Guild Wars 2

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Zenyatoo.4059:

Now, this has no indication of difficulty, but both swamp and aquatic are easy as heck, and the fastest fractals. Whenever I see them Im more than happy.

Eesh, I built both of those… guess I need to toughen them up a bit…

No thanks. Every single Fractals instance is harder then gw1 Slavers’ Exile and i Hated that dungeon for real. Making it even harder is takign away all fun I will ever have in gw2.

I still find that PUGs cant handle swamp without a mesmer to get the one that’s farthest away. Easily what always takes my groups the longest. :/

Can’t say I’m a big fan of the swamp. It seems to rely too much on luck / speed boosts / class mix, and not require or even benefit much from tactics or teamwork. In fact, it just leads to conflicts between players when one of them can’t make it back in time a couple of times in a row.

Also, trap collision detection is buggy as hell. I frequently walk 1-2 feet next to a trap and see it break (and knock me down, and freeze me for 2 seconds, and force me to sit through the “getting up” animation, and then get slowed). And no, it’s not that I hit another trap, because I can see it “break”, although I never went anywhere near it.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Zenyatoo.4059:

The jellyfish has several neat attacks, but the way we damage it is still just normal damage the whole time. You could perhaps make the electric lamp things around the arena hurt the jellyfish too/give it a buff that makes it take more damage. Now players are rewarded for kiting in 3 dimensions, as well as risk/reward of standing inside the electricity.

Spoiler alert: They do! It’s just a bit difficult to perceive, but if you leash the jelly into it, it actually takes some pretty severe damage. It also hurts the spawned jellies.

That aside, my boss designs are an area that I would do well to improve upon.

That’s good news!
I think you still may wish to add a buff icon, even if it does nothing but say “Jellyfish is taking damage from the electricity” as the damage can be practically unnoticeable (unlike for example the dredge suit, in which he gains a buff, a visual effect, and obviously your damage spikes)

Someone earlier suggested bosses from Zelda or Dark souls make good inspiration. I would like to add monster hunter to that list, I find almost every boss in that game has interesting attack patterns, all of which are almost essential to dodge, which is a crux of the GW2 combat system.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Aevin.2391:

You can climb and jump over the walls that appear.

We’re well aware of it, and I feel fine with it. The walls that appear can be random, and I’m always in favor of player ingenuity to solve time sensitive problems.

“time sensitive” is an understatement.

i was doing the swamp one just now, and after an hour and a half, we gave up. the reason? as soon as we got close to any of the potential tree walls, they’d rise. all of them, with no exception, to the point where the entire area surrounding the altar was impossible to go through.

and that’s not even talking about all the zig-zagging that has to be done, encouraging players to just keep resetting the wisps until they get a somewhat favorable layout.

seriously. permanent swiftness, movement speed signets (the thief one), 1200 range shadowstep (when the game didn’t outright deny me my shadowstep and teleported me to where i was instead of where i was aiming at) and avoiding all traps, and we still couldn’t get within 20ft of the area because of all the walls raising.

please tell me it’s not intentional, because it makes no sense. there’s no pattern, they just raise all at once and won’t go down until minutes after we’ve failed.

Bruno, it’s very doable. While I am certainly no expert on the swamp, just taking some time out and wandering around the map to see the traps and the routine and where all the possible entrances are, exploring the thing, really have helped me. I’m only at level 9 as i’ve been helping guildies get their levels but i’ve got over 70 completed fractals and feel that the swamp one is one of the more exciting ones. It’s never the same thing twice, which is refreshing when some of the fractals start feeling a bit repetitious.

