Guild Wars 2

After another frustrating run of the swamp fractal, I realized something that makes me hate it even more: The options for teamwork are vastly limited and, if one of your wisp runners stumbles, there is nothing anyone can do to help. By stumble I’m including things like:
– Fails to get over a barricade*
– Picks up a wisp early/late.
– Dies to Mossman when they were running without someone to keep aggro off them.
– Get panicked by the number of spiders, hit ~ to switch to their AOE weapon, dropping wisp. Yes, I did this. Shortly afterwards I decided that, since I was getting worse, we should have one of the people who had never done swamp before run a wisp.

It doesn’t help that with 3 wisps and 5 party members that at least one of the runners has to go solo.

*Jumping puzzles are a major “no teamwork” area. When you have a team mate who can’t handle the Rata Sum/Cliffside jumps, all you can really do is res him for another go until he finally succeeds.

Really, the Swamp doesn’t seem like it’s a matter of teamwork. It’s a matter of hoping that the runners don’t screw up because when they do, there is nothing you can do but try again. And again. And again. Until nobody screws up.

I guess your difficulty level of fotm is very low, since all these problems never show on high lvl team. All this depends on experience. You should know where to stand on each point, and where to jump over barricade. I can successfully run most of the wisp points and I’m sure most people after 20lvl can do it. When we saw swamp, we will say “easy one, lucky day”.

know ur terrains well it’s fine at low level , as you proceed higher difficulty ..even the lousiest knows what to do

Mesmer portals in both areas = teamwork. If I’m not running in the swamp, I’m speed boosting, cleansing or drawing aggro from one of the runners. There’s plenty of opportunities for teamwork there.

Teamwork in swamp fractals :
- portals
- swiftness and vigor buffs
- condition removal
- stability
- distracting mobs
- running ahead to trigger traps (you don’t even need skills for that!)

I’m a big fan of teamwork. Working together we can do far more than the combined effects of working alone. However, teamwork is not a replacement for individual ability.

I look at things like jumping puzzles and the swamp as testing the individual as well as the group.

When content is a team sport, the team can carry weaker members. When the content shifts to focus on individual contributions, the weaker links are singled out. Not necessarily eliminated, but identified.

We need both forms of content, if you ask me.

There’s literally no jumps in cliffside that you can’t just walk. The jumps in Rata Sum can be cleared by having someone stand on the platforms and show the others where to jump. None of the jumps require swiftness, and none require toeing the edge to make it; so so long as you show them where to jump from, and where to jump to, there shouldn’t be any issues at all.

Similarly, Swamp is about as teamwork-y as you could possibly get from a dungeon. Five party members, three wisps, one champion drake, one mossman. One person to each, and you’re golden. Don’t know the paths? Scope out which wisps spawned, and show people first. Don’t know how to handle mossman/drake? Swap off with someone that can. If you’re super cool and can have people either avoid the bosses/trigger pathway snares so the wisp-carriers don’t accidentally fall over, so much the better.

Teamwork? Awwwwyeah.

All of the jumps in the asura fractal can even be done while in combat. They’re not hard.