to safety when dropping agony ice crystals, opting to instead lure player’s to their death!
• Agony Ice crystal drops now have more patterns to choose from.
• Four fire braziers now appear at the corner of the room.

Boss Shaman’s Abilities

• At higher levels, he puts up a Frost Aura that chills attacking players before initiating his frost breath.
• At higher levels, his frostbite stacks do not go away on their own, and require you to visit a brazier to warm up.
• He has taken some Speech classes and now has access to a few more lines besides “Your weakness” and “Jormag”. Alternatively, he doesn’t say them as much.

Swampland Fractal (aka Mossman is a kitten Fractal)

Does anyone else remember when fractals came out and this was the fractal that was considered the PuG killer and hardest fractal of them all? Well its still a bit of a PuG killer, but player experience helps shorten this fractal a bunch. I’ll leave that in the Suggestions forum, since its a suggestion for completely new content, and not the existing one.

And you know what, I really don’t have any issues with this fractal or it’s boss fights too much.

Mossman Abilities

• At lower levels, he comes out of stealth before initiating an attack.
• He gains a set health amount where he stops attacking in Norn form, and switches over to his Spirit form, since this seems to be pretty unpredictable.
• At higher levels, he gains the ability to pull players to him in a manner similar to Ranger offhand axe 4.
• At higher levels, he combines his pull with a PBAoE attack similar to Ranger offhand axe 5.

Bloomhunger Abilites

• At higher levels, he gains the ability to launch a spike out of the ground that bypasses reflection and targets a player, similar to the Nightmare Tree from Twilight Arbor.
• At higher levels, his ground spike ability summons multiple spikes in a line instead of a single spike.

Underground Facility Fractal (aka Oh No The Dredge Fractal)

Gate Switch and Ground Button

• At each ground button, there is now a shield that a player can pick up with two skills attached to it. Skill 1 creates a temporary projectile reflection wall. Skill two is a gong that temporarily stuns nearby enemies.
• At the door switch, there is now a separate lever that creates a protective dome for 5 seconds for anyone on the switch as long as the player is alive. The lever recharges in 3 seconds to allow the reapplication of the protective dome.

Bomb/Blowtorch Gates

• Dredge no longer infinitely spawn. Dredge now drop loot.
• Number of Dredge that spawn due to damage done on gates dramatically reduced.

Champion and Clowncar Room

• Dredge coming out of Clowncar no longer drop loot.
• Dredge infinitely spawn from clowncar until the it is destroyed (break the car’s door mechanism maybe?).
• Bombs are placed around the room, and can be dropped as an environmental weapon to do AoE damage.
• If the Veteran Dredge that spawns on the Champion is hit with a bomb, his gong shield breaks and can no longer give buffs to his allies.
• Reduced health on Champion Dredge.

Ice Elemental and Dredge Powersuit

• Slightly Reduce number of mobs between the previous room and the boss fight room.
• The rest of the fight remains unchanged.

Hopefully this shortens the fractal a bit, since it has a lot of cool mechanics, but it ends up taking forever, and everyone despises because of the length. The one downside to my changes is the lack of loot, but you guys can go farm champions for that, so meh!

Urban Battleground Fractal (aka For Ascalon! ARAAARARARAFRAGFDHFG! Fractal)

I don’t have any issue with this fractal really. Getting used to the AI is a bit of a pain, but otherwise things seems to go pretty well. So I don’t see any changes I could really make here.

Moving On.

Volcanic Fractal (aka Fire Burns! Fractal)

Again this fractal does pretty well in relation to skill level, and I wouldn’t change much. I have heard of issues regarding a new cutscene that results in the deaths of people, but I’m sure that will get sorted out.

Moving On.

Uncategorized Fractal (aka Endless Falling Fractal)

Harpies

• Remain unchanged. Never keep knocking players down! Its hilarious and they should have brought some stability anyway!
• Fix the invulnerability bug that harpies sometimes gain, even when in melee range with a sword.

