Guild Wars 2

What does everyone think about this new update to Swamp,

When I read the patch notes I thought this will be fun, but you know what it was totally boring, so boring ill avoid swamp again even for daily fractals,

The moss man in the hall way is just your standard fight,

The Bloomhunger is a total bore fest, go in burn it, oh now run around for 60 seconds avoiding never ending spawns of invincible enemies, then run in burn again, repeat the 60 seconds, then run out spawn 4 wisps, run in and burn.

You should have put the Mossman and Bloomhunger in the same room at the same time with old mechanics, that might have made it more interesting,

This is my own personal opinion on the new Swamp,

PS: at least the new Fractal is fun.

You didn’t do the fight mechanics for the bloomhunger correctly. You have to kill the mobs in the green circles. But yes, Mossman is facerolled in 20 seconds and the bloomhunger and mobs are too easy. I like the new mechanics but it is not challenging enough.

Timegates are horrible gamedesign.

Arthas.1074:

Timegates are horrible gamedesign.

would more call it skill gate to get the mobs inside green circles.

Ok I Did It.2854:

You should have put the Mossman and Bloomhunger in the same room at the same time with old mechanics, that might have made it more interesting,

They should combine after 40% health hahaha. Mossman should jump on and mount the bloomhunger.

In all seriousness though, maybe replace the mobs at the spirit stage with a spirit form of Mossman and elite wolves, and you have to fight him 25% health and kill the wolves each interval, with Mossman stealthing like he used to and shadowstepping between the spirit tethers at random, or maybe like Mai Trin shadowstepping to the furthest enemy so that you still have the kiting to the spirit areas like we have now.

Came here hoping for some guidance. Was just pugging a Tier 4 and after 7 wipes the group disbanded.

It felt like we were missing a vital mechanic. We kept moving in a circle to gain the wisp buff but we never got him below 90%. Staying alive wasn’t incredibly hard for the most part except when he had a few invisible (on our screens at least) attacks.

We’d be fighting and then … 3 of us would be insta downed. We’d quickly rally and rez and keep moving til it happened again. He also does this charge that doesn’t have an ‘end’ tell. So we dodge when he’s close, but he HUGE so we’d still be in his hitbox.

The section with adds didn’t make a whole lot of sense. He was invulnerable but the adds were trash, but killing them did nothing. Then a champ oakheart spawned among the adds and it would go invulnerable at times too …

Hints? Pointers?

Green circles make him and the adds vulnerable, so you continually rotate trying to keep them in the circles. At 25% you go grab wisps at 4 corners of the room and turn them in. While he’s invulnerable because of a charge too far or something clear blooms to get rid of poison fields, once gone they don’t seem to respawn that phase so preclearing is useful.

Mikal Dynath.6195:

Came here hoping for some guidance. Was just pugging a Tier 4 and after 7 wipes the group disbanded.

It felt like we were missing a vital mechanic. We kept moving in a circle to gain the wisp buff but we never got him below 90%. Staying alive wasn’t incredibly hard for the most part except when he had a few invisible (on our screens at least) attacks.

We’d be fighting and then … 3 of us would be insta downed. We’d quickly rally and rez and keep moving til it happened again. He also does this charge that doesn’t have an ‘end’ tell. So we dodge when he’s close, but he HUGE so we’d still be in his hitbox.

The section with adds didn’t make a whole lot of sense. He was invulnerable but the adds were trash, but killing them did nothing. Then a champ oakheart spawned among the adds and it would go invulnerable at times too …

Hints? Pointers?

Gotta drag adds and champ into the green.

I don’t mean to be a downer but I felt like my raid runs have been easier than 89

Chaos I think is fine, but I feel the stun is a little annoying. I do play warrior so maybe I’m just bias. I eventually just swapped bow for majority of the fight and it was smooth.