White.6193:

Bruno, it’s very doable. While I am certainly no expert on the swamp, just taking some time out and wandering around the map to see the traps and the routine and where all the possible entrances are, exploring the thing, really have helped me. I’m only at level 9 as i’ve been helping guildies get their levels but i’ve got over 70 completed fractals and feel that the swamp one is one of the more exciting ones. It’s never the same thing twice, which is refreshing when some of the fractals start feeling a bit repetitious.

oh believe me, i know it’s doable. i did it yesterday :P

but today, for more than one hour, all the walls would raise whenever we got close to them. ALL of them. we were getting locked out of segments of the swamp.

and i’m only at level 2, because i keep redoing lv1 with other people ;-;

From reading this, I’d say I must have been the luckiest schmuck to run the Swamp. I don’t think I ran into a single trap transporting a wisp, no real “wall” issues at all. I also ran the one that was furthest from the drop points. Quite frankly, I didn’t know there were any traps in there. Didn’t understand why people were so worried about getting the wisp there on time, seemed like plenty of time to me.

Now, hearing how there are traps in there, and apparently walls that change location? I guess there is some challeng to it I just some how didn’t notice.

Swamp is easy and a very short fractal; hence why I like it too.

At least as a mesmer where you can use your portal, teleport, then temporal curtain for speed buff.

If you have a second mesmer, then the fractal is a joke, just use two portals.

Of course, if it is your first time, then I can understand why it may be difficult because of the quickly appearing walls, traps, not knowing the best route to take.

However, once you know how to do it, trust me, it is arguably the best fractal as again it takes no time at all.

BrunoBRS.5178:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Aevin.2391:

You can climb and jump over the walls that appear.

We’re well aware of it, and I feel fine with it. The walls that appear can be random, and I’m always in favor of player ingenuity to solve time sensitive problems.

“time sensitive” is an understatement.

i was doing the swamp one just now, and after an hour and a half, we gave up. the reason? as soon as we got close to any of the potential tree walls, they’d rise. all of them, with no exception, to the point where the entire area surrounding the altar was impossible to go through.

and that’s not even talking about all the zig-zagging that has to be done, encouraging players to just keep resetting the wisps until they get a somewhat favorable layout.

seriously. permanent swiftness, movement speed signets (the thief one), 1200 range shadowstep (when the game didn’t outright deny me my shadowstep and teleported me to where i was instead of where i was aiming at) and avoiding all traps, and we still couldn’t get within 20ft of the area because of all the walls raising.

please tell me it’s not intentional, because it makes no sense. there’s no pattern, they just raise all at once and won’t go down until minutes after we’ve failed.

Did you actually read the post you quoted? Because if you had you’d realise everything you just said is a moot point.

Uloi.8593:

I second or third the comments on the jellyfish boss. I haven’t tried it, but I am quite sure you could set the whole party to auto attack and AFK.

Dolphins are ok, the lights I can’t do at all.

On the swamp thing, that’s been a killer for my parties. I guess we need to recruit more mesmers – thieves.

No you can’t, we tried it

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Zenyatoo.4059:

Now, this has no indication of difficulty, but both swamp and aquatic are easy as heck, and the fastest fractals. Whenever I see them Im more than happy.

Eesh, I built both of those… guess I need to toughen them up a bit…

Selective reading much???? Toughen swamp up and people will just respawn to get the fractals that don’t suck. Swamp is the worst most frustrating for no good reason fractal in the game. Jellyfish only needs buffing in early tiers. This is why you guys screw stuff up. You knee jerk when someone says something is too easy and ignore people who say something is too hard. GG.

HeeHee.5208:

Swamp is easy and a very short fractal; hence why I like it too.

At least as a mesmer where you can use your portal, teleport, then temporal curtain for speed buff.

If you have a second mesmer, then the fractal is a joke, just use two portals.

Of course, if it is your first time, then I can understand why it may be difficult because of the quickly appearing walls, traps, not knowing the best route to take.

However, once you know how to do it, trust me, it is arguably the best fractal as again it takes no time at all.

And people like you are why games get screwed up. “Whaaaa! It’s too easy!” Then you state you play a profession that has an unfair advantage in the event. Guess what hero, not everyone plays a Mesmer nor should have to have one in the grp for this factual not to be completely crappy.

Hel.6340:

BrunoBRS.5178:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Aevin.2391:

You can climb and jump over the walls that appear.

We’re well aware of it, and I feel fine with it. The walls that appear can be random, and I’m always in favor of player ingenuity to solve time sensitive problems.

