Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone. I am a ps warrior (gs + axe/mace usually) who is beginning to go into higher level fractals. I always pug as joining a guild is just not practical for my lifestyle. My personal reward lv is 25 and I have every intention of working towards 50. I check gw2dungeons.net frequently but I find the fractal guides not that helpful, probably because fractals change quite a bit every 10 levels.

I will do my best to make my questions organized, and then update my posts if I am given answers. Maybe this will help other inexperienced players too.

1.) Trash mobs. At lower level fractals you cleave them down so quickly it doesn’t matter. At higher levels what should I be doing to help my team? I can apply weakness with my warhorn. Is that more helpful than the knockdown + vuln? Or does a thief’s blinds take care of it all? Should I be using skale venom?
A1) Stick with mace. Trash mobs have no defiance, so use tremor to knock them down. Warriors are not there to give defense against mobs. We are there for offensive support and moderate dps. Skale venom is probably a waste. Eles/thieves should do the blinding. Remember tremor is a projectile, beware reflects.

2.) Range vs melee on certain bosses. I know melee is higher dps. I prefer to run melee, but some bosses are so visually cluttered I cant see the tells to dodge. Examples of what I am wondering. Arch diviner, mai trin, grawl shaman, moss man. What is expected of me in a fractal group? Pure melee? A hybrid? Pure range? I want to run whatever will help my team the most, but I just don’t know what that is. Are most of you able to see the animations and dodge? I can totally accept “learn to play” as an answer.
A2.) Stick with melee, its a skill worth learning. Practice max melee range. Don’t fight a boss head on. Have the boss on the right side of your character, at max range possible. This makes it easier to see. Use bladetrail as appropriate (diviner has reflects!). Whirlwind to save yourself too. Also gs f1 has increased range so that can be used. If a boss turns to face you, you typically need to dodge. Don’t start a 100b if the boss is facing you.

3.) Snow blind fractal : Melting the ice wall. At higher levels, say 40 or even 50, should I be trying to kite the sons of svanir around, or trying to kill them? Some hybrid with range?
A3.) Kiting as a guardian is possible. Also stealth is a common tactic. Mesmer portals could also be utilized to hop in, light the fires, port to safety.

4.) Snow blind fractal : Elemental source. I have no idea what I am doing in this fight. I mostly hope that someone targets an enemy and I go dps that enemy down. Should I kill the ice elementals when they are up? Or should I focus on the ele source? Should I keep a fire lit for us? Should I give up banners to bring stability/stun breaks ?
A4.) Try to keep the team together, by actively targeting enemies. Go around the outer edge of the area to avoid agrooing ice elementals. Try to keep a fire burning, and remove frostbite stacks before the “blizzard” starts (25/50/75% health left). Remember disc banner is useless against the boss.

5.) Aetherpath final room. It seems pugs mostly stack on top of the one box at the edge of the room and bring stability/stun breaks to tank the lasers. Will this continue to be the tactic at higher levels?
A5.) Yes this is the tactic. Consider bringing shake it off. Unblockable cc works well to interupt the golems spin attacks. I believe, but have not tested, that fear me could work well. Rampage was also recommended, I have not tried that out personally.

6.) For the reactor fractal, in the heat room. At lower levels (1-10) I could easily solo this room by just spamming the first ability (wiki calls it meltdown), it makes you run faster. Is this still the tactic? We had a mesmer portal us half way in to do this room. If there is no mesmer what do we do? I know bear form helps, but I do not know how. Do groups without these abilities need to use cooling rods?
A6.) Take Defiant stance for heal, shake it off bulls charge, shake it off, and elite rampage. Use sword + warhorn for swift+initial leap. Then spam the #1 skill to get back to normal movement speed. Once your agony has worn off, use your heal + shake it off. Then bulls charge. Go into rampage and use dash, seismic leap. Dodge whenever possible. If you get downed, heal until you can use vengeance. Once your inside use shake it off to cure immob so you can hit both switches.

7.) For the final boss in the reactor fractal, the anomaly. Should I use melee? This weekend I did an initial melee burn at the beginning, but then swapped to rifle when everyone else started spreading out.
A7.) Try to melee the whole time. This boss dies fast, at any level. If he turns to face you dodge back. It is probably best to bring gs+rifle. You can still stack some initial vulnerability, just like axe/mace (not quite as much).