New swamp has been terror, I played my warrior to try and cc him down and it worked but I was usually near dead by the time the bar broke. I then swapped to ele and ranging him was fine but when he starts tossing his ranged attacks it becomes a bullet hell. I can usually dodge the first two but the rate that they fall makes it near impossible to keep up. I think I’ll start bringing my necro for this fight as everything else I try to bring ends up in disappointment. Raids are suppose to be end game content but I found bloom worse than any raid boss I’ve every faced, granted I’ve only done first wing. This is suppose to be some medium end content and I feel like it’s a nightmare. I think I’ll skip every swamp until it’s addressed.

Between Chaos boss and Bloomhunger there is just too much going on at once, it’s a clusterkitten. There’s enough of that in raids.

It’s mostly that I feel like I’m working harder for the same loot though. If you gon’ buff the difficulty, up the rewards as well.

After doing both of these T4 fractals with my group earlier today I have the exact same feelings as Eternal Effect

Chaos: High damaging Auto-Attack + Stun on final boss is dumb. The fact that melee is so kitten for this boss makes it the a slow ranged attack fight that most people (myself included) hate. 1st boss is fine.

Swamp: Very poorly tuned. Bloom’s groundpound has such a high defiance bar that our group essentially just ran out of the AoE because if we didn’t have some CC’s up he would essentially murder anyone still in there after a couple seconds (we just broke the shake instead). Projectiles are near instant, they are dodgeable but higher ping people probably have a tough time. Trash mobs still die instantly so you have to wait 1 minute in between phases pretty much doing nothing. Then all of a sudden a champ spawns at the end with a large hitpool (he should spawn at the start so people can wack on him and maybe kill before bloom is back). Our strategy was basically one person kites bloom far away while the rest deal with the champ and poisonblooms, which made this fight way longer than it ever should be.

Bloom is pure hell at T4. Grossly overtuned.

Phibes.4128:

Bloom is pure hell at T4. Grossly overtuned.

Can’t help but agree. Its a little much. But with a few tweaks (projectile speed, wisp times at the end being a bit longer considering the poison) it could work.

I found it a challenge at first…mostly learning the bosses mechanics.

Once the initial learning period was over its actually not that hard.

The general strategy we used was to pull clockwise into green (forced on you) for the first 25% dodge/stay near green when possible as it grants 100% endurance regen while inside it. At 25% preemptively move to the next spawning sections and cleave as many ads as you can / epi / aoe. Once that is done and the champion is summoned then focus the champion down first as his knockdowns combined with bloomhunger can be problematic. Resume fight as normal till 50% repeat process till 27%. At 27% hp spread out and be ready to have 1 person in each corner with the 5th ready to tick him over to 25%. Grab orbs put in slot, and burn.

That said i totally enjoyed the fight…tad chaotic and the AI could use some improvements (loved to focus minions/run up trees) but that aside it was better than the stand there and burn.

Please don’t touch a thing! I love it. The only thing maybe is I saw someone mention champ first at the phase, not a bad idea to make the in between phases more fun.

Still. Hope you guys enjoyed your blues and greens after downing bloomy!

Mitch.4781:

Still. Hope you guys enjoyed your blues and greens after downing bloomy!

Rewards will always be trash in this game, the whole point is to have poor rewards to incentivize gem buying to circumvent gold grinds.

Your only good source of income in this game by design is playing the trading post. Nothing comes even remotely close to it.

Agreed. It was nice to have to actually have a challenge in FoTM. Once the mechanics are understood, it’s a very reasonable fight.

Waiting to see a solo/duo for the last wisps, I’m sure there’s a better way to get all four while low manning it as the timer seems forgiving enough.

I like the new mechanics but I agree that it needs tom minor tweaking. Mainly projectile speed.

Also not sure if anyone else ran into this issue but when we got him down to the massive attack phase on several occasions no one was able to interact with the wisp receptacles after picking up a wisp.

I have to say, the OP’s post lines up pretty well with my experience. I play T4, as I have for a while now.

Chaos: Generally straightforward. Since it was my first time in this fractal, it took a bit longer, but otherwise fun. Only problem was the fight with the legendary brazen gladiator. He ends up being too much of a damage sponge. I think the fight could go a lot better if his health level was toned down a bit. I didn’t really notice the stun on his autoattack, as I was ranged the whole fight. That said, the fight feels more reminiscent of Thaumanova than it does of Aetherblade — when your teammates go down, you almost never can help them. I don’t know if that was intentional or not, but it can be really punishing to have another fractal where you’re the last one alive and trying to solo the boss (surprise, happened to me, the condi engineer).

