Guild Wars 2

I’ve only very recently got into fractals but am only playing for the rewards – ie extra infusion slots for maxing out stats for wvw and unlocking fractal/gold weapon skins.

Given I have no interest in Ad Infinitum or in playing fractals for fun, is there any point in playing over scale 50 other than the additional Pristine Relics from dailies? I’m trying to work out if the increased challenge is worth the additional reward or whether it’s easier/faster to just do tier 2 dailies and then say farm scale 40…

The other reason is I don’t want to craft a second set of ascended armour/weapons from my wvw gear. So I only want to use a few spare trinkets to swap in my inventory for agony infusions – say 2 rings and a backpiece with 6x +9 and one +7 infusion to access up to scale 50.

I farm T4 daily fractals when the dailies aren’t really tedious (I skip Cliffside, Molten Furnace, Captain Mai Trin Boss day because ugh, 3 really tedious fractals with the crowd favorite mechanic “waiting for something to happen”).

I mostly farm it to supply my bad wvw habit. T4 fractals can reward ascended boxes at the rate of 1-3 per week depending on how the RNG gods like you. I am farming it just to get ascended gear for alts for wvw.

Drop tables are:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractal_Master's_Chest

The higher tier daily boxes give a better chance at good loot. You’re more likely to get those fractal skins and ascended gear if you do T4s. Also you can get T7 mats that can be used to craft ascended gear or can be sold for good money. But more importantly, doing T4 dailies also rewards the dailies for lower tiers, so in the end you’d get more than twice the loot as T2s.

If you run them close to reset, there are likely to be a lot of good groups. A lot of people are very familiar with the mechanics and run them every day, so you can get some very smooth runs. That being said, you’ll also run into some very bad groups if you’re pugging, but in my experience it isn’t any more likely than a bad group on lower scales. If you’re used to T2s, you may take some practice to do T4s consistently though, as they are more difficult.

I found T2/T3 parties both very rare and very lacking, I remember taking an hour and 5 tries to kill molten boss once in T3. It’s much easier to find a group in T4, not to mention the quality is much higher.

Hmm, thank you all this is good advice.

I didn’t consider the increased possibility of ascended gear cheat drops at t4, although I don’t have alts so the purpose would be to have a second set of gear for fractals only.

And yeah the question of success with pugging dailies was troubling me. So far in t2 even in a “bad” group or where things go wrong for whatever reason you can still push through and do it. Only things like the legendary ice elemental/mining suit can be tough in a bad/uncoordinated group. But if the chance of good groups is high at t4 then I would feel more comfortable with pugging the dailies there. It would certainly be nice to earn double the number of pristine relics.

One question though – currently I don’t play and optimised build for fractals, but in t2 this isn’t an issue because tbh anything works. But is it good enough for t4?

I am geared out for hybrid damage in wvw (mesmer) using mostly Viper with a few other pieces so not pure glass. I do use focus traited for reflects and the other usual team support stuff – Illusionary Inspiration for boonshare, traited wells for alacrity and more of it and restorative mantras for aoe heal. Is this kind of not quite wvw, not quite pvp, not quite hardcore pve build sufficient or do I have to build an exact meta pve/fractal build to be successful in t4? I don’t want to be a burden on a team, but equally would be intimidated if needing to perform perfect rotations with perfect gear/stats just to succeed in t4. I realise this would be more suitable in the mesmer subforum but seeing as it ties in to the reason behind this thread I feel it is more appropriate here. From what I’ve read, viper seems to be good for pve but I have no experience of high end instanced pve.

All fractals on all levels are easy. If you’re in it for the loot, do all t4 every day.

Curunen.8729:

And yeah the question of success with pugging dailies was troubling me. So far in t2 even in a “bad” group or where things go wrong for whatever reason you can still push through and do it. Only things like the legendary ice elemental/mining suit can be tough in a bad/uncoordinated group. But if the chance of good groups is high at t4 then I would feel more comfortable with pugging the dailies there. It would certainly be nice to earn double the number of pristine relics.

Personally, ever since the changes to the fractal rewards, I’ve found the quality of T1 – T3 pugs have decreased hugely. That’s probably because there is no reason for anyone who can do T4 to go back to the lower tiers (as completing T4 also gives T1-3 rewards), so there are very few experienced fractal runners in those lower tiers.

With the exception of a few fractals, even mediocre T4 pugs rarely struggle.

Well this is all great then. I’ll work up to t4 (hopefully get a few ascended drops to help with a second set of gear) and pug the dailies there once I get up there.

tbh pugging T4 is easier than pugging T2

because people who have to pug T2 are usually less experienced than people who pug T4
(not always but just in general T4 seems to go easier since most times everyone knows exactly what to do)

so you may want to go for T4 for easier fracs that are also more rewarding

Orangensaft.7139:

tbh pugging T4 is easier than pugging T2

That may not be really true – T2 fractals are visibly easier than T4, and that sometimes offsets the difference in pug quality. There are also some puggers that, while generally casual (and unwilling to face higher tier difficulties), are relatively experienced and do have an idea what they are doing.

