Guild Wars 2

We did it with no stealth. We stacked at the entrance to the 1st platform just where you come off the ramp up, that way if anyone got low they could jump down a level to heal up out of agony. Kill the far side veteran first then Warrior (Defiant Stance + Endure Pain) and Rev (Infuse Light, he might have used Rite of the Great Dwarf also) running that seal and whoever was healthy running the near one that we’re pretty much stood next to. Probably wasn’t the fastest method but it was pretty clean.

Watch your positioning. If you don’t have agro you can stand directly behind a boss and most attacks won’t hit you. Just be aware of which attacks hit in a 360 arc (e.g. Legendary Mining Suit’s double punch) that you will need to evade. Also be ready to dodge if the boss does switch agro to you and turn around, some bosses can also adjust the direction of their attacks mid swing so you need to watch out for allies dodging through the boss putting you in danger during those attacks (Mai Trin’s melee, Lornarr’s Frost Breath and 2nd Archdiviner’s backbreaker spring to mind). Using max melee range will also cut down the number of attacks that can hit you.

We were doing fractal 40 and got Thaumanova. After leaving the starting room you have to go to the center of the room and kill 4 Skritt. As the last Skritt died my game crashed, as it did for everyone else in the party meaning we lost all progress.

I might have missed it but Wollam the Plunderer seems to be missing from the HoTW sheet. Any chance he could be added please?

The NPCs don’t skip the dialogue, the full dialogue is performed, the gate then opens and they teleport down and start the 2nd dialogue. All that is skipped is the time the NPCs take to run from the top down to the test room.

Lelouch.8745:

> Requires leap skill to get to certain place that would otherwise be inaccessible to change NPC behaviour
> Restricted
> MFW

You can go ahead and end the restricted category right now if you’re blind enough enough to allow this crap.

All this does is cut down on time spent waiting for NPCs, in that regard its no different from getting NPCs killed to skip dialogue or using waypoints to teleport NPCs around the map which is present in multiple current records (e.g. AC p1, SE p3). There are no events skipped, not even any mobs that we would have to have run past otherwise. If this is the end of the restricted category then it already ended long ago.

On the molten skip

Aldarn.4650:

Note you don’t necessarily need to RTL/Rocket Boots over from where I did, any class with a Leap can make it from the opposite side of the gate where there is a concrete slope you can leap onto the fence from (so you can do it with pugs regardless of what you’re playing).

I wasn’t 100% sure it’d be allowed so decided to post it as restricted and let people decide. If its not at least everyone’s daily runs will be 20-30s shorter.

Note you don’t necessarily need to RTL/Rocket Boots over from where I did, any class with a Leap can make it from the opposite side of the gate where there is a concrete slope you can leap onto the fence from (so you can do it with pugs regardless of what you’re playing).

I don’t know if walking into the room early still bugs the instance or not, we just use this method now which hasn’t bugged yet

[HeX]Hexagonis
Molten Facility Fractal
10/05/15
game build 48,555
Restricted time: 10:50

Ele – Johnny Howitzer PoV
Engi – Tákú PoV
Warr – Aeyana Achilles
Guard – Nika Marooned
Thief – Ingyi

Not exactly the best party composition but a decent time.

Engi is quite competitive against thief for casual runs I think. They both cover a lot of the same utility, Thief has better single target DPS while Engi has better AoE DPS. Thief stealth is a bit better but that only really makes a big difference in Dredge and Mai Trin (if you stealth her), as said mobility is a plus for Thief too, particularly on the Cliffside arm seals. Engi immobs though are really nice on a lot of the bosses.

Overall I’d slightly prefer a Thief over an Engi but I don’t think there’s enough of a difference between the two for it to matter in a normal daily run, Thief is better in some fractals, Engi better in others it all depends which you get.

We have Engineers in our parties quite a lot. We have lots of people who like playing them and they’re really good in Fractals.

Run was a bit ago so not sure if Taku will still have it. I’ll ask

Follows restricted ruleset but sadly no F11
From 11/04/15

Ele 1 – Johnny Howitzer
Ele 2 – Quintey
Guardian – Zorkoma
Warrior – Ildirun Ankor
Engineer – Tákú

From my experience the Ele spawns are somewhat bugged, even on the first snowstorm you can get 2-3 eles spawning stacked on the same spot.

When you could destroy the top of the source we used to ignore the elementals as much as possible. After the snowstorm we’d all meet at the same fire, eles would just Meteor shower the source and ignore the adds, any Icebows doing the same. Non-eles would attack the adds if too many agroed otherwise just try to go for the source. Kind of a half way between suiciding and playing it safe by killing the eles.

