Guild Wars 2

After seeing the development of fractals in the recent months I had very high expectations regarding this new fractal. And they have been satisfied. I can confidently say that fractal team is by far the best dev team out there (and I have a lot of respect for all the devs) not only because of the amazing content they deliver, but also because they actively engage with the community (Hi Benjamin Arnold!) on different platforms, listen to our feedback and keep up to date with new strategies used by the players.

As far as normal mode goes, the difficulty tuning on higher scales (T3 and T4) seems to be pretty standard. It feels a bit harder because it’s unfamiliar, but after a few weeks/months, running T4 Shattered Observatory will be no different to Cliffside or Thaumanova Reactor. On lower scales (T1 and T2), it seemed a bit more difficult by comparison. T1 fractals are supposed to be easy, but 25 doesn’t feel like an introductory-type fractal. I especially hated how difficult it was to make up for other people’s mistakes. Typically, one good player is able to carry a team of newbies in any T1 fractal without much problem. Not a big deal to me, since I won’t be running lower scales anyway, but I though I may point this out because newer players might seriously struggle here.

Challenge mode was exactly what it was supposed to be. Challenging, exciting, fun. More mechanics which sometimes overlap. With a good, coordinated team, challenge mode can be done fairly easily and consistently. Nonetheless, I feel like the “ultra challenge mode” achievement is going a bit too far. I haven’t attempted it yet, but the way I understand it – one player dying at any point = immediate restart. I would therefore propose a suggestion: change it to track individual bosses instead. Similar to raid wing 1 achievement. That way people still have to beat every boss without a party member dying, but there will be less annoying restarts and less blaming when 1 person screws up (which would feel especially terrible when you’re at the last boss).

Story was alright, but I don’t pay too much attention to that anyway. It was nice to see some old, familiar faces as well as new ones being introduced.

Also low-gravity mechanic is super fun, but it feels really weird for a moment when you return to normal tyria.

Good job on this one devs, keep it up.

It’s not like there are already some threads about this specific theme.

@Moderators:
Can you merge threads? Ty.

If I wanted my feedback to get lost in hundreds of posts by casuals complaining about how hard the fractal is and how fractals are turning into raids, I would have done just that. But I don’t.

@Moderators:
Can you not merge threads? Ty.

Look precisely there are different threads with different opinions already.

But understood, you are such a special one that your opinion is more valuable than of everyone else. ^^

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

We also have some bug fixes incoming that should help alleviate some pain points at the higher tiers as well.

Does that include making the floor fall at 15% or 40%? I know it’s been said that it is supposed to be 40%, but that it a Long time to be dodging the floor with anomalies showing up and having the floor possibly disappear from under them.

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

All the feedback from all the posts on the forums here has been incredibly informative, and we are watching closely to see how people feel as they get more confident with the mechanics.

That said, we have also come to the conclusion that the tier scaling is a bit off for boss 3. It is too difficult at tier one. We are rolling out some balance tweaks in the next patch that will ease the difficulty curve so that lower tiers are more introductory. We also have some bug fixes incoming that should help alleviate some pain points at the higher tiers as well.

Thank you very much!

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

Azoqu.8917:

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

We also have some bug fixes incoming that should help alleviate some pain points at the higher tiers as well.

Does that include making the floor fall at 15% or 40%? I know it’s been said that it is supposed to be 40%, but that it a Long time to be dodging the floor with anomalies showing up and having the floor possibly disappear from under them.

Cameron would like for it to stay at 40% as that was the original intent. With some of the other bug fixes it should hopefully be less frustrating, but we will continue to monitor feedback for this.

It should be set up such that anomalies can never spawn in a place where the floors are gone all around it. There should always be at least 1 available floor adjacent to the anomaly to stand on. If this is not the case, please let us know.

Does that mean that even if the dissapearing pads rotate for the durr of the safe zone the pad thats under it wont dissapear right?

Also this is a question on a comment either you or another fractal dev made during the ama but i didnt get the chance to ask:

You guys said that nightmare and shattered would be the main hard ones and that the new fractals will be easier.

Does that mean we won’t be getting any hard fractals in the future or you see room for more hard ones down the line? And if not will new fractals have atleast cms that stay in the same range of dificulty with the existing ones?

Thanks for the answer.