Your advice is really appreciated.

I am gona grab one extra post slot in case I ever expand this.

Hiya, are you on Na or Eu? If your on Na I can run with you if you like

As for snowlind, you want to keep the fight a 5v1 as much as possable. So after the bizzard, you want to group up as a team and kill any agro’d ice elementals. Don’t forget to run around the outside of the hunts so you can aviod as much agro as you can as you make your way back to regroup.

Sarah

1) Eles and guard should contribute blind as well. Knockdown would be more useful in my opinion but it depends on the group dps. Just stay in the sandstorm and give might.

2) Comes down with practice. Though, unexperienced players makes it harder to melee because they stand in boss hitboxes or spam useless graphic pollution ( best exemple would be guardians using f1 on bosses). You’re expected to melee as much as you can, especially as a phalanx warrior. No melee= no greatsword= no might. Obviously, it’s better to have you ranging than dead in most cases. In mai trin, I’d rather have you dead to be honest. Keep practicing melee and adapt to the group. If no one is supporting you and you’re the only one meleeing, know that you can afford to take a ranged weapon. If the group is clearly experienced, try to force yourself into melee range.

3) Kiting is a good idea, but it’s harder to do at higher levels. I usually do it as guardian but I guess it should be doable as a warrior. Some people have different tactics, mostly the thief perma stealthing and soloing it, so ask before.

4) Same thing, different tactics. Sarahfull gave you one, my group usually just burst it down when it’s at 75% and bring it as close as possible to 0. If we wipe, we restart. I hate the fight and I don’t want to spend time on it.

5) It should be. Take warbanner just in case.

Hope this covers most of it. If you have more questions, I’ll try to answer them as well.

1) Don’t bother with skale venom, use slaying potions (outlaw/scarlet etc) and if none applicable, probably sharpening stones.

2) Depends what the group is doing but consider changing from strength/arms/tactics to strength/discipline/tactics so that you have fast hands and use GS + axe/sword. You won’t maintain 100% berserker’s power uptime due to the lack of the furious trait in arms, but you’ll still be able to generate might (assuming you’re using fried dumplings for food) and have a little more defensive utility without having to use a ranged weapon, which are really awful on warrior.

3) Normally groups will either stealth together for it, have a thief solo it, or sometimes a guard will kite em around for a bit while the others spam with torches in the middle. If it’s chaotic, just run around with a torch and hope for the best.

4) Avoid aggroing those elementals when they spawn. Try to make sure you don’t have too many stacks of frostbite before it phases (75%/50%/25%) so that when you get teleported, you can live by the time you regroup. If you get ported to the middle and end up aggroing mobs as a result, nothing you can do but try to get to safety.

5) Yeah, pretty much. This encounter is really annoying and it generally is the fastest for everyone to condense to one area so the golems come to you.

Here are some warrior tips. Each class as utility that can help make 50s easier.

If you don’t have a staff ele using frozen ground for shaman use signet of might and LB 5. LB is also good for shaman due to fire aoe.

Fear me is also unblock able which can be helpful for subject 7 if the party coordinates for his shield.

Also for the thermanova shard you can use your healing stance to help get through the heat room. Though if you are Norn or have a born they will be better at it with racial elite.

You can also use signet of strength or fear me for aether shard at the end to interrupt the golem spin. Although endure pain works well too in case party is wiping, pop that and war banner.

Note though that war banner will not fully Rez if there is agony ticking because the agony decreases healing. So WB is somewhat RNG at 40s and 50.

You have a lot of blasts with banners. It doesn’t hurt to pop banners when an ele is might stacking at the start of a fight especially if they are doing this with just staff.

That’s all I got really. Some of these tricks are for carrying which you may need to do with pugs. Some might be redundant with a good party but even good parties mess up.

Andraus.3874:

Also for the thermanova shard you can use your healing stance to help get through the heat room. The agony ticks will heal you so time it for when it starts to tick.

