Guild Wars 2

Nah, no recorded evidence other than me being moderately wealthy after only playing fractals for the last year or so, and the old fractal spreadsheet data if that still exists. But then again you didnt show any evidence either. :b

Its true that fractal rewards werent top notch, that they maybe should have been improved, that they had a lot of issues like weapon rng, useless relics, that their value varied between players (such as asc glove box not being useful to players that only have one character or that already have multiple sets of ascended gloves on all characters).
My argument is that while they had these problems and were not top notch they were not a bad source of income if you played the content anyways. I also believe many people perceived fractal rewards to be MUCH worse than they actually were. In my experience fractals had consistently better indirect gold rewards (like gold item drops, t5 mats) compared to dungeons. Also getting an ascended glove box feels much less rewarding than being handed 30g for example.
Another thing that I believe lead to many complaints was how much they scale with player skill/experience compared to the rest of the game. Id agree that rewards were pretty kittenty if my average run took 40min+. Plus many players probably had no clue that you could consistently do runs in half that time, which would again lead to seeing the issue in the rewards.

Also im salty because the constant complaining was a surefire way to make anet up perceived rewards by putting more bullkitten boxes and random currencies into fractals.

tldr Speaking from my experience the consistent fractal rewards were very much good enough to not feel bad about the time spent playing them instead of dungeons or silverwastes or something. Plus you had the rng skins.

Would you agree? If not, why?

kubetz.3058:

Got the same issue, but running the instance on the same character that did it 1st time fixed it for me.

same

deSade.9437:

Rag.3258:

spoj.9672:

Nah they werent. Fractals have never been rewarding enough.

Yes they were. Fractals have been rewarding enough.

No they weren’t.

Yes they were

I can do this all week

spoj.9672:

Nah they werent. Fractals have never been rewarding enough.

Yes they were. Fractals have been rewarding enough.

Wethospu.6437:

• In Volcanic, you can use bundles to replicate stones to break his bubble really fast.

I bet anet will fix this one but none of the other bugs

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

Guardianway is kittening amazingly faceroll comp for pug groups. It fails way less than the standard meta comps.

If 5 Guardians are like that, imagine TEN, 10 guardians in raids. Call me crazy all you want, but I’m betting Guardianway will be the one of the easiest way to complete raids.

They will probably remove guardian from the game if first raid clear will be done with 10 guardians on the release day.

This almost gave me enough incentive to buy hot

Wethospu with a great example on how to present irrelevant numbers in a convincing way

Do mobs aggro healturret while youre stealthed?

frifox.5283:

I must be the god of clowns, I use feathers in ALL my runs.

^

Seems pretty unlikely that “challenging group content” will be harder than fractals

Mesmer is in a spot where they have the tools and strengths to replace assassin or engineer in the skipping role. Especially portal is probably the strongest skill in game.

Mesmers problem is that you and your party need to put more effort in (compared to kitten or engi) to play those strengths, which pretty much nobody in this game wants to do outside of record runs.

If you dont put that effort in or try to emulate guard or any other role you end up being a straight downgrade compared to other classes. Not completely useless, but bad enough to argue that you’re doing your group a disservice by not rolling a better class

fracture.9754:

Do you know that his range attacks can bug out and hit you regardless of range you are away from him?

The bug always happens, the aoe damage portion that should be centered around the archdiviner (physically hitting with the hammer) happens around the player he targets afaik. Like the ele blast heal blasts at the targets location instead of on yourself

EcoRI.9273:

thief still the preferred class.

Well thats just because kitten is still the easiest of the three skipping classes

Purple Miku.7032:

There is no consistency to Horrik’s aggro patterns, regardless of armor or hp values or damage or anything. He fires at both my ele and warrior in groups, neither more often than the other and I have noticed absolutely no pattern to it.

