Guild Wars 2

TChalla.7146:

I think all rabbits in game should become aggressive and be the highest level creatures in whatever area they are located.

Imagine the chaos if they all were converted to the Champion Rabbit from Fractals…

I think you may be approaching this from the wrong direction. While it’s nice to have, there isn’t any pressing need for ascended armor in the game currently outside of high level Fractals, so there’s no reason for you to have to rush through making it. Especially since you are now able to process the time-gated materials, just play the game normally and you’ll have your set soon enough.

Enko.6123:

Slacker.2679:

I feel that everyone is forgetting that Guild Wars 2 is not about vertical progression. This is the exact reason that Legendary weapons do not offer any advantage in terms of stats over the previous tier, and instead offer horizontal progression in terms of the skin and prestige. The only reason that stat switching is even there is because it is not a reasonable request for players to make a legendary weapon for each set of desired stats. Sigils on the other hand can be overridden and changed for the same cost as any other weapon.

Adding sigil swapping or increased stats only to Legendary weapons would be an example of vertical progression and not something that works with the overall design direction of the game. It would have to be a change made to both Legendary AND Ascended to be considered, and this is not something that is likely to happen.

Personally, I feel that a more reasonable approach would be to make upgrade extractors cheaper, or to enable the removal of sigils for a fixed amount of gold.

How is this an example of vertical progression? Adding stats is, yes. Being able to swap your sigils at will is a matter of convenience. As you already said, stat swapping is there since its not reasonable to make a separate weapon for each. People don’t have to. They can always transmute the skin.
Legendaries need something to set themselves apart from ascended and stat swapping is the only thing there is. Adding sigil swapping to them would give them an extra perk and it wouldn’t be giving them extra abilities or anything.
If you consider sigil swapping to be vertical progression, then you should be considering stat swapping vertical progression as well.

It’s vertical progression because it presents an advantage over the previous tier of weapons. Selectable stats is technically an advantage as well, but it’s reasonable because it is simply too costly for players to craft multiple legendary weapons to change the base stats. Since there is no change in the cost of swapping sigils over any other tier of weapon, adding sigil swapping only to Legendary weapons would present a clear advantage. Whether it be a pure stat advantage or one of convenience, it’s still there.

I feel that everyone is forgetting that Guild Wars 2 is not about vertical progression. This is the exact reason that Legendary weapons do not offer any advantage in terms of stats over the previous tier, and instead offer horizontal progression in terms of the skin and prestige. The only reason that stat switching is even there is because it is not a reasonable request for players to make a legendary weapon for each set of desired stats. Sigils on the other hand can be overridden and changed for the same cost as any other weapon.

Adding sigil swapping or increased stats only to Legendary weapons would be an example of vertical progression and not something that works with the overall design direction of the game. It would have to be a change made to both Legendary AND Ascended to be considered, and this is not something that is likely to happen.

Personally, I feel that a more reasonable approach would be to make upgrade extractors cheaper, or to enable the removal of sigils for a fixed amount of gold.

hybrid.5027:

As Weth said, instabilities/gambits just create simple systems that can be and are being gamed.

The real solution is to increase the boss mechanics as you go up tiers. No extra HP sponge / extra damage gimmicks like the original 50-80 fractals. Legit, difficult raid style mechanics. Archdiviner at 80 should be akin to one of the medium difficulty Wildstar raid bosses. Ofcourse this is difficult to program and time consuming for devs. But the end result would be, by far, the best content in the game.

My proposal…

51-60: Bosses get one additional mechanic to add complexity to the fight, ideally a coordination check or a CC check. No more rings on loot table. Ring drops replaced with greater chance at ascended loot boxes (pickable stats) and fractal weapon boxes rarely 10-20% (pickable skin). will be challenging for pug groups, slightly more difficult then a 50 for organized teams. 5g for completion bonus + 10s per level. Expected 30-60 mins for organized team.

61-70: Bosses become akin to hardmode raid bosses, roughly equal to one of the first few Wildstar raid bosses. Complicated AOE patterns, CC checks, coordination checks. Extremely challenging for pug groups, challenging for organized groups. Rewards would be 34% chance at fractal weapon box, 66% chance for ascended weapon/armor box (pick stats). 10g for completion at 61+10s per level above. 60-90 mins for organized team.

