Guild Wars 2

Toughness changes are poorly signaled in fractals. FOr example, after dealing 50% of damage to the Thaumnova anomaly, it suddenly gets harder to damage, with no visual or other indication. This renders the healthbar partly meaningless (The first 50% is about 5% of the 2nd health bar in how much it takes to burn down) and distorts the players’ ability to tell how well they are doing. There need to be clear indicators (and not just hidden among tons of icons below the health bar) as to what is going on.

Running around in circles like a headless chicken doesn’t make it the bosses fault.

^ This
You burst at first and run after.

So, if the original toughness is T, by what percent does T change once the boss hits 50% health?

You mention toughness changes, and you mention this in context of two healthbars, so surely you mean the toughness of the boss changes.

…But the toughness doesn’t change at all. So what are you on about? That the boss has phases that, like many phases on many bosses, introduce new mechanics once a certain health threshold has been reached?

I’m not sure how that can be “signaled” better. It’s tremendously obvious that new mechanics have been added to the boss when it happens. Dessa even has some dialog explicitly telling you this.

This sounds a lot like DPS starts high ( initial burst, with the long cd, high dmg skills), then tailing off.. more so when additional mechanics kick in forcing people to avoid things.. ( or losing scholar buffs and such).

Sounds more like a group dps drop off than a toughness changing thing to me, though I could be wrong.. I don’t really pay attention to the thaumanova anomaly fight anymore..

It’s harder to damage after 50% because the platform vanishes and you cannot maintain proper melee rotations successfully. If you want to prove this to yourself, bring a Ranger to this fight and just Longbow spam the entire time. You’ll find that your numbers both above and below 50% HP are the exact same given the same buffs.

Rising Dusk.2408:

It’s harder to damage after 50% because the platform vanishes and you cannot maintain proper melee rotations successfully. If you want to prove this to yourself, bring a Ranger to this fight and just Longbow spam the entire time. You’ll find that your numbers both above and below 50% HP are the exact same given the same buffs.

Just take an engineer, the turret explosions hit for the exact same amount all the time only affected by vuln(easily controllable).

I don’t remember any patch notes that mentioned an increased toughness scaling. I think everyone has the right idea on dps loss due to the moving around. An infamous necromancer theory crafter Nemesis often used it as an example as to why the meta was a lie. I agree half way because it’s true that it becomes significantly harder to melee the boss down and you do lose tons of dps from trying not to die. However, if my team has a lot of range options like scepter guardian, scepter necro, staff ele, or engineer kits I’ve been able to keep up my melee rotations on my PS warrior. The drop in DPS mainly depends on the skill level of the group and the party composition.

Boogiepop Void.6473:

Toughness changes are poorly signaled in fractals. FOr example, after dealing 50% of damage to the Thaumnova anomaly, it suddenly gets harder to damage, with no visual or other indication. This renders the healthbar partly meaningless (The first 50% is about 5% of the 2nd health bar in how much it takes to burn down) and distorts the players’ ability to tell how well they are doing. There need to be clear indicators (and not just hidden among tons of icons below the health bar) as to what is going on.

Thaumanova is a terrible example. Party DPS drops like crazy at 50% health because people are too busy trying to not die to focus on damage. Groups that can continue to maintain their attacks while dodging the fall actually continue to take him down just as fast as the first 50%

If you want to test your theory, take turrets or minions with you. They will continue to do the same amount of damage regardless of which phase he’s in.