Actually the agony prevents the healing, and if you use your defiant stance just when you have double agony you won’t get healed at all. You should try to use your defiant stance when you don’t have agony for maximum healing.

For meleeing bosses, constantly hit them with both strikes on bladetrail, and turn sideways to the boss to utilize max melee, you can out-range archdiviner/ettin, etc… Mossman can be tricky with his surprise axe if there aren’t reflects up, you can look at sesshi’s mossman solo’s on war. Mai trin requires you to walk into and out of her range for complete melee, you can bring offhand sword/mace if you really need, and step out to range specifically to draw out a teleport shot.

Thanks for the responses everyone. I will add summaries of your answers to my original post sometime this week, I need to go to bed now haha.

Sarahfull I am on Na, and I would love to run with someone experienced. I don’t usually run fractals on weekdays, so maybe sometime next weekend?

thrag.9740:

Thanks for the responses everyone. I will add summaries of your answers to my original post sometime this week, I need to go to bed now haha.

Sarahfull I am on Na, and I would love to run with someone experienced. I don’t usually run fractals on weekdays, so maybe sometime next weekend?

yep, sarafull is one experienced player. I wonder how much has he been following sekitten goating.

2. I can easily explain mai trin and grawl sharman.

These two bosses only has 2-3 actual attacks.

Mai trin – absurdly boring boss ( anet please delete this fractal) everytime she stops, it pretty much a clue when she is about to attack. The boss always cycles between teleport pistol -> range spin -> teleport pistol.

Her melee attack can happen anytime when you are close enough.

The grawl sharman only has two attacks. agony arrow and aoe.

The grawl sharman will fly up to use he aoe. The boss will face you before it attacks with his agony arrow.

Both bosses are relatively safe to melee.

Grawl Sharman, has 4 attacks, there’s the targetted AE (think FGS 5), the Arrow, then 2 “melee attacks” one flying up and when he swoops back down he’ll throw up 3 Lava Fonts inconsistently spaced/placed. Then there is his other melee attack where he rises a bit and slams down with a knockback and damage, this is one big red circle, the other swoop one has no circle but easily visible with how much he rises.

Then of course the phase stuff.

I still enjoy Mai because I think they were on to something with the unblockable/undodgeable attacks. Takes it to that next level of recognition rather than just throwing the same defense at everything. It’s a pity they haven’t expanded upon that type of thing. Also I’m still trying to get my timing down for Air Blasting her pistol shot so I can carry better

Mai Trin is probably the only boss in the whole game that requires more than just deepfreeze and burst in a 5man team.

Lendruil.9061:

Mai Trin is probably the only boss in the whole game that requires more than just deepfreeze and burst in a 5man team.

Yeah, blasting stealth like always and a war that can press 2 and 5…
(I don’t really care about it, but kitten it’s just too long compared to Maw/Molten…)

Is mai even longer than maw? I guess maybe if you’re lifestealing on maw?

Jerus.4350:

Is mai even longer than maw? I guess maybe if you’re lifestealing on maw?

Indeed, we’re always lifestealing with guildes, forgot about that >.>

thrag.9740:

1.) Trash mobs. At lower level fractals you cleave them down so quickly it doesn’t matter. At higher levels what should I be doing to help my team? I can apply weakness with my warhorn. Is that more helpful than the knockdown + vuln? Or does a thief’s blinds take care of it all? Should I be using skale venom?

2.) Range vs melee on certain bosses. I know melee is higher dps. I prefer to run melee, but some bosses are so visually cluttered I cant see the tells to dodge. Examples of what I am wondering. Arch diviner, mai trin, grawl shaman, moss man. What is expected of me in a fractal group? Pure melee? A hybrid? Pure range? I want to run whatever will help my team the most, but I just don’t know what that is. Are most of you able to see the animations and dodge? I can totally accept “learn to play” as an answer.

3.) Snow blind fractal : Melting the ice wall. At higher levels, say 40 or even 50, should I be trying to kite the sons of svanir around, or trying to kill them? Some hybrid with range?

4.) Snow blind fractal : Elemental source. I have no idea what I am doing in this fight. I mostly hope that someone targets an enemy and I go dps that enemy down. Should I kill the ice elementals when they are up? Or should I focus on the ele source? Should I keep a fire lit for us? Should I give up banners to bring stability/stun breaks ?

