Guild Wars 2

The cost to produce non-simple infusions (if you don’t want to use regular ones) is ridiculous….plus you need to commit a full set of ascended armor/weapons to agony resistance.

Is the payoff at lvl 40-50 worth all the grind/cost?

It is if you want the fractal skins, chances at ascended weapons/armor, and the very low chance at a fractal tonic.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/299a88/king_high_level_fractal_droprate_research/

If you’re looking for something to get gold directly, then probably not.

I’d honestly wait and see. Word is Fractal rewards are undergoing a huge revamp with the HoT release.

I did low level fractals for a short while, up to level 10. I don’t remember getting anything that encouraged me to continue or was as good as a dungeon. Dungeons at least, you can buy exotics with tokens. They’ll need to greatly improve low level fractal rewards if they want people running them.

I’d say yes

Then again what i’m basing that off of is my own experience of getting pretty much 4 free ascended sets from fractals. Nearly every weapon skin and enough weapon chest to start my own armory.

If you’re just starting them now, then no. It just isn’t rewarding at all, much like most of the stuff in this game. Tons of effort, for little reward. So stay away for now, at least until HoT comes out, then give it a try.

Because in the state they are now, it just is not worth it to get started. Especially with HoT coming soon and the new revamp to Fractals. Like Just A Flesh Wound stated, they need to greatly improve low level Fractal rewards if they want people to actually do them. Cause getting started in Fractals is basically a waste of time. You don’t start getting anything good till the higher levels, and before then, it is just wasted effort for little to no reward.

So wait till HoT. Then see if it gets better.

While I have to agree that lower level fractals are lacking shiny and unique rewards, the last revamp already added pristine fractal relics to sub level 10 fractal dailies (which is a huge improvement over the old system). Thus getting your ascended rings by level10 and 20 is assured and allows for smooth progression.

Anyone who expects fractal skins and or great amazing unique loot when just starting out, yeah keep expecting. I doubt this is going to happen.

As to rewards from fractals in general, they could use some beefing up, but I doubt the amount of upgrading needed to make people who don’t enjoy fractals to sudenly run them is viable. It’s like this: if you don’t enjoy the content, you’ll likely not enjoy it after running it 50 times more. Though the small exception to this is that fractals do get more challenging and thus more fun at higher levels.

Cyninja.2954:

While I have to agree that lower level fractals are lacking shiny and unique rewards, the last revamp already added pristine fractal relics to sub level 10 fractal dailies (which is a huge improvement over the old system). Thus getting your ascended rings by level10 and 20 is assured and allows for smooth progression.

Anyone who expects fractal skins and or great amazing unique loot when just starting out, yeah keep expecting. I doubt this is going to happen.

As to rewards from fractals in general, they could use some beefing up, but I doubt the amount of upgrading needed to make people who don’t enjoy fractals to sudenly run them is viable. It’s like this: if you don’t enjoy the content, you’ll likely not enjoy it after running it 50 times more. Though the small exception to this is that fractals do get more challenging and thus more fun at higher levels.

Yet if low level fractals don’t get a substantial reward boost how many of the casual dungeon runners are going to do it? The more intense type of player will go on of course and get their infusions to handle agony, but your Joe Average Player who used to do a dungeon or two when he logged on to get a few gold and some tokens, is he going to push on to the level where he needs to pay to play, but still not get really good gold or skins as rewards?

The thing about dungeons you could be as casual as you wanted and still get decent rewards. This is pushing people who want casual, after work dungeons into something harder, and that might not be a good fit.

You don’t need to buy the expensive Agony infusions to run fractals. Just buy the 75 relic infusions, at most just buy the plus 5 infusions which only cost about 2g each or something. Don’t blow things out of proportion. A daily fractal gives you 1.4 gold alone not including drops, do 2 of those and you can already buy an infusion.

Also you don’t need a full set of ascended armor to do fractals 50 at most you are going to need full ascended trinkets and a weapon. But you do need an extra 15 ar after all that which can be gotten by replacing 3 plus 5 ar with plus 10 ones, it’s way cheaper than getting a full set of ascended armor. Even if you don’t wanna do that and just rely on the free infusions you can buy with 75 relics and the 2g plus 5 infusions, you can do up to fractal 49 which is essentially the same kitten. I don’t get why you are assuming it takes a lot of gold and effort to do fractals 1-49. Do you even do fractals? 1-49 you are going to need 525 fractal relics for 7 plus 5 Agony infusions and maybe an additional 7 gold to buy the 3 plus 5 Agony infusions you need from the tp. That is not too much considering if you lvl from fractal 1 all the way to 49 you will get at least 50 gold so you are going to make a profit of 43 gold.

since they explicitly said they are nerfing the gold reward from dungeons and moving them to other content (fractals and raids), fractals might be more worth it after HoT launches.

they are revamping fractals so that you only have to do one (not 4) to get a reward, so i can see fractals becoming the “new dungeons”.

