Guild Wars 2

To me, this dungeon is a pure example of the brilliance and originality of Anet’s map designs. I may not agree with their balancing, but the maps never cease to astonish me. It’s a great dungeon IMO, and even PUG players can do it with the right communication.

Perhaps my favorite little fractal is the blizzard one, however. The darkness and snow really makes it. I hope there will be a map designed solely with that.

Not sure how to put this so it’ll get through given your replies shadowlancer. You just don’t seem to be able to accept the rest of the world is doing fine or at least learning while you can’t even get past what the problem is with your groups. People are actually trying to give you concrete proven advice and all you can do is snub them repeatedly like they don’t matter. Here’s a hint….they’re actually getting it done and you aren’t so you might want to listen up. I see you running around angrily in your dungeon telling people what to do and putting them off, hence your failing at the runs.

Step 1

Realize the problem….you.

Step 2

Learn what it take to fix the problem and implement it. (keyword here is learn)

Step 3

Profit

I 4 man pugged up to level 5, then we decided it would go faster so we got a 5th and went up to level 7 with no problems. I honestly can’t even fathom failing at level 1.

Since my other post was deleted and got an infraction for it for some dumb reason.. I’ll repeat in other words.

You dont need full exotics for the first few difficulties, but what you do need are people who can think, react, are aware of whats going on etc.

I’ll not think about my words, because too angry!, and wanna tell that Anet has thought with their butts when create F@cktalis level. Now I see that in all overflows and Server’s LA – all looking for group with diff. levels. Some1 need 1M8 for lvl 1, some1 need 2Ms for 5, and all stay and wait for miracle post with their lvl. For no guild players is too hard to find a party with their levels. So first to do something turn off you butt and turn on your brain.

@OP hah you think you’re out of luck try having a friend who does nothing but constantly complainst, then says “i’m done” at the FINAL boss (legendary dredge suit) and leaves, him being the party leader btw.. :P I wanted to punch him over skype YET… I still enjoyed the dungeon. I am not level 80 yet nor do I have exotic gear but I really like Fractal… Shame that it has that disconnect bug though.

It getting tiring trying to herd the cats in PUGs. I can’t even get past level 2 because when I get a group that figures out they need to pick up the reflective crystals the boss just bugs out. This last time all the crystals vanished and it killed all of us at the same time, we ran back and it reset.

I absolutely agree with topic starter. FOTM is very beautiful but the gameplay is stupid, annoying and deeply frustrating.
We’ve got dumb puzzles like “pull that switch” and “jump on a shelf” instead of role playing and combat tactics, downed allies have to wait for ages until resurrected or restarting, and the worst fail that disconnected players couldn’t re-join.
We’ve played FOTM for several hours and left very angry and disappointed. Thanks god the other dungeons are great.

To op, no you are fail.

You don’t need full exotic. In fact the first levels are quite easy.

There are 2 fractals that can make PuG parties ragequit: The swamp and the dredge ones, because they need a lot of coordination and are frustrating.

And I agree you can find some jerks, today I found a big one, guy didn’t follow any instruction, tell us to shut up and acted like he was saving the day when he was literally the only reason why things were going terribly bad (dredge fractal). I spent the entire run hoping he would ragequit at some point, which he finally did but only after half of the party got tired and abandoned too.

But on the other hand, you don’t need a group of elitists full of exotics, the only thing you need is nice people able to cooperate, I always try to be as colaborative as possible an the most important part is being patient with other players. Today I found my new Guild in this dungeon, a group of nice players that started at a lower level for me and then they repeated the Chicken achievement for me. They didn’t know me and still did it, after some fractals I asked to join their guild.

Finally, I’ve found there is a bigger number of jerks on overflows servers (the bad example and others were on overflows, the good one on my home server), I’m not really sure if it is because players from my country are nicer overall, or because players on overflow feel a bit hostile towards the unknown.