Four Champions

• Slightly reduce health.
• At higher levels, the Rabbit respawns to attempt to murder the party.
• At even higher levels, the Rabbit is invulnerable to player attacks, and instead a Holy Hand Grenade Bundle drops from the Bandit. This kills the rabbit in one hit, and has a cooldown instead of being used. The Rabbit still respawns, so know where you dropped the kit!
• Once the other three champions die, and the Rabbit has died at least once, he despawns.
• Rabbit only drops loot on first death.

Bonus Fractals

Couldn’t think of anything for Jade Maw, so how about a new agony mechanic and boss?

Petrified Forest Fractal with a different agony mechanic as another bonus fractal

tl;dr: CITIZENS, THE NEWEST AND MOST UNIQUE DUNGEONEERING CONTENT IN ALLL OF TYRIA. Hopefully brought to you with some interesting gameplay changes!

I really like the idea of giving players items to pickup in the dredge fractal. At the moment it’s basically “ok, who is willing to take armor damage to get far point so the dredge don’t respawn and kill us all?”

This is really good but I’d add to the harpy fractal that the knock down is fixed. As it stands right now if you are next to another player and they get hit so do you, regardless of buffs, reflects, and invuls.

why do people post what essentially boils down to fanfic

here’s an example of a suggestion that Anet can actually take and implement:

“hey anet, make dungeon rewards better”

here’s an example of a suggestion that Anet can not and will not ever implement

this entire thread

Broadicea.8294:

why do people post what essentially boils down to fanfic

here’s an example of a suggestion that Anet can actually take and implement:

“hey anet, make dungeon rewards better”

here’s an example of a suggestion that Anet can not and will not ever implement

this entire thread

A lot of what I tired to recommend are actually things that Anet have already done in the past, with the exception of Cliffside and Underground (which I went a bit overboard on).

Jellyfish is boring and unengaging, but we have three past instances of a better invulnerability system than what we have.

And a lot of monster and encounter don’t quite scale with the fractal level, so having one or two existing attacks added to their arsenal would add some much needed scaling to a few of the enemies that just gain health/damage.

Lanser.8520:

Aquatic Ruins Fractal (aka Underwater Dolphin Fractal)

Jellyfish Boss Mechanic

The main mechanic here seems to revolve around dragging the Jellyfish to electric cages to do more damage, though it is poorly communicated. Instead:

• Being eaten currently only extends the time it takes to kill in a frustrating way. Remove the Jellyfish’s invulnerability state when eating someone, and have him instead gain back armor stacks for each pulse you are in his belly.
• Being downed while being eaten instantly restores multiple stacks while spitting you out.
• At higher fractal levels, the Jellyfish gains the ability to pull players to him before initiating an electric twirl (the one that stuns) similar to Lt. Grast’s from Ascalonian Catacombs.

I hope you realize that the eating attack from the Jellyfish can not be dodged, but only interrupted by someone using a sink/float skill. So unless they make that attack dodgeable, this idea is absolutely terrible. It would make melee’ing him virtually impossible, or you’d need 2 people (guardian, ele or mes) with god-like reflexes that never fail.

Lanser.8520:

Initial Fight With Cultist Boss

-snip-

Final Boss Mechanics

-snip-

So, you think it’s a good idea to put people in a limited amount of space with a guy that hits like a truck and spawns wells everywhere that give you agony and 7 million conditions.

Not only that, but the limited amount of space becomes more limited as the fight goes on…

I like the idea if you just completely scratch the wells, because it would give people incentive to put away their range weapons and go into melee. But with the wells, it’s terrible.

Honestly, the biggest fix Cliffside needs is just the complete removal of the first boss, because he’s pretty tedious and makes the fractal unnecessarily long.

Lanser.8520:

Underground Facility Fractal (aka Oh No The Dredge Fractal)
Bomb/Blowtorch Gates

• Dredge no longer infinitely spawn. Dredge now drop loot.
• Number of Dredge that spawn due to damage done on gates dramatically reduced.

Honestly, this part should just completely be removed all together. Get rid of the turret/bomb part and the Dredge fractal becomes equally long to the other fractals, especially seeing how both events are pretty “meh” and the bomb event respawn rates are nothing short of ret*rded.