Btw (sorry for bombarding you with questions ben but) the last couple of fractals have followed a boss to boss to boss design. Is this a design choice you will be moving forward with or you believe theres space for fractals like cliffside and urban? Because alpt of ppl me included would like to see oldschool fractal designs again. (not that i disliked nightmare and shattered ofc)

HYPE

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

I’m not sure I understand the question. The bottom line is there should always be a safe space inside the bubble to stand.

There will be easy and hard fractals in the future. I can’t give specifics.

Surely easy and hard would depend on the tier and not the fractal itself?

I think the number of mechanics going on at the same time in CM may be a little too much, but I haven’t had much time on the last boss.

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

I’m not sure I understand the question. The bottom line is there should always be a safe space inside the bubble to stand.

There will be easy and hard fractals in the future. I can’t give specifics.

uhm hard is ok, but i think all attacks should be evadable like the first boss of Shattered Observatory Does this AR puddle thingy and a AR shockwave right after, Which hurts a lot! I don’t think you could evade it or block it >.<

Also boss 2 has helpers that does bouncing electric beam that bounce like WAY too much which is totally unfair for squishy class like ele

Benjamin, is the floor drop phase supposed to happen at random? On Reddit, it was said that it should always trigger when the boss is 40%, however sometimes it doesn’t happen at all or happens when the boss is 30% or even less than 10% – I saw a YouTube video today showing 100 Challenge mode where the phase started on 2%.

Also, it might be just my bad memory, but I think yesterday, during the phase the floor drops, the Anomaly spawned where there was no platform to stand on.

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

Watch the circles under your feet to see the timing, and just dodge in to the boss. You will avoid all damage.

I’ve done this but I still get 5 stacks of burn, is that intended?

The ball mechanic is a nice twist on things, although at higher tiers the fight can very much devolve into /gg if even a single ball is dropped. Not sure why we couldn’t just have gliding and updrafts, jump pads, or mushrooms instead of the odd electric jump pad things that players can potentially miss and fall to their deaths but it’s not a major detriment once people stop trying to glide. Some of the achievements are going to make people curse the game, though (bouncing one especially).

In general the HoT-wide issue where low durability classes go down too easily to unavoidable damage due to difficulty through mass AOEs throughout fights also occurs here. Even at the most optimal positioning and dodging, there is still a minimal amount of damage you just have to tank due to limited numbers of dodges and attack density, and low durability classes can barely stay upright just from that damage, never mind damage from actual hits. Making it more about avoidable but deadly attacks instead of tons of unavoidable damage would be nice, as that makes it a skill floor instead of a stat floor.

One issue I have with the final boss is that some classes have trouble with the combination of the Main boss and the Diviner and Gladiator sub-bosses, as the tactical swing is too wide. In particular, an Elementalist would like to take close range weapons for Diviner and for the main boss, but are entirely unable to fight the Gladiator at close range, needing to use long range. Because Eles can’t weapon swap, this puts them in the situation where they are able to do little more than dodge attacks and hope the rest of the team can handle the Gladiator if they kit optimally for the rest of the fight, or they are playing sub-optimally the rest of the time.

I agree with the comments that Fractals are becoming increasingly raid-like, and that this is creating issues. The problem is that while raiding is generally done by organized groups, Fractals are more often done by PUGs. Making it so you need this level of coordination and teamwork among 5 strangers without voice communication leads to a lot of turnover. I have yet to get through the entire fractal without at least one person leaving due to rage after wipes or time concerns. PUGs don’t get together for 3 hour blocks to gradually learn and improve on mechanics, and every time a PUG group shuffles, it’s basically a reset. Given this, it would at least be nice if each fight gave rewards instead of all the rewards being at the end, so people who can’t finish still get something and people aren’t actively watching LFG for groups on the last boss to join to get quick rewards.

The Analogue Kid.3896:

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

I’m not sure I understand the question. The bottom line is there should always be a safe space inside the bubble to stand.

There will be easy and hard fractals in the future. I can’t give specifics.

Surely easy and hard would depend on the tier and not the fractal itself?

Chaos isnt hard even at t4

I’ve spend a lot of time in the new fractal over the past days and allready finished the 100CM achievement. I will just give my feedback in here.