“time sensitive” is an understatement.

i was doing the swamp one just now, and after an hour and a half, we gave up. the reason? as soon as we got close to any of the potential tree walls, they’d rise. all of them, with no exception, to the point where the entire area surrounding the altar was impossible to go through.

and that’s not even talking about all the zig-zagging that has to be done, encouraging players to just keep resetting the wisps until they get a somewhat favorable layout.

seriously. permanent swiftness, movement speed signets (the thief one), 1200 range shadowstep (when the game didn’t outright deny me my shadowstep and teleported me to where i was instead of where i was aiming at) and avoiding all traps, and we still couldn’t get within 20ft of the area because of all the walls raising.

please tell me it’s not intentional, because it makes no sense. there’s no pattern, they just raise all at once and won’t go down until minutes after we’ve failed.

Did you actually read the post you quoted? Because if you had you’d realise everything you just said is a moot point.

yes i have, and no it’s not moot, when you consider that the whole “jumping over” thing was not originally intended, and that it can often lead to players getting stuck in the geometry, due to its unplanned nature.

BrunoBRS.5178:

Hel.6340:

BrunoBRS.5178:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Aevin.2391:

You can climb and jump over the walls that appear.

We’re well aware of it, and I feel fine with it. The walls that appear can be random, and I’m always in favor of player ingenuity to solve time sensitive problems.

“time sensitive” is an understatement.

i was doing the swamp one just now, and after an hour and a half, we gave up. the reason? as soon as we got close to any of the potential tree walls, they’d rise. all of them, with no exception, to the point where the entire area surrounding the altar was impossible to go through.

and that’s not even talking about all the zig-zagging that has to be done, encouraging players to just keep resetting the wisps until they get a somewhat favorable layout.

seriously. permanent swiftness, movement speed signets (the thief one), 1200 range shadowstep (when the game didn’t outright deny me my shadowstep and teleported me to where i was instead of where i was aiming at) and avoiding all traps, and we still couldn’t get within 20ft of the area because of all the walls raising.

please tell me it’s not intentional, because it makes no sense. there’s no pattern, they just raise all at once and won’t go down until minutes after we’ve failed.

Did you actually read the post you quoted? Because if you had you’d realise everything you just said is a moot point.

yes i have, and no it’s not moot, when you consider that the whole “jumping over” thing was not originally intended, and that it can often lead to players getting stuck in the geometry, due to its unplanned nature.

Maybe it was planned? Who knows! All I can say is that I haven’t once gotten stuck, and neither has anyone else I know who’s being doing it that way.

The ‘jumping points’ seem to be too well placed for this to be an unplanned coincidence.

As I said it my first post, I’ve had entire sections cut off before, leaving jumping as the only option. And when was the last time ANet (or any other game dev) were ‘fine’ with people jumping over/through stuff they shouldn’t have been?

The next 3 seconds of this video are a guide to avoiding the traps:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJFyz73MRcg&t=58s

We have been very fortunate that we’ve only ever had the swamp as our first fractal instance, so there’s been nothing to lose when we restarted the cluster instead of wasting more of our evening. I dread hitting it as fractal 3 of a sequence because that will mean the evening’s been a complete bust in terms of Fractal Relics.

The swamp fractal is the only fractal that already requires some basic team coordination at lvl 1 or the basic understanding of your class and it’s possibility’s (speedbuffs, aegis, mystforms, portals, stability, stealth, dodges … everyone has at least something useful). That’s why so many people fail at it. Because they are either bad at their class or they fail in group coordination through the team chat with pugs.

That’s reall it. People who fail at Swamp should not get their hopes up of completing the other fractals at higher levels when some really become nasty with added mechanics that will require you to actually understand your class and coordinate. They are doomed to fail if they don’t learn in the progress (and people who skip it and reset fractals for that reason … it’s really silly and shows they won’t be able to improve). Doesn’t matter what team combo you have.

Swamp is simply a check if you understand the game & class mechanics and if you have team coordination. That’s all. There are no trash mobs at all. That’s why some people find it very hard, while others find it the most easy (mainy they mean the “fastest”) of them all.

