Guild Wars 2

This fractal reminds me of my old days working at a grocery store, after working a long 12 hours with no break, right at the end of my shift the delivery truck would come and i would have to unload it.

Or

When you’ve written a long kitten exam and you’re hand is cramping up, then you turn the page and there is one more long kitten essay question.

When this fractal loads and i see myself spawn in thart brown tunnel, all i can do is sit in a corner in the fetal position and sob gently to myself.

Please share your experiences and together we can make it through this.

I honestly don’t feel too… how do you say… angry? when I see the dredge fractal. Commence hate.

I love dredge fractal, you get 1-3g more than any other fractal, so at least it makes it feel like the fractal rewarded me a bit when I get it. Though it is about 5 mins longer than thaumanova or aetherblade.
And when PuGing Thaumanova’s worse because PuGs don’t realize you can skip every trash mob, instead they go killing each and every portal and it’s horrible.

It ruined my life. I’m having a hard time keeping up with the bills because i spend too much time trying to beat it. I don’t know how much longer I’m going to make it…

Zerothousand.3089:

It ruined my life. I’m having a hard time keeping up with the bills because i spend too much time trying to beat it. I don’t know how much longer I’m going to make it…

Be strong, there are thousands of folk just like you struggling in silence. Together we can make it.

Fractal Level is relevant to this opinion. At levels 1-20ish, Dredge is more than managable and even (just short of) enjoyable because the challenges are reasonable in duration.

At fractal level 49 dredge is a nightmare that makes me feel the same way as you.

I’ve only done dredge 50 once, and I’ll never speak of it again. (Over 2 hours in the one fractal)

This is the only fractal that causes me to groan loudly.

I actually don’t mind dredge fractal.

The sections with infinite spawns are aggravating, and they are the primary cause for how long it takes to complete the fractal. The manner in which they respawn doesn’t help – even changing how they (re)spawn could make a big difference.

For example, if you made the dredge respawns for the first section outside the caged room so they have to stream in through the door, giving groups the chance to coordinate a bottleneck at the door.

Similarly, when doing bomb runs, if the dredge were to send reinforcements from below, you could clear the ramp up to the door, then hold the incoming dredge back (or at least slow them down) while one or two players handle the bombs.

In both cases, if the group doesn’t have enough DPS, they could focus on CCs and still manage it.

As they are now, the spawns in the first section force people to leave some dredge alive to cheese the respawn mechanic. In the bomb run hall, it guarantees that groups without stealth available have to do suicide runs.

It’s not cheesing the respawn mechanic when you clear one side and kite the other. Alternatively you could kite all of them but that’s pretty difficult, if not impossible, at higher levels. There’s no value added in killing them over and over.

For the bomb path, groups do not need to do suicide runs if they don’t have a thief. Suicide runs became popular because they’re easy and require little effort. The dredge at the stairs are the only ones that respawn infinitely and there’s only like 5 of them. The rest up the ramp respawn after every two bombs detonate on the door.

TL;DR. Infinite respawns are not an issue in this fractal unless you choose to let them be.

EDIT: The primary cause for added length is lack of team strategy and lack of player skill. You’d think this would not be an issue at high levels but unfortunately 50 is the new 10.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/LFG-level-49-50-daily-fractals/first#post3634106

Ace.1726:

This fractal reminds me of my old days working at a grocery store, after working a long 12 hours with no break, right at the end of my shift the delivery truck would come and i would have to unload it.

When you’ve written a long kitten exam and you’re hand is cramping up, then you turn the page and there is one more long kitten essay question.

You’re giving me flashbacks of last semester in my assembly language course stop

Pretty funny metaphors and I agree with you. Every time I see it load, always stop to take a deep breath irl and an exasperated sigh, and evaluate whether or not it’s worth it to even bother with the dysfunctional PVT hero pug team that I usually end up with.

Zerothousand.3089:

It ruined my life. I’m having a hard time keeping up with the bills because i spend too much time trying to beat it. I don’t know how much longer I’m going to make it…

Hahahaha

I wouldn’t call the last exam question. That scared the kitten out of me when I realize it’s too late. Dredge fractal had always been a groan or more because you know you’re wasting more of your time for an end reward that’s just horrendous compared to the other stuff you can do in the game.

Someone give Dolan a medal already.