5.) Aetherpath final room. It seems pugs mostly stack on top of the one box at the edge of the room and bring stability/stun breaks to tank the lasers. Will this continue to be the tactic at higher levels?

Your advice is really appreciated.

1.) Mace off hand is a better choice, as you can actively interrupt many one-shot attacks when blind is not prevalent. For example, Aetherblade Thug’s Battle Standard, Ascalon Monk’s Empower/Heal Area, Fire Elemental’s Lava Font (not reflectable).

2.) Practice max-melee range. De-target, turn the camera side way so that boss is 45 degree from your facing direction. Slowly pull away from your target while your attack still hits but your skill gets a red bar under it. You need to have an idea of the attack cd to manage endurance, block and whirlwind attack. I always have whirlwind attack ready to break off 100b for an emergency dodge. Between two dodge, I try to bait in Riposte for an extra damage.

Arch Diviner always attacks in a cone area in front of him. If he turns around or twists his torso, you need to dodge regardless. Mai Trin has a slightly wider attack area, the trick is to start casting when you’re out of range, step in for the attack to hit then step back from her attack range (in/out like that). If she focuses on a tank (earth elementals, or bear), you can stay behind her back to attack for a bit. In an average pug, you can use a combo of Endure Pain and Berserker Stance to burst her down once her shield drops to 2 or below. If your group has a big trouble with blocking her teleport pistol, I would suggest you use mace/sword or mace/mace (instead of axe/sword) a` la Wethospu-style to interrupt her attack. This tactic works amazingly well on groups who keep CC on Mai without any good purposes. (Imbued) Grawl Shaman is fairly easy to melee given he’s the only boss with pure range attack. Grawl Shaman needs to face his target to fire off his arrows, so you need to dodge as soon as he turns to your direction. If your group has a mesmer casting Temporal Curtain or Illusionary Warden, make sure to stand slightly behind them for reflection. The point-blank AoE have super obvious tells. For the Dive and Fire Storm attack, you do need to wait at range for the AoE to disappear as they deal extreme damage plus Agony. As for Mossman, avoid doing pure melee if your group has PETS, CLONES and OBLIVIOUS IDIOTS. 90% of my downstate attribute to the Axe/Dagger/Whatever bouncing off a clone and landing straight onto my head even I already dodged it 2 secs ago. And you also have to deal with packs of wolves if your group lacks cleave, somehow. So, in that case, I wouldn’t trust others enough to melee him.

3.) 4.) Generally, I would just run back to the first camp to shake off the Frostbite stacks if I see the group cannot handle both the Ice elementals AND the Frostbite stacks. It would be great if you can light up the fire for your squishy teammates before retreating. Otherwise, don’t try to fight without proper active defense management.

5) Use a bunch of unblockable CC to bypass the charged shield and interrupt the golem’s spin, pull, punch attack. You know what is even sweeter than Battle Standard? Rampage and beat the cr— out of them.

Looks like everyone has already said what needs to be said.

Just a cautionary note here on offhand mace. The #5 skill is a projectile and can be reflected by some of the mobs in fractals. Couple of examples include the final face-off against the Legendary Archdiviner, and the Jade Colossus in Jade Maw.

On higher level fractals, it can be deadly to knock yourself or a teammate down while using the skill on a target that’s going to reflect it back.

loseridoit.2756:

I wonder how much has he been following sekitten goating.

Wait, what?!

Sarahfull.4930:

loseridoit.2756:

I wonder how much has he been following sekitten goating.

Wait, what?!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQcrIIPJXLojfkTTisM9BsA

this guy. stupid censor. i type out his screen name and anet censored it. I wonder what language the rest of his name is offensive in

My advice: Never click on the “leave instance” button before the bonus chest spawns.

We just had a clown like this in a run. Two other people click yes, I click no.

We get warped out. No chest, no skin, entire run completely and utterly wasted.

Do not be someone like that.

loseridoit.2756:

Sarahfull.4930:

loseridoit.2756:

I wonder how much has he been following sekitten goating.

