FotM Barrier to Entry
Bosses do not do agony damage from fractal 1-9, and agony damage from fractal 10 is easily avoided or mitigated if you time your healing/defensive skills right.
I did fractal 10 every day for 10 days and got my two ascended rings in that time. (One from drop and one frome relics.)
I suggest you get into a group doing fractal 10’s just to level up your fractal level.
“If you keep getting hit, you’re playing the Thief wrong!” -Bassman
You can get to the point where you get rings from daily chests (10) without any AR, and the backpack’s first upgrade is also very is to get. Throw in the amulet and you’re swimming in AR. I find level 10 fractal groups to be among the most common, both ingame and on gw2lfg.
Having Agony’s damage scale with your personal level instead of the true level defeats the purpose of the levels, in my opinion.
“The fatal flaw in every plan is the assumption that you know more than your enemy.”
Antonius Duarte – Elementalist – Kaineng
Antonius Duarte – Elementalist – Kaineng
well, agony resistance dont’ even do anything for fractal level1-9.
And I just did a bunch of level10 daily a week ago. And as far as I’m seeing half the people dont’ have any agony resist.
Yea but the point is to be able to play with people of any level. The way it is now, if you join a group that is playing at a much higher difficulty level than your own personal level, you will pretty much become useless in boss fights due to the agony level been that of the higher difficulty level instead of your personal level.
Unless of course you have the right amount of AR, than you are good. (But a lot of people don’t.)
Anet did say you can play with people of any level, which is true to an extent, they just forgot to mention that you need this much AR to do so.
And is it just me or did agony become heavier at even lower levels than it should be?!
“I got a fever! And the only prescription, is more COWBELL!”
They did say that they want people to play together independent of their personal level. However, it is still intended that AR gate the true level. This helps people with say 20 AR who are only at a personal level of 17 join groups doing level 25~. The barrier of entry was lowered, but rightly not torn down.
“The fatal flaw in every plan is the assumption that you know more than your enemy.”
Antonius Duarte – Elementalist – Kaineng
Antonius Duarte – Elementalist – Kaineng
^ ya I mean, what’s the point of fotm having level if any lvl0 person can just walk in and do fotm50.
But you have a good point. They might as well remove fotm level. I mean this is a game for casual right? Only hardcore content is farming 300 hours of gold for legendary.
Yea but the point is to be able to play with people of any level. The way it is now, if you join a group that is playing at a much higher difficulty level than your own personal level, you will pretty much become useless in boss fights due to the agony level been that of the higher difficulty level instead of your personal level.
Unless of course you have the right amount of AR, than you are good. (But a lot of people don’t.)
Anet did say you can play with people of any level, which is true to an extent, they just forgot to mention that you need this much AR to do so.
And is it just me or did agony become heavier at even lower levels than it should be?!
Actually, Anet did not forget to mention that you need AR at higher levels. It was always like that since FoTM was released. It’s either you have no idea what fractals are in the first place or you forgot about it.
The reason they allowed you to join parties with higher fractal levels was so that you won’t have to pester higher level players to help you level from level 1.
Why would you join a fractal 15 group at level 1 when you can join a level 3 and get the same rewards?
“If you keep getting hit, you’re playing the Thief wrong!” -Bassman
Yea but the point is to be able to play with people of any level.
This is false. The point is to make grouping easier, not necessarily people being able to play with other people of any level. (i.e. A person from lvl 2/3/5/6/4 can all group at level 6 instead of each having to find their own respective lvl 2/3/5/6/4 groups. The point is NOT for a lvl 2 to join a lvl 20 group).
Don’t disturb me, I have a cat in me at the moment.
Yea but the point is to be able to play with people of any level. The way it is now, if you join a group that is playing at a much higher difficulty level than your own personal level, you will pretty much become useless in boss fights due to the agony level been that of the higher difficulty level instead of your personal level.
Unless of course you have the right amount of AR, than you are good. (But a lot of people don’t.)
Anet did say you can play with people of any level, which is true to an extent, they just forgot to mention that you need this much AR to do so.
And is it just me or did agony become heavier at even lower levels than it should be?!
You will be just as useful in boss fights provided you can dodge the agony attack, which is not even that difficult except at maw (where it’s impossible). At maw you need the others to carry you and res you.
There’s not much point playing in way higher level fractals than your personal level is, though. Your rewards will be tied to personal level, you will still progress only one level and a run at level 42 (for example) will take a lot longer than the run on level 12.
Here is a good way to get agony resistance. Get an ascended amulet with laurels. Do some 1-9 fractals. Get an agony infusion for 75 tokens. Now you can do 10-19. There are chances that ascended rings can drop from doing dailies. But there are also the daily tokens which you can spend 10 of them from a ring. Once you get 2 rings you can get 2 more infusions and have 15 agony resistance. I would start doing level 20 so that you can get a fractal purple shard drop from it. Once you get that you can upgrade a ring so that it can give 5 more agony resistance. Once you’re at 25 agony resistance you can do 1-29 without taking agony damage. I can’t talk about 30+ because I haven’t gotten there yet. But you can also make a backpiece with tokens to get your AR to 30 and you should be ok on 30+ fractals with 30 AR.
You don’t need agony resistance for 10. For a long time, I ran it in MF gear, with no ascended items at all. You simply have to play with a degree of intelligence. Some bosses are tricky, like the Grawl, but it’s the fire, not the Agony, that’s the real danger there.
I really have no idea why lower level people want to run higher level fractals. Your reward level is tied to your lower level so you are not getting any better rewards. The only benefit I can see is more drops because there might be more mobs.
But these low level guys joining high level parties without AR and without knowing the mechanics have become a big drag on parties. It has become tougher and tougher to find a qualified group of people to party with.
Don’t attempt to do fractals too high for your character!