First Boss:

I think the boss is pretty straightforward and I really enjoyed the “tower” mechanic where you have to kill several bosses to carry on the fight. His attacks are not too rng and overall he is a good introduction into the fractals mechanics. (solar beam/bloom etc.)

Second Boss:

I ******* love this boss. The design is absolutely beautiful. The “ball mechanic” is something new and is fitting the boss rly well. The mechanics are easy to learn and for decent players this boss should be no real threat. I don’t rly have something bad to say on this one.

Third Boss:

Oh god,…where do I start. Maybe, at first,…I enjoyed the fight but I can understand why people will hate him. I was able to kill him once, and got him beyond 10% several times.
I feel like the boss is not finalized,…not ready for the encounter in Tyria yet.

1. The mechanics seem to overlap in a rng way, which isn’t rly a problem with a good group till you hit 40%. But I think for the future it would be better if green circles, skullbomb and anomalie really would appear together or in a strict pattern.

2. The “green circle” mechanic itself seems to be buggy as well. Sometimes the circle makes the dmg at 70-75% of the circle,…sometimes it does no dmg,…sometimes 2 circles spawn in a row on the same player. At most of the times, you just can’t say when the dmg hits. There should be 1 circle, and the dmg should appear at the end of the circle.

3. The destruction of the plattforms seems to be affected by the groupdps. It is pretty much rng if the mechanic appears on -40% or not.

4. When the destruction starts, anomalies can spawn on destructed parts of the arena,…which results in a pretty safe wipe. This should be fixed for sure.

5. Beyond 40% the mechanic stacking is pretty insane and most of the time,…there are very limited “safespots” inside the arena. But till 25% it is still manageable. Maybe you should think about limiting the mechanic stacking to several mechanics that can occur at the same time to make the fight more predictable while keeping the chaos style alive. But ALL mechanics at the same time,..seems a bit too rng. Sometimes it feels like if it is just luck where to stand and if you are able to get beyond 10%.

6. F4 distortion from Mesmers seem to bug in a certain way since signet distortion works just fine for the most mechanics.

7. The Orb mechanic results in a lot on rng wipes at 80/50/25% because the orbs get stuck on the sides of the Arena when getting pushed to far or people getting several orbs while some players get none. I think you should fix it to 1 ORB=1 PLAYER! And you rly need to fix the stuck mechanic on the edge of the arena. The spawning of anomalies at the start of the orb phase is absoultly ok from my point of view.

8. The low gravity jump seems to bug a bit for me, or it isn’t intended to be an evade at all? Maybe you can give us a disclaimer on which mechanics can be evaded and which not by using low gravity jumps?

Thats pretty much it,…I’d love to get a reply and if you need any more info please let me know. I think the fractal is great but the last boss just needs a bit polishing to make it an “organised chaos” and maybe a bit more easy to achieve for Pug Groups because of not so many rng wipes.

Much love, Raj!

Throwing in my two cents for this since our usual dungeon/fractal group gave this a go last night. We aren’t some highly experienced group, we haven’t done top tier fractals and are working our way up together so we have a lot of learning to do. But we work well together. We learn and adapt quickly. We run pretty much every other fractal well, with only maybe a couple of hiccups as we encounter new mechanics as we advance in fractal level. As this was our first go we did this as the lowest tier, level 25. We did go into this having read over the wiki on some of the basic mechanics.

For the general mechanic of the low gravity, 4 of us loved it and were having a blast and one of us absolutely hated it. The fractal itself was absolutely stunning in appearance – kudos for that!

Boss 1:
We had no issue with this boss. The tactic of having to go around and get the anomalies was easy, the fight was fairly standard but a good intro to the fractal. It was fun to break out of the standard fighting to fly around for other objectives, but we had clear knowledge of where we were flying to and didn’t feel thrown off.

The only annoying thing was something that happened to only one member of the party. He entered the downed state mid-jump into the blue air column that transports the players around the platforms, from the main platform to the first island. Instead of being turned into a mote/orb, it was his downed self floating through the draft and no downed skills were available. He was stuck in the draft, tried using a rez orb, but he was unable to move out of it until it turned him back into a mote and shot him out. But it took 2 minutes for that to happen. By that point the rest of us had continued due to the time limit and he had to run through the AoE aftermath of the anomalies, getting back to us as we were heading back to the boss.

