Guild Wars 2

My friend & I have been duoing fractals at low level for the last month or two and I wanted to share some of the tips & tricks we’ve learned along the way. The intended audience includes players who are looking for a challenge, don’t consider themselves “elite,” and can’t be bothered to fully optimize their builds.

For me, it’s a lot more fun than trying to solo (too tedious), repeated PUGging (too random), or waiting around for just the right group of friends/guildies to be on at the same time. A fringe benefit is: we always have room for one more, so we can help people who are working on monthly or someone who has to AFK a lot (e.g. sick kid or playing from work).

A lot of fractals have “gating” that makes them much easier for full groups, but they are still possible to do. The exceptions are:

DIFFICULT TO DO WITH TWO

• Swamp: can be done by an expert thief or by any prof + thief|mesmer. You have to be really quick, though.
• Dredge: two spots need three or more people.

NOT AS DIFFICULT AS YOU THINK
The ones that sound tricky to people who are used to full teams are:

• Uncategorized: Thieves Infiltrator’s Arrow, Mesmer’s Blink, Elementalist Lightning Flash and similar tricks allow you to shutdown the electrical trap on the Guitar Hero stairway.
• Cliffside: Turns out, it’s sometimes easier for two people to manage the last pair of seals. Remember that as long as you break one seal, it doesn’t matter if the other resets.
• Volcanic: Two people can get the bonus; you have to be good at avoiding the knockdowns and fast at killing the veteran shaman.

Everything else comes down to being easy enough or your being willing to forget about what has always worked for you and try some new things.

• Bring multiple weapon sets, including stuff you don’t normally use.
• Bring at least one alternative armor or trinket set, so you can trade damage for durability, if required.
• If you need to try a third time to finish a room, change your strategy: swap to different traits, replace your main weapon with one you never use, and definitely use a different set of utilities. We’ve found a use for a lot of “bad” weapon sets — some of them will have a useful niche somewhere in FotM.
• Finally, think of it as “practice” — instead of being worried about how quickly you can finish, focus on getting better at strategy/tactics, managing your rotations, perfecting damage mitigation/avoidance techniques, and delivering more damage. This psychological edge might be more important than any other trick.

If you get stuck with a particular part, reply here and I’m sure folks will offer a variety of techniques to handle it. Likewise, if you find a cool way to manage a difficult bit, please share it with others, as it seems that many are interested in taking on FotM in pairs instead of quintets.

edit: added headers to clarify what the lists were showing

you can duo swamp.

all you need is a mesmer who knows how to portal

loseridoit.2756:

you can duo swamp.

all you need is a mesmer who knows how to portal

Thanks for the reply.

Did I forget to mention that above? (I do mesmer, but I’m too slow to reliably get two wisps usually. I definitely need practice.)

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

loseridoit.2756:

you can duo swamp.

all you need is a mesmer who knows how to portal

Thanks for the reply.

Did I forget to mention that above? (I do mesmer, but I’m too slow to reliably get two wisps usually. I definitely need practice.)

ahhh, you put swamp under exception so I was confused.

it not really that hard.

Usually, I place the portal at the finish post. Grab the farest wisp and run the next wisp. I place the portal down and portal back then teleport back to grab the last wisp and portal back to the last pole.

I highly doubt that you need to be fast. You just have to be fast enough to walk between the two wisp which is much less distance than the finish and the wisp near spiders

it nice to have condition removal and probably mass invisibility because entering combat will slow your movement speed

I usually bring far reaching manipulations.

Maybe it’s not that I’m slow so much as I get lost easily. In any case, thanks for the note (I updated my post to clarify what the list was showing).

And yes, those are good tips for the first bit of swamp: mobility, stealth, and portal.