Guild Wars 2

In the Cliffside Fractal, there is an event where players are expected to alternate between damaging two seals while killing enemies to charge the Cultist Hammer. There is an exploit where if the players leave one cultist of the initial group alive, no more will respawn on that side, allowing players to charge the Cultist Hammer on the other side and run it back to the “safe side” to use. The seal on the “safe side” will not regenerate during this time. If at any point all of the initial cultists are killed, there is no way to return to this state, and this tactic is no longer possible.

This is a widely-known issue that I’m surprised hasn’t been addressed yet; this tactic is used by the majority of parties today. I’ve seen a large number of parties disband as soon as they fail the exploit by killing all the cultists, because the encounter is otherwise quite difficult.

Last time I did this fractal was about 2-3 weeks ago but I’m fairly sure that if you leave cultists they still “heal” the seal and if you wipe after killing two of them at any side it resets properly. It was fixed few patches ago.

Another thing, Anet fixing this making it properly reset tells me they don’t see it as an exploit.

It’s not an exploit. It’s a tactic.
The mobs will respawn only if the group is wiped.

It’s a good tactic actually because the cultists hits insanely kitten later fractals.
So. I see no reason why this topic exists.

Try it sometime at level 28+ without that tactic.

I dare you.

I’m fussy with many of the cheaty things players like to do in fractals – climbing past the initial dredge level content, turning foes (ice shaman, head cultist, etc, etc) into dumb and deaf sacks of meat that stand there and take hits without so much as blinking, glitching hammer mechanics for free swings at the final seal…

I’m fussy about many things to the point where I’ve left groups that shamelessly exploit content so much it becomes boring. I play to be challenged and entertained. And ‘exploiting’ the arms fight that way, if you chose to call it an exploit, is still a challenge, but one appropriate for level 28 content. I would freely work with groups to see the fight through. If however they monkey with the hammer or call for me to stack on the head cultist, I start checking temple statuses… There’s fun challenges in the game, even if its not in dungeons. I’ll find that challenge.

This is not even close to being an exploit.

It’s no an exploit, maybe bad design.

You seem to have misunderstood the trivia of this part, Donald.

The seals do not regenerate themselves, but get filled up by mobs. So you kill a single mob on one side (well … to be sure, you don’t kill one) so it gets healed less and you can run there without getting hit by 10 mobs. At the same time you guard the other side and continuously aggro the mobs, so they don’t heal the seal. That way the seal you’re guarding will not be regenerated and you continue to hit them alternately.

I don’t know how the developers thought this should be solved, but making the party run from one side to the other or guarding both seals at once would be a bad design once you reach lvl 20+. The amount of mobs and their strength simply forces you to guard a single seal.

Levels 28-48 are at least manageable with both seals surrounded with cultists. That changes laters.

Did OP play past fractals level 6?

Join a 48 group. Post after. Lol.

Try it sometime at level 28+ without that tactic.
I dare you.

Agreed, this encounter is very hard otherwise. The existence of this exploit prevents the event difficulty from being properly calibrated.

It’s no an exploit, maybe bad design.

You’re saying it’s “by design” that the mobs don’t respawn until 3 of them are killed, then they respawn infinitely? It would be a non-sensical design. It’s much more likely that the trigger for infinite respawn is set this way in order to prevent them from flooding the players right away. Players exploit this by never triggering the respawn.

Yamagawa.5941:

Try it sometime at level 28+ without that tactic.

I dare you.

I have done it without the primary strategy at level 32 before. I would not wish that on my worst enemy. At the time, we didn’t know about wipe=reset. It’s the same strategy: charge it on one side, run to the other and hit, charge again, etc. except you have to do it for longer as the far side recharges quicker. stealth makes it reasonably safe.
With this “exploit”, this fractal is easily the most hated/feared/aggravating/longest. Without it would be good reason to return to the mists lobby. It would literally be easier to do 3 other fractals than that one – dredge and harpies included.

This isn’t an exploit, it’s called a tactic. There’s nothing to fix here, It’s working as intended.

Dear Mr OP, go play in high level fractals before posting.

Not sure what playing in high level fractal changes — you realize that the encounter is impossible without this tactic? How does that express Anet’s intent that this is the way the encounter was meant to be done?

Not really impossible without it. You can focus one Seal and do hit&run to the other one.

Wait, that’s what everyone already does. So fixing it would just make it longer and require better hit&run (Stealth + Portal, Immunity, some Control).