Some background: I’ve been an MMORPG gamer for 10+ years now, and I started playing WoW even before BC.
No, this is not a complaint thread, this is actually thank you + please give people a chance thread.
It was my first time to do FotM earlier today on my level 46 necromancer. I tried doing a frac earlier during the weekend with some guildmates, got the Cliffside (Colossus) one, and people kept dying to the wind blowing part (I died just once on that part, in fairness to me).
In my server (Sanctum of Rall), the “elitism” has gone so far as people requiring you to be level 80 even just to do Frac 1. I will not discuss how divisive this is becoming in this thread because there are already a lot of threads open about that so let’s move along…
Before you start judging, I do understand this mindset, and I can totally understand where they are coming from. It isn’t really a big deal to me because – hey, eventually I’ll be 80 too and get to do all these cool frac things, right?
But one group was advertising for just 1 more for Frac 1 in LA. I hesistantly messaged the person asking to join. I was hesitant being that:
1) It’s a PUG, and the skill level required in this game for dungeons is much less PUGgable than WoW
2) Chances are, people running Frac 1’s are sub 80’s and we would be a bunch of underlevelled noobs dying over and over again
But you know… I wanted to learn, and was willing to pay the repair cost. It would be disappointing, of course, if we couldn’t even finish 1 fractal, but at least I’ll learn from the experience.
To my surprise, the group was composed of 4 level 80’s (3 of which were warriors), a thief, and noob me. I don’t know how they reacted when they saw I wasn’t 80, but they were sure nice enough not to make a comment.
So we entered FotM, and I was nervous. I was afraid I’d mess things up for their group. One thing that dungeons here in GW2 has made me realize is that you’re better off if you’re a console gamer. That wasn’t me. I never played console games, I did not have the dexterity and eye-hand coordination gleaned from countless hours of Mario or Zelda or whatever you guys play on consoles. I’m an RPG games on the PC guy through and through – text based games, turn based games, etc, but I was never an action gamer. I couldn’t dance dance revo to save my life.
So imagine my apprehension running FotM. The fact that you have to time your dodges in this game was already extremely taxing for me, what more in dungeons where “skill” is interpreted based more on how quickly you can react, rather than on how well put-together your gear is (like it is in WoW – yes, I am one of those people who love spreadsheets and softcap/hardcap haste discussions).
…
Anyway, 2 fractals later and we were actually doing very well (I am not sure if it is just me or because we had 3 warriors they’re really that OP). I hardly died or get downed, I made sure to give regen to the tanks, keep the enemies as blinded as often as possible – you know, just do common sense things to help out the group as much as I can.
At the 3rd fractal, one of the warriors got DC-ed. When he came back, he couldn’t join us any longer.
Very long story short – I four-manned 5 more fractals with just 3 other very patient, very nice Australian guys, and I am now at level 3 difficulty.
The fractals are amazing, especially Solid Ocean, and Uncategorized. The Urban Warfare was the one I didn’t like the most.
So anyway, a big thanks to those Aussies (I sadly was not able to add their ID’s) for giving a noob a chance, and hopefully this will encourage other level 80’s to give lowbie noobs a chance if they’re running the lower levelled fracs.
Here’s the last part of our Solid Ocean encounter and you can see what a total noob I am and yet we were still able to do it with just four of us.