Guild Wars 2

So… I am now on fractal lvl 12. The 10 last fractals i have done, i have had the dredge one… Its ALWAYS the second fractal my group gets. Why don’t i like it?

1. Its long
2. Its “harder” than the others
3. I HATE DREDGE!! I seriously can’t stand them, i dont know why…
4. The final boss is annoying when going with a PUG

It seriously is the worst fractal of them all. The underwater fractal i have had ONE SINGLE TIME… Had it on level 8 (I think) and never again

There are some others i have had a few times aswell, but this dredge kitten is the only one i get

I’m in high 50’s and it’s just a snorefest of endless kittenen dredge with perm protection and regen where normal mobs can pretty much 1 hit non heavies if you don’t dodge. I think a reasonable balance would be to remove the perm protection and regen giving mobs and also make it so the mobs are actually hittable as soon as they leave the vehicle @ rabsovich. I’m usually unable to hit more than 1 with my 100b and the other mobs aren’t even displaying invulnerable popups. :/

Dredge is kind ok. People seem to like removing it when it comes up first, but the only really difficult part is the cage. The others are just skill tests, and its not that long. Most parties seem to be able to complete it too.

Cliffside and grawl are the real deal brakers. The former because 15+ you rarely can just dps race the arms seals and the latter because people are bad at movement dodging fire arrows.

Dredge fractal would be more tolerable if the dredge HP was reduced to account for the fact they’ll all be under the effect of protection, always. They don’t feel that threatening outside of their zerg mentality but they soak up far too much damage to be fun.

Homonavn.6348:

3. I HATE DREDGE!! I seriously can’t stand them, i dont know why…

imo
They’re especially hideous
They spam daze
They’re quite ugly
They have perma protection
They’re not easy on the eyes
They come in packs with a wide variety of attacks (aoe, range, melee)
They’re disgusting mole people

Homonavn.6348:

It seriously is the worst fractal of them all.

Dredge is actually my favorite fractal until >20, just because of the farm potential. The starting event is super easy with some coordination and then it is basically a trash farmfest until the endboss which, again, is cake with coordination.

It definitely has the most potential to punish lack of coordination though, it is extremely easy for someone to screw with the final boss and make things ten times harder than it should be, and not understanding how the doors work at the start can cause grief. You shouldn’t need to stand on the first two switches for more than a couple seconds. Outline everyone’s roles before the fractal starts instead of just trying to figure things out mid-fight and you’ll breeze through.

I find the whole dredge fractal quite easy. OK, not whole as the start cage is way too hard for pugs and even with friends when there are no atleast 2 guardians spamming prot/other boons.

All I would do is that making those mobs inside the cage being normal mobs and not veteran at all. With this could be decreased the respawn time of the mobs to still be bit hard. I would do same with the “bomb alley”.

But definitely needs nerf/fixes.
As off-topic, also nerf volcanic fractals last boss quite much.

i dont mind dredge, initially the switches part is annoying but after that it’s sweet sweet miner bag loot, dredge may be annoying to fight but they definately give you good rewards for killing them.

consider a mesmer for their amazing Boon Removal abilities to combat dredge boons, or a Thief with Bountiful Theft, it wont remove boons as well as the mesmer but it will apply those very long duration boons to your party, a mesmer also brings Feedback if you lack a Guardians projectile defences.

Rogacz.9865:

Dredge is kind ok. People seem to like removing it when it comes up first, but the only really difficult part is the cage. The others are just skill tests, and its not that long. Most parties seem to be able to complete it too.

Cliffside and grawl are the real deal brakers. The former because 15+ you rarely can just dps race the arms seals and the latter because people are bad at movement dodging fire arrows.

Wow don’t listen to this guy, cage is easy part. 2 on switches with kits and 1 on panel with kit and its done.

Also group im with just leroy’s the arms 30+ no problem and invite it to be grawl because its so short. The main problem is the prot and regen in the dredge making that thing take soooo much longer than the rest and just annoying rather than fun.

When you make a game you want people to have fun not be annoyed and the dredge frac is annoying, its like cursed shore, no one is ever there anymore because that kitten is just annoying, getting pulled around all day, frozen, crippled… just dumb. Not hard.. just dumb.

Wow don’t listen to this guy, cage is easy part. 2 on switches with kits and 1 on panel with kit and its done.

Also group im with just leroy’s the arms 30+ no problem and invite it to be grawl because its so short.

See this is your problem with understanding what i wrote. You re going with a study group, im going with PUGs always. It doesnt happen everytime that 3 people have stealth kits.

And please dont get me started on leyroying the arms in PUGs. Some people die when chanters look at them.

Rogacz.9865:

Wow don’t listen to this guy, cage is easy part. 2 on switches with kits and 1 on panel with kit and its done.

Also group im with just leroy’s the arms 30+ no problem and invite it to be grawl because its so short.

See this is your problem with understanding what i wrote. You re going with a study group, im going with PUGs always. It doesnt happen everytime that 3 people have stealth kits.