Its a lot harder to do now as the extra CC from the swirl is very disruptive and the bugged spawns seem more frequent, so you need to put a bit more focus onto the adds. I had a look at a few of our more recent runs, the source fight is taking us around 2mins, I’d guess thats probably faster than suiciding?

Lauren Kamieniecki.6245:

There’s a fix scheduled for this but it is too early for a “soon”… Need another week before another round of “soon” starts going out.

This is an awful response. The bug completely prevents progress in fractals and isn’t avoidable. We just had to do a the first fractal 3 times to do our 50 because the 2nd fractal was Molten Facility each time. This answer basically says don’t do fractals for at least a week probably more. If this was a living story release it’d probably have been fixed within a day.

Alphard.6529:

Aldarn.4650:

Air – Current 150 Ferocity and Bolt to the Heart for 6.67%

Bolt to the Heart will probably get boosted to 10%, same as Executioner. Bountiful Power should give 2% per boon.

Which would only favor staff even more if so

Snowball.3497:

I don’t get why people are so quick to scream nerf seemingly without considering all of the changes. I would say the D/F damage is close to unchanged.
Let’s compare the coming D/F to the current one to come to a conclusion.

The builds I will compare are 66060 to the current 66200.

Fire:
66060: Additional trait, VI or V, whichever 66200 didn’t use.
66200: -
Air:
66060: 220 Ferocity from Ferocious winds and Aeromancer’s training
66200: VI and X, resulting in 16.67% dmg.
Earth:
66060: -
66200: 10% from Stone Splinters
Water:
66060: 10% when >90% hp and 2% / boon, resulting in 16-18% dmg. Frost aura when hit.
66200: -

Result:
66060: 220 ferocity + 10% when >90% + 6-8%
66200: 6.67% + 10% + 10%
——————————————
This becomes 220 ferocity vs 8-10% dmg, depending on number of boons, critical chance and how good you can keep above 90% hp. In any way, with current meta builds are 220 ferocity stronger than 10% damage. We also get a random free frost aura for -10% damage taken as a bonus

If you do the same comparisson for Staff

Current 6-4-2-2-0
New 6-6-0-6-0

Fire – unchanged except the new build gets Burning Precision for a small boost

Air – Current 150 Ferocity and Bolt to the Heart for 6.67%
New – Tempest Defense (varies from really good to mostly useless), 6.67% from Bolt to the Heart and Weak Spot (4%).

Earth Current 10% Damage
New nothing

Water Current 10% Damage > 90
New 10% Damage > 90 + Bountiful Power (8% assuming 2% per boon).

So the new build loses 10% from Earth and 150 Ferocity from Air in return it gains 4% from Weak Spot, 8% from Bountiful Power, Burning Precision, Tempest Defense and Blasting Staff. Alternatively you can trade Arcane Lightning for Blasting Staff on the current build and then the New build is only losing a single 10% mod and gaining more than 10%. Either way staff gets a boost to its DPS.

If D/F is breaking even while Staff is doing more damage then D/F just falls further behind. Especially since staff should gain more from the moving of the traitline granted stats since it invested more points into non-offense stat traitlines than D/F did. That just makes it even harder to argue for using D/F over staff (other than its more fun).

spoj.9672:

Molten Facility fractal – At the very start after you talk to Rox. If you use AOE and do too much damage so you kill the molten dredge before they finish spawning you will not get credit for every enemy. Which will result in an incomplete progress bar. Which means the drill wont trigger. And seeing as no new molten alliance will spawn you will have to restart the fractal.

Basically dont kill the molten alliance at the portal too fast or before they finish spawning. We were running 5 eles for the lols when we discovered this bug. :P

You need to wait for the event progress bar to appear in the top right. As long as nothing dies before then its fine. Any you kill before don’t progress the event as it didn’t start.

I wouldn’t complain if they gave me more gold for it but neither do I feel the reward is inappropriate. As I said before I’ve not struggled to buy anything I want and fractals is pretty much my entire income. If I had to make the choice with my playtime between having fun or having enough money to buy the things I want then I’d complain but at the moment I have both.

spoj.9672:

Its really not that bad as in atleast its not nothing. It is still terrible though. :P

Im honestly surprised so many KING members try and justify the rewards. Dont you guys spend most of your time in fractals? :P

Most of us are doing Fractals because they are fun, not for the rewards so perhaps thats why we’re not underwhlemed by them. It probably also helps that our runs are fast, doing a full set of fractals (50+40+30+20) gets me 15+g and takes around 2hours plus time to form the parties, that’s definitely not terrible. Its enough gold at least that I’ve never felt like I had to go farm to buy something I really wanted.