Hats off to the creator of the Swamp for making a dungeon that gets both “fast & easy” and “ kitten hard & impossible” reactions just because of that. And no it’s not because of the class setup within your team that you are struggeling.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Zenyatoo.4059:

Now, this has no indication of difficulty, but both swamp and aquatic are easy as heck, and the fastest fractals. Whenever I see them Im more than happy.

Eesh, I built both of those… guess I need to toughen them up a bit…

The problem with swamp is that it is nearly 100 % mobility dependent with a little luck involved with the trees, which means if you have high-mobility professions it is easy, and low mobility professions make it tough. This also means that 2 people basically AFK since there isn’t a whole lot they can do to assist a high-mobility runner (they can draw aggro and eat traps, but these aren’t a big issue). While a high-mobility profession can run circles around the map and make up for bad luck with tree spawns, less mobile professions are pretty much done if luck isn’t on their side. This is repetitive and unfun with certain profession setups.

What swamp needs is a way for the two non-runners to contribute to making life much easier for the runners, and for success to be less profession-based.

Simple fix: Make the annoying appearing tree areas destructible, allowing the non-runners to clear the way and allowing less mobility focused groups to do it by forcing their way through.

Swamp is absolutely the best fractal!
It can be done very quickly if you learned the pattern, we never run with mesmer (thief\ranger\war\guardian\ele) and its definitely doable without thief as well

If you love this fractal like us you can just reset the fractal#1 to get it first like we do

Tulisin.6945:

Unlike the other fractals, swamp is heavily profession dependent. A group with a bunch of mobility (thieves, mesmers) has a much easier time with this than a group of slower professions. In a 3-thief group that can just shadowstep their way home, I’ll take swamp any day.

I have seen lot of people saying it is profession dependent, but that really ain’t the whole story. Lemme give you an example how each profession can make it:
Thief: shadowstep, shortbow 5
mesmer: portal, blink
ele: Cantrips
ranger: Rampage as one
quardian: stand your ground, aegis, lot of condition removal and stun breakers
warrior (with warrior I usually run the furthest ones): balanced stance, signet of rage, shake it off
engineer: stability and stun breakers, be ready to change utilities
necro: run around like a crazy and do nothing, poor necros

thats 7/8 classes that have class-spesific skills that make them good for this fractal. So dont blame you class. Unless you are a necro. Poor necros =(

Naviiso.9241:

Tulisin.6945:

Unlike the other fractals, swamp is heavily profession dependent. A group with a bunch of mobility (thieves, mesmers) has a much easier time with this than a group of slower professions. In a 3-thief group that can just shadowstep their way home, I’ll take swamp any day.

I have seen lot of people saying it is profession dependent, but that really ain’t the whole story. Lemme give you an example how each profession can make it:
Thief: shadowstep, shortbow 5
mesmer: portal, blink
ele: Cantrips
ranger: Rampage as one
quardian: stand your ground, aegis, lot of condition removal and stun breakers
warrior (with warrior I usually run the furthest ones): balanced stance, signet of rage, shake it off
engineer: stability and stun breakers, be ready to change utilities
necro: run around like a crazy and do nothing, poor necros

thats 7/8 classes that have class-spesific skills that make them good for this fractal. So dont blame you class. Unless you are a necro. Poor necros =(

Thieves can’t use shortbow 5 when holding the wisp, weapon skills aren’t available. They can, however, prestealth, use steal/SS signet, and chain dodge, which you didn’t list.

And merely listing one or two things for each profession does not equality make. Everyone can do swiftness, stunbreakers, and condition breaks. Everyone has mobility tools, not everyone has equal mobility tools. 20s stability doesn’t compare to shadowsteps, for instance.

Coming from someone who primarily plays a thief some professions are far better equipped for this. That isn’t inherently bad, but design could be improved to reward having those mobility skills without making it nearly as frustrating when they aren’t available.

Swamp is ridiculously easy with a competent/intelligent group.

Asagi.1405:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I design them on paper, present them in a meeting to some other designers, make adjustments to them based on feedback, build/script it, play it, get feedback on it, adjust based on feedback rinse/repeat until it ships.
Other times someone else builds it based on the designs, but we work together on reacting to feedback and hooking it up in the game.