71-80: Bosses become akin to traditional nightmare mode raid bosses in complexity, roughly equal to a moderate difficulty Wildstar raid boss. Same checks as previous tier but increased individual responsibility, such as mechanics that require the team to split up to different sections of the arena to accomplish individual challenging tasks. Virtually impossible for a pug groups, extremely challenging for organized team. 25g for completion+10s per level, 50% chance at a fractal weapon box AND 100% chance ascended gear box (pick stats). 90-120 mins for organized team.

Surely we won’t get anything like this, but it would provide a framework for challenging group content utilizing increasingly complex mechanics. And the loot is technically the same stuff at each tier (just more as you go up) so casuals can’t complain that the skill gate is keeping them away from some prestige item.

Additional reward: As you level up when you reach a new tier you unlock a new title to show off how far you’ve progressed. Once you hit 80 you get “Fractal Master” which is a title one would well and truly deserve if this prop was implemented.

-Nike

While the rewards may need to be tweaked a bit, I feel this post is an excellent representation of what the future of Fractal progression should look like. Fractals have already been scaled up as high as they should go without adding new mechanics instead of overall tankiness. And for 51-60 at least, PLEASE don’t add any more AOE/one-shot boss mechanics. I think that something like this would be more interesting:

• Cliffside: In addition to the stacking debuff, the hammer must complete a full rotation through the party before being picked up again by the same individual.

This would make things much harder for uncoordinated groups, but be doable by experienced and coordinated players.

In regards to Mistlock Instabilities, I think that they’re an excellent idea but as many others have stated, they are widely unbalanced and there is no real incentive to run the more difficult ones. Instead of rebalancing them however, I feel that an incentive should simply be added to coerce players into completing each one. An achievement maybe?

• The Stabilizer: Complete a full fractal rotation with each Mistlock Instability active. Scales up to 10AP at 20/20.

10AP wouldn’t be enough to make most people run these, so I feel that an additional reward would be necessary. I would like to see it tied to the “freebie” Fractal Weapon box I mentioned earlier from achievements, or if a dedicated way to purchase them is introduced then it should instead reward a bunch of Pristine Relics. A “The Stabilizer” title would be pretty neat as well

Essentially what I’m getting at is that while the current rewards system is in place (with skins remaining the only prestigious item), players should be expected to fully complete Fractals 1-50 to receive ONE skin of their choice, and 51+ in order to receive more or complete the collection.

Kronos.2560:

With the recent daily fractal (get extra pristine) I would understand if they made it 50. But I also agree that 100 +10 gold is overkill. The skins aren’t that elite, I’ve seen plenty of first timers get the skin i want in 11-19 fractals. Rng just happens to not be my friend. And just curious if its only 10 for a ring why would it need to be 100 for a skin? I mean they aren’t that elite of skins, it just sucks to try and get the last one you need (opposed to just duplicate warhorns/tridents).

All of my suggestions are essentially structured around maintaining the current balance in Fractals. The developers already went through a major rebalancing of rewards with Fractured, and because of this I don’t believe it is likely that they will significantly change the balance again in the future. Therefore, I believe it is the most productive to discuss changes that would minimally impact the current balance of things, while resolving headaches for players wherever possible.

In regards to Fractal Weapon skins, I believe it is important to look at what goes into the skins, versus whether or not they’re desirable overall. As I mentioned before they are designed with a high polygon count, have free-floating and moving parts, have very detailed particle effects, and some of the weapons leave trails. In terms of quality these are nicer than ascended skins, and somewhere in between ascended and legendary. This is my reasoning as to why they should not be easy to obtain.

If skins were readily available for 25-50 relics, I feel that would also be very frustrating to many long time players as it would significantly devalue all of the time invested in running high level Fractals for skins. I feel that the best solution for everyone would be to make it so players could reasonably expect to get no more than 1-2 skins in a dedicated manner, be it either from achievements or relics, which is where I got the 100 and 10g figure from. I still believe that one skin from achievements is all that should be guaranteed, but if a purchasing system were introduced then the costs should be proportionally high.

In addition, it’s never a good idea to balance rewards around the luckiest of players. Saying skins should be easy to obtain because some people were lucky enough to get them at 11-20, would be akin to saying that precursors should have a 50% drop chance because some people throw a handful exotics into the forge and get Dusk.

Kronos.2560:

I agree with Slacker’s post for the most part. Though I would like the ability to buy fractal skins with pristine relics. I don’t care if its 25 or even 50 for 1 skin, as long as it is EVENTUALLY attainable. That would still keep the skins rare but not purely rely on rng which after 2 years can still leave you lacking the one weapon skin you actually want.

