Guild Wars 2

So, I’m currently 30+ in fractals and since I haven’t noticed any big differences compared to 20-29 (Besides the increased agony damage) I think it’s safe to rate the different fractals.

**** YES tier:
-Underwater: You may die a lot on dolphin, the boss takes forever. But there is just no way you can fail this fractal
-Swamp-Bloomhunger: Ok, this boss actually does damage unlike jelly, but this fractal is so short and easy when coordinated that deserves going here.

Easy enough tier:
—Swamp-Mossman: Mossman can 1 shot you and is kinda hard to dodge, other than that very easy.
—Ascalon: If you keep the npcs alive and avoid being 1 shot by the warriors, not much can go wrong here.

Annoying, but easy tier:
—Asura: You better get a lots of reflects if you don’t want to lose your hair because of the knock back balls. Whoever thought tons of knockbacks in a jumping area were fun was right
—Ice: Everything on this one is so easy… but then you get to the Ice elemental and you feel like you are inside a pinball machine.

Mid tier:
—Colossus: kinda long, but not hard overall.
—Jade maw: If you don’t have enough agony res, enjoy wiping after every phase change., Other than that, not hard.
—Dredge-Ice elemental: Long dungeon. bomb path can get hard, last boss is quite easy.

Decently hard tier
—Dredge-mining suit: The agony is challenging to dodge and you need good team coordination. Nice battle.

OH GOD WHY tier
—Grawl: tons of grawls, all with pulls and binds, forget about fighting them all at the same time. After that, teleporting monkeys making it impossible to teams with no damage to save the captives.
Last but not less the flame shaman; lava floor, agony arrows with no cast time and no red circle and a huge amount of lava elementals that root and do massive damage make this battle the hardest of FotM. Can’t count the amount of pugs that have ragequit at this battle. Of course with some coordination this fight is very doable, but is definitively the bane of most PuGs

And, that was my opinion regarding the difficulty of the fractals…

way to easy:
underwater – impossible to wipe on boss, youll get through darkroom/dolphin at some point, well only one has to…

cliffside, statue – 2hands event: if you let the 2 initial spawns alive, the mass respawn will never happen, making it to easy on higher scales
hitting the last seal directly makes the boss laughable
though, if they fix either of that it gets insanly hard at higher scales

snowblind – impossible to not completing the fractal since nothing resets there, you can actually wipe your way through, again even more laughable boss, which can bekilled by 2 people without taking any dmg since he has 0 range abilities
if you have problems with the ice elementals: run behind the houses after the teleport to gather at one firespot… youll suddenly feel like that event is a joke

jade maw – even if none of your group has sufficient resist to survive in downed state, you can still bypass it with insta rezz on downed state making it impossible to not progress

to easy:
asura – old tom, place enough dwayna tears in front of the consoles, hide behind the small walls, laugh about the boss
endboss, kite the asura boss around the pillars and youll never be hit by agony, robots arent linked so if you pull them far enough from each other you wont even have to handle all 4 at once, making him 2manable

swamp – bloomhunger, hide behind trees if he casts his poison bullets no agony, ever
mossman, agony axe has a 1-2s flighttime and targets the position where you will be if you dont change ur course/speed, if you change it rapidly it will never hit

ascalon – 1st event may take some tries if you arent lucky with the vets behavior but overall you can die through
endboss is to easy with warriors ultimate banner, ressurecting all NPC instantly => boss down in <30sec, depending on number of npc’s, again agony completly avoidable on maxrange

good:
dredge – events are hard if you lack proper tactics on higher scales, though a certain karma item makes them to easy
mining suite – probably best tuned endboss, cant zerg him down, need koordination and timing, have to watch out at all times
ice elemental – easier (dunno how many ice ele there will be at 40++) but possibly harder later on

way to hard:
grawl – 1st event is to hard on open field, to easy if you use the terrain
endboss is extremly hard in higher scales with the amount of elementals spawning
and low time to react to the agony attack

so the problem i have with fractal of the mist is basicly that its just a matter of repaircost and time whether you progess or not, assuming the players have certain amount of skill

ps: dunno whether there are new mechanics after lv30, so things might change

I did Grawl yesterday at level 1 and thought the final boss was super easy. Maybe because it was level one? The worst part was avoiding falling asleep while burning down the boss for 20 mins. Most of these bosses have way too much HP.

The arrows on shaman do have a cast time, it’s the same animation as Harpy hunters bow attacks (Same harpy model, same animations) so it is dodgeable, it just might get hectic to dodge them when lava elementals are around.

I would honestly rate Asura fractal harder than the Dredge mining suit.