You can perfectly find both kind of parties, I guess you need to be a bit lucky, but trust me when I say you will probably find better results when you are patient with other players. There is a difference between asking and demanding, and most times the first one will yield better results.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Normally you would want to go with either cheap tactics or an inability to rez. But this combines both at the same time, which makes for a very unpleasant dungeon. For example, while doing the underwater fractal there is a pathway that you have to go through that is extremely dark and does high damage in this darkness. The only way to go forward are to grab luminous plants and go from luminous plant to luminous plant.

Problem is, with 5 people and only 2 or 3 plants at each point, someone dies from the darkness. Or they die because the krait in that area use nothing but stuns and sinks and immobilizes. So you have to go back to rez them, but they die immediately since they’re in the darkness without protection, and you’ll likely die if you go there since krait will be around their carcass. So the team dwindles down from 5 to 2 or 1, and those few can’t fight off the vet kraits that await them at the end and then they get killed. Restart event. Then, if someone manages to get forward far enough to hit the checkpoint, they have to suicide themselves so the whole team can arrive and respawn finally.

I want to make a comment on this, since this is the first fractal I did with a PUG, one was level 5, another 44 and the others 80. The whole thing about the fractals is to figure a way to go through it, as a team, in my humble opinion.

Regarding the Fractal with dark water.
If you did grabbed a luminous plant, you would've noticed the skill on them, that once you click on a dead party member, you revive them and teleport them to you. Adding to that, there were zones with light coming from the ground, and those were safe to swim around.

Fractal of the Mists is one of the most interesting dungeons I’ve had the pleasure to play, with different mechanics, some more fun than others (I’m looking at you, Legendary Imbued Shaman), but it’s doable with PUGs, since I’ve been to PUG’s where not everyone was 80 and was able to do the Fractal with no problem.

The only thing I would complain about, is not about the Fractal, but the fact that once someone gets disconnected, you can’t get them again inside. That’s the only thing that have give me problems.

This is not even a dungeon, they could have made 9 great dungeon and give us 1-2 every month, but no they create this, so now you just grind grind grind grind grind grind grind…
P.S. Anyone for Arah path 4? Didn’t think so

A: “I beat it with Guildies.”
- Get a guild, just shout in LA, just so easy, unless you are not a friendly person and nobody want you.

B: “Go do it with friends.”
- You can make friend in guild

C: “I didn’t have any issues with my PuG groups.”
- I leaded many pugs, all problems can solved with right communication, you certainly dunno how to calm peoples and seek solution together. When you are stuck, stop and think 1st before repeat the failure.

D: “He’s talking like an Elitist so its him thats the problem.”
- Do we have to be elitist to complete fotm? Not really, if you cant complete you are not even below average.

It require movement control (jumping), it require communication (most mechanics), it require dedicated player to pick a role during boss fight sometime (drop bucket in dredge), it require avoid damage during boss fight (dun simply melee & learn to dodge at right time), it require different utility setup at different situation (think before you move)

if you don’t even good at 1 of them, you are really bad game player.

for the record:

i managed to go through it with a lv8 player that had started playing GW2 the day before.

Shadowlancer.7102:

I just spent a couple of hours working with people on these dungeons threw pure PuGing (Pick Up Groups). Half the people that join, lie about having full exotic gear, don’t follow orders, suck at puzzles even after explaining to them what needs to be done, or just sit there and act dumb.

I agree this is a pure PvE dungeon and its impressive but this is not PuGable and after trying 2 months forming my own guild for such dungeons like this. I wasn’t able to make guild nor find a decent guild dedicated to this cause.

An absolute fail and boring patch for the next 2 months. GG Arenanet.

Through, not threw*

And because YOU can’t get a group together this whole update is a fail? The fact about groups says nothing about the update, more about the lack of a lfg system. Also how you failed on making a dungeon guild (which others have succeeded in) is totally irrelevant.
And why would you even ask about exotic gear? It is NOT needed for any dungeon so who cares if anybody lies about it, we run perfect laps with a full team in magic find.

