Guild Wars 2

You’ll notice that spy kits are mainly used in fractals, and not really in explorables. For a very simple reason. The scaling with fractal levels is absurd.

By lv38-48, the amount of dredge veterans and their shockwave attacks/projectiles/melee from a single one of them will hit anything but a bunker guardian or ele for half their HP. Multiply that by the amount of mobs in that cage. There’s simply no way players will be able to tank more than 2-3 of these mobs for the amount of time it takes to channel the control panel. So you get exploits like people having to die on panels and stacking stealth because otherwise a group of 3-4 people cannot handle that group of mobs short of stacking guardians. And what this game needs less is stacking more guardians.

A parallel situation of mobs hitting too kitten hard is the ascalonian fractals. Warriors will 2 shot you, and it’s not just the charge. Their autoattacks hit too hard. Yes, using the NPC’s is part of the strategy, but when mage mobs from a distance will focus fire with little animation a player trying to go into melee to aggro the NPC’s on the groups, any player will go splat in less than 1 second. Mobs hit too hard in too short a time window too often and with aoe range to boot. So you have to hug range and find ways to get the NPC’s to aggro on the mobs while staying in range because meleeing is suicidal when mobs hit that hard.

Cliffside shows a better example of mob hits. You can still get gibbed, but it’s not by autoattacks. It’s by backstabs with big animations or getting focused by a large group of cultists, who you can los/clear vulnerability from. Grawl mobs with one aattack even at 2k toughness will take out half your health. It’s not good when mobs can do this. It just drives players to skip any form of triage and find a way to circumvent fights — which they do. There should be a ramp up to that kind of damage. You might want to try mechanics like environmental traps that punish players for not paying attention to the environment instead of mobs that are scaled up to silly levels as a disguise for difficulty.

Then you have the harpies. You have short platforms you can’t dodge in, but harpy rapidfire attacks that will downed a helpless player unless they have a reflection cooldown up. It’s simply not fun. As a player, you shouldn’t need guardians and mesmers to make the experience less frustrating. Yes, it would be a lot more manageable if you just had to worry about jumping platforms to avoid orbs, but the rapid fire and heavy hitting autoattacks mixed in just make it tedious.

Attacks that hit hard should not be autoattacks. There should be indicators, and players should have the means to respond to them regardless of class. I really don’t mind harpies chaining knockdowns and you having to be situationally aware and mobile to make your way through, but when multiple harpies can both knock you down and down you with a rapidfire you cannot dodge, it gets silly. Silly mechanics lead players to get resourceful with unintended mechanics, which spy kits were.

The Jade Maw is another deeply flawed encounter that encourages exploiting. Skin droprates are so low that people will do fractals that are higher than current agony resist affords, so you get a case of people resorting to asinine tactics like suiciding someone, rezzing them to 99%, wait for the agony ticks and rez the player so he doesn’t have agony and can rez the people who have agony. I just disagree with the design of agony for jade maw moreso than agony in general (which is just a gear check to be honest dictated by grind). At least the other agony attacks you can be skillful enough to dodge. I’m not sure you are happy with a system that leads players to use suicide as a tactic to progress…

Now you’ve removed spy kits, which needed to happen, but spy kits were just a symptom. And you didn’t address the source. You didn’t make the dredge fractal more about skill— you just made it a matter of bringing a thief and mesmer for stealth stacking on the control panel; and time warp while 2 people have to suicide on the panel side buttons.

What has this wall of text rly to do with spy kits? Basically you are just complaining how content get harder on higher lvl and this is new bcs? or that pretty much every fractal is done wrong, just stop doing it if you hate it that much. 500+ fractals and 60+ lvls later only real use for spy kits I had on dredge fractal just to cut out some time and
occasional stealth ressing.

While it’s perfectly fine to express your opinions, please do it with a much more descriptive title that actually encompasses your entire topic.

Ursan.7846:

While it’s perfectly fine to express your opinions, please do it with a much more descriptive title that actually encompasses your entire topic.

….That is the topic. People use the spy kits to circumvent such time consuming endeavors. The only reason people don’t use spy kits in ascalon is because they don’t have to tank all the 2-shotting mobs thanks to the NPC’s.

Cato.3547:

What has this wall of text rly to do with spy kits? Basically you are just complaining how content get harder on higher lvl and this is new bcs? or that pretty much every fractal is done wrong, just stop doing it if you hate it that much. 500+ fractals and 60+ lvls later only real use for spy kits I had on dredge fractal just to cut out some time and
occasional stealth ressing.