If you make good time completing fotm, the rewards can be well worth it but the process of building up your ascended gear collection just for additional AR is questionable. People tend to want gear progression anyway, so there’s that and it’s something to do. Sometimes it’s good to just have a goal or something to aspire to within the game because optimally using your time to make fake game money can have it’s drawbacks too.

I’m up to rank 44, and honestly… it’s not really worth it. The rewards aren’t bad and it’s a great way to get a ludicrous number of ascended rings, but there are much, much easier ways to earn gold than to run Fractals. Fractals is mostly nice if you’d like more of a challenge than your typical content.

That said, this may change when the rebalance rewards.

41-50 has roughly a 16% chance to give an ascended armor or weapon chest. So unless you have no use for more ascended gear, then yes it’s worth.

I got an ascended shoulders chest. Getting this means I didn’t have to craft my ascended shoulders which would have cost me 5 globs of dark matter, 20 cyrstalline dust, 5 bolts of damask and 1 elonian leather square, and a few other mats I can’t be bothered to check now. The bolts alone would cost me over 80 gold. So that’s over 80 gold saved from that drop.

Zach.2618:

You don’t need to buy the expensive Agony infusions to run fractals. Just buy the 75 relic infusions, at most just buy the plus 5 infusions which only cost about 2g each or something. Don’t blow things out of proportion. A daily fractal gives you 1.4 gold alone not including drops, do 2 of those and you can already buy an infusion.

To do this though, you’d need Infused ascended trinkets/back pieces. This requires grinding lower level fractals to obtained the mist essences necessary to create infused pieces, correct?

Good Tofu.9376:

Zach.2618:

You don’t need to buy the expensive Agony infusions to run fractals. Just buy the 75 relic infusions, at most just buy the plus 5 infusions which only cost about 2g each or something. Don’t blow things out of proportion. A daily fractal gives you 1.4 gold alone not including drops, do 2 of those and you can already buy an infusion.

To do this though, you’d need Infused ascended trinkets/back pieces. This requires grinding lower level fractals to obtained the mist essences necessary to create infused pieces, correct?

By the time you hit 40 you’ll probably have a dozen shards of mists essence

it has my most wanted item: Fractal Tonic

#worth

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Cyninja.2954:

While I have to agree that lower level fractals are lacking shiny and unique rewards, the last revamp already added pristine fractal relics to sub level 10 fractal dailies (which is a huge improvement over the old system). Thus getting your ascended rings by level10 and 20 is assured and allows for smooth progression.

Anyone who expects fractal skins and or great amazing unique loot when just starting out, yeah keep expecting. I doubt this is going to happen.

As to rewards from fractals in general, they could use some beefing up, but I doubt the amount of upgrading needed to make people who don’t enjoy fractals to sudenly run them is viable. It’s like this: if you don’t enjoy the content, you’ll likely not enjoy it after running it 50 times more. Though the small exception to this is that fractals do get more challenging and thus more fun at higher levels.

Yet if low level fractals don’t get a substantial reward boost how many of the casual dungeon runners are going to do it? The more intense type of player will go on of course and get their infusions to handle agony, but your Joe Average Player who used to do a dungeon or two when he logged on to get a few gold and some tokens, is he going to push on to the level where he needs to pay to play, but still not get really good gold or skins as rewards?

The thing about dungeons you could be as casual as you wanted and still get decent rewards. This is pushing people who want casual, after work dungeons into something harder, and that might not be a good fit.

Casual runners may also not have the brain power to handle stack / hammer swapping on cliffside either. I know I can’t.

IMO right now, hell no

But after HoT and reworked rewards, possibly, especially if you need the ascended gear for smoother raids

Good Tofu.9376:

Zach.2618:

You don’t need to buy the expensive Agony infusions to run fractals. Just buy the 75 relic infusions, at most just buy the plus 5 infusions which only cost about 2g each or something. Don’t blow things out of proportion. A daily fractal gives you 1.4 gold alone not including drops, do 2 of those and you can already buy an infusion.