I feel that if a dedicated method to obtain skins were to be introduced, that 25 or 50 pristine relics would be far too cheap. In order to keep things balanced I would favor something like this:

• Fractal weapons skins can be purchased for 100 Pristine Relics + 10g and require a personal reward level of 50 or higher to purchase.

The amounts required could increase depending on balance as desired by the devs, but I think a minimum of these three factors should be required.

I figure this is as good a place as any to share my thoughts on Fractals in general. I’ll repost and elaborate on these once an official discussion thread is created, but I figure I may as well get this out there for people to comment on. To start off…

“PUG Killer” Fractals
I feel that there are some fractals that are particularly complicated for pickup groups to run, particularly the Volcanic fractal. Obviously “get good” is the easiest answer, but I feel that can be difficult as the boss fight is particularly unforgiving even if you know the mechanics, and there is no way to practice it on a regular basis. It’s a bit out there, but what if we had something like this?

• Players would be able to receive a buff for the final boss that reduces their outgoing damage by 50%, but makes them immune to fire damage.

This would obviously make the fight drag out much longer, but it would give an alternative to groups simply giving up on the third fractal after running into this boss. Additionally not everyone would have to take the buff, so it would open up new strategies such as having a dedicated healer.

Fractal Weapon skins
To start off with, I’d like to point out that these are extremely polished skins. They have high polygon counts, particle effects, and there are even trails on many of the weapons. This makes them of higher quality than even most of the Black Lion skins which sell for 50g at an absolute minimum. Because of this, I do not feel that there should be an easy way to obtain them. If anything, I would see these changes:

• Fractal weapon boxes drop at tier 51-60, and have an increased chance to drop over the 41-50 tier. I believe the devs are already planning on this change, but if there is no tier increase I would like to see fractal weapon boxes begin to drop at 41-50.
• Give people a freebie, but don’t make it easy. You could get ONE skin (weapon box) per account by completing all of the achievements. An achievement would be added to complete a fractal daily at reward level 50 (or current max) to prevent players from getting them solely at lower levels.

This would alleviate much of the frustration of people who want to complete their collection, or want one skin in particular that they’ve been playing for years for, without giving them away like ascended rings candy.

Training
As of now, there’s no way to practice an individual encounter. I would like to see something like this:

• A training/replay mode for fractals could be introduced where parties would be able to play an individual fractal for reduced/no rewards. This would be a great asset for guild groups who would like to help players with particularly troublesome encounters. Rewards would depend on game balance, but given the farmability of swamp they would probably be removed altogether.

Ascended Rings
This is another hot topic as myself and many other players have a growing inventory of rings that can’t be salvaged or used as anything else outside of vendor trash. I believe that this is mainly due to a lack of salvaging for ascended equipment and may be rectified in the future, but in the short term I think that these changes would help:

• Ascended rings should be given a vendor value of 1g, similar to ascended weapons.
• To balance this, ascended rings would cost 1g in addition to 10 pristine relics from the vendor. This is still extremely cheap for ascended tier equipment and would prevent relics > gold conversion.

If nothing is going to change, I would like to hear a definitive response from the developers confirming this so I can retire my inventory in peace.

Fluff
There are a few things that I would like to see that don’t necessarily effect the game balance overall. For instance:

• Why on earth don’t we have a Baron von Scrufflebutt mini yet?

I would like to see this, and other fractal specific items drop from the boss chests. It would liven things up and give us some flair to carry around to the rest of the game.

Bererker gear is pretty much part of the meta at this point and isn’t likely to change. Part of the problem that caused this is that dungeon monsters were “balanced” by making them tanky more than anything else, so groups want DPS in order to reduce the frustration of long fights. These were also like this since the game’s release.

To me the game has been moving in the right direction, especially with the living story fights. Both of the dragon bosses were not particularly tanky, but introduced new mechanics in order to avoid damage and make the boss vulnerable. This makes other gear more viable (I did them on my PTV Engineer without issue) but still trains the player towards avoiding damage and attacks altogether. In that case Berzerker gear will still be the end-goal to be able to use in fights.