Oh, shut the hell up. You’re not the only unique snowflake who has done lv60. Many people are sitting at max.

whoosh That’s the sound of the point going over your head.

The content is doable. It’s just nowhere as efficient as running other tasks, and why exploits like spy kits and 99% jade maw rez tricks are designed. Or leaving one target alive on cliffside so the full group doesn’t spawn on one side.

If anything, the post is a complaint about punishing players for doing the content proper instead of taking shortcuts like bugging a boss or bringing in outside items or stacking classes like the guardian.

The content is not hard — it is tedious and only a matter of armor repairs.

Why spy kits are used. Because they are a consumable, and enable a more flexible play style. They gimped the spy kits and neutered the game.

Lambros Augustus.6594:

Why spy kits are used. Because they are a consumable, and enable a more flexible play style. They gimped the spy kits and neutered the game.

What are the flexible playstyles other than aggro drop for 10 seconds? For stealth rezzing it stll works— it just has some activation time and can’t be chained.

Spy kits are conflicting to me, because they to a point became expected. Yet, it is good to see one of those karma items be useful. It rewards you for world completion and participation in pve events — same for venoms.

But there is a problem when people expect the perk of becoming chain invisible to avoid an overtuned encounter. I have a feeling they ought to give those mobs the treatment they have for explorables and the cliffside fractal where the veterans turn into normal mobs, and cull the numbers a bit.

If you crank up the difficulty of a dungeon, then it is supposed to be hard. 38-48+ are for people that like the challenge, so if you don’t like it, go back down to 20-28.

When I play Diablo3 and raise the monster power to 10 in inferno mode, I don’t go complaining to the devs they made the game too hard. That is simply the difficulty I chose to play.

In regards to spy kits, they were simply an easy way to complete certain events. Now it is time for a new strategy because they were overpowered in the first place.

people just replaced a WORKAROUND with another fyi…..

Spykits were workaround nothing more.

They were OP in open PvE to get some skill points…..
They clearly overreacted but most of all they didn t fixed the roots of the problems for what the workaround was used despite having them reported months ago.

They are used because of “path of least resistance”.

The OP merely uses spy kits as an anchor to his argument. It wasn’t the problem with spy kits he was addressing but the whole design itself.

But I guess for some of you, reading the topic and the first paragraph = comprehension.

Stop schilling the anti spy kit theme. It was flexible it was useful and now thanks to an overly obtuse group-think it is gone. You guys want the game harder. Do it in white armor from level 1. Just yapping and schilling.

Weren’t fractles designed to become increasingly difficult and eventually impossible as the level increased? I feel like most people are missing the whole point.

For those that want a challenge, push fractles to as high as you can exploiting every little resource you can find. To those that want loot find a level of fractles with the balance of time, difficulty and loot that fits you best and run that.

Rypo Falem.8913:

Weren’t fractles designed to become increasingly difficult and eventually impossible as the level increased? I feel like most people are missing the whole point.

For those that want a challenge, push fractles to as high as you can exploiting every little resource you can find. To those that want loot find a level of fractles with the balance of time, difficulty and loot that fits you best and run that.

INCREASING THE NUMBERS MOB HIT FOR DOES NOT MAKE IT MORE DIFFICULT.

It just makes you stack guardians because a) group aegis/prot/regen/healing, and b) they have 3 good reflection sources.

Guess what? 2/3 of those dredge in the cage that 2-shot you are ranged mobs that you use reflection for.

It’s not difficult because you complete the event by dying on the buttons and having someone stealth through the control panel (spy kit removal just means people will bring a mesmer or thief for that fractal).

If you are so skilled, film a kitten video of you doing 38-70 fractals, on that dredge cage without using guardians or mesmers, where nobody goes defeated while the control panel is interacted with. SHOW ME.

I don’t want your internet lectures. Put up a kitten video or shut the hell up and begone.

NO Guardians for that cage, NO mesmers.

The only time i used spy kits in dungeons was to get through the tedious parts of the dredge fractal. Now i will just avoid that level.