Wow.. im impressed, so this is what gw2 withdrawal looks like.

noobgood.8762:

Someone give Dolan a medal already.

he could put that medal on the now no longer existing neck of uriel asther

edit, or:
arya slade – moo cow guard
kaya lereau – purple ele
skye eterna – mes
felicity sinclair – engi
natalie fox – thief
kiera thine – ranger

all dead and gone

(forgot his necro but it doesn’t matter since it wasn’t 80)

RIP Uriel Asther
RIP Arya Slade
RIP Skye Eterna
RIP that ungeared engineer
RIP characters that I forgot

Gotta give you +1 for remembering the names and getting the spelling right… But seriously… you err… trying to make me sad? >.<
RIP Uriel… RIP indeed. Hands down the most attractive Warrior in game, y’all know it.

mourning iz srs bsns

Dredge fractal is the sole reason I make and carry watchwork portal devices on my ele now .-.

That was freaking awesome, ubershaun. I can’t even believe how accurate that describes my experiences in fotm… seriously.

“You force your eyes to stay open as you wait for that same PuG Warrior to fall off the edge with the Hammer again, yep, there he is, downed. You roll your eyes and pick up the Hammer, leaving him to revive himself. "

“Rabsovich finally falls, you’re absolutely certain now that you’re dealing more damage than your entire team combined. "

“Your blood boiling, you charge in to melee as the final lava spout hits its mark, unsurprised to find your teammates staying at ranged, the Warrior even throwing a question mark into party chat. There was no stopping you, and the Mining Suit crumples before you, defeated.”

“It is a statement shared by many, a question known by all, yet a question forever without an answer…
“Why the kitten do I do fractals?””

Seriously. Why the kitten do I do fractals…?

Irrelevant comments from people who do sub 49 fractal runs claiming dredge fractal is fine. High level this is a nightmare and I can’t believe it hasn’t been fixed.

You need to PM Colin this. It encapsulates the fractal experience perfectly.

Great read. 10/10.

fadeaway.2807:

Irrelevant comments from people who do sub 49 fractal runs claiming dredge fractal is fine. High level this is a nightmare and I can’t believe it hasn’t been fixed.

False, baseless assumptions are irrelevant.

Dolan, the fascinating foreshadowing you use in your story would put some writers into shame.

From the shadowy depths the Dredge watch. They studied you, mastered your language, learned your strengths, learned your weaknesses. From the shadowy depths they watch… Waiting… They can feel your every breath, your hands are a little slower today, your eyes a little more droopy than usual, you strike the keyboard with more passion, your clicks unnecessarily strong. And silly you, you chose to do fractals in this mood?
They knew when to strike, right from the moment you rolled Swamp they were ready for you, the decision was already made.
As you climb up the thin scaffolding you feel yourself being watched, almost as if… Almost as if something was standing right behind you, the smell of permanent Protection and Blind Immunity wafts through the air-
“Wait what?” You spin around quickly, met with nothing but the darkness of your room.
The Proceed box opens up, and slowly but surely everyone readies up except you. You stare at the box, the cursor held above Ready. You try to click, but your hands are frozen.
“Omg rdy up hrry” flashes across party chat, that same Warrior from before.
Sweat runs down your body, that pungent smell stronger than ever, now with a hint of gunpowder…. Gunpowder?… Bombs. You shake your head violently as your brain puts the pieces of the puzzle together, as if you could argue the inevitable.
You take a deep breath, gathering yourself, retaking control of your fingers, you hesitantly click Ready.

I especially loved the bold part; just so … perfect. I can die in peace now, the dredge fractal has been encapsulated in all its glory and wickedness.

ubershaun.3649:

It takes five wipes trying to organise your team through the drill platform, but with perseverance, some god delivered patience, and half your party re-rolling to Thief,

I literally spat my drink out on this part

I love dredge fractal, my Thief privilege feels so real.

Spiuk.8421:

I love dredge fractal, my Thief privilege feels so real.

I’m so triggered right now.

This must have more challenges added to it at higher levels and this is the difficulty I am reading of. Of course pugging anything can turn it into a nightmare. Ive only done it at level 10 and under so please tell me that it gets harder after that. Im a fractal noobkin.

Nice story, ubershaun. XD Funnily enough, I ALSO got Dredge fractal last night. Everybody in my party went, “Oh man…”

And to make matters worse, we also got the Bomb path. -_-

Still, at least Rabsovich went down pretty smoothly. The Warrior in my party decided to YOLO charge right into the fray, but surprisingly we managed to deal quite comfortably with Rabs and his mobs at the same time.