The biggest problem here is that Anet have completely split the playerbase. We now have people looking for groups for multiple levels of this new dungeon which makes it harder and harder to find people on the same level as you. This is not an intelligent move on Anets part in my opinion. I’m all for new content but gating it in this way is only going to succeed in annoying all those that were left behind for various reasons.

I find it hillarious… I remember running FotM level 1 with two 80’s who did have mostly exotics, two freshly leveled 80’s mostly in rares, and a level 4 who clearly was better geared that all of us.

Sarcasm aside, the level 4 did not keep us from smoothly progressing. FotM is more about player awareness than gear at the early levels at the very least. It does help to use a voice program like Mumble or Vent, but gear should not be an issue, especially not early on. If you think it is, then likely, your doing something wrong.

No exotics? Ha, what a laugh. Did a guild run (lv1-3) and two players werent even level80. One was even a lv46 Thief.

Run went just fine. Its not about gear its about using your brain, and voicecoms also help a lot.

I have successfully done 37 fractals, currently on F#9, every single one of them pugs with no one I knew.

I’ve done two 3-fractal runs now, first with my guildies and then with a pug. The latter run was more difficult because the communication wasn’t really there for a while, but we still managed it without too much trouble.

All in all, I think the fractals are some of the best PvE content I’ve ever seen in an MMO. I love that they incorporate puzzles, jumping and running areas, use kits in interesting ways, and that the bosses are finally showing some variety, ie. more than just ‘Stay out of melee, avoid red and oh he has ONE BEELLION HITPOINTS’.

Speaking as a mesmer, I actually found my shutdown abilities (moa morphs, stuns, dazes and interrupts) useful for once. The utility a mesmer can bring, such as blink, portals and invisibility, could also be deployed to get past a few tricky parts without it ever feeling like ‘cheating’.

Top marks, Anet.
(Also kitty golems <3)

I´ve tryed 4 times now and there is always someone who lost connection and he wasn´t able to enter with us again and 2 times all our group suddenly was in lions arc again when we were fighting a boss.

These are the problems i find really annoying about the dungeon. I havent been able to finish a complete run because of this. And also if someone leaves we should be able to find another one and continue with the run without having to restart the whole dungeon again.

Sorry for my english

22 succesful runs yesterday up to level 6 all with pugs. Only time we failed to go up a level i.e. complete the 3 set was due to d/c’s, bugs or freezes.

We pooled our knowledge and spent 5 minutes talking about each instance before we tackled it. No individual knew all of the instances and tactics but between us we knew most of them so pooled our knowledge. Someone on fan duty, someone marking target order, someone on tipper and so on.

Communication is the key when running with others, pug or not. Don’t need TS or great gear, party chat is adequate.

I wonder why you couldn’t form your own guild….
Perhaps your personality doesn’t fit in a GL role. Maybe you should look for a guild that focuses on PvE.

Reading this thread is taking a long time, but I don’t think you need full exotic

The group I was with (those guys were awesome ^^) got through fractals 2 and only tow of us were legit 80s, and one of them dc’ed long before the end. I was (at the time) only level 26.

I’d say the hardest parts were that robot that you have to spill the lava on and figuring out how to kill the eldritch abomination/squid thing, because there was no guide at the time that we did it. I’m glad I wound up with a bunch of smart, funny gamers though because we sussed everything out quite quickly.

It was hella fun

Yeah it’s kind of a social thing. If you are too socially kitten to become a useful member of a decent guild, or find a party of 4 other like-minded people who you can run the dungeon with together, then you’re going to fail at Fractals.

With Teamspeak or Mumble, a decent party who all know how to combo field and res each other, it’s really a breeze (except for the stupid dolphin one I always seem to get).

Learn 2 social interaction.

Voice chat should never be a requirement to clear a dungeon, stop pretending that it should.

