Guild Wars 2

Ropechef.6192:

Nevets,

come play with me, We can be bitter old forumites without a raid team together.

:)

I’m in medical school now, and my desktop is in another state. I appreciate what this franchise has done, but part of me is glad that they destroyed the content that I loved. It makes it easier to move on and focus on school, which at this point in my life I need to do.

I don’t play this game anymore, but I still check in the forums from time to time. I just want to say I appreciate that after all these years the dungeon forum still maintains remnants of its former glory.

Incredible trolling.

Milennin.4825:

Was there a reason they nerfed the rewards?

Their economist literally said it was to disincentive people from doing dungeons. In other words, they don’t want people doing dungeons as much.

Cyninja.2954:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Thaddeus.4891:

Yaki.9563:

I’m pretty disappointed. I guess I’m forced to craft ascended armor and weapons if I want to continue in fractals and that is just not worth it. I opened about 20 days worth of daily boxes (40 regular, 20 adept, 20 of the middle tier) and got nothing. GG and bye bye.

If you bother looking thing up. If only lol.

Ascended box are dropped from daily 51-100. There is a very small chance to drop from Veteran and zero from Adept and Mist chest.

With Trinkets alone you can reach 94 AR which mean you can do up to level 68 where you should get about 1 Ascended box (weapons or armor) for every 6 days on average.

Pretty much similar to what we used to have.

Honestly, what data are you looking at?

I’m looking at King’s Fractal Drop Rate data here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18IHVJao5j85KOp6lBTOgO8qs4VYD3Xty-jKPZo8o-Q4/pubhtml#

These data indicate that from the daily boxes you have about a 12.5% chance of getting an armor box from a Champion daily chest, and practically 0 chance from any other chest. That’s a skin every 8 days. Pre-HoT if you did 50, 40, 30 daily you’d get an armor box every 5 days or so (again, using that same data sheet.)

Skin drops have been radically nerfed – about 1 per 5 days to 1 per 25 days. Golden skin drops are abysmal – about 1 per 50 days.

The rewards are worse than before HoT, still. The only thing that’s better now is XP and maybe gold, though I haven’t looked at that data.

Pre HoT, dailies took 4 fractals, now it’s 3. (this easily accounts for the now slight reduction of ascended armor droprate from lower fractal daily chests, not to mention the 3 fractal dailies take way less amount of time now)

Skin drops have been nerfed. Then again pristine fractal relic drops are up (considering very few people ran 30,40 and 50 pre HoT, especially once they were full ascended). Now a lot more people are running all the fractal dailies. Oh and those pristine relics at 5 per day? 4 days per skin once you’ve completed fractal 50. Skin availability is WAY up.

If XP, Gold, skins and total ascended gear aquisition is up, what else is there which is worse than pre HoT?

You’re right about the regular skins. So XP, Gold (maybe) and regular skins are up. Gold skins are low, ascended gear acquisition is lower than pre HoT.

I’m talking from a time perspective. Just because you can now put in less effort/skin doesn’t mean the drop rates are up. They’re down on an item/time basis.

Thaddeus.4891:

Yaki.9563:

I’m pretty disappointed. I guess I’m forced to craft ascended armor and weapons if I want to continue in fractals and that is just not worth it. I opened about 20 days worth of daily boxes (40 regular, 20 adept, 20 of the middle tier) and got nothing. GG and bye bye.

If you bother looking thing up. If only lol.

Ascended box are dropped from daily 51-100. There is a very small chance to drop from Veteran and zero from Adept and Mist chest.

With Trinkets alone you can reach 94 AR which mean you can do up to level 68 where you should get about 1 Ascended box (weapons or armor) for every 6 days on average.

Pretty much similar to what we used to have.

Honestly, what data are you looking at?

I’m looking at King’s Fractal Drop Rate data here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18IHVJao5j85KOp6lBTOgO8qs4VYD3Xty-jKPZo8o-Q4/pubhtml#

These data indicate that from the daily boxes you have about a 12.5% chance of getting an armor box from a Champion daily chest, and practically 0 chance from any other chest. That’s a skin every 8 days. Pre-HoT if you did 50, 40, 30 daily you’d get an armor box every 5 days or so (again, using that same data sheet.)