Boss 2:
Favourite fight of the fractal hands down for all of us. It took a moment to get the bouncing of the ball correct with balancing that between the doomed mechanic but it was fun. Going in with the write up from the wiki was one thing but experiencing it and adapting was another. We were cracking up as one was shouting “I’M DOOMED I CAN MAKE IT!” and others shouting “BALL!” through the fight. This fight was the most fun we have had in a fractal in a long time.

Boss 3:
As a complete flip from boss 2, this was one of the worst fights we ever had to do in a fractal. At the lowest tier of this fractal, no doubt.

We took about 6 or 7 attempts before we finally gave up. We chock up the first half up to learning the mechanics of the fight (as the wiki description was bare bones) and getting used to it. Not unusual for a brand new difficult fight.

For the most part, the majority of the fight was tough but wasn’t too awful except for the Solar Blooms portion where we needed them to move to the generators to stop his AoE. The Blooms were such a pain in the kitten that all of us were frustrated. There were times where the blooms would just stop moving. They weren’t near the edge, they were in front of the player, the player was hitting in the direction they wanted, but they wouldn’t budge and stayed there until it exploded.

There were times when the blooms also moved to the very edge of the platform and then also would not move. Several of us were perfectly in line with it when the electric border was not on, and yet it would not move. Only once one of us got it to move after it had hit the edge and that was only because he was basically standing with his character’s toes on the very edge of the platform. They also would occasionally crowd (not all, but 3 on one player when we were all up happened several times) one player made it difficult to get them to separate enough to knock towards the corners of the platform.

I do love, however, that we were able to use the new launch skill to counteract the fear effect if we were hit with it to keep us from running into the electric or off the platform entirely.

Dealing with the blooms that didn’t want to move when they should, getting stuck on the edge, amidst all of the other stuff going on, it felt very very overpowered for a level 25 fractal. The lowest we got on the boss was 28% and that was after many attempts and many rez orbs – I blew through all but one of my whole stash in just trying to get that fight done. Eventually, we had to just stop and go do something else because we were all irritated and frustrated.

So that’s my run down of our first go. I would be happy to provide more information if needed. As a whole, the fractal itself is enjoyable and if the last boss was more properly balanced for the level and some kinks were ironed out, it could easily become one of our favourite fractals.

The solar bloom thing on the final boss is very easy:
1. Don’t hit/autoattack them at first
2. Go to the corner next to the generator you want to blow up with your bloom
3. Wait until the bloom has followed to your position as it will move alone without any help or hits at all
4. Take one step back (not a big one, just a little [tap s once or twice]) so that the orb is between you and the generator.
5. Autoattack/Push the orb into/next to the generator
6. Done

Problem most people have: They ignore 1. and hit like stupid as soon as the orbs spawn and then rage/cry about that the orbs are not handling well and everything is bugged. ^^

Vinceman.4572:

The solar bloom thing on the final boss is very easy:
1. Don’t hit/autoattack them at first
2. Go to the corner next to the generator you want to blow up with your bloom
3. Wait until the bloom has followed to your position as it will move alone without any help or hits at all
4. Take one step back (not a big one, just a little [tap s once or twice]) so that the orb is between you and the generator.
kitten the orb
6. Done

Problem most people have: They ignore 1. and hit like kittenoon as the orbs spawn and then rage/cry about that the orbs are not handling well and everything is bugged. ^^

It’s also like, they dont remember the very same mechanic is learned in the first fight /shrug.

TexZero.7910:

It’s also like, they dont remember the very same mechanic is learned in the first fight /shrug.

It’s different because you just have to hit the orb away from your group and nothing else. You can still stack together and dps the boss while hit the bloom once in a while to keep it on the edge.
I can understand that people have issues with that even on fractal 25 because they are nervous or panic out due to the floor timer instead of going slowly to the corner first because there is enough time to handle it.