Well the guild thing is a bit weird with fotm. Yes I am a member of a large guild (WvW focussed) but with the level system it’s difficult to find 4 others that want/are able to do the same level as you. Also with being an international guild there are the different timezones to negotiate.
It’s either repeat levels or use pugs until they catch up I guess. So far the pugs have been fine. Will run with guild only and TS once agony kicks in past level 10.

One other thought – With the level system, once you get past, say level 5, most of the players will have played most of the instances several times so should know them pretty well making for better runs and less communication needed.

We made lvl 2 in PUG 3 man. I was in MF exotic gear. We died many times on the last boss only before we realize what we have to do (Jade Maw) .
FoTM is the best dungeon i have ever been in so far. I have played WoW, Aion and Allods Online as MMOs + few other RPG games. Few of DnD dungeons can compare to FoTM as ideas, dynamics and pass-through / bosses mechanics . May be few of WoW dungeon events/bosses/stories combined with content and density can compare it too (i can remember Black Rock Depths in WoW was HUGE, with many bosses, mini events and realy lot of different paths through it, same as Dire Maul or Maraudon). The problem there was that most of the bosses fights was “Fight him to death” .

59 guardian with 3 80s and a 41 something or other.

Level 1 was challenging, but fun.

This all exotics or no dungeon thing is completely idiotic. I have, as a test, run many dungeons in MW only. Not even rares.

Skill > Gear any day of the week. Build right, don’t suck, and you’ll be fine.

Edited for clarity

Ahlen.7591:

This all exotics or no dungeon thing is completely idiotic. I have, as a test, run many dungeons in rare only. Not even MW. And been fine.

Skill > Gear any day of the week. Build right, don’t suck, and you’ll be fine.

Does MW mean masterworks? Because masterworks are worse than rares.

Just gotta agree with everyone that full exotic gear makes like no difference in the fractals.

The hard parts of the fractals that I have encountered so far have had absolutely nothing to do with gear. I mean, how is gear going to help you avoid traps and go the right way when running wisps in the swamp? Or avoid the stupid krait when you are a crappy dolphin? Or get a good magma dropping rhythm going for the ice elemental / dredge suit?

All of this stuff is more about coordination, skill, and knowledge than anything else. Not once did I get stuck in the fractals because of a gear issue…and I even did it with sub 80 people before.

I hated this dungeon.. didn’t help that people were being rude.

Thats the nature of PUGs in MMO, designers can’t do anything about it.

I PUG a lot too, what I do is build up a contact list of some competent players i come across and I whisper them first to see if they r available before i spam trade chat.

John.7180:

Reading this thread is taking a long time, but I don’t think you need full exotic

The group I was with (those guys were awesome ^^) got through fractals 2 and only tow of us were legit 80s, and one of them dc’ed long before the end. I was (at the time) only level 26.

I’d say the hardest parts were that robot that you have to spill the lava on and figuring out how to kill the eldritch abomination/squid thing, because there was no guide at the time that we did it. I’m glad I wound up with a bunch of smart, funny gamers though because we sussed everything out quite quickly.

It was hella fun

You mean people actually use guides for these mini-dungeons? I just lost all faith in humanity…

Shadowlancer.7102:

… Half the people that join, lie about having full exotic gear, don’t follow orders …

I guess I spot the source of the problem here ^^

Being ordered around by an elitist snob isn’t fun and possibly some acted dumb to spite you ^^

We did this with sub 80ies so no exotics at all … gear does NOT matter (at least not with the lower levels). Teamwork does.

When coordinating raids in WvW or getting people to “follow orders” it matters greatly how one “orders” the others around. It’s fun running with some people and I absolutely refuse to run with certain commanders and rather switch to a different map. It’s all about how you address those you expect to follow your lead …

I’ve been doing the Fractals dungeons with nothing but random Pugs, usually with good results. I’ve only been in one or two groups that had terrible results, mostly due to incompetence resulting in completely broken armor (not my own armor), inability to follow basic instructions (Pull the mining suit underneath the lava buckets and immobilize it! Why am I the only one with an immobilize skill on this team?!) or a single person leaving the party early.

