Guild Wars 2

Fractal Instability

Social Awkwardness: Nearby allies receive Agony while you are fighting opponents.

What value is there in having this in fractals? To break the “stacking” game? Stacking in some encounters is very useful others not so much. For example where some sort of stacking is helpful is Mai Trin. Now, we are already in melee range which is more challenging than range. We already have various obstacles including her nasty swing attack, the aoe’s coming at us, and now a bunny and a tentacle. Then on top of that is Social Awkwardness which discourages players being close together and the group needs to be close together near Mai Trin so the electro shots hit her.

Often times stacking is done in melee range. Melee already has enough punishment. There have been many posts stating melee in high level fractals is very punishing vs range. Why punish melee even more?

Maybe it’s an to make an emphasis a healer role to counteract the DOT damage from the agony. I see what you mean though, it still feels far safer to spam condi from range.

I made a necro for high lever fractals and since she’s been geared for it I have been taking her. With the changes to make power builds on par with condi builds, I took my power druid in to do my daily fractals tonight. Right now I cannot conclude if the change was meaningful. I will continue testing but I did do the Mai Trin on my druid. I healed when needed, but every time I went to stand near the boss everyone’s health would drop so I continued to heal but that lasts only so long. It’s not like I am on my resto shaman where I can continuously heal.

Side note, Toxic Trails with Adrenaline Rush owned me in my Cliffside daily tonight. I was melee like normal on my druid and my health dropped to 1-2k in a second. Cliffside feels different and not in a good way. From now on it’s range for me.

One more side note, I really do appreciate Anet trying to make power builds on par with condi builds. Very welcomed change! Go Anet!

Cliffside has major issues because it’s an area denial map. It forces you into tight areas, either with moving AOEs (chest) or tight spaces (arms). Both Social Awkwardness and Toxin Trail are all about area denial, but when you are already on a map that is doing it, you end up with no way to stay out of the bad zone. You can literally have no place to go to avoid the toxin trail, and no where to move to avoid social awkwardness. There is a good reason everyone avoided 94 like the plague before the patch, but now you can’t do either of the T4 Cliffsides without this problem manifesting

Ran 90-94-100 today and everyone seemed to be doing alright meleeing. I think social awkwardness is the most forgiving in terms of area denial instabilities. The reduced range and the new visuals actually make the instability more fun and interesting. The comp we ran was heavily melee, warrior/mesmer/druid/rev/necro. We managed by simply spacing out a tad bit, the hitboxes of mobs are rather big actually. Perhaps having a druid made everything easier, but it doesn’t seem to be too big of an issue. We had more issues with the flux bombs during the chest phase, but everyone quickly figured it out when they got the bomb and walked away.

I think the only instability that needs to be looked over is the toxin trail. The damage, area denied, and duration is way too high.

just adapt your “stack” to a wider stack: druid middle and the others around him so noone gets agony (which limits druids heal if needed)

did a run yesterday, but didnt see this visual effect. its limited to some settings or another red/green invisible stuff? <- redid todays t4 and finally found it^^ its a bit confusing you can only see it when you attack…

i think in anet they know what they doing,i personly think that this is best way possible.