Vinceman.4572:

The solar bloom thing on the final boss is very easy:
1. Don’t hit/autoattack them at first
2. Go to the corner next to the generator you want to blow up with your bloom
3. Wait until the bloom has followed to your position as it will move alone without any help or hits at all
4. Take one step back (not a big one, just a little [tap s once or twice]) so that the orb is between you and the generator.
5. Autoattack/Push the orb into/next to the generator
6. Done

Problem most people have: They ignore 1. and hit like stupid as soon as the orbs spawn and then rage/cry about that the orbs are not handling well and everything is bugged. ^^

We were taking the time to get the orb between us and line it up with the generators and we were pushing them with our auto attacks for the most part, occasionally with push skills. We still had issues with the orbs either grouping on one player, refusing to move past a couple of hits and too far from the generators when they blasted, or when they didn’t end up lined up right (if someone ended a little bit off on their trajectory) that they were stuck on the edge of the platform with the generator just out of the blast range.

So pretty much as you explained and yet we still had issues. This is not a case of not understanding and then raging/crying that it’s bugged. No one claimed that it was that the blooms were bugged because we couldn’t do it. They wanted feedback and I explained the issues we had with the bloom movement.

Most of the time when that portion of the fight spawned as we got the flow of it, we were able to get all but one generator down and was able to get that down when the bloom popped up again a minute later. But by that point, there were so many difficulties between the giant AoEs and the other portions of the fight going on simultaneously that we were unable to recover fast enough before we wiped again by another round.

TexZero.7910:

It’s also like, they dont remember the very same mechanic is learned in the first fight /shrug.

As Vinceman said, it does differ from the earlier fight as you are in need of aiming them at something. The spreading AoE does add some pressure into getting them down within a certain amount of time but we eased out of that initial panic after the first few cracks at the fight.

Maethor.2810:

TexZero.7910:

It’s also like, they dont remember the very same mechanic is learned in the first fight /shrug.

As Vinceman said, it does differ from the earlier fight as you are in need of aiming them at something. The spreading AoE does add some pressure into getting them down within a certain amount of time but we eased out of that initial panic after the first few cracks at the fight.

Im just sayin, the mechanics are additive in nature. First you’re show the look away and the orb. Then your show a room with 4 distinct corners to fight in. Then you have an almost identical arena with pylons that almost magically appear when the orbs do in the same distinct corners. It shouldn’t be rocket science to figure out what to do if you apply some very basic problem solving skills.

Any chance we can lower the height of the eye icon which telegraphing the fear attack for Aark? Right now it is so high up in the sky you can’t see it unless you have the camera zoomed all the way out or have the camera angled at a severe angle.

To be fair you know that the orbs follow linked players around and in the third boss you realise rather fast that the pillars are impowering him.

Therefor it should click to you knowing that you need to get rid of the pillars and that these orbs follow you/explode that the 2 mechanics play together in some way.

You dont need to realise it from the first moment. Just realise at some point. After that its all about polishing the execution of it. You know that attacks knock them back and when you do it first and ppl attack randomly the phase will prob fail.

Therefor you look to not spam attacks randomly at them.

Sure its not the same but its a task that requires you a basic knowledge of the mechanic. Much like the 3 eye beams its not the same as a normal eye attack but knowing how the eye attack works is the key on dealing with that attack as well.

ArthurDent.9538:

Any chance we can lower the height of the eye icon which telegraphing the fear attack for Aark? Right now it is so high up in the sky you can’t see it unless you have the camera zoomed all the way out or have the camera angled at a severe angle.

Id much rather to be able to move the boss’ healthbar (or anyones i target) freely. Half the time the attacks are hidden behind that hp bar.

TexZero.7910:

Maethor.2810:

TexZero.7910:

It’s also like, they dont remember the very same mechanic is learned in the first fight /shrug.

As Vinceman said, it does differ from the earlier fight as you are in need of aiming them at something. The spreading AoE does add some pressure into getting them down within a certain amount of time but we eased out of that initial panic after the first few cracks at the fight.

Im just sayin, the mechanics are additive in nature. First you’re show the look away and the orb. Then your show a room with 4 distinct corners to fight in. Then you have an almost identical arena with pylons that almost magically appear when the orbs do in the same distinct corners. It shouldn’t be rocket science to figure out what to do if you apply some very basic problem solving skills.

Sure but there’s a difference between ‘use the mechanic you learned’ and ‘try to use the mechanic you learned and have it not work the way it’s intended’ which is what Maethor seems to be saying. Our group tried it and had the spheres in front of us, hit them, and had them literally end up behind us instead, or had 3 spheres attach to one person and be unable to get them off at all.