But most of the time, the groups I’ve been in were great, and very successful. Even when a group did not know what to do, it did not take them long to figure it out. In my experience, most Pugs for Fractals on Aurora Glade tend to be pretty good players.

Most importantly, I’m having fun again! Now there really isn’t any reason to go back to the old dungeons ever again.

Fractal 33 with all PUGs. Having more fun in FotM so far than normal dungeons for me

Level 26 solely with PUGS.

It’s actually easier at higher levels since most of the bad pubs have given up by the time you reach 20+, haven’t seen a 5 signet warrior since level 4

Holy Necro batman!

Seriously this thread was buried

Never encountered a bad pug in all my time playing. Perhaps your standards are too high.

Or perhaps you’re just lucky?

I’ve certainly had my fair share of bad PUGs

PuGed all the way to 21! Not including multiple runs of level 10 I did to get rings. Already did about three repeats of 20. Had good and bad PuGs, had failed runs too but overall, it hasn’t been a problem. However, I will say this, level 1 is the hardest level to do with PuGs.

This is because very likely, everybody is new. Some might have done a couple of failed runs but with some successful fractals or are alts of people who have characters with access to higher level fractals but most are new and that means they are learning, this includes builds that work, time commitment necessary, as well as the actual encounters and mechanics. So of course the success rate is not high. But that should be obvious to anyone who has ever done a dungeon. Get past level 1 and Fractals does get better… until you reach those crazy agony levels.

But you know, I am just in it for obsidian shards now. No crazy agony for me!

I have 2 level 80 characters, a thief who is at fractal level 10 and pugged his way to it, and a necromancer who pugged levels 1-8 and 14-18 and is now playing in a group of 3 people while pugging the other 2.

So saying that 90% of the pug groups suck is not true. What is true is that the pug’s have to listen if they dont know the dungeon, and that can be a problem, but surely not at such low levels, not to the degree that you can’t beat the dungeon.

Smart, skillful play beats stats in this game, by far. Some attacks are not meant to be absorbed by the player, regardless of gear and profession, so they punish you hard if they hit, live with it.

Regarding the swamp: yes, the swamp is ridiculous at lower level because people fail to understand what to do, or what stability is, or what teleports are, etc…later on, as you grow in fractal level, and as your groups become more experienced, you will pray for the swamp, since it is the fastest fractal dungeon out there, only challenged (in terms of speed of completion) by the underwater one.

Regarding the “no self rezzing of dead players” mechanic: it is a good mechanic that teaches people to be careful, bring more defensive skills and improves their overall gameplay by far. It kills the spawn point zerging, it kills the mindless rush into the fight, and that is never a bad thing. There is no argument you can give to me that such a mechanic is bad. I have 2 friends who refuse to play this game (after buying it and playing to level 80, beating many dungeons and gettig map exploration) because they think its to easy because of the waypoint zerging and the downed state. Go and try to play the Secret World, there if you die in a boss fight, you resurect in a safe circle which you cant exit untill either the boss is dead or the whole group wipes, no rezzing mechanic in the game at all (= even your teammates can not rez you), yet the game is fun and challenging, because you try not to die, and that is not true here for so many players. Many people come into fractals with the general idea like “what the heck, ill just die and run from the waypoint” and fail, and then complain. Waypoint rezzing in dungeons, especially at some parts of the dungeons (defending the npc in CoF while he sets up the bomb for example, dying at Lupicus and running back from waypoint in arah 2 and 3, etc…), waypoint running after death is a valid and widely accepted strategy, instead of the more intelligent “play defensive and don’t die” strategy. If you ask me, all dungeons should work like fractals when it comes to the rezzing and checkpoint mechanics. Many of friends and guildmates who are playing changed their playstyle after they did some fractal runs, and improved their general understanding of defense, dodging and keeping themselves alive in fights, and brought that knowledge to other dugeons. A team of people where everyone is at fractal level 20 generally does normal dungeons a lot better and smarter than the dungeon runners that never did fractals. So, to conclude, doing fractals successfully actually improves people in terms of playstyle and defensive thinking, so there is no way you can defend your point of view that the rezzing mechanic and defense requirements set by fractal dungeons is a bad thing.