Swamp: The changes with Mossman and the map were fine. Mossman had a ton of wolves, but not unmanageable for the high level. And finally Mossman’s health was reasonable.

The problem was with Bloomhunger. All of his attacks are CC’s, all of them can theoretically one-shot you, and all of them are massive AoE’s. There was no opportunity for melee classes to melee, period. Melee’ing him was tantamount to suicide.

If you get downed by Bloomy, it is extremely difficult for your teammates to get you up due to the CC and AoE nature of his attacks. Because of Bloomy’s constantly moving nature and AoE attacks, it is extremely difficult to break his CC bar. Additionally, the projectile poison that Bloomy shoots out is too quick if you are anywhere near him. You have less than 1/4 second to react at times — that is not a fair amount of time to dodge, and god help you if you’re lagging.

Additionally, when Bloomy phases, if your team is not at full health and prepared, it can quickly become a kitten-show due to the overwhelming number of enemies and the constant need to move.

I also feel that there is simply too much going on, and it is difficult to keep track of everything that is happening. On top of all the constant fighting and moving around, I have to keep track of the poison blossoms and the movement of the wisp AoE. It is visually overstimulating and it is easy to get confused or lost.

My suggestion? Significantly limit the visual effects that are going on during the fight (while making others more obvious, like the wisp. Maybe a bubble or something), and reduce Bloomy’s overall damage. Additionally, reduce the strength of his break bar, to make it achievable to break at range. Very few classes have hard CC’s at a reasonable range (as it should be), but that also means it is extremely rare to break his bar. These changes would bring Bloomy enough into line with other bosses while still keeping him unique.

Overall: There was a lot of melee hate with these changes. While I play engineer and this doesn’t particularly bother me, I noticed it was near impossible for our melee classes to get decent DPS going. If you weren’t ranged condi damage, your damage output was simply crap. I don’t know if this was considered, but it is the result of these changes. My team ended up having 3 necros, a chronomancer, and myself (a condi engineer). Is this the meta you want for fractals ANet?

The new T4 Swamp is just really, really bad overall.

The Whisp stage at the start is different. I am not certain yet if all 5 people participating in the mini-event is necessary (with the rifles). Groups will need to get used to it, and may need to tolerate a few fails while they do so. Not so tragic.

No issues with Mossman. It is different (not massively so), and it is not complex. Not a heart-attack inducer.

Bloonhunger … where to begin. This fight is absolutely horrible.
1) He does too much unavoidable damage. There are way too many circles on the ground and they move/spawn way too fast. You will get hit with one and death is unavoidable because you will necessarily get hit with a lot more. Unavoidable chain damage resulting in unavoidable death is not cool.

2) When you wipe, the fight does not reset. All mobs that have spawned remain, including the poison flower things and all the AoE damage they create. Sloppy IMHO.

3) Steep learning curve. Sorry, designers, but this was a mistake IMHO. Fractals are supposed to be (relatively) quick. In the end, this fractal ends up being very slow.

For me the changes in this fight are too many. It is simply too different combined with too much complexity. It is not Bloomhunger anymore. It is a new boss with a too-high learning curve.

The Cliffside change back in the Spring was awesome. This change is the opposite because, while getting to Bloomhunger is suitably streamlined, surviving the fight with a pug will end up costing you so much time that the fractal becomes unrewarding and painfully slow.

2 cents respectfully submitted,
Adzekul of The Seafarer’s Rest.

We knew complaints like these would come up when we talked about swamp yesterday on ts and we wished to have it in the daily rotation for the next day.
Voilà, good to have it now!

All I have to say it is a l2p issue again. The fractal is new, yeah, so get used to it by the time. It’s not very hard if you know what you have to do. The green wisp fields allow you to have almost unlimited times to dodge and it’s also possible to melee him.