The meeting about the dolphin section garnered a lot of laughs when I presented it. To be honest I came up with the idea at home after a Rum-and-coke. It got people excited in the meeting, which made it a fun design to work on and get feedback for.

Okay so really, why the sink mechanic?
Isn’t it enough that you can be 2-3 hit as a dolphin and can’t fight back? Why lock our controls for 2 seconds?
Moreover, the sea scorpion thing.. it doesn’t work. It barely distracts them at best, and at worst it actually makes the kraits aggro you.

That’s the point. You’re supposed to read the control tooltips. As a dolphin, you drop anti-krait defenses (think anti-air). You don’t fight, you run. You just run and pop distracting skills. That’s the point.

RE: Swamp: It’s either the easiest or the hardest, and that depends on the coordination of your group. A good team who communicates, and all set up for condition removal and swiftness, mesmer teleport even (though not at all necessary) makes it cake. People who don’t work together, or don’t pay attention to the traps and the mobs, make that one hell.

I played my mesmer but I had trouble with the swamp, possibly due to colorblindness. The traps and (red circles, what red circles?) just blended in with the ground. In the end I just started looking for the shape of the traps while moving my camera around and trying to spot the shapes of the traps.

After several tries, by some miracle I made it to the Skelk Wisp with Portal Entre still active but failed to notice the bear trap mostly occluded by the terrain >.<

After that one of our members DC’d or rage quit and we were unable to continue.

It takes awhile to learn but the traps tend to be in fixed locations. Also most of the traps (like the bear traps and trip wire traps) do not have red circles and are difficult to spot even for a person with normal vision.

Once you memorize the locations of the traps and places where the walls are likely to appear then it becomes easier.

It also helps to equip stun breaking or condition removal abilities, though you cannot always use them on yourself if you’re running a wisp.

There’s already a way for people who aren’t running to make it easier for the runners that is 100% profession independent.

Run in front of them and trip the traps so it doesn’t hit people who are carrying wisps.

Then you use some condition removal and stun breaks to get out of cripple/immobilize/knockdown and keep going. Every single profession in the game has some of these.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Zenyatoo.4059:

Now, this has no indication of difficulty, but both swamp and aquatic are easy as heck, and the fastest fractals. Whenever I see them Im more than happy.

Eesh, I built both of those… guess I need to toughen them up a bit…

You’re kiddin’ right?

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Eesh, I built both of those… guess I need to toughen them up a bit…

The dolphins are the cutest thing ever

I don’t think the swamp one is easy per say unless you have a well coordinated group but that’s the point of dungeons, working together. It’s why a lot of pugs struggle with them.

The water ones are really cool except perhaps the boss fight, we find Mr.Jelly far too easy but we haven’t gotten to the agony stage yet so it might change on higher levels (Been taking it easy helping guildies out with their fractals etc).

(Btw, Any ETA for the Arah gate bug? The one where you can’t enter the dungeon. It’s still bugged and we miss lupi waypoint contested also on Desolation)

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Zenyatoo.4059:

Now, this has no indication of difficulty, but both swamp and aquatic are easy as heck, and the fastest fractals. Whenever I see them Im more than happy.

Eesh, I built both of those… guess I need to toughen them up a bit…

you can tell that to the random partys ! you will be cursed for days

There is probably only one time that Swamp will be impossible: when you’re in a group where no-one has ever done it at all or only done it with a mesmer/thief – when this happens you don’t figure out how to do it successfully.

Did a pug last night lvl3 and was praying not to get Swamp and wouldn’t you know it, comes up as second fractal. Thought the night was over then. No mesmer, no thief. Warrior, 2 Guardians, 2 Rangers. 3 of us haven’t succeeded here before and 1 hasn’t seen this place before. And I was not having a good night, I was the kitten doll of boss attraction last night, have never run out of dodge energy that many times last night, was funny died to the blizzard after an amazing amount of knockbacks that kept coming my way, and then watched the group get may be another total of 3 knockbacks while they killed the boss. Anyway, back to topic on hand, the Swamp.