Skin drops have been radically nerfed – about 1 per 5 days to 1 per 25 days. Golden skin drops are abysmal – about 1 per 50 days.

The rewards are worse than before HoT, still. The only thing that’s better now is XP and maybe gold, though I haven’t looked at that data.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Can drop from the chest you get when you complete your daily. Still has an absurdly low drop rate.

Source? Did you get one yourself?

Removed from game, far as I can tell.

Sesshi.2610:

I used to sort of respect DnT for making build guides and all but now I just laugh at them for the pathetic no skill trash they are, also if THEY can do it after a month of practice then the average pug should have no problem at all either ^^

Lol.

Fay.2357:

Dalent.9358:

MAGpie.7962:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Ascended Drop Rates
We’ve noticed some changes to ascended drop rates that are below what we were expecting.

If you tell a computer, 10%, it will give you 10%. If you tell it, 1%, it will give you 1%. Please tell me, how you can “EXPECT” less than the value YOU put in? Are you kidding me?

You know, I would respect you a lot more if you you man up for a change.

Except that’s not how that works. At all.

That’s absolutely how it works. There are many very complex systems in this game. RNG boxes are not one of them, so don’t try and white-knight by pretending that coding an RNG box takes any amount of skill or experience, because it doesn’t.

You literally just slap an RNG with a if check onto every item in the loot table. If RNG produces a number above a threshold, then it appears in the box. This is not complex, and saying that they ’didn’t expect rates to be this low’ is either flat out lying or admitting they literally don’t have the first clue of how either math or coding works.

Not saying you’re wrong but it’s crossed my mind more than once that their drop equations are more than RNG. Could be a multivariate function taking into account things as simple as magic find or as diverse as individual performance, chat during encounters, hours played etc.

Also, for Christ’s sake, why do the Devs take questions over on Reddit and not their own forums?

Seriously where does everyone keep hearing that the Abaddon fractal was already built? I thought they said they would NEVER build it because we voted for Kiel instead.

Its Josh.2860:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

3. +10 AR item bug

The potion doesn’t stack with other sources of Agony Resistance (any agony resistance at all)

I know, I read it. Is it intentional? Is it just meant for beginners?

This round of updates will address the loot and the hp-sponge issue, which is a step in the right direction.

The other things that need to be addressed that are currently unanswered:

1. Fractal leaderboard
2. Fractal weapon collection bug
3. +10 AR item bug
4. Major exploits that were supposed to be fixed are not
5. Damage scaling reduced by about 75% – even if mobs on high levels have less armor, they’re still hitting for lower than pre-HoT which means there is still little risk and still no challenge
6. Whether or not the tonic is still in the game
7. Price of salvaging ascended gear should be the loss of the gear itself, not 1 gold in addition
8. Uninspired instabilities

For once, I just want there to be an actual chance of failure in this game. I miss that. Party wipe should kick the group from the instance and party wipes should happen more often. As it stands there is no risk at all for virtually any groups (and I pug.)

What do you want to do? Do you want to beat the content or beat it efficiently? You can beat it in whatever gear you want, it’s easy enough. But as you’ve heard, condition gear will allow you to beat it more efficiently.

Arcadio.6875:

Dat reddit exchange

That last comment made me lol.

I want the pre-fractured fractals back, dredge clown cart and all. I want to spend 45 minutes killing the dredge clown car on fractal 79, and I want to fight fire shaman on fractal 79 and I want the skin drops to be 1/4 again.

I literally bought HoT because of the fractal patch, and as it stands I feel totally lied to. It’s not that fractals didn’t meet my personal expectations, it’s that they aren’t what ANET SAID they would be. I pmed Jon Smith and he sent me to a Reddit post saying he was looking into the reward drop rates… but as it stands the collection is still broken 2 weeks out, leaderboards are still “in the works” and none of the exploits were fixed. I honestly feel like these changes were completed in like two days by a single person and never tested. It honestly feels cut and pasted.