Your condescending tone isn’t helpful either, js.

therapite.3645:

TexZero.7910:

Maethor.2810:

TexZero.7910:

It’s also like, they dont remember the very same mechanic is learned in the first fight /shrug.

As Vinceman said, it does differ from the earlier fight as you are in need of aiming them at something. The spreading AoE does add some pressure into getting them down within a certain amount of time but we eased out of that initial panic after the first few cracks at the fight.

Im just sayin, the mechanics are additive in nature. First you’re show the look away and the orb. Then your show a room with 4 distinct corners to fight in. Then you have an almost identical arena with pylons that almost magically appear when the orbs do in the same distinct corners. It shouldn’t be rocket science to figure out what to do if you apply some very basic problem solving skills.

Sure but there’s a difference between ‘use the mechanic you learned’ and ‘try to use the mechanic you learned and have it not work the way it’s intended’ which is what Maethor seems to be saying. Our group tried it and had the spheres in front of us, hit them, and had them literally end up behind us instead, or had 3 spheres attach to one person and be unable to get them off at all.

Your condescending tone isn’t helpful either, js.

Its usually better to run straight at the pillars and when yhe orbs are close enough and ready to explode dodge backwards.

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

Azoqu.8917:

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

We also have some bug fixes incoming that should help alleviate some pain points at the higher tiers as well.

Does that include making the floor fall at 15% or 40%? I know it’s been said that it is supposed to be 40%, but that it a Long time to be dodging the floor with anomalies showing up and having the floor possibly disappear from under them.

Cameron would like for it to stay at 40% as that was the original intent. With some of the other bug fixes it should hopefully be less frustrating, but we will continue to monitor feedback for this.

It should be set up such that anomalies can never spawn in a place where the floors are gone all around it. There should always be at least 1 available floor adjacent to the anomaly to stand on. If this is not the case, please let us know.

Unfortunately this happens. During the 40% phase the chances of an anomaly appearing on part of the platform that disappeared are extremely high.

Another thing i’d like to mention (i dont know if it is mentioned somewhere else), sometimes u get the orb phase without additional mechanics, sometimes u get bombs, greens and anomalies during that phase. Is this intentional?

My finding was that the difficulty of the last boss (especially in CM) is inversely proportional to your group DPS. With a bad group and poor DPS, mechanics tend to stack, sometimes to the point when it’s physically impossible to prevent a wipe. With a good group, the fight feels much easier and there’s usually no more than 2 mechanics at a time.

therapite.3645:

Sure but there’s a difference between ‘use the mechanic you learned’ and ‘try to use the mechanic you learned and have it not work the way it’s intended’ which is what Maethor seems to be saying. Our group tried it and had the spheres in front of us, hit them, and had them literally end up behind us instead, or had 3 spheres attach to one person and be unable to get them off at all.

Your condescending tone isn’t helpful either, js.

I don’t know if it is intentional to get more than one bloom during the phase or not. But nevertheless I haven’t seen them bugged and I’ve played the fractal a lot now since release, especially the last boss.
And I can tell you, whenever this phase failed there were people in my groups (pugs but also know players with me in ts) hitting the bloom like there’s no morning with autoattack right after they spawned (Hello, staff tempests with air attunement!).
The key here is to be patient. Don’t hit the bloom until you are in the corner in front of the generator. It will join your place and you need 1 single autoattack to push it into it for the explosion.
If you have 2 blooms connected, do the thing once while ignoring the other one and afterwards run to the next corner.
It’s the same mechanic for 25, 50, 75, 100 and CM.
As said above for me it’s absolutely a player issue in the first place – not surprising because this is new content, so I won’t blame them – just execute it like I described and you shouldn’t have any problems, especially not at level 25. You don’t wipe there if all blooms will explode and you’ll get another 4 blooms.
Plus: Tell you staff tempests to not use air attunement during this phase. I don’t know if the blooms “soak up” the bounce but if not you can really have a problem because air autoattacks will bounce between targets – often seen by unexperienced players at KC (raid boss) during the orb phase while they push it out of the area failing to close all rifts then.