And please dont get me started on leyroying the arms in PUGs. Some people die when chanters look at them.

ok then make sure you have stealth kits and tell 2 of them to die on switches and your done, run out lose argo and rez.. easy.

Also its not a “sturdy group” its a few people who met in pugs that added each other, we don’t ever talk other than saying “hey you wanna do 38?” the problem is people like you who just say " it can’t be done, or its to hard" or the people who as soon as grawl or dredge come up type out in chat “omg no” or "reset’. You make those people who don’t know what their doing never know what to do because they never do it.

Yep. If you’re with “bad pugs” who im sure could easily understand what do given a bit of instruction in most cases all you need to do is tell 2 of them to die on switches and you being the good player here will spy kit on the console and it’s done in 20 seconds.

There’s a simple strategy to the arms which involves keeping one chanter alive on one of the sides then getting your hammer charges from the opposite side.

Even at 50+ cliffside is easy and fast and pretty fun. Dredge is a tedious snorefest with stupid hp mobs with perm protection that daze you endlessly and even in solid groups takes a lot of time. Sure, the rewards are somewhat better with loot bags but it’s still boring as hell.

Brutal Arts.6307:

Homonavn.6348:

3. I HATE DREDGE!! I seriously can’t stand them, i dont know why…

imo
They’re especially hideous
They spam daze
They’re quite ugly
They have perma protection
They’re not easy on the eyes
They come in packs with a wide variety of attacks (aoe, range, melee)
They’re disgusting mole people

Everything kind of ok, but…

They play the Gong… gg

I only hate them coz you can’t blind them >.>

I would replace dredge with crystal enemies (like the shatterer and his trash mob). I want crystal enemies in a dungeon!!!! and dredge do suck and boring to kill.

Dredge is better than half of them, even in the mid-20’s. Because you get good drops. Yes, it takes longer, but there is a reward. My record is 28 miner bags in one run. I’ll probably beat that going to higher fractal #’s

Do mobs obey the 5 target limit for AE buffs, and short buff duration on protection? Getting that cleaned up (or raising their cooldown on gonging) would probably help

is people like you who just say " it can’t be done, or its to hard" or the people who as soon as grawl or dredge come up type out in chat “omg no” or "reset’. You make those people who don’t know what their doing never know what to do because they never do it.

Wow you re going on some odd tangent. Have you ever run some fractals with me? I hope not, cause i d leave if you presented the same attitude there as you do here. And all i wrote here, is that i personally dont find fractals difficult, except the cage part, and in cliffside the arm seals, and in vulcano fractal the final boss. Not because i personally cannot cope with those, but becuase portion of groups im in cannot finish those.

And no, i dont ever call for reset. Because with the amount of fractals chances are you will still get one of the three in the later two fractals, so i d rather know faster if the group is good. And yes, i will leave if i will think my time is being wasted, which does happen from time to time in pugs.

Dredge is my favorite Fractal, mostly due to the farming potential of all the mobs, but also because it’s a pain later on.

This is pretty much the “endgame” content, so i personally don’t understand why everyone wants easy.

I like the dredge fractals at lvl20+
a lot of mobs = a lot of drops ^^

Dredge are ok most of the time. It’s just sometimes people have no idea what to do at switches. They just rush it, and die very quickly. With most PUGs it always takes two tries to acually pass the cage part.

Grawl is the worst though. A lot of PUGs can’t do last boss at 20+.

I used to not like dredge when I was just looking for the fastest clears while I was working on leveling up my difficulty/getting ascended

But now that I’ve got all the gear, I really like dredge fractal just for the amount of loot you get. On high difficulties it’s probably the best loot in the game at the moment, you really get a TON of mobs to aoe.

It’s also one of those places that’s probably harder at lower difficulty just due to the people you’re more likely to be grouped with.

I think most of you didnt get my point… Yes I DO HATE IT, but thats not what i complain about. I mean that this fractal pops up 90% of the time. Its alot more common than any of the others. I would LOVE some variety in fractals. Not just grinding dredge, dregde, dregde over and over

I really like the Dredge Fractal. It requires coordination and is not easy sneeze fest like Swamp or Underwater. (There is too little challenging content in the game anyways imho). Then there is tons of loot and the Suit boss is always fun to watch if you have a good mesmer in your team.

I also like Volcano alot because its hard and requires good coordination and its short too.

What I really hate with a passion is cliffside and probably everyone I know hates it too. This is 90% because its bug ridden like hell and never worked properly from the start and still bugs out alot killing people randomly, cages, mobs respawning without reason etc. But its also long.

So usually higher level groups will roll their first fractal until you get 1 of the easy 3 because that reduces the chance to get the long and tedious ones by 1 fractal which is big.

On lower levels I think all fractals are fine. The issue starts around 14+ and gets increasingly more so at 30+ because the mobs just have so much HP, the trash gets tedious³.