Some pug players will make your life a hell, that is true, we had situations when after a bad pug ragequit we 4 manned the fight in the 1st try without a problem. Remember, someone failing badly at some fights will punish the whole team, not just one player.

Regarding the gear requirements you mention: no “old” dungeon in this game, nor fractals (at least not to level 20) require full exotic gear, surely players in full exotics will have better stats to start with, and therefore can be a bit (but just slightly) more careless in terms of defense or DPS checks. But, there is no excuse for anyone to be running around in blue or green gear either, since rare gear is cheap enough, and any player who played normally to level 80 will have enough money to go out and buy a set of rare gear from the TP.

The mentality of some people (who are sadly a majority in this game) is bad, its bad in terms how they perceive the defense values, so it is not uncommon for people to think that purely offensive gear (glass cannon) is the way to go, which simply isn’t true. Surely, some players have the skill, and I have seen people at fractal level 26 in pure glass cannon builds excelling in the runs, but they knew how to keep themselves alive, when and what to dodge and generally how to stay out of harms way AND they had a set of defensive gear to swap to if stuff gets to rough. No one has a excuse to run in glass cannon gear before they are sure they can stay alive and the team is good enough to support their playstyle.

I pugged till lvl 42.
Albeit that there are some very bad groups through pug sometimes, most of the time they r competent.
After some time I played w/some of the same ppl that also pugged and it became apparent to me who is the real deal and who’s not great as we lvl progress.

Part of the big problem with pugging is that getting a group takes far too long than it should be. I hope the next patch helps this problem somewhat but it won’t be a full solution.

I’m still pugging it and at level 34 atm. Levels 1-10 are a bit rocky as people are a bit noob, but it gets faster and faster as you climb despite in increasing difficulty.

I can’t imagine failing level 1-2 difficulty even if you don’t know what the heck to do in the dungeon.

My guild mates were playing early Fractals levels wearing Masterwork gear…

I’m looking for enthusiastic players to recruit into our guild for Fractals so we can help them climb up to high Fractal levels, but even I don’t want to invite you as you don’t sound like too fun of a person to be around.

And as for the dungeon itself, I think it was brilliantly designed and very engaging to play. It’s annoying that Difficulty levels are not “backwards compatible” but that will be fixed at the end of this month. It is not uncommon to go naked in this dungeon do to broken armor and even in some cases party members opt to run naked. I did Difficulty level 2 last night naked running it with guild mates who were wearing Master Work armor. I did level 33 Jade Maw boss fight naked due that fight simply being to dodge the Agony blast.

Sorry OP but i strongly disagree with you.In my opininion FotM is perfectly balanced and is very good made.As Arah and the Fractals are the only good end game for hard core gamers the two dungeons do their job perfectly.

FotM’s levels 1-9 are pug and casual friendly yes.They are very easy too.But now days are filled with noobs and leavers.All my friends and everyone else who knows what he is getting into should avoid like plague 1-9 tier.Because they are filled with the not experienced population of the game.

The solid pug groups start from tier 10 and up.If you want an experienced pugs i suggest you to wait untill end of January so you can do the higher difficulties.

And one more thing.FotM and Arah are the hardest end game for pvers.They are not meant to be pug fiendly.Especially the higher levels of FotM like 50+.There you need good coordination and a speciffic class stacking if you don’t want to buy reviving orbs.

The current state of FotM for me is perfect.It has a little from everything and for everyone.I like dungeon’s design a lot.