Things to note about dredge mining suit:

-Bombs come out in 2 waves, but they explode at the same time, be conscientious of other party members positioning and which direction you dodge and you should only ever need to dodge this once
-Dredge agony attack can be dodged entirely by 2 consecutive dodges, warrior shield block can block it entirely, invulnerabilities work towards this goal as well.

The fight is easier than the final boss of Asura imo since its mechanics are predictable and more easily avoidable if with judicious use of your dodges.

Asura final boss can target the same person indefinitely and is completely random in who he attacks. The longer the fight goes on, the more likely it becomes that someone will be consecutively targetted and inevitably hit by agony. The unpredictability of this fight can make it more difficult since it can push players to the point where they run out of ways to dodge/mitigate the damage.

asura triple bolts can always be avoided with the pillars

if the grawl boss has an animation hes not looking in ur direction while doing it, what afaik every other mob does
i have noticed many times that he switches at my direction and instantly fires his arrow

you name the problem with dredge suite, you need 2 dodge, which you wont always have with unlucky timing of bombs and player positions which may require you to dodge etc
afterall you can die pretty fast on him and if you are downed its not always possible to rezz you without causing further problems

there is no unlucky timing of bombs, just be careful with managing your endurance and it’s fine. They always explode at the same time, you only need to dodge them once, if you want to get crafty at it, you can do it the same way as Subject Alpha where you dodge as they explode like Alpha’s aoe. Doing this you completely eliminate having to be conscientious of party positioning.

And grawl does have an animation, I’ve never had an issue finding it.

Ugh, doing the harpy shaman when its laggy. Its an extra layer of difficulty haha.

Man she hurts.

urzen.7096:

I did Grawl yesterday at level 1 and thought the final boss was super easy. Maybe because it was level one? The worst part was avoiding falling asleep while burning down the boss for 20 mins. Most of these bosses have way too much HP.

Grawl starts as easiest, moves to average and ends as hardest as you advance in the scales.

I agree for the most part, but I would put dredge mining suit as easier than dredge ice elemental. No adds, bombs can be reflected for massive damage. Only bad part is the huge room wide agony hits, but if you’re within visible range they are easy enough to dodge.

Unfortunately I always end up with terrible groups against dredge boss, people can’t kite to the right spot, have no agony resist and die to his ground pound, and can never get out of the way of bombs fast enough. Plus the person pulling the levers loves to always go down right as we get the boss into position… If I could clone myself and bring a party of 5 of me in, it would be one of the easiest bosses in fractals.

Good to know. Ill never make it past the first levels anyway.

Thanks for sharing some insight on each of the paths. I’m at Level 20 myself and have at least found it moderately challenging though the experience from previous levels helps ease up a bit.

Here are my findings so far on certain ones:

• Dredge: Perhaps the longest and maybe hardest of all Fractals, especially if you get the bomb path. However, there is a “shortcut” to skip most of the beginning of the Fractal. I said to myself as I kept pugging: “If a lot of pugs know about this, then it’s definitely going to get fixed.” It seems more prevalent in higher levels when party members have been conditioned enough to skip annoying stuff.

• Cliffside: I actually like this one but there are two points where pugs often come to disputes: the arm seals and the end boss. Some pugs like to stick 2 players on each side and 1 as a “runner”. That strategy works in lower difficulty levels, but on harder scales, I find it more reliable to have everyone run together and muscle through the heals. Don’t worry if one side somehow magically returns back to full health. Also recommended is to leave at least one add per side alive during each transition at least to lessen the amount of healing done to the seals. At the end boss, some have found to cheese the encounter by keeping the boss stunned at 75% HP, then AoE the middle seal until it is destroyed. I don’t think this is the intended way of completing it but it seems to work.

• Jade Maw: Some pugs might insist in skipping all of the trash, which is a shame because those mobs can actually drop Onyx Cores/Lodestones. Come to think of it, most of my Vials and Globs drop from them than any of the other Fractals. I’ll keep my opinions on skipping content to myself on this post, but as far as loot goes, you really should kill them. They’re easy to kill and you can get good stuff from them if you’re lucky.

• Imbued Grawl Shaman: This is perhaps a very annoying boss, at least during the phases when it summons the Lava Elementals. I’ve always prioritize the bubble on the boss and then the adds because if the bubble is not broken fast enough and the boss reaches one of the NPCs, it will heal for about 25% HP. Lots of AoE helps in breaking bubble and suppressing the adds at the same time. The bubble is triggered by the boss’ HP (every 25%) so you can take your time to take out the adds and then return back to killing the boss.

Almost all of these problems are solved with Mesmers.