One of those is Uncategorized , really the Prison Encounter could use the HP of both the Shaman and Etting halved, maybe even more HP reduction. Or simply cut it out, its just a boring snoozefest of hitting those mobs for 10 minutes.

But here is the main problem of Fractals and why they are badly designed past Tier 2.

A-Net has handled increasing difficulty in the laziest and worst way possible after Tier 2.

Lets take Uncategorized as an example:

Tier 1 is straightforward
Tier 2 increases the difficulty by slightly increasing mob hp but adding new mechanics to encounters. For Tom its the Fan Mechanic and for the Boss its his agony.
Tier 3: More hp, more damage
Tier 4: More hp, more damage
Tier 5: see above

See whats happening? From Tier 1 to Tier 2 the design is nice because to make it more difficult we have to learn something new from the bosses. But after that its just stupidly increasing HP and Damage of the mobs. It makes the encounters not really harder, just more tedious and longer. You know it is hard to concentrate for 15+ minutes on an encounter. Then maybe someone messes up at dredge suit and I have seen that one go for 30 min + on some groups.

So stop increasing HP and Damage as a means of difficulty please A-Net and think of some new ways of making encounters harder.

Homonavn.6348:

I think most of you didnt get my point… Yes I DO HATE IT, but thats not what i complain about. I mean that this fractal pops up 90% of the time. Its alot more common than any of the others. I would LOVE some variety in fractals. Not just grinding dredge, dregde, dregde over and over

Just play on, it’ll stop doing that.

I used to see the harpy fractal constantly, it was 2nd or 3rd for me probably 10 times in a row. Now it just appears at an ordinary rate.

Nothing more than a quirk of RNG.

Brutal Arts.6307:

Homonavn.6348:

3. I HATE DREDGE!! I seriously can’t stand them, i dont know why…

imo
They’re especially hideous
They spam daze
They’re quite ugly
They have perma protection
They’re not easy on the eyes
They come in packs with a wide variety of attacks (aoe, range, melee)
They’re disgusting mole people

And they’re a bunch of commies. Don’t forget that.

You should feel lucky.

It is one of the more challenging fractals. With the practice you are getting in, you will be a real pro when you get to the higher levels

(of course – Murphy’s Law – you will probably never get it then).

My immediate thought upon getting the Dredge Fractal at 20+ and 30+ is “sweet, loot galore!” Those Miner’s Bags, man. So much loot.

Also, I can pretty much trivialise a good percentage of the dungeon with permaweakness fields and stealth bomb plants/door breaching. Always take a Thief to this one.

Really though, it’s not bad. You just need to get keep your head screwed on. Dredge are the best at throwing off a group’s flow. Those dazes make most pugs panic and fumble to their deaths. Also, bear in mind that those ground attacks by Oscillators are counted as projectiles and can be stopped by barriers like Smoke Screen.

Honestly, it’s not that bad. The loot is VERY nice, and you can make things massively easier with the use of ash legion kits. The door opening and cannon parts are especially easier with ash legion kits. As for the final boss, it’s not that bad if your team knows what it is doing and you are equipped properly.

Volcano fractal on the other hand is an kitten!

As a tank guardian I absolutely loathe this fractal. I spend most of my time CCed, and you can’t even blind those kitten. Going melee against dredge is just too painful

treborIRL.4521:

if the dredge fractal is that bad for you then honestly stop playing pve. this is content lots of players have been waiting for, a challenge, actual strats being used.my last dredge chest x2 exotics x1 rare x1 lodestone at lvl 16. it was pretty nice.

You do realize just about anyone involved into this conversation can dwarf your ego post, right?
You got lucky, big deal. My lvl40 chests rarely contain anything more than 1 rare, but that is not even the point. The point is dredge fractal is absurd. It doesn’t take any special skill to sit there dazed for a minute straight while ranged people clearing kitten off you. It is boring, annoying, tedious and lame. You can call it “challenge” if you want, but most of us disagree.

Dredge shock wave attack is just brutal at level 20, I’m running full tank guardian and if the boss uses it, it usually will one shot me. (Aegis will get hit by his lackey veteran)

Still not as bad as the button part.

You know, Spirit Shield of the guardian can block his shock wave.

Dredge fractal is easy, only place that gets annoying is the cage if people dont do it right.

To make it easy do this.

1. When you enter the fractal gather 4 people at the first gate, 1 people runs up to the first switch.
2. When first gate opens all 4 people kill the 2 vets at the cage door, while the top guy runs down to first gate.
3. When vets are dead, 1 out of the 4 runs up to the second switch and runs back down as soon as the 4 others of the group are right inside the cage.
4. Kill all dredge in the cage before standing on the two switches.
5. Stand on switches, have one guy ready to attack the mobs that spawns at the cogwheel and have one guy on the cogwheel. Guy that flipped second switch will probably have adds unless he has some stealth to drop aggro on his way to the cage. He should help at switches or to clear around cogwheel.
6. Door opened, continue.

Most importanly is step 2 and 3, it makes it much much smoother.