I’ve nothing to add to chaos because we 3 manned it on patch day till snowblind part and the boss fight is easy as hell if you are aware of having the aggro. Still possible to melee him as well while standing behind him or dodging the third hit of his AA-chain.

Do I have to mention that I don’t belong to any sc guild? ^^
I believe devs are collecting tears from fractals as well now. Thank you for that and thank you guys here for this thread being the first amusement as a good start in the day!

New swamp is trash. Might as well stick Bloom into raids. The mechanics feels more like made for raids than fractals. Swamp is harder than Mai in level 100. Something feels wrong here… Takes ridiculously long to beat for most pug. Please have Bloom and friends go to raids and let him one shot people there.

It’s not nearly as hard as a raid boss. If you get it second of third try and pretend it’s as hard as raids, then you clearly havent spent hours and hours trying to learn raid mechanics.

But this is the consequence of more than a year of brainless “fight” with barely any update. Whenever they try to introduce some challenge, people are not used to learn mechanics anymore…
Swamp used to give you rewards for free, now you must deserve it.

A T4 fractal is meant to be hard. I am GLAD the two new boss (Chaos Boss and Swamp boss) and Snowblind boss offer a bit more challenge than they used to.

Level 77 Swamp is the wrong place for “stepping stone into raids”. This is what level 90-100 are for.

IMHO 100 should be the hardest in the game,so let me add my voice to that. I have enjoyed the 100 fractal, although the Technician outside is not to my liking (a bit over-tuned IMHO).

I do not advocate making all the 90-100 even harder than they are now. IMHO difficulty seems right as is. Maybe the devs should consider different mechanics to 90-100, but that opens up other problems.

77 is not the place for “hardest non-raid content in the game”. Maybe the raids are over-complex.

You guys should rethink what you have been doing in fractals for the last year and take a guardian. Guards can block basically everything he does and shield #5 is a god in the fight. Another tip: if someone goes down in the ground pound, have a necro or ranger pull them out.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4v4bz4/finally_got_around_to_doing_the_new_swamp_fractal/

And in the words of an Anet dev: Git Gud.

Adzekul.3104:

77 is not the place for “hardest non-raid content in the game”. Maybe the raids are over-complex.

Except it’s not that hard. Maybe a bit long for a fight, but not hard.

Like everything else, people just need to get used to it. Maybe it’s time (THANKS FINALLY) to stop using full dps build and think evade and survival.
Level 100 is easy peasy too once you understand that.

It’s like the Chaos boss. Ive had some people in my group complain cause they don’t have enough dodge. Well the game gives you some ways to get more, some skills give you a few seconds of invincibility. First time obviously is hard cause you don’t know the mechanics, but after a few tries, a good player knows that he has to adapt his build.
That’s what T4 fractals are for.

Because you have a pay attention a bit more doesn’t mean it’s harder… just less boring.

A T4 boss that can be mastered within the first week of its release would be bad design imho, the fact that some players (not all) are having issues with it in T4 is completely normal. Just master your class, adapt your build, like you did with level 100 (I hope…) and it’ll all be fine.

I’m all for making T4 harder, as long as the rewards get a bit better too. Or give us a T5 specifically for raid-oriented players who enjoy hardcore stuff.

Swamp is a lot of fun…its a bit more moving and a bit timing will need it but anyway gl :P

Linken.6345:

Arthas.1074:

Timegates are horrible gamedesign.

would more call it skill gate to get the mobs inside green circles.

Both the same, its horribel. I thought they learned something from the past…………………………………………………………….oh wait.

did the fractal today, its really awesome!
my whole Group enjoyed it and we talked about how the recent Patches from arenanet really satisfy (April+this one – except maybe the temest changes, they could’ve been better, it really feels clumsy now).

and i know many many ppl that feel the same way.

Props to Arenanet!

Anet_Ben:

“Bloomhunger is intended to be the most difficult fractal right now. There is a problem in Guild Wars in that there is no real stepping stone to raids.”

Source:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4v4bz4/finally_got_around_to_doing_the_new_swamp_fractal/

Another clear announcement that GW2 wasn’t made to only cater easy content to the playerbase (although I don’t call Bloomhunger that difficult after playing swamp)!