Lanser.8520:

Champion and Clowncar Room

• Dredge coming out of Clowncar no longer drop loot.
• Dredge infinitely spawn from clowncar until the it is destroyed (break the car’s door mechanism maybe?).
• Reduced health on Champion Dredge.

Please don’t bring Anet on ideas. They already ninja-updated Fractals to make more dredge spawn from the clown car. All that’s missing is the removal of loot…

As for the Champ’s hp, it’s pretty okay to be honest. I’ve never felt the guy had too much hp when fighting him.

Lanser.8520:

Hopefully this shortens the fractal a bit, since it has a lot of cool mechanics, but it ends up taking forever, and everyone despises because of the length. The one downside to my changes is the lack of loot, but you guys can go farm champions for that, so meh!

Yeah, that’s a pretty big downside. Especially since that’s the only selling point of that fractal. Like I said, just remove the bomb and turret event, and the length of that fractal will be on par with the others.

Lanser.8520:

Urban Battleground Fractal (aka For Ascalon! ARAAARARARAFRAGFDHFG! Fractal)

I don’t have any issue with this fractal really. Getting used to the AI is a bit of a pain, but otherwise things seems to go pretty well. So I don’t see any changes I could really make here.

No problems? How about fixing the NPC AI so they start attacking before they get hit? I’ve seen my party wipe at lvl 48 because the NPC’s were just standing idly by, watching us get murdered, and once we all died, they decided it was time to chime in, and got their faces kicked in as well because there were no blinds or anything.

I mean, Agent spire has bad AI… But the Ascalon NPC AI is just.. Depressingly bad.

Lanser.8520:

Uncategorized Fractal (aka Endless Falling Fractal)
Four Champions

• Slightly reduce health.
• At higher levels, the Rabbit respawns to attempt to murder the party.
• At even higher levels, the Rabbit is invulnerable to player attacks, and instead a Holy Hand Grenade Bundle drops from the Bandit. This kills the rabbit in one hit, and has a cooldown instead of being used. The Rabbit still respawns, so know where you dropped the kit!
• Once the other three champions die, and the Rabbit has died at least once, he despawns.
• Rabbit only drops loot on first death.

I only agree with the reduction of the boss HP, because it’s pretty ridiculous. The rabbit is fine to be honest. The holy hand grenade thing is pretty funny, and I wouldn’t mind it, but it shouldn’t respawn all the time.

Lanser.8520:

Cliffside Fractal (aka Giant Stone Man Fractal)

Final Boss Mechanics

• During the fight, you are surrounded by a Dome of Light centered on the boss. When outside of that dome, you take agony damage. At higher levels, this dome is smaller. As his phases progress, this dome shrinks. When the boss is disoriented and drops the hammer, the bubble disappears. Remove Boss’ ability to cause an agony explosion when less than 50% health.

I like this idea, might increase his pressure a little which is too low if you stay at range. Though his pull move (cursed grasp) could become counterproductive with this new dome.

• When players are “stacked” on top of the boss (within 25-50 range), the boss has a chance to stumble on his normal attacks and only do glancing blow damage.
• If 4 players are “stacked” on the boss when the seal takes damage from the hammer, the boss takes 10% damage.

I don’t really know why stacking should be rewarded. Structured formation should be promoted instead.

Lanser.8520:

Swampland Fractal (aka Mossman is a kitten Fractal)

Mossman Abilities

• At lower levels, he comes out of stealth before initiating an attack.
• He gains a set health amount where he stops attacking in Norn form, and switches over to his Spirit form, since this seems to be pretty unpredictable.
• At higher levels, he gains the ability to pull players to him in a manner similar to Ranger offhand axe 4.
• At higher levels, he combines his pull with a PBAoE attack similar to Ranger offhand axe 5.

His stealth is very non intuitive mechanic. Give him -%movement impairment conditions duration but reduce stealth duration to 3-4s maximum.

Bloomhunger Abilites

• At higher levels, he gains the ability to launch a spike out of the ground that bypasses reflection and targets a player, similar to the Nightmare Tree from Twilight Arbor.
• At higher levels, his ground spike ability summons multiple spikes in a line instead of a single spike.