To do this though, you’d need Infused ascended trinkets/back pieces. This requires grinding lower level fractals to obtained the mist essences necessary to create infused pieces, correct?

As someone already mentioned, if you had taken the liberty to actually run fractals first you would know that by the time you reach a lvl where you are required to infuse your trinkets you will have more than enough mist Essence shards to use without even grinding for them. Seriously some people just like to blow things out of proportion and assume without even experiencing it yet. Yes shards of mist Essence drops often enough so you don’t have to worry about ‘grinding’ for it, I’ve even gotten 2 shards in 1 run before.

Right now I run fractals for the ascended drops and exclusive fractal rewards coupled with the daily pristine relics. Currently if you are looking to run fractals just to earn some gold than it is not the place for you, however we do not know how they will change the reward once HoT starts so no one can say for sure if it will be worth it gold wise. As for me it will probably be even more worth it once HoT hits, more gold with my already awesome rewards? Why not.

Fractals is the new dungeon. You have a high chance at getting asc rings that u can salvage for the new legendary material in HoT. Rewards will be buffedx dungeons nerfed in gold income, and fractals split up to made less time consuming. If you’re into progression in general sooner or later u will want to step into fractals, and over time u will get plenty of free asc chests which is alot of gold saved. Not to mention the currencies and item update to vendors.

The final point of AR to reach the agony reduction cap is only 1/6th as effective (1.2% reduction in agony tick damage per point, to a minimum of 1% per second). Until the 40’s/50scale i treat the cap as being 1 point lower than it actually is, which can save you a lot if you’re buying agony infusions.

@OP:

Nope.

Bubi.7942:

@OP:

Nope.

^ this. If you like doing fractals it’s worth it. If you do it hoping for great riches, you will walk out dissapointed with a gold and 25 emperial fragments. Just yesterday i was talking how is funny how much uninfused rings i get off lvl 50 or getting nothing on the end.

It really depends on how you look at it. If you’re looking to farm gold directly, the easy answer is no. But if you’re interested in fractal weapon skins, an easy ascended back item or ascended weapons/armor, then the answer is yes.

I’ve basically fully equipped two characters with ascended armor purely attained from doing fractals (which saved hundreds of gold worth of crafting). I’ve also gotten the fractal skins I wanted and gotten multiple ascended weapon chests. So for me personally they have been worthwhile and I typically do them more regularly than dungeons. I think they’ll only get better with the upcoming changes.

Fractal weapon/armor boxes have a 10-15% drop rate at higher level fractals(40+). If we calculate for 70g per box of saved gold in crafting. That equals aproximately 7g per fractal run on top of what you are getting in loot, direct gold and karma.

Not quite as terrible if you factor in unique skins. Ofcorse the boxes are not sellable, so your goldbank will not grow as much.

SpyderArachnid.5619:

If you’re just starting them now, then no. It just isn’t rewarding at all, much like most of the stuff in this game. Tons of effort, for little reward. So stay away for now, at least until HoT comes out, then give it a try.

Because in the state they are now, it just is not worth it to get started. Especially with HoT coming soon and the new revamp to Fractals. Like Just A Flesh Wound stated, they need to greatly improve low level Fractal rewards if they want people to actually do them. Cause getting started in Fractals is basically a waste of time. You don’t start getting anything good till the higher levels, and before then, it is just wasted effort for little to no reward.

So wait till HoT. Then see if it gets better.

Worth it? umm yes….

I do 1x fractal 50 a day. Within a 7 day span I get anywhere from 1-3 ascended drops. I would say it is rare that I don’t get any ascended drops. Plus roughly 7 ectos per run.

Fractal 50 takes 20-30 minutes with a good pug.

I thought ANET said they are extending fractals. Why not get your rank up ASAP at a chance at ascended?

Fractals are about the only thing even slightly challenging in the current PvE game.

In my experience it is. Then again fractals is the place where the luck really is on my side.
Things I’ve gotten during my years: 10/19 skins, nearly 2 acs sets (random pieces), The Energizer, a crap load of asc rings, and of course my precious fractal tonic.

So yeah if you like RNG and in need of ascended gear, it is worth it. Though I bet it’s gonna be more rewarding with the upcoming revamp.