Wait, what?!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQcrIIPJXLojfkTTisM9BsA

this guy. stupid censor. i type out his screen name and anet censored it. I wonder what language the rest of his name is offensive in

Ah, I see. I was re-reading your post like 10 times just to understand it and couldn’t. Thanks for clearing it up, and yes I do follow him.

Sarah

Hey guys, I did 6 fractals this weekend with your advice. It felt a lot smoother, and I had a much better time, thanks

I do have another question though.

7.) For the reactor fractal, in the heat room. At lower levels (1-10) I could easily solo this room by just spamming the first ability (wiki calls it meltdown), it makes you run faster. Is this still the tactic? We had a mesmer portal us half way in to do this room. If there is no mesmer what do we do? I know bear form helps, but I do not know how. Do groups without these abilities need to use cooling rods?

8.) For the final boss in the reactor fractal, the anomaly. Should I use melee? This weekend I did an initial melee burn at the beginning, but then swapped to rifle when everyone else started spreading out.

By the way, I thought I would share something I discovered this weekend. Medical packs (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Medical_Pack) can make the cannon phase of mai trin a lot easier. Giving both swiftness and healing. I made sure to let my group know to look for them.

7. I know that you can still do it on two classes, thief and warrior.
For thief you take withdraw, roll for initiative, shadowstep and signet of initiative, like so: https://youtu.be/zlDu192lR2M
If you want to make it a lot easier you can take shadowtrap instead of roll for iniative. start with sb5 shadowstep, place the shadowtrap, use the return skill and withdraw, then wait a bit and shadowstep + withdraw to the end. First one is a lot faster though.
On Warrior I am not too sure, I think you can do it quite easily with an fgs + defiant stance. Don’t blame me if you die halfway through though.

8.) In an organized group you can burst the anomaly down in one go without having to switch to a ranged weapon. Otherwise I guess you can take a ranged weapon on swap for after the first burst, although even then I usually don’t bother to be honest and just wait a few seconds to get back into melee.

thrag.9740:

Hey guys, I did 6 fractals this weekend with your advice. It felt a lot smoother, and I had a much better time, thanks

I do have another question though.

7.) For the reactor fractal, in the heat room. At lower levels (1-10) I could easily solo this room by just spamming the first ability (wiki calls it meltdown), it makes you run faster. Is this still the tactic? We had a mesmer portal us half way in to do this room. If there is no mesmer what do we do? I know bear form helps, but I do not know how. Do groups without these abilities need to use cooling rods?

8.) For the final boss in the reactor fractal, the anomaly. Should I use melee? This weekend I did an initial melee burn at the beginning, but then swapped to rifle when everyone else started spreading out.

By the way, I thought I would share something I discovered this weekend. Medical packs (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Medical_Pack) can make the cannon phase of mai trin a lot easier. Giving both swiftness and healing. I made sure to let my group know to look for them.

7.) For the Heat Room, I usually take Defiant Stance, Signet of Stamina, Bull’s Charge, Rampage, Shake It Off, Sword and Warhorn.
- Start by giving yourself swiftness. Stand a bit over the edge of the first barrier, Savage Leap into the room.
- Spam Melt Down (Transform skill 1) to get a normal walking speed. Dodge deliberately.
- Around 5k HP, wait for the Agony tick to go away then use Defiance Stance.
- As you are healing up, Bull’s Charge.
- Activate Rampage: use Dash, Seismic Leap. Then proceed to Walk in your Rampage form, Dodge if needed.
- You should reach the end of the room when you exit your Rampage form. If you go down, keep Heal until your Vengeance is up.
- Once you’re inside the room, activate one of the switch, use Shake It Off or Charge (Warhorn) to cleanse your immobilization then turn off the other.

OPTIONAL (usage may be considered nubs by many):
- Get at least one cooling rod inside the room.
- Trait for Vigorous Shout and use Shake It Off early as a small heal. You can swap for Nomad or Cleric trinkets before hand to have a small Healing/Toughness/Vitality bonus.
- Get an Energy sigil so you have two free dodges when entering and exiting Rampage.
- Eat Vitality+Toughness food.