First idea okay, second not really. This fight is already filled with projectiles and 1-2 guardians with mesmer change this fight into monkey faceroll.

Underground Facility Fractal (aka Oh No The Dredge Fractal)

Bomb/Blowtorch Gates

• Dredge no longer infinitely spawn. Dredge now drop loot.
• Number of Dredge that spawn due to damage done on gates dramatically reduced.

Champion and Clowncar Room

• Dredge coming out of Clowncar no longer drop loot.
• Dredge infinitely spawn from clowncar until the it is destroyed (break the car’s door mechanism maybe?).
• Bombs are placed around the room, and can be dropped as an environmental weapon to do AoE damage.
• If the Veteran Dredge that spawns on the Champion is hit with a bomb, his gong shield breaks and can no longer give buffs to his allies.
• Reduced health on Champion Dredge.

Removing one of those parts would be the best option.

Urban Battleground Fractal (aka For Ascalon! ARAAARARARAFRAGFDHFG! Fractal)

I don’t have any issue with this fractal really. Getting used to the AI is a bit of a pain, but otherwise things seems to go pretty well. So I don’t see any changes I could really make here.

Your allies don’t have AI, they have AR = Artificial kittenness. Their aggro mechanic has to be changed to proximity. Some enemy skills animations like flame burst could use some overhaul. Similiarly, the damage enemy mobs and arrow carts at the last area inflict should be reduced.

Volcanic Fractal (aka Fire Burns! Fractal)

Again this fractal does pretty well in relation to skill level, and I wouldn’t change much. I have heard of issues regarding a new cutscene that results in the deaths of people, but I’m sure that will get sorted out.

Imbued Shaman dive skill should be changed. If you don’t have enough endurance for two dodges, it hits too fast and the damage is extreme. Futhermore, firestorm skill should not be almost instantly casted, especially with enrage buff.

Uncategorized Fractal (aka Endless Falling Fractal)

Harpies

• Remain unchanged. Never keep knocking players down! Its hilarious and they should have brought some stability anyway!
• Fix the invulnerability bug that harpies sometimes gain, even when in melee range with a sword.

Four Champions

• Slightly reduce health.
• At higher levels, the Rabbit respawns to attempt to murder the party.
• At even higher levels, the Rabbit is invulnerable to player attacks, and instead a Holy Hand Grenade Bundle drops from the Bandit. This kills the rabbit in one hit, and has a cooldown instead of being used. The Rabbit still respawns, so know where you dropped the kit!
• Once the other three champions die, and the Rabbit has died at least once, he despawns.
• Rabbit only drops loot on first death.

Ettin has way too much hp for just a champion, should be reduced, but not slightly. Moreover, this fractal heavily promotes projectiles defenses. That should be reduced, at least the final fight, unless anet considers kiting the boss as a legit tactic.

Overally, mostly good ideas but it’s just a fanfiction which most likely won’t happen.

Bright.9160:

I hope you realize that the eating attack from the Jellyfish can not be dodged, but only interrupted by someone using a sink/float skill. So unless they make that attack dodgeable, this idea is absolutely terrible. It would make melee’ing him virtually impossible, or you’d need 2 people (guardian, ele or mes) with god-like reflexes that never fail.

To be honest, mesmer sink is much easier to accomplish since it activates 25% faster. Plus, there is a boss that’s almost impossible to melee – Ashyn in phase 3. Unless someone wants me to prove otherwise with full melee party at level at least 48.

I wrote lot of stuff but i decide to delete them in favor of a single thing.

Before thinking of making fotm harder at ANY level anet needs to make sure that any leve has the same challenge with AND without one or more guardian.

Nowaday fotm 48+ with 2 guardian is really a formality, wherever without guardians is smoething few players can do.

That is the reason GUARDIAN is mandatory in fotms and that is plain wrong.

p.S: jellyfish is either ubereasy to sink or impossible…
I suspect istances use a P2P system and thus LAG changes a lot even with gaming connections.
And This game is far from being lag friendly as advertized.