There is however no reason whatsoever to run T3. The difficulty difference from T4 is not that big (if you can do one, you likely can do the other), the difference in rewards is significant, and it is generally pugged by people that can’t cut it for t4 (and so will really struggle in t3), have no AR for t4 (and often t3 as well :P), are new (so no t4 levels unlocks yet), or are there for specific achievement/collection (and thus can run the fractal in unstandard way).
In many ways that crowd can be worse than people found in t1 pugs.

If there is content in the game that should always be cleared daily it’s fractals (T4).
It’s your major source of ascended gear and a nice chunk of gold for relatively easy runs depending on group.

As a lot of people mentioned above t2/t3 can be quite tedious since players aren’t really familiar with basic mechanics such as boonsharing, cc, instabilities but it’s worth the time to get that ar to 150.

onevstheworld.2419:

With the exception of a few fractals, even mediocre T4 pugs rarely struggle.

Bloomy <3

Can’t remember how often I and my colleague were the last survivors when all the PUGs had died to him.

Now I’m worried about having to go through the wasteland of T3 in order to get to T4… :S

I’ll be starting to pug T3 today – hopefully it’ll be painless until I can unlock T4.

Edit – nope, T3 is as horrible as you guys make it out to be… quality of players is definitely way lower than T2. Seems to be a constant res fest. Can’t wait till making it out of here till T4 though at this rate it might take some time. :/

Famine.7915:

All fractals on all levels are easy. If you’re in it for the loot, do all t4 every day.

Yep.

Curunen.8729:

Now I’m worried about having to go through the wasteland of T3 in order to get to T4… :S

I’ll be starting to pug T3 today – hopefully it’ll be painless until I can unlock T4.

Edit – nope, T3 is as horrible as you guys make it out to be… quality of players is definitely way lower than T2. Seems to be a constant res fest. Can’t wait till making it out of here till T4 though at this rate it might take some time. :/

Yeah, the middle two tiers are considerably quieter i found – I noticed this when going back to finish off doing all fractals. T1 & T4 are more popluar because of loot (T4) and newbies starting out / lower barrier to entry (T1). In the middle are achievement hunters and people building up thier AR.

Although that was before recent changes, so it may be slightly diffrent now

Well to balance that out I had some good experiences pugging T3 dailies yesterday evening – just got to be in the right team.

Curunen.8729:

Now I’m worried about having to go through the wasteland of T3 in order to get to T4… :S

I’ll be starting to pug T3 today – hopefully it’ll be painless until I can unlock T4.

Edit – nope, T3 is as horrible as you guys make it out to be… quality of players is definitely way lower than T2. Seems to be a constant res fest. Can’t wait till making it out of here till T4 though at this rate it might take some time. :/

you seem rather unlucky. I usually have little trouble with fractals. Most of the time, I can tell from the first boss or ‘big encounter’ whether or not I think a party can finish the fractal. Then I just go find a new party. But you’ll notice that as you get higher in the tiers, the more you’ll have to rely on what actually works instead of ‘weeeh, I wanna play how I want’

Amaimon.7823:

Curunen.8729:

Now I’m worried about having to go through the wasteland of T3 in order to get to T4… :S

I’ll be starting to pug T3 today – hopefully it’ll be painless until I can unlock T4.

Edit – nope, T3 is as horrible as you guys make it out to be… quality of players is definitely way lower than T2. Seems to be a constant res fest. Can’t wait till making it out of here till T4 though at this rate it might take some time. :/

you seem rather unlucky. I usually have little trouble with fractals. Most of the time, I can tell from the first boss or ‘big encounter’ whether or not I think a party can finish the fractal. Then I just go find a new party. But you’ll notice that as you get higher in the tiers, the more you’ll have to rely on what actually works instead of ‘weeeh, I wanna play how I want’

Oh I’m pretty happy with my build optimisation so far (like 80-90% efficiency compared with meta because being efficient reusing wvw gear) providing alacrity, gathering mobs with focus, providing reflects and so on and certainly have not been carried so far in T3.

But what didn’t realise is that T2 and below you don’t have to be choosy about parties – you can usually push through even if the party is weaker.

But in T3 your right I have realised to be choosy with parties. For example I was doing the Chaos fractal in T3 and someone asked in chat how to get through the lighting the 4 fires section because they didn’t know what to do… this kind of thing I don’t understand. :/

And then as you said you get ridiculous things of chain ressing at the first group of small mobs – I’ve decided if I have to perform more than a handful of resses at the first mob group then I’m leaving the party. Did not experience this at all at T2, but some players seem to just die really easily in T3 parties. I’m not being snobbish/elitist here, merely truthful observations so I hope that comes across in the text.

But overall I haven’t got a good sample size yet – had some good and bad experiences, so kind of 50/50 at the moment. We’ll see how it goes over the next 20 scales or so…

t1-3 isnt even worth running. do t4 you get all of them and ascended gear pretty consistantly.

sophiewhite.3149:

t1-3 isnt even worth running. do t4 you get all of them and ascended gear pretty consistantly.

I will once I get there.

Just have to give a shout out to a great group tonight running T3 dailies – best group I’ve been in so far, by far. Great synergy, teamwork and efficient execution. Don’t think I should mention character names but I look forward to running into those players again.