Guild Wars 2

Let me start by saying I’m not writing this from a place of frustration. I think A-net hit a home run with fractal dungeons, but I’m wondering if the rest of the community shares the viewpoint i’m about to talk about.

Last night was a typical night for our dungeon group. We ran the next level fractal (42) so that we could challenge ourselves and reach that next tier of difficulty. We really enjoy the content and just have a great time all around.

Despite not being in it for the money one common topic of conversation is just how crappy the drops/loot are for such difficult content.

It just doesn’t seem to scale the way one would expect.

I’m speaking mostly of the rare, exotics, fractal skins and their drop rate. You get plenty more greens and blues. Once you’re level 40 Personal Frac level you likely don’t need any of the common drops you’d see:

• Shards – you don’t need anymore
• Frac relics – you’re good on bag space and likely have your back piece. Skill points are situational.
• Ascended Rings – you’ve gotten your two rings and probably rings for alts
• Fractal skins – I’ve gotten 1 skin out of hundreds of runs. Maybe that’s just kitten luck but the story is the same for many friends.

At this point you’re simply hoping to make a little gold on the side while enjoying the dungeon.

My Point

Would you like to see Arenanet increase the benefits of running high level fractals? Im not suggesting they should be so profitable as to kitten off the CoF speed runners, but I do think maybe a slight tweak is in order. Anyone who’s spent a lot of time trying to kill Shaman in volcanic 40 only to get a few blues and a green feels my pain.

Some options

• A chance at an ascended amulet or accessory after level X
• Slightly more elevated exotic/rare drop rates: I’ve gotten as many as 6-7 rares in a run, but i’ve also gone countless runs with 1 rare or less, some long and painful. I think i’ve gotten fewer than 5 exotics in total from all of my runs. I do not run magic find because the content is challenging and I like to min/max.

My favorite option

Fractal armor: Similar to other dungeons this would give us something to spend relics on other than more bags.
If I had it my way you’d have to reach a specific frac reward level to buy specific gear skins and those skins would be available to that character only. In a game where we dont have the gear treadmill this would give us some sort of “visual” bragging right saying “hey I do this tough content pretty often on this specific character”.

I can just see some guardian pimped out in all “level 40 fractal armor” getting asked advice from new guardians who want to run fracs. Hell, id ask him questions.

It would also give us zero advantage, which is the idea right?

I like the idea of armor. However if they add armor it will be ascended, which I think is pretty far off. Granted, they could just put in exotic, and update it to ascended when they release that, but that seems like extra work. I’d rather them just focus on ascended armor.

The back piece is a pretty good visual bragging right, along with fractal skins if you’re lucky enough to get them. I’m about 200 ectos and 100 relics away from my shiny.

Overall… they really need to look at Risk vs Reward across the entire game, because it is more out of whack than any game I have ever played.

is it me our the loot get graper the higher u go becous my loot has cone done every progresson

I’ve done 48 multiple times and the reward I got from doing 48 is worse than sub 30 every time.

my loot was great in starting fractals soon as i got to lvl 30 fractals only loot most the loot i get is 80% blue only or 19% green and 1 % rares no cores or any ting only geting blues and higher i cone the lower the green have drop now it like 90% blues 9.5% greens and 0.5% rares andi am lvl 41 fractals and my loot is only most of the time blue items ifen from the end daily chest it blues + daily only the fractal relifcs coins and prime fractal haven seen any good loot for any other dungones to most of the time my loot is just green

People will say it is just RNG and bad luck, and ANet will say loot does scale the higher you go in fractals.

But my experience and a lot of other’s experience says just the opposite. The drops at higher fractals are not better and quite often worse than lower level fractals. And this is with an increased difficulty and increased time commitment.

Just. Not. Worth it.

Done lv 36 yesterday, got 0 rares, 0 shards and a ring I already had.
On the contrary, while doing lv 28 a day prior I got 2 exotics, 5 rares, a shard and 2 lodestones and we didn’t even get any of the long fractals(we got cliffside and dredge on 36).
The chests imo are too random, they could do something that you get guaranteed a rare from third fractal or smthng ( so people couldn’t abuse it and everyone would be happy).

They just need to add fractal skins and t6 mats to the existing relic merchant.

Did a level 71 run last night, lvl 83-84 mobs, got 1 rare the entire run :/ The loot really doesn’t scale. If the challenge wasn’t so much fun there’s no way I’d continue doing Fractals because the drops really are terrible.

The loot doesn’t seem to scale which is poor design and needed to be fixed months ago or at least should have been commented on by now. This is 1 out of countless posts that has been left with no response sadly. I really hope a fix is on the way since the 40s is one of the only real challenging and fun pieces of content in the game right now.

Servatus.9214:

• Fractal skins – I’ve gotten 1 skin out of hundreds of runs. Maybe that’s just kitten luck but the story is the same for many friends.

You said you just did a 42 for the challenge. It sounds like you do 38 and below only. Repeating anything except for 48 is a waste of your time. I rarely ever saw anyone get a skin in 20-30s. Some may disagree but they have been very lucky 20-30s but the chance of getting a skin greatly improves in the 40s. I’ve run 48 nearly every day for a month and at least 1-2 people usually get a skin each run. Sure we get screwed over with 0 rings/skins sometimes but we get compensated with 3-5 skins on other runs. Again though 0 rings/skins for the group at 48 needs a fix months ago.

So in short just level and stick with 48. You will become a better player and have more fractal spears, harpoons, spearguns, torches, warhorns, condition rings, and healing power rings to take up plenty of bank space. You will not receive better loot till you get to the daily chest popping up on your screen except for an increase in relics.

Right now I have a shortage of shards, and what I want to be able to do is smash these rings I don’t need for them.

If anything have relics + essences + maybe globs + mats to make skins.

Crowl.8791:

Overall… they really need to look at Risk vs Reward across the entire game, because it is more out of whack than any game I have ever played.

This, so very much

This kitten is introduced at Fractal relog patch!!!!! be4 the drop were much better!!!

this arent RNG is NERF

and this make me realy angry they nerfed fractal 1 hours normal speed and cof p1 still exist!! (i hate farm cof p1)

@Servatus

Totally agree, man. I think they should introduce buyable t6 mats/lodestones for common/pristine fractal relics. Skins should be buyable too (say, 50 pristine relics), coz this RNG is just inadmissable considering that it requires such a large large time investment and is based on a daily basis.

obal.3218:

You will become a better player and have more fractal spears, harpoons, spearguns, torches, warhorns, condition rings, and healing power rings to take up plenty of bank space.

I think most ppl want some certain skins, not hellbunch of random unusable (or barely usable) weapons/rings to occupy some free space in the bank. Unfortunately it is the 2nd case now. Isnt 500 fractals and lvl 50 enough to get the skin u want? For me, desired fractal skins are similar to legendaries in terms of farming, but u have absolutely no control over the aquisition process. U either have it, or not. 1 or 0. No milestones, no progress to ur goal. U can get it after 1 run or never. I think this is wrong.

@Alphik.5327 Disagree with pristine relics being used to buy skins. In that case running low level fractals would become more profitable than higher ones.

Oh yeah, 30-40 fotm groups should be MUCH more profitable than CoF1 speedrunning. Either buff the former, or nerf the latter.

George Steel.1804:

Oh yeah, 30-40 fotm groups should be MUCH more profitable than CoF1 speedrunning. Either buff the former, or nerf the latter.

The response will always be nerf. Then people will just move onto farming something else. That’s what happens when you have dungeons that aren’t rewarding enough to do legitimately or with a regular/mixed group.