It’s Mai Trin’s aggro pattern that tends to be more consistent, as she always will go for a warrior or guardian over an ele. The only time I don’t get aggro when I’m on my warrior is on the occasion there’s another warrior and sometimes guards. I don’t know which value(s) she aggroes most off of for which attributes but my first guess would maybe be armor.

just did a mai trin, put on nomads gear and had aggro of both mai trin and electroshot pretty much all the time. it wasnt 100% but pretty close.
that run didnt go well, we had someone ressing almost all the time, mesmer channeling mantras, pugs with questionable zerker gear etc.
so yeah, its pretty consistent

I’m just saying its actually one of the least random and most controllable aggro mechanics in game

Aleth.9630:

• It’s awfully designed with the random aggro from Horrik. Yes, strong teamwork should be encouraged, but when soloing a boss feels much better than doing it with 4 random non-terrible players, something is wrong. The complete lack of controllable aggro is a huge oversight for this fight.

Both mai trin and horriks electroshot are actually super likely to aggro high defense characters. Put some toughness on your guard or war and theyll stick to you like glue.

That worked like a year ago at least

I’d join for the all cutscenes runs

Edit: as long as I dont have to record

lol

you seem to have a talent for writing things that go over peoples heads

well having access to the strongest skill in game sure helps

Nah hes right, if you push a mes into a guardians role you end up with a kittenty guardian that doesn’t use any of the mesmers potential. Might as well just use a guard. If you replace the assassin however you can actually play mesmers strengths and outperform assa/engi in some regards.

I’d suggest ele

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Rag.3258:

Does food even work in the pvp lobby?

It does if you apply it before you enter the lobby.

TIL

If it has a night sky or is mostly underground it’s probably a night time instance. Excluding molten and mai trin (edit: and reactor) fractals because anet didn’t pay attention.

Does food even work in the pvp lobby?

If you play with bad pugs take strength. If you play with average to good pugs take frailty or accuracy. If you play in very good or perfect groups take air or impact.

Thaddeus.4891:

No you tested when the ele stack might first and then the guardian stack shorter might on top of it. I’m talking about the other way around.

2: 2 guards@100% might duration, 1 ele@175% might duration. Ele stacks 21 stacks of might at the same time as both guards empower. Might goes to 25, then quickly drops to 21, then stays at 21 for a long while before dropping to 0 quickly. Looks like 2 empowers only added 4 stacks. PvP-Environment.

:|

Thaddeus.4891:

The problem is when short boon are first and they limit the longer boon. Like if a guardian empower and then a ele stack 18 stack. The group will quicly drop to 13 stack and not 18.

Well I tested that just a few posts above your post and thats just not what happened.

…is still broken. Just tested this by hitting a testing golem for 5mins with >100% critchance.

85% of ticks happened within 5-6 seconds of each other, 15% took longer than that. No ticks happened less than 5 seconds of each other. On average ticks happened every 5,9 seconds.

Just letting you know in case you didn’t or were wondering if it was fixed. I’d say its probably not worth bringing for daytime dungeons @5s cooldown.

SlyDevil.3952:

Rag.3258:

Short boons in general don’t overwrite longer boons, don’t see why staff 4 should be an exception. Have you tested this yourself?

New boons overwrite the oldest stacks, same with old style conditions(Pre-patch, vuln still gets overwritten). So the first 12 might stacks are going to get overwritten, you lose ~7-8 seconds on those first 12 stacks.

I don’t know how you got to this conclusion. I just checked again, these are the three tests that I did:

1: 1 Guard@100% might duration, 1 ele@175% might duration. Ele stacks 18 stacks of might, then guard does empower. Might goes from 18 to 25, then drops back to 18 shortly after and all the 18 stacks drop off roughly the same time a long while later. Looks like empower only added 7 stacks. PvP-Environment.

2: 2 guards@100% might duration, 1 ele@175% might duration. Ele stacks 21 stacks of might at the same time as both guards empower. Might goes to 25, then quickly drops to 21, then stays at 21 for a long while before dropping to 0 quickly. Looks like 2 empowers only added 4 stacks. PvP-Environment.

3: 1 War@160% vuln duration, 2 wars@100% vuln duration. 1 War stacks to 24 vuln, then other wars shout OMM. Vuln goes to 25, then visibly drops to 24. Looks like 2xOMM only added 1 Vuln. PvE-Environment.

(4: 1PS war@145% might duration, silverwastes. Mapwide carrier bonus of 25 stacks might for like a minute gets applied. Keep attacking, stop attacking, Might stays on. PvE-Environment, noticed a few days ago.)