Also got dredge yesterday .. and the day before (both on 49). Just dredge took us as long as a full fractal run without dredge would take us. One evening spent well when you have limited playing time.

Also the last skip was fixed where you could get at least 4 people at the same time into the cage, which means they at least know about the existence of the fractal but refuse to do anything good about it which honestly makes me mad (especially with the lack of feedback here)

Running with my lvl 50 daily team in TS:
Upon hearing: “get…to…higher…ground”
“Expletive, groans, expletive, expletive…expletive this – we’re rerolling”
Roll #2: finishes in the amount of time it would have taken us to just do the dredge.

Well all know it’s long. It’s stupid long. Like, really stupid long. It could end at Rabsovich and still be too long. Aside from that the Dredge themselves are the real problem with this fractal. Dredge are poorly designed mobs. Anyone who has experienced the Dredge Fractal could probably tell you this instictively, but I’ll explain why I feel this way.

It’s as if Anet decided to put everything that would make a PvE mob difficult onto one type of mob: Dredge. Massive (unreflectable) ranged damage, huge health pools, spam CC, immune to an essential defensive condition (blind), and boon spam. To make matters worse, even if you try to account for the boon spam and bring boon removal (which is sort of a silly proposition in PvE, but let’s go with it) it doesn’t matter because they reapply every second. Ridiculous. Most fights that involve any number of veterans leave you feeling helpless.

I would honestly like to see devs run this fractal on level 50. I have a hard time believing people who are capable enough to create such a great overall game as this really think there’s nothing wrong with this fractal.

Not 50, 49 please so that the effect of dodging has an impact. They should also run all other fractals on 49 for a comparison of how much different it actually is.

Also Ascalonian and then wipe on the first group after dulfy (preferable the one in the middle) so that NPCs don’t spawn and you’re more or less dead on respawn.

Yesterday we didn’t get dredge with the same group, the complete run took us around 1:30 hours less if I remember it correctly (well maybe an hour since we took a break during dredge the day before .. because it’s so awfully long)

Got dredge at fractal level 40 and 30. In the first one, my group pretty much 4 man the panel room since our mesmer pug is rather umm… ‘useless’ (quote). In the second one, we had a friend as the fifth and were slaughtering everything with grace. I’m happy since they went smoothly and I’ve got hefty loots including a fractal spear skin and an infused crystalline band from daily chests ;3

Adamantium.3682:

Well all know it’s long. It’s stupid long. Like, really stupid long. It could end at Rabsovich and still be too long. Aside from that the Dredge themselves are the real problem with this fractal. Dredge are poorly designed mobs. Anyone who has experienced the Dredge Fractal could probably tell you this instictively, but I’ll explain why I feel this way.

It’s as if Anet decided to put everything that would make a PvE mob difficult onto one type of mob: Dredge. Massive (unreflectable) ranged damage, huge health pools, spam CC, immune to an essential defensive condition (blind), and boon spam. To make matters worse, even if you try to account for the boon spam and bring boon removal (which is sort of a silly proposition in PvE, but let’s go with it) it doesn’t matter because they reapply every second. Ridiculous. Most fights that involve any number of veterans leave you feeling helpless.

I would honestly like to see devs run this fractal on level 50. I have a hard time believing people who are capable enough to create such a great overall game as this really think there’s nothing wrong with this fractal.

So which massive range damage attack that’ll unreflective are you referring to? The only one I know of is the mini boss’ (Ratrovik or w/e) shockwave attack but it has a long telegraph making it easy to dodge.

I believe only one dredge mob type buffs. Try killing those first if you’re not stacking in the first place.

the reverberants and some other mobs that cast the shockwave (looks like ele staff earth 5) bypass reflects at least to some extent

guanlongwucaii.3162:

the reverberants and some other mobs that cast the shockwave (looks like ele staff earth 5) bypass reflects at least to some extent

If you don’t stand directly on the reflects, then you won’t get hit. They are still reflectable but it seems either they have a large hit box or pass through the wall of reflection before being sent back to the mob.

I’m doing fractals with friends being on TS3 and if we roll dredges, I’m just laughing out lout from them being so mad ;D
Take it easy and equip PVT

I didn’t look at this thread until now. I’m glad I did; Dolan’s short story was superb. +1