I think most of the complaints about the new swampland fractal have come from people who aren’t used to taking defensive traits over offensive ones.
I attempted to pug it on reset but alas we failed. I then woke up the next morning and attempted again but now with knowledge of it. I told the pugs how the mechanics worked and what was required. We had 3 warriors, all running longbow or rifle + gs for the trash. They all ran Adrenal healing with healing signet. Plus I was running a staff minion master (death/blood/reaper) and the other necro ran condi minions. It took a few attempts to get the mechanics down but we managed it.

All in all I would say to everyone, bring sustain. There is no timer so there no dps check.

A necro and a druid sounds like a good idea to be honest. Esp as druid buffs can’t be stolen by boon thieves.

edit: I won’t get to try the new fractals out for another few hours so i’m making an informed guess.

T4 bloom just needs sustain not really even a gear change pretty much every teamate can switch out one trait line for something more supportive, or heck they can just grab an actual healer in like magis/cleric/zealot etc gear.

My only request really is to make the projectiles drop a bit slower. Any sort of ping would honestly wipe a player during that skill. I think everything else has an acceptable tell.

Anet_Ben:
“Bloomhunger is intended to be the most difficult fractal right now. There is a problem in Guild Wars in that there is no real stepping stone to raids.”

Lahmia.2193:

I think most of the complaints about the new swampland fractal have come from people who aren’t used to taking defensive traits over offensive ones.
I attempted to pug it on reset but alas we failed. I then woke up the next morning and attempted again but now with knowledge of it. I told the pugs how the mechanics worked and what was required. We had 3 warriors, all running longbow or rifle + gs for the trash. They all ran Adrenal healing with healing signet. Plus I was running a staff minion master (death/blood/reaper) and the other necro ran condi minions. It took a few attempts to get the mechanics down but we managed it.

All in all I would say to everyone, bring sustain. There is no timer so there no dps check.

Hey ! I think I was in the same party
I ran a Core Warrior with Adrenal Health.
I think I went in downstate 1 time because of the overhelming particules and my computer slowing down (even if I run a good computer spec..)

This fractal is now just a pain in the aahhsse, its not like the mechanics are hard to work with or anything like that, there is just no room for error. If someone goes down, it seems nigh impossible to rez them whether you pull or not, blooms leap is far too fast, my 300 ping made it impossible to dodge and the fight is just far too long. My regular group is 5 reapers and with us all in raid gear it still takes forever.

Time vs Reward, its no longer worth doing as its not enjoyable either.

Yeah the thingy isn’t hard, I mean my grp of casual mates (non raiders) did it in 30 minutes after figuring out the mechanics.

The hardest part is we all have 300-400 ping so the circles rek us pretty easily since they land different to where we see them for reasons and the leap timing is a bit on and off due to lag too.

Definitely no reason to redo swamp ever again though unless you really want the daily rewards, not really worth the effort.

People finding Swamp too difficult now just prove that it was really needed ( so after a while people will be pugging raids a lot easier ) , because it still way easier than raids, and if you cant complete T4 swamp you shouldnt be trying raids.
And for people that says that fractal shouldnt be that hard. You remember that there is T1/T2/T3 swamp right? So there you go your easy content for 5 man. All T4 should be on the level of Chaos and Swamp.

Having only done swamp on a low level once (gonna do T4 later), the main problem I had was the time gate every 25%, which can apparently be ended early if you kill mobs inside the wisp aoe (which we did, but didn’t trigger anything?). Should be common knowledge by now that timegates which can’t be ended prematurely by the party/squad just accomplishing their goal faster are annoying as hell. So I hope that something just went weird on our end and you can move to the next phase before the minute is over.

OnizukaBR.8537:

People finding Swamp too difficult now just prove that it was really needed ( so after a while people will be pugging raids a lot easier ) , because it still way easier than raids, and if you cant complete T4 swamp you shouldnt be trying raids.
And for people that says that fractal shouldnt be that hard. You remember that there is T1/T2/T3 swamp right? So there you go your easy content for 5 man. All T4 should be on the level of Chaos and Swamp.