Novuake.2691:

maddoctor.2738:

Novuake.2691:

maddoctor.2738:

Novuake.2691:

maddoctor.2738:

MSI Afterburner is just a 3rd party utility that DISPLAYS information, by default it’s not optimizing anything. Shows you CPU/GPU usage, ram usage, vram usage, fan speed etc. It allows players to see where their bottleneck is. When any of these counters reaches 100% it means it’s the bottleneck and what’s causing the FPS drop.

Sometimes in GW2 you experience lag and fps drop when the CPU/GPU are both not used 100%, and there is enough RAM available, that’s one clear indication of the VRAM getting full.

Common misconception.

Bottleneck does not require one “resource” to display as being fully utilized.

Consider this :

Graphics running @ 80%.
Quad core CPU running @ 60%.
However 2 of the 4 “cores” are running at 30% each.
RAM is still more than empty enough.

Is there a bottleneck?

Not 100% utilized, but if it goes above 80% then there might be a problem there. If with the above info there is also huge FPS drop there are two possible Bottlenecks.

A) The 2 cores that are not running at 30% are way high up in usage, the engine isn’t optimized to spread the load between cores causing trouble.
B) If everything else looks fine check the VRAM

OK ill add more refinement.

VRAM underutilized, lets say 50%.
Other cores on CPU are barely even being touched by usage.

And still having huge FPS issues? I guess next stop is network and hard disk usage…. Usually FPS drops can be explained with data, I don’t get what you want to say? That a PC might appear completely unutilized and still have severe fps drop issues?

Jip. Last part, sorry you keep skirting the point im getting to. :P Not intentionally I am sure. Anyway.

Point is assuming everything looks to be underutilized.
Can it mean there is a bottleneck or not?

Bottleneck is a general term… it doesn’t have to be hardware, it could be anything including the game engine that is preventing the rest of the system from being utilized fully.

There is definitely a bottleneck somewhere in the game engine. During world bosses my CPU stays around 80%, but my GPU usage tanks down to almost nothing. I have 4gb of VRAM, and 16gb of normal RAM so that’s not the issue. Game is running off an SSD so it’s not a hard drive or pagefile issue. I haven’t monitored network usage but I’ll try that with tonight’s Teq to see how much it’s actually using.

I think what needs to happen is an improved scaling system for effects during large events. For example I don’t need to see the path of every projectile and it’s associated effects that’s launched at a boss, and scaling it down to something like a simple “ping” to know that someone else’s attack has hit would be good enough while keeping the framerate up. I would be curious as to how much overhead this would reduce if any, but I don’t think the devs will be willing to discuss this level of detail on how the engine works.

I wasn’t sure where to put this, but it seemed more appropriate in general discussion as it isn’t a thread about the dungeon or drop rates, and the suggestions forum has been archived. As things stand there is a somewhat buggy collection in the game for Fractal weapon skins called Fractal Master with no reward outside of 10AP. This doesn’t seem right to me, as something so hard to complete should have a much more satisfying reward.

That’s why I’m proposing as a reward an Ascended (or Exotic) trinket/amulet with selectable stats that gives your character a mists aura similar to how Oontz’s necklace included a gem that covered your character in a dark aura. I am not sure how difficult this would be to achieve with the current game engine, but I just wanted to throw it out there. Feedback and other suggestions are of course welcomed.

Disclaimer: I have several Fractal skins but am nowhere close to completing the collection.

I agree, this has been beaten to death and it’s clear that the devs have no plans to change things. But while we’re at it I’ll throw in my 2c. I think at the very least we should see:

*Have all fractal weapons drop as a box instead of a random weapon
*Create a vendor to trade existing, unused skins for a fractal weapon box

This would eliminate a large portion of headaches while still allowing the skins to be extremely rare as they seem to be intended.

In regards to the Fractals 21-30 daily, there is absolutely NO reason that this should be included in the rotation. A very small portion of the player base is even of a high enough level to complete them, and all it does is cause problems for people who are trying to run them normally.

We had one guy in a level 21 run last night that had absolutely no agony resist, and this wasn’t apparent until the second fractal. We felt too bad to kick him, but his logic was that he “needed” the daily and thus it was okay to be carried through the fractals. And he was indeed carried; by the end of the run he had no armor left intact. I hate doing gear checks and generally try to be laid back about things, but this is getting ridiculous.

Elricht Kaltwind.8796:

Kryptonite.9376:

They aren’t cheats if they level the playing field.

I’m sorry, but in video game terms, isn’t that the exact definition of a cheat?

It’s really determined by how you want to interpret things. But to me, it’s not a cheat if it brings unintentionally broken content down to a reasonable level of difficulty.