Instabilities: cut and paste
New Island with New Merchant: cut current island, remove the portal, add new character model with existing asset, add a few items
Collection: not touched
Exploits: not touched
Leaderboards: not touched
Rewards: touched, end result is the OPPOSITE of what they said it would be

Half the stuff that was discussed as selling points for the revamp, THE SELLING POINTS that got me to buy HoT weren’t included, and haven’t been added in the past few weeks. It just feels so dishonest that it hurts.

morrolan.9608:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Other notes:

1. Raid currency to buy boss rewards if you are unlucky with drops (even get some if you fail to kill the boss, limited to weekly amount)

2. High chance for ascended armor/weapon drop

15% is not a high chance and for raids its not sufficient.

15% is about one drop every 6 weeks (if there’s only one boss) which means about 9 months for a full precursor armor set if you don’t get duplicate pieces, but if you do it’s an even longer time.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Cannot-put-ascended-ring-in-MF/first#post5693596

There have literally been at least three threads on this.

Rings acquired before the Fractured patch with the +5 agony built in do not show up.

ANET has nobody working on dungeons or Fractals as is apparent from the total lack of bug fixes to promised Fractal content, so don’t look forward to a fix anytime in the near future. Maybe a few years from now after the Fractal Leaderboards are released, the collection has been fixed, the rewards have been fixed, and the exploits they claimed were fixed are actually… fixed.

DrEckers.2039:

I am a big fan of making the once per account achievements for completing all fractals of a tier like 76-100 infinitely repeatable. That would always give motivation to complete every fractal level as well as a guaranteed way of obtaining fractal skins. In addition if someone does not need the skins, they can still sell the boxes at the trading post for a small profit.

This is actually a decent idea.

Windsagio.1340:

dutchiez.7502:

There is no amount of boonstripping that can clear the boons a full zerk team generates on mobs with this instability. I haven’t tested it, but I am fairly confident in saying that a mesmer in zerk gear who is autoattacking with sword (which has a boon strip on the 3rd skill) would not be able to strip the boons it is generating with it’s own attacks.

The only way to “counter” this instability is to wear gear which does not have precision as a stat. This will mean your damage goes down the drain, any build that relies on on crit effects is extremely hampered (read: every build) and more importantly, everyone in your team will have to acquire a new set of ascended gear (armor, weapons, trinkets) just for the 20 levels that feature this instability.

Not what I would call great design.

But you haven’t tried it, and don’t quite get the build.

This is something we (well one of the others) figured out to try in the first 5 minutes of us doing the new fractals (doing the 50 right after HOT released). The Mesmer takes a fairly substantial dps drop because you’re not using damage phantasms, but the net party gain is enormous.