Difference is raids reward you for that difficulty, Swamp as it stands now provides next to no real rewards.

Also tone down the tryhard please? I know you’re the best and everyone else needs to “git gud” and you’re voting Trump but until everything is tuned to be like the T4 swamp it’s a little unreasonable to have this single lone boss fight be about 5x harder than any other encounter in any fractal without at least providing appropriate rewards.

OnizukaBR.8537:

People finding Swamp too difficult now just prove that it was really needed ( so after a while people will be pugging raids a lot easier ) , because it still way easier than raids, and if you cant complete T4 swamp you shouldnt be trying raids.
And for people that says that fractal shouldnt be that hard. You remember that there is T1/T2/T3 swamp right? So there you go your easy content for 5 man. All T4 should be on the level of Chaos and Swamp.

The bolded exactly. Fractals are scaled, can’t do the hardest, drop down a tier. The new Fractal changes are great, we now have at least a couple t4 fractals that are tuned to how they should be at t4.

Vinceman.4572:

Anet_Ben:

“Bloomhunger is intended to be the most difficult fractal right now. There is a problem in Guild Wars in that there is no real stepping stone to raids.”

Source:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4v4bz4/finally_got_around_to_doing_the_new_swamp_fractal/

Another clear announcement that GW2 wasn’t made to only cater easy content to the playerbase (although I don’t call Bloomhunger that difficult after playing swamp)!

Another indication that if that’s the case then they need to separate the swamp out from every other fractal or buff every other T4 fractal to it’s level AND provide appropriate rewards. You want to cater to the psuedo-raider? Fine that’s okay, but don’t just lump it in with everything else and expect the playerbase to choke it down without providing appropriate time/effort rewards.

Atticus.7194:

OnizukaBR.8537:

People finding Swamp too difficult now just prove that it was really needed ( so after a while people will be pugging raids a lot easier ) , because it still way easier than raids, and if you cant complete T4 swamp you shouldnt be trying raids.
And for people that says that fractal shouldnt be that hard. You remember that there is T1/T2/T3 swamp right? So there you go your easy content for 5 man. All T4 should be on the level of Chaos and Swamp.

Difference is raids reward you for that difficulty, Swamp as it stands now provides next to no real rewards.

Also tone down the tryhard please? I know you’re the best and everyone else needs to “git gud” and you’re voting Trump but until everything is tuned to be like the T4 swamp it’s a little unreasonable to have this single lone boss fight be about 5x harder than any other encounter in any fractal without at least providing appropriate rewards.

Welcome to Fractals, where your reward isn’t “worth it”. That’s how they were for a LONG time, then sometime while I was gone HoT made them a quick and easy daily farm. I very much welcome this change even if it means less reward for the effort.

The new fractals are fun and just the right level of challenge, imo.

Well done, ANet.

Rewards for fractals with respect to effort (time, difficult, etc. ) is the best it’s ever been.

OnizukaBR.8537:

People finding Swamp too difficult now just prove that it was really needed ( so after a while people will be pugging raids a lot easier ) , because it still way easier than raids, and if you cant complete T4 swamp you shouldnt be trying raids.
And for people that says that fractal shouldnt be that hard. You remember that there is T1/T2/T3 swamp right? So there you go your easy content for 5 man. All T4 should be on the level of Chaos and Swamp.

I can do VG, Sloth, Gors and Sab easier than I can do Swamp because there is time to react in the raid encounters, I was not able to dodge out of the leap or charge attacks in Swamp because of the higher ping. Either that or I’d get hit midway through my dodge jump and KD for an eternity.

ANet should be developing content that is not extremely frustrating to do for anyone not living in the US with fibre internet 500m away from the server.

Add a couple hundredths of a second delay to some of the more devastating attacks and don’t jump on and donkey kong when someone is downed, it makes it too hard to recover from mistakes, and it will be fine.

The last thing we need is more scripted garbage where if you learn the mechanics and perform your key strokes like you are told by the game, then you get a shiny. I for one want encounters where you are able to make mistakes but recover from them with good teamwork and adaptation. Right now, without a perfect ping, Swamp is extremely frustrating and takes far too long.