8.) What I usually do is to let a staff ele/scepter guardian/duelist mesmer/grenade engi/long bow ranger to engage in combat first. They are classes that have a more potent firing power than you. They will draw the aggro, especially the bomb pulse which detonates the floor, for awhile and leave you enough comfortable room to melee. When the boss spins, back down to mid range a bit to bait the floor breaking action there, then come back in to melee. I would love to have Discipline trait here so you can get Fast Hand and Heighten Focus, the latter allows you to fully burst 100b without interrupting (F-k Tactics).

Hey guys, it’s been quite a while since I posted here. I have gotten to level 50 and ran many 50s at this point. I am close to finishing the fractal frequenter achievement. But I have a new question.

8.) For the grawl shaman boss. In the shield phase. Does whirling axe (warrior axe 5) actually strip 15 stacks from the shield? Usually I go gs+axe/axe. But it is tough to see if axe 5 is really stripping that many. Stacks seem to start stripping a LOT faster once i get back to auto attack.

Stacks are stripped by skill use while you have the boss targetted, it will at most remove 1 stack for it’s very long cast time. Bring sword offhand for personal survival during non-shield phases or mace if you are comfortable surviving and want the extra vuln. Axe auto will strip the bubble faster than GS, but GS can buff your party more for clearing the eles, and stripping stacks shouldn’t be an issue in groups as long as people are keeping the boss targetted while casting.

If you need to pick up discipline for fast hands, in a group, drop arms and grab burst mastery to restore 1/3 of your adren on burst use. Just remember to stop activating your healing signet since you won’t get the precision buff.

I understand. Too bad, this was one of literally 2 places where I thought off hand axe was useful. Oh well.

oh he has to be targeted? That is very important information for me. I often do not keep anything targeted so that I can position myself to cleave as many enemies as possible. I’ll have to remember to target him in the future.

Hold your right mouse button and wiggle as you fight, you can keep him targetted and turn your body to hit other enemies, if you want to hundred blades a group of enemies you’ll probably need to untarget him though.

Offhand axe is good when you want to build up adrenaline quickly before going perma-camp greatsword – being the cases when fight needs to be short and burst required.

- Kitten trash mobs that are better dead than CC’d: Earth Elementals, Embers, Molten mob.
- Situationally, trash mobs that are dead before you can CC: Aetherblade, Ascalon, Cliffside Novice/Chanter.
- Bosses that melt too fast for you to care about swapping to axe/mace: Archdiviner (last fight), Molten Weapon Facility boss, Molten berserker, Svanir Shaman, Old Tom.

I remember someone mentioned all the multi hit skill only count as 1 hit to the bubble.

But the good thing about axe 5 is it hit 360 degree.

I think the good players probably use GS-Axe/sword on this.

For pug, I personally use longbow axe/warhorn. longbow because with signet of might I can pindown when the boss bubble. Warhorn for condition removal. I actually got the build from meta battle. I think meta battle occasionally make build though not meta but is good for less skilled player. Like metabattle used to have turret engineer, or minionmancer in their spvp build list.

Most of the time I just hope the pug wont’ wipe. So a slow 10 minutes kill dont’ bother me that much.

You start on axe mace for fights then go to GS so you can burst vuln on axe 2 mace 4 while the vuln on crits ramp up, unless you have a lightning storm then blade trail and fury signet.

If the mob is going to cause trouble, healing signet fury signet and bursting might onto your party with WW + hundred blades will help more than waiting for an axe 5 to finish.

Skill use strips the bubble, if you have enough damage against the ads, just use fast casting skills and save your cds for after the enrage buff.

The biggest thing to remember about builds and encounters is, “It depends”. 5man is different from solo or 3man, some fights might require more dodges, some groups might handle defensive buffs better than others and allow you to bring more offensive builds, your willingness to spend money also comes into play with consumables/multiple gear sets and likewise your tactics must fit your ability/group’s ability. Taking an uncoordinated group against the priest of melandru in melee can be tough, using power block on the ancient ooze with players expecting to dodge back can cause problems, the best choice is not always possible so the question is, which sacrifices are worth it?

Watch these, a little dated but will give you a lot of solid strats and a better idea of whats going on:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtmrC91LQfu5-hlj9Mh2dfwqN57qE3VXU