Of course the cleansing isn’t perfect, but it avoids the normal zerk party fury/retal/25 might/10 stability/protection/occasional aegis issue that you get in the 41-50 bracket otherwise.

~~~

Honestly this goes directly to my point. People never even tried to be creative in dealing with the instability, but instead tried to haedbutt it to death and then complain about it.

This is where leaderboards and good rewards might spur creative solutions. Incentives matter.

I mentioned in another thread that there is a recipe with relics, matrices and crystalline dust that no one has found to my knowledge. I’ll bet that’s it.

Anybody out there?

Uncle Melty.4297:

edit: Merch back up and I was wrong.

What was changed?

Kitta.3657:

It’s really as simple as if you don’t have leveled fractal mastery 3, your rewards are worse than before expansion (while they announced putting more rewards into fractals) but if you have the mastery they are closer to pre-hot rewards and the mastery system is only available to HoT purchases thus making it so they took away rewards from base game and put them behind a paywall now.

Even level 3 fractal mastery rewards seem lower than pre-HoT. Totally lame.

Paradox.1380:

You have some information wrong, they decreased Bosses HPs in all of Fractals. Fractals don’t take any longer than they used to. They are much faster in most cases.

Have you even played Fractals since the update? The scaling is easier on beginners at lower levels, but 50+ the bosses have VASTLY VASTLY higher HP pools.

phys.7689:

Windsagio.1340:

I think you’re working backwards from a narrative you’ve already decided on. There’s really nowhere to go with the discussion from there.

no, im basing this on experience an evidence in the game.
Only one facet is unproven, thats the data on whats in what chest,

5 daily chests for core before
4 daily chests for core now
5 daily chests available for Hot now

less earning in fractals now
More earning in fractals before

lower difficulty in fractals at scale X now

even ignoring the unknowns, the raw numbers currently objectively reflect devaluing of core content, with hot content

You’re right.

spoj.9672:

Pre-fractured rings didnt work for me and all my friends/guildies.

Yeah, I really think it’s an issue of ring age.

That fractured patch really was the worst.

KaosNinja.4967:

so 5 days ago (oct 23) i submitted a support ticket, not knowing this was a common issue.

at the end of the back n forth, all i ended up with was the generic “Currently this is a known issue and we are working on fixing it…will get back with you when we have found a solution.” and that last reply was 4 days ago.

when people reported an issue with the Specialization achievements, there was a fix within hours.
when people reported an issue with the Revenant achievements, there was a fix within hours.
This, as with all things Fractal related? " we’re working on it™ "

ANET has shown deference to small group content since GW2 was born. See dungeon team firing, fractal leaderboard broken promise, fractal reset, dungeon nerf, and now this.

Vespers, when you say they are taking away rewards from base game players are you referring to gold in dungeons and Fractals?

I sort of hear what you’re saying. It’s not like they paywalled BETTER rewards in the expansion, it’s that they nerfed rewards for base game players and then paywalled rewards that base game players previously had access to in the expansion.

It’s like this:

Base game before HoT: 1 gold per run
Base game after HoT: 30 silver per run
Expansion after HoT: 70 silver per run

(All numerical values are not actual, but are just representations.)

So to even get close to what Fractals rewarded before HoT, you have to buy the expansion.

It’s a legitimate complaint, no matter what some people say here.

They deleted my post saying that I was discussing exploits. Seems like it was.

rush in man.4506:

fractal lvl 2 is bloom

Moss for me.

rush in man.4506:

wich lvl you ned to kill mosman on ? swamp fractal is ounly scale 2 (bloom) and 21 ( mossman) but for chalange you need to kill mosman in frac 1-20 so wich one do i go to. or its a overlooked thing just like CoF farm

2 is not bloom if I remember correctly.

The entire Fractals update seems to be bugged to pieces (none of their fixes actually were fixed, some rings not showing up, weapon achievement broken, +10 AR item not functional) so I wouldn’t be surprised if this was too.

Lendruil.9061:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Lendruil.9061:

Nothing that they said got fixed was actually fixed. Condi dmg at dredgeboss e.g. still doesn’t scale up when he gets hit by the fire.
They probably just thought “hey, lets write it into the patchnotes, people probably won’t even try it out and just think that it got fixed.”

This is true except for Mossman. Open world really is the priority.

Just curious, what happens if you pull mossman under water?

My group wasn’t able to pull him in anymore.. That said, a pug was doing the pulling so he could’ve just failed miserably.

Lendruil.9061:

Nothing that they said got fixed was actually fixed. Condi dmg at dredgeboss e.g. still doesn’t scale up when he gets hit by the fire.
They probably just thought “hey, lets write it into the patchnotes, people probably won’t even try it out and just think that it got fixed.”

This is true except for Mossman. Open world really is the priority.