But, having read on this forum about using 2 players at the far off shrines – 1 to run ahead and disable traps for the one running the wisps – and being able to climb/jump over the tree wall, we had the Swamp sorted after 1 fail from a Mossman pop up on the countdown – lol that was funny – to killing the Bloomhugger – not a tree hugger then? – in about 10 minutes or so.

So yeah, hate it to start off with, but from having read about the knockback on the Asuran harpies section, gimme Swamp anyday!

But so far, loving all the fractals, a real breath of fresh air still…how long that will last, hehe, we’ll see

Hobocop.1508:

There’s already a way for people who aren’t running to make it easier for the runners that is 100% profession independent.

Run in front of them and trip the traps so it doesn’t hit people who are carrying wisps.

Then you use some condition removal and stun breaks to get out of cripple/immobilize/knockdown and keep going. Every single profession in the game has some of these.

This is pretty much the way I do it.

Whoever gets the hardest two wisp locations will get an assistant to kill off/aggro mobs and dump buffs on the runner to help them. There’s really nothing to it, IF you can strategize. Just don’t forget to switch your stun break/ condition skills back to normal for the rest of the fractal.

What’s really fun is to see the evolution of each fractal as the difficulty increases. The Uncategorized Fractal is so easy at level 1, you can ignore the harpies. You can wipe the floor with them too. Later on, the knockback is a real factor to contend with.

My complaints – Jade boss gets a bit boring, need a few new bonus bosses.
Every fractal is very good, besides one little event in one specific fractal.
The dredge one, where you need to bomb the door with unlimited spawns of dredge. It’s the most supid thing I’ve come across in fractals.
Everything else is good, besides the DC/crash problem which should have been fixed 5 minutes after the dungeon was added.

I like the swamp. Cheers to robert and co for the fotm dungeons, as they are excellent.

There are enough clues in this thread for people having trouble with the swamp, those who still post about it being too tough at this point just need to read the thread

I like this one too. After you’ve done it several times it’s relatively easy. Fortunately on high difficulty levels most people are pretty comfortable in it.

The dredge and charr fractals are orders of magnitude harder than the others.

I like the swamp fractal as it has fairly unique gameplay.

I like the cliffside fractal as it’s a really cool theme (takes kind of a long time though)

I like the fractal where you turn into dolphins.

I like the fractal with the harpies and the mad asura and the cat golems in what appears to be the future ruins of rata sum.

I feel the charr, swamp, and dredge fractals can literally take forever if your group is not coordinated enough.

The swamp fractal is a wonderful concept and well made, but deeply deeply flawed to the point where it’s been wrecked. Kind of like a beautiful cake with a kitten on top.

The problem is the walls. And that they are random. You run at a clear path and it suddenly becomes a wall. You run to the next clear path and it too becomes a wall as you arrive. That’s not fun or interesting gameplay. It’s just frustrating. The minimap is no help, but it could and should be. You can’t get better at a random maze.

Yes you can go over some of the walls, but not all of them and you don’t have time to do that. Jumping over a wall isn’t a quick process. You have to really work at it for a few seconds and you don’t have those seconds to spend. Jumping over is not an option for every player that attempted the Mad King’s Tower, but never finished. (I’m sure you have stats on that.)

If the walls had a set pattern you could learn then bingo… fun instance. If the walls could be destroyed then you could have 2 people blowing them up to clear the way. If the walls had switches.. then yes. If you could make a wall despawn permanently each time a champion died… then again more interesting play. Anything that gives players a choice with both pros and cons to weigh becomes interesting gameplay. But not random. That’s what wrecks it.

BTW the bosses at the end of the water fractal and the swamp fractal aren’t too tough or too easy… they are just a bit boring. They could do with a decrease to their hp and an increase to their abilities. (Not necessarily dmg output.)

Depends on group and are they actually good at their professions
Ran w/ a group and did swamp in the 1st try twice.
Hope that all 3 of the fractals can be swamp.
Crap, now they r gonna made this hard cuz of this thread. Thx a lot.