I think most people have missed the pink elephant in the room, the developers put an obviously exploitable item in the game, then say “wow, players are exploiting this item, let’s fix it”. Why hire people to work for you if they don’t have enough common sense to tie their own shoes or even know they need to keep them tied? This seems to be a problem all across the corporate United States, not to mention the government.

before yesterday i had never stepped foot in fractals, and my group was able to do it on the first try (with me pulling the lever)

i’m a thief, although my shadow refuge/blinding powder/heal wasn’t enough to keep me in stealth for the entire time, so one of my party members kept the dredge that spawned near the lever from attacking me

maybe it’s a different story at much higher fractal levels, but on level 4(5?) fractals i had no problem doing it without any prior knowledge

hamsteak.1368:

before yesterday i had never stepped foot in fractals, and my group was able to do it on the first try (with me pulling the lever)

i’m a thief, although my shadow refuge/blinding powder/heal wasn’t enough to keep me in stealth for the entire time, so one of my party members kept the dredge that spawned near the lever from attacking me

maybe it’s a different story at much higher fractal levels, but on level 4(5?) fractals i had no problem doing it without any prior knowledge

It’s different. Much different at higher levels. Mob autoattacks will routinely take out a third to half of your health when they are veterans.

Ok so I have tried to do lvl 20 fractal 3 times now after the update and only once out of the 3 has it worked out. This one time was simply because we got lucky fractal rolls and a fairly balanced team.

I understand I am not the best, I probably don’t have the best gear to go with my build (that I have built after doing many dungeons and many PvE encounters). If i had to rate myself it would be at a less than average engineer who finds themselves learning something new every time I log in.

On those notes above, in my modest opinion, The OP has made a valid point if you take the time to read his wall of text (should have added a TLDR summery lol) you would understand this post.

Simply increasing the damage you can take from a foe in a game is an extremely easy way to increase the difficulty. Is it something you should not use ever? No, it has it’s moments where it is perfect. Is it something that Fractals should use? Sure. Is Anet using it right at the moment?

Not particularly.

Let me explain. In fact the OP’s example is perfect. The dredge/switch/panel room very early on in one of the fractals. There are many ways to make this already difficult encounter more challenging without ramping up the damage to 2 hit KOs from a single foe (excluding when a mob takes a shot at you). Increase the number of panels/switches that need to me used, make it a multipart panel that requires more people/time as the fractal lvl increases all with a very closely controlled damage increase and spawn rate from the dredge.

Am I complaining because Fractal lvl 20 has foes that hit hard, no. What I am pointing out is that the developers are not being particularly intuitive on how they make fractal lvl 60 (unless they added something between 20-60 that i don’t know about ><) harder from fractal lvl 1 and It seems that they feel more of a need to punish players for using viable clever methods (seriously I myself never new about these until fractals and It makes total sense that a character would carry these. it is an in-game reward that is fairly balanced and WAS extremely useful) to beat them.

TLDR (for both me and the OP I think): Instead of spending time punishing players for being intuitive Anet should focus on making fractals more balanced with more intuitive difficulty increases from level 1-60.

Why Ash Legion Spy Kit was used: Because it was overpowered.

The Dredge Fractal does not summon an “endless” wave of creatures. It summons one wave every 20% of the door’s health in damage, so you can just do it slower and kill them in smaller and more manageable groups.

Nokaru.7831:

Why Ash Legion Spy Kit was used: Because it was overpowered.

The Dredge Fractal does not summon an “endless” wave of creatures. It summons one wave every 20% of the door’s health in damage, so you can just do it slower and kill them in smaller and more manageable groups.

This is not about the door. It’s about the CAGE.

I would appreciate if you paid a little bit more effort reading what people actually post instead of strawmanning them.

Zenith.7301:

Rypo Falem.8913:

Weren’t fractles designed to become increasingly difficult and eventually impossible as the level increased? I feel like most people are missing the whole point.

For those that want a challenge, push fractles to as high as you can exploiting every little resource you can find. To those that want loot find a level of fractles with the balance of time, difficulty and loot that fits you best and run that.

INCREASING THE NUMBERS MOB HIT FOR DOES NOT MAKE IT MORE DIFFICULT.

It just makes you stack guardians because a) group aegis/prot/regen/healing, and b) they have 3 good reflection sources.

Guess what? 2/3 of those dredge in the cage that 2-shot you are ranged mobs that you use reflection for.

It’s not difficult because you complete the event by dying on the buttons and having someone stealth through the control panel (spy kit removal just means people will bring a mesmer or thief for that fractal).

If you are so skilled, film a kitten video of you doing 38-70 fractals, on that dredge cage without using guardians or mesmers, where nobody goes defeated while the control panel is interacted with. SHOW ME.

I don’t want your internet lectures. Put up a kitten video or shut the hell up and begone.

NO Guardians for that cage, NO mesmers.

I never claimed I could do it. I was just saying it’s silly to complain about difficult content being difficult.

There is that magic word, silly. At least it brings some levity to the forums. I sincerely thank you for that. I wish I could just go back to pre-school and just be silly.

Silly is a most fantastic word.