Also: You need +55 AR to get full resistance on scale 40-49. A full set of acs trinkets plus acs weapons (or 2-3 armor pieces) with simple infusions should be enough.
Those infusions which grant +5 AR and +5 stat, is the last thing you wanna grind for^^

In there current state no they are not worth it, its just a time sink for nothing, its been well documented that the rewards for fractals have been bad for a long time, it even took a team of people to document just how broken it was before Anet would “look into it” and even since then its still bad,

However as Anet have decided that raids and fractals are where they want to go, and they are abandoning dungeons, they may have actually looked at, and fixed the loot tables for Fractals, so I would say keep an eye on the Fractals sub section on the forums after next weeks expansion release and see if they are worth it.

Zeppelin.6832:

Fractals are about the only thing even slightly challenging in the current PvE game.

This.
To me, trying with different classes, as i complete a new set with the rewards, is the only thing keeping me on this stale content.

High level fractals can be very profitable. I have around 12 ascended weapon chests and over 30 ascended armor chests sitting in bank (and that’s after gearing 6 chars full ascended).

Cyninja.2954:

While I have to agree that lower level fractals are lacking shiny and unique rewards, the last revamp already added pristine fractal relics to sub level 10 fractal dailies (which is a huge improvement over the old system). Thus getting your ascended rings by level10 and 20 is assured and allows for smooth progression.

Oh that’s why I don’t have a pristine fractal relic- I did a few sub 10 fractals, have some fractal relics, checked out the wiki and it suggested I probably ought to have a least one pristine (given what I had run) but nothing in the wallet. I must have run it before the revamp.

My personal experience with fractals was lukewarm, partly because of my own incorrect expectations: as described by Anet, I kind of expected shorter instances but the current fractal run is quite long. Couple run time with the need for agony resistance, which requires a dedicated armor set, and there was little appeal to me. It’s not like I don’t like farming for skins; it’s just that there’s other skins and other ways to do that that I enjoy more.

I am eager to see the new fractal system, which appears to be more what I was expecting. If it becomes something I can step in and out of, without a large commitment of time on any one evening, I might give it another go. Of course, it depends how fun HoT is, but since they have described a HoT legendary system that seems to require so much time it isn’t really ‘rushable’ (i.e., I will be done many many months from now), I don’t envision spending all my time in HoT. (This is probably a good call on Anet’s part- means I’ll enjoy the content for much longer and also leaves value in doing other things).

I guess the new legendaries require some fractal items as well, but to be honest, they need to greatly improve fractals before I’d grind those items. When I realized Maudrey II required pristine fractal relics, I stopped working on it. Would be nice to have, don’t want it enough to even grind fractals for a week. So there I sit 5 relics short of the item. I guess that’s a sign of how little I enjoyed fractals

So I guess with such a view you didn’t do any WvW either because you arent max rank when you start it. Require BiS and fortitude stacks and a commander tag.

All not True, just as it isnt True that you need ascended armor and agony resistance for every fractal.

And dungeons only go that fast because everyone knows them (and it’s just stack,faceroll,skip,facerollstackskipp). In fractals, partied with experienced Players it goes smoothly too and quick.

Now tell me about some improvements on fractals.

First impressions are lasting ones.

It can’t be compared to WvW because that’s PvP, which is more exciting and which people will do for low rewards. Fractals are players against NPCs, and for that players want rewards. I got up to level 10. Each set took about ~45 minutes with me and the other players who were still starting out and learning it. After the end of a fractal set I looked in my inventory and found…. some greens? Don’t really remember other that it was unremarkable and not enough for my time. Since I didn’t aspire to high level fractals, there was no point to continue to play low level fractals. Unless the rewards are good enough, the casual player who just wants to do a dungeon or two after work isn’t going to stick to it.

I love fractals. I find the mechanics more interesting than dungeons. I find that it presents challenges we don’t see much of anywhere else. And I like the (current) fact that most of the people I know are learning along with me.

In terms of gearing up, I’ve only used simple infusions until I got to doing L30+ and by that time, I had enough mats to infuse a few items and combine +1 ARs appropriately. With a utility infusion in your amulet, you can get +25 AR easily, which is good up to L30, without ascended armor or weapons.

Once you infuse rings (and a backpack, Mawdrey being the cheapest to infuse), you can add +10s (slowly to be sure), taking you up to +55 AR, which is good until L50.