There is some things that should be done in future.
1. Less RNG. Woo, anomaly appeared on disappeared platform, thats fun.
2. Less melee hate. When melee cannot hit the boss just because “lul we decided to do that because this mechanic pattern is cool”… seriously?
3. A little bit more testing. Pets being oneshotted is not really funny.
4. Please, please stop putting important tells on badly visible indicators. Yes, flashy indicator above boss head on arena full of flashy stuff while boss getting punched by all sorts of flashy spells – is not good idea, at all. Please make ground indicators instead. Also please consider to add voice line tells to important boss attacks.

seems impossible to do the last boss on cm with a pug group, need 5 players with good communication as there was like 3-4 mechanics going on at the same time in some instances.

i love the new CM. i got the achievement on the second day after spending 10 hours on the last boss. i was actually quite disappointed—the only way our team could beat the boss, was to bug it out and DPS hard to 40% to skip the floors. it made the achievement feel meaningless. however, we did manage to get the boss to 6% once with floors, but the floors were still bugged in some way, because there were more than 4 tiles present.

keep up the great work! i hope to see more challenging content in the future, as it’s the only reason i stick around this game, for raids and high-level fractals. thank you, Arenanet.

My only complaint with it (so far, I’ve only fought the first boss didn’t have time to finish) is when I dodged the expanding circle under me, a larger pulse it looks like applied 5 burning stacks that do incredibly high damage (on Daredevil) and with Shadow Step and Signet of Agility I couldn’t remove it every time, I understand other players could have condition removal but it seemed odd that I’d get burned like that during a dodge

I think the new fractal has too much visual noise at times? E.g. the first boss on CM, the starting sun thing is too bright.

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

It is supposed to always happen at 40%, this is a bug. We will be rolling out a fix for that along with some other bugs.

Devs purposely put in bugs with their fixes. Confirmed.

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

Nick.6972:

I’ve done this but I still get 5 stacks of burn, is that intended?

That is intended, however currently it does not scale. The proper way to deal with it is a condi cleanse, resistance, or healing. We will be adding better scaling soon.

Why did you intend to damage players when they dodge the attack? That’s really unfair. When I dodge I expect to be protected from damage.

Sublimatio.6981:

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

Nick.6972:

I’ve done this but I still get 5 stacks of burn, is that intended?

That is intended, however currently it does not scale. The proper way to deal with it is a condi cleanse, resistance, or healing. We will be adding better scaling soon.

Why did you intend to damage players when they dodge the attack? That’s really unfair. When I dodge I expect to be protected from damage.

exactly my thought, I thought I wasn’t dodging properly but then after a while it dawned on me that you can’t avoid it, seems kinda kittenty..

Also finally beat the last boss, albeit I don’t feel that good about it since the tiles started when the boss was 5% hp and the rewards were kinda meh (for the time put in) so I probably won’t be doing it again xD

There is a bug sometimes with the medusa/fear attack on the final boss during CM. Sometimes even though you clearly look away from the boss the attack will still hit you. I know there are some good videos out there that show the bug, specifically some CM kills on Youtube. To my understanding you have to wait until that “solar wave” passes you in order to turn back around, but even knowing that the attack sometimes will hit as if you were looking right at it. Also, you said some improvements, does that mean aoe’s (red circles) are less likely to spawn in the doom bubbles? Also, a question about the green circles, is it a bug that they sometimes appear and then disappear and then reappear on the same person, like it activates twice. That mechanic in general feels buggy. Lastly, projectile destruction does not work very well on the orb attack, which makes it fairly difficult to deal with, will we be able to use more projectile destruction (for example putting a corrosive cloud over the boss to destroy the projectile, because as of now the arc “hehe” of the cannon shot is strange so that the orbs can go over most projectile conversions, such as sublime conversion. Thank you for all the work on this fractal it has been amazing to play, except that darn 40%. As a side note I agree that the rewards for the CM could be a little better, considering how difficult the final encounter it, compared to the 99 CM, so I believe the rewards should compensate for the difficulty.

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

Sublimatio.6981:

Why did you intend to damage players when they dodge the attack? That’s really unfair. When I dodge I expect to be protected from damage.

The designer who built that skill intended for it to be a guaranteed damage pressure to emphasize condi cleanse or heals.

I’m ok with undodge or unblockable skills. But I think would make the gameplay better if we got visual clues of a skill that is undodgeble, like instead of the red visual marker we get a light orange one ? (Or anything like that) So we know before hand that we cant dodge said skills.