All those tests look like gw2 is intelligently kicking stacks, which is exactly what it looked like in my previous test. Honestly I think you didn’t check your facts at all, which would be pretty annoying, but please tell me if and how you did.

Purple Miku.7032:

Staff #4 is not supportive. It is detrimental as it will override might generated by eles/warriors which last a long time. Don’t use it.

Pretty sure it doesn’t though? Short boons in general don’t overwrite longer boons, don’t see why staff 4 should be an exception. Have you tested this yourself?

deSade.9437:

Well, let’s put it this way: Shiro better be a freaking awesomely, game-breakingly, orgasmingly op son of a kitten to even get close.

Sounds like Shiro to me

You can hover your mouse over your party members portraits to see where they are

How about you play how you want and let others play how they want?

@spoj: yeah I didnt add power, crits etc to vp (in fact I forgot that lifesteal scales at all). I just used an average build to compare +39 damage per hit by vp to +39 damage per hit by x amount of power. I also assumed a 2600 armor target.

Regarding symbolic avenger and stacking symbols I just did a quick test in hotm . Equipping only honor, radiance and zeal and picking only symbolic avenger as major trait, then spamming mace, gs and staff symbol on top of each other. I grabbed the highest critical damage and put it into the damage formula with (vuln*symbolic avenger) as unknown value. If I didn’t kitten up the math the highest crit was done with about 1,39 modifier from (vuln*symbolic avenger), which is surprisingly close to 1,05*1,1*1,1*1,1 (estimated 5 vuln from the minor trait). Vuln and weapon damage range give a bit of wiggle room, but not enough for almost +40% damage.

On the other hand a guard on quickness isn’t really stacking symbols, but the trait behaves oddly anyways (put down a single symbol on a random mob and watch the trait trigger only on some of the hits), and maybe quickness is messing with the trait. Maybe the trait is bugged but has no influence on the damage of guardway.

Wuselknusel.4082:

Rag.3258:

Wuselknusel.4082:

Ranger were able to abuse the blast finisher on pet swap in some, very gimmicky situations (You needed a tonic without cooldown for that. You would just spam the tonic to get a blast finisher each time you transform).

The logic reaction to that bug is obviously to give the trait a 30s IRC, while the petswap is 15s untraited. Logic. Balancing at its finest.

Tbf that trait stated 30s cooldown from the start, it was just bugged and fixed.

Yeah, because one blastfinisher on a 15s cooldown is way too OP…

I’m just saying I dont think whoever changed that trait spent much thought about whether it was strong or not, he was probably just making the trait work like the tooltip states it would.

Btw, Vampiric Presence feels a bit underwhelming doesnt it? On a buffed zerker build @3.4k power, 1000 average weapon strength and an average modifier of 2 per hit (including traits*equip*vuln*crits = 4x, skillmodifier = 0.5x) I get a damage increase equivalent to roughly +50 power. I felt 3.4k power and *4 modifier were a good estimate for an average meta pug build. I’m unsure about the average per hit skillmodifier of 0.5, some classes like necro or maybe guard might go below that, others should go above? I think on among all classes 0.5 skillmod per hit should be on the lower end. If we increase power, average weapon strength or modifiers, vampiric presences performance only gets worse compared to +stat.

250 power among the party from a single trait isnt bad, and the trait performs comparatively better in different groups, and anet has to consider the selfheal (eh) but still, I was hoping for a little more. Or maybe my math is wrong, thats not unlikely.

Wuselknusel.4082:

Ranger were able to abuse the blast finisher on pet swap in some, very gimmicky situations (You needed a tonic without cooldown for that. You would just spam the tonic to get a blast finisher each time you transform).

The logic reaction to that bug is obviously to give the trait a 30s IRC, while the petswap is 15s untraited. Logic. Balancing at its finest.

Tbf that trait stated 30s cooldown from the start, it was just bugged and fixed.

Hero.3527:

Well with the way it is now with radiance and zeal, radiance gives you more access for blinds for the trash mobs, zeal gives you more vulnerability on blinds. With just the symbols heals and aegis and perma protection u can outheal mossman and many other bosses. Mayb 1 guard going into virtues would work better but not all imo.