Andraus.3874:

Was there any Dev response somewhere on this like Reddit. I’m not so sure it won’t be nerfed/ deemed exploitive.

On twatter Chris implied it wasn’t an exploit.

Anyway, I too want to raise a glass to CoF. I’ve been here since the SUPER early days when CoF Path TWO was the main token farm for exo gear because everyone thought the boss of CoF Path 1 was impossible.

Drinks

GrimmR.3541:

It’s done!

http://i.imgur.com/F80jqzF.jpg

Grats! What’s the secret SC was talking about?

Lol

Upgrade recipe: Ecto, stabilizing matrix, gold relic, old skin.

Can get gold relics from salvaging gold weapons in addition to the achievement.

If anyone figures out the dust recipe post here.

Yep. Older rings that I’ve been using from the start don’t appear, with or without removing their infusions. Luckily I had hundreds of rings so I just did a swap out.

Toxicity.5392:

there’s a reddit post somewhere from yesterday showing the fractal skin combine recipes. 10 gold relics = skin of your choice

The relics’ description indicates you can combine four, not ten, for a golden skin. But as I indicated, there are other recipes to discover.

Minor spoilers below:

Well I had my fun for the weekend and I made it from Fractal 51-75. I’m going back to school tomorrow and won’t be able to play until Christmas so I thought I’d share my thoughts.

1. Fractals were fun, I enjoyed the increase in difficulty, but some of the instabilities seemed gimmicky and obnoxious (Cliffside exploding enemies.)
2. I was super disappointed the collection wasn’t fixed this weekend. I was looking forward to getting a gold skin but unfortunately now I’ll have to wait.
3. I was disappointed that ascended salvaging cost so much. I was looking forward to dumping my rings and clearing up bank space but I don’t have nearly enough gold.
4. There is a new rare collections achievement for salvaging ascended items. It’s called “Ascended Recycling” and requires individuals to salvage ascended gear and consume 6 powerful legendary items called “Salvaged Greatness, Puissance, Grandeur, Excellence, Brilliance, and Dignity.” If you eat all 6 you get a “Fractal Reliquary” and a title called “Fatebreaker” (lol at that title. just call it RNJesus won’t you?) The “Fractal Reliquary” trades fractal relics for something useful in the same vein of Mawdrey and the others.
5. The achievement for beating levels 51-75 gave me 2 golden relics. The description implies one can combine 4 to get a golden weapon in the forge. I discovered that they can also be used in other mystic forge recipes to upgrade the “old”, “blue” fractal weapons. They combine in the forge with “stabilizing matrices” and any old fractal weapon skin, but I couldn’t find the 4th ingredient. They also combine with stabilizing matrices and piles of crystalline dust, but I couldn’t find the 4th ingredient for that recipe either. Things that are OUT: gift of ascension, mists stone, all the mist essences, globs of dark matter, bottle of elonian wine, balls of dark energy, stars/ingots/bricks, vision crystals, philosopher’s stones, mystic crystals, agonized essence, 1 agony infusion, +5/7 versatile simple infusion, cube of stabilized dark energy. If anyone finds the 4th component to either recipe, let me know. As of right now you can’t get more than 2 golden fractal relics by any means that I am aware of (unless by the fractal relic eater, see point 4) so I don’t know how one can combine 4 relics into the forge to get a golden weapon.

Overall it was a fun experience and I am looking forward to playing again and getting to 100 during the holiday season.

Happy hunting.

Tom Yzf.5872:

enjoy

Dude you are seriously the best. Good luck with whatever games you frequent in the future! I will use it to advance the art of fractals

Thanks so much.

TPMN.1483:

There is nothing new !!

Its the same instabilities we’ve played before just stretched out – boss hp/dmg nerfed to hell….I mean did they have to make this stuff easier at all?

It was already being solo’d at lvl 50.

They are harder.

Get any good rewards? How did you get enough AR?

Tom Yzf.5872:

how much do you need?

The +10s are like 60-70 gold, I have like 10 ATM. any donations appreciated :P

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Welp, Cliffside is a pug breaker now, that’s for sure.
Worst hour of my life.

Lol my team wiped repeatedly on arm seals. Half the time was spent replacing pug rage quitters.

Tom Yzf.5872:

I would suggest to just accept the nerf and move on. This is old content that was going to get phased out anyway. Less people who do dungeons = more who will have to buy HoT to get rewarded.

I predict raids are not going to replace the fun I had with dungeons when the game first came out (nor have that fun last as long as it did) so I’m not going to buy HoT. With this nerf, I’m sure it will be hard finding pugs to play with. Seems I’m going to play less and less than the little I currently do.

Geez. The really sucky part is I have soo much gold/items hoarded up. Should’ve spent it all enjoyed it when I played more. xD Silly end of the world salty giveaway? who knows lol

I could use gold to buy more ar for new fractals

Don’t need the mastery line. Look harder, it’s an ascended pink box called fractal weapon box. Middle golem. If you seriously don’t see it send a ticket. It’s there for me without the mastery unlocked.