Zui.9245:

Fractal drop rate research in terms of rares: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2s35nz/fractal_rare_drop_research_potential_problem/

The amount of rares is decent, but not really that good IMO. Compare it to what you can get in a world boss train in the same period of time, and it’s really underwhelming especially when comparing difficulties and the fact most of the world boss train can actually be spent AFK instead of playing the game.

The problem with that research is its only looking at rares and not any of the other common valuable drops. On any given run you’ll get a bunch of Cores, maybe a Lodestone if you’re lucky and normally 1+ account bound exotics (insignia/inscriptions sell for 1.5-3g). The +1 agony infusions also sell for ~8s each. I’m not saying its going to beat dungeons for income but if you add everything together its really not that bad, especially if your groups runs are on the faster end of the time scale.

I also think its difficult with the daily end rewards. Things like fractal skins and ascended boxes are supposed to be special. Getting that one fractal skin you want is probably more difficult than it should be, but if it was too easy then you probably wouldn’t care about having it in the first place as everyone else would have it too. A ring or nothing should be the normal reward, if you get a skin you didn’t have or an ascended box its a nice bonus.

If your whole party ranging then even staff ele isn’t necessarily that good. Most likely the boss is moving around a lot so will not be staying in your Lava Fonts, greatly reducing your DPS.

I would always melee even if my pug is ranging. For parts of the fight where you don’t have agro you can just stay behind the boss and there is little danger to you, he will mostly be chasing other players so won’t even attack that much unless he has a ranged attack. If the boss stops moving thats a good indicator he’s going to attack so just dodge as soon as he stops. If you have agro then you want to keep the boss crippled or chilled, you can then just keep backing off him while hitting at maz melee range and he won’t be able to attack back unless the gap is closed.

You can pretty reliably get him down to somewhere between 1-15% at 50 in a good group with the occasional kill. We don’t reliably kill him in one but its not too rare either,.

Edit: Uploaded one http://youtu.be/qx3pyyoiO7k

That’s definitely true. Some better advice than trying to skip phases might be to look at how you approach the bubble phase.

I think the most useful thing to know about the bubble phase is that you don’t need to attack the Shaman at all to break the bubble. Stacks are removed by using a skill while you have the shaman targeted. That means you can focus on killing the elementals with ground targeted AoE and melee cleave and the shamans stacks will be removed while you do that if you keep him targeted.

At least 1 staff ele is tremendously helpful also, Meteor Shower absolutely wrecks the elementals while Frozen Ground buys you time. Make sure your team supports your eles, they’re going to want some condi removal after the Meteor Shower as they will have picked up burning during the channel. You don’t have to rush between bubble phases so changing to Water to lay down some water fields to blast can help a lot with keeping your team’s health pools topped up, especially if your team knows to watch out for them to use their own blasts on the field too.

Get your team to watch their positioning as the bubble phase nears, you want everyone close to the Guardian so they can make it to his Wall of Reflection right away.

Get the Guardian to save an aegis to use as soon as the Shaman’s Bubble pops. The Shaman is enraged at this point and anyone getting hit by an arrow will most like go down, worse if someone gets caught by the firestorm at this point they could easily end up fully defeated as its not easy to res someone in a double damage ticking AoE like that.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Do we have any idea what the cooldown for that skill is? One minute?

I’ve never timed it but based on where my skill cooldowns are when he bubbles again I would hazard a guess at 45secs (if unchilled). I have a bunch of recordings I can check when I’m home from work to give a better answer

Edit: Wow four-five-s is censored

In order to bubble the Shaman has to use a skill, which has a cooldown. Skipping bubble phases happens if you have enough DPS that you push him over the boundary where he would normally bubble before the skill comes off cooldown. Once the skill comes off cooldown however he will use it immediately regardless of health.

You can kill him straight after the 1st bubble even at 50, but its easier at lower levels. Skipping just one bubble phase is pretty reliable at any level.

Its for specific cases. We are hitting all 3 bosses with Deep Freeze which lasts enough time to almost kill them so we get a big benefit from having Tempest Defence

Aenesthesia.1697:

But, for pure damage, don’t compare conditions vs berserk while hitting a sitting duck. Do it in a boss fight where you have to stop attacking to dodge, revive pals, cast whatever you need to cast, heal and generally running for your life…. while doing all those things, berserkers do 0 damage. Conditions meanwhile keep ticking and that’s why I ask if they are not superior in that situation.

Your conditions may keep ticking damage but while you are dodging/reviving/whatever just like the zerker you are not hitting and therefore not applying new conditions. You lose damage just the same as the zerker you just don’t see the effect of it until a little later due to the delayed damage nature of conditions.