Zeal is pretty much given and Honor is too strong to drop with empowering might and writ of persistence, so it comes down to radiance vs virtues.
Radiance: 10%^retal, 10% critchance^burn, stronger burns or +30stat per signet
Virtues: 20%^aegis, more burns, 1% per boon
I’d take virtues unless im facing very strong trash.

Just did a frac as well, using Zeal 223, Virtues 111 and Honor 132. It really is ursanway like, pretty strong for how simple it is. You can just facetank through some mechanics. Now if guards had stealth.. ^^

It is anything goes, but its not like this comp has bad synergy

Talyn.3295:

Wonder how long before we start to see, “Hammer guard only groups” In the LFG box

Hope they pick it up asap

Miku Lawrence.6329:

I love it, looks like Ursanway.

Thats a great comparison ^^

Probably, but maybe I’m just missing something

So my ele gets +150 base power from just equipping fire traitline, plus the +150 for a total of 1300 power when completely naked and in fire, and 1150 in every other attunement. Any reason for that?

@Miku, regarding archdiviner not being stunned, this might explain why -> click

I’ve never trioed much myself, but I’ve wondered about the many (phalanx) wars since the trio tournament. Banners and mightbuffing scale with the amount of players affected, but the damage loss that a (phalanx) war is compared to ele is a more fixed value. So if (phalanx) war is in an okay place in a high dps 5 man group it should be quite a bit worse off in a 3 man group.
Is the robustness of war worth that much in your eyes?

insanemaniac.2456:

you can literally group up and push auto run with swiftness on and never get hit by cannons

.. And then lag out.

I don’t see a problem with that if theres people buying it. You’re buying 15-30mins of content skipped (probably a lot more if youre buying) and getting more unique rewards than from say arah so ~10g seems appropriate.

Swamp Fractal

Album Rooms
Album Monsters
Added a picture of a safespot close to each wisp. Wisps are counterclockwise.

Animations:
Bloomhunger – Shoot
Bloomhunger – Entangle
Bloomhunger – Poison Rain
Bloomhunger – Summon Spirits

Spider Eggs – Plop

Trap – Attack1

Tripwire – Attack1

Wisp – Binding Roots

Wisp Route 1
Wisp Route 2

Missing:
Mossman

Uncategorized Fractal:

Album Rooms
Album Monsters

Animations:
Baron von Scrufflebutt – Rocket
Baron von Scrufflebutt – Golem Rockets

Ettin – Sweep
Ettin – Shockwave
Ettin – Massive Smash
Ettin – Bellow

Harpy Hunter – Shoot
Harpy Hunter – Multi Shoot

Mr. Mittens – Smash
Mr. Mittens – Whirling Assault
Mr. Mittens – Punch
Mr. Mittens – Slash

Old Tom – Disrupting Blasts
Old Tom – Chain Lightning
Old Tom – Launch Fist

Professor Mew – Punch
Professor Mew – Charge

Rabbit – Jumpkick

Raving Asura – Lightning Bolt
Raving Asura – Lightning Blast

Snuggles – Static Field
Snuggles – Golem Rockets

Room 1 – Run – Slow
Room 1 – Run – Fast
Room 3 – Run – Slow
Room 3 – Run – Fast
Room 3 – Run – Faster
Room 3_2 – Run – Fast
Room 5 – Run

Missing Animations:
FRACTAL_UNCATEGORIZED_MOB_HARPY HUNTER_3PULSING ORB
FRACTAL_UNCATEGORIZED_MOB_ETTIN_5BREAK STUN
Anything that Shaman and Bandit do, Rabbit bite

“You can use Blink to skip all harpies and then Portal your team. Unsure how this exactly works.” – If this is referencing the trick that was used a while after fracs were released, this was fixed.

Old Tom -> Untraited Phantasmal Warden is able to absorb every projectile of his spinning attack. – To my knowledge, fixed

Baron von Scrufflebutt, Golem Rockets: Can’t be blocked. 17 CD Spreads arms and spins (3 s), shoots rockets. -> doesnt spin, rather punches (see .gif)

Apologies for the bad quality on some of the gifs.

Talzed.4153:

So this lead me to an idea. If you kick a player from a group, you should need to wait at least 10 minutes before you can repost in LFG.

Are you kidding me?