However, if Adnul was designed to intentionally be this hard, then I would consider it a cheat. I find this hard to believe though, because there is a time-limited achievement (Grandmaster of Om) that requires you to beat Adnul to achieve, and at this level of difficulty it’s possible that most players would miss out on it.

In addition, to me any NPC that has to “cheat” to beat the player (healing faster than possible with a human player, etc) is bad design. This is not how difficult content should be designed.

I’m hoping these will take a fair amount of effort to get, but not entirely held behind an RNG wall (especially paid RNG) like the current BL skins. These are the first set of weapon skins that I am really, really looking forward to so I am going to be putting a lot of effort towards them, it would just be a shame if it’s all for nothing.

Minos.3450:

Well, Mai Trin is currently emprisoned in LA, charged with murder of a member of the council. She hasn’t even the slightest chance of ever becoming council member through an election (she wouldn’t even be able to apply for a seat).

The devs have stated that the election is based on pirate politics… for all we know, there might be a rule somewhere saying that if you kill a council member you’re entitled to their position.

Not a troll thread, I’m completely serious. Both of the current candidates are offering very similar promises and it’s obvious everyone is going to vote for Evon Gnashblade because of the Black Lion discounts. Would make things more interesting if a new challenger were to appear

I for one am hoping that Mai Trin will be announcing her candidacy for the council position. I think she could bring about some… interesting changes to Lion’s Arch.

Now that her cover’s blown, what’s left to lose?

It’s becoming a joke… extra rings are little more than vendor trash at the moment. I got tired of them filling up my bank so I just made a ring holder alt and dumped them all there until they’re useful for something else.

I think part of the problem is that anet hasn’t decided how ascended items are going to be salvaged/crafted, or don’t want to introduce a system yet. Because rings are no longer unique to fractals (and ascended items overall are available through other parts in the game) making them salvageable for fractal relics or essence doesn’t make sense. Making them salvageable for ectos doesn’t make much sense either, as you can already get them from rares and exotics and I don’t want to see another tier of “0-8” ectos and get 0-1 99% of the time.

However, if this is the case, I think the entire player base would appreciate a response relating to why this hasn’t been introduced yet, regardless of the reason. If it’s not ready yet just say so

Guesting is not the issue here. The server still has a set capacity which is not getting surpassed, the problem lies in when 99% of the players allowed on a map are in one place for an event. This is NOT something that can be fixed by disabling or changing guesting, and would instead require a serious overhaul of how the game handles large events.

I would also like to request that people stop throwing around the word “exploit” like it applies to everything that makes you the slightest bit unsatisfied. You can still only loot one chest per character per day, so the system is working as intended and there is no reason whatsoever to consider this an exploit now that they fixed people being able to open multiple chests.

Sorry but I had to

I’ve been doing 20+ fractals almost daily since they were introduced and I’ve gotten:

1 Pistol
2 Longbows
1 Greatsword
1 Harpoon

My warrior is basically rolling in the skins but I have yet to get a rifle for my Engineer (who is my main), but such is RNG

I know I’ll probably get flak for this, but I very much like the rarity of these skins. It’s nice to know that there is at least something in this game that as a casual player, I have the same chance to obtain as someone who is able to spend the time to grind for a legendary (which I gave up on a long time ago).

That said, I would still like to see some way to work towards one that isn’t completely dependent on RNG. Either some combination of a large amount of regular/pristine relics (no RNG), or the ability to throw 4 infused rings into the forge (some RNG) for a chance at one.

On another note, I hope at some point in the future we can upgrade these to ascended quality as the skins seem to fit the category… for a cost, of course

I would like to know how they are going to be infused as well. Although I’m holding off on getting my amulet until they reveal whether or not they’ll be available through fractals, either via drop or relics.

I hope they can help you out, since imo this isn’t a case of misclicking, there is an expectation that anything you upgrade through the forge will be account bound even if it was previously soulbound.

Heck, even the ascended backpiece and rings operate like this, upgrading the fractal capacitor from exotic to ascended un-soulbinds it.

I bought 25 keys during the Black Friday sale and got a lot of boosters and tools that I was hoping for to aid in leveling alts. After that I’ve gotten very few keys, and usually through story mode events and once I actually got a drop in the open world.

Why haven’t I bought any more? Because the chest drops recently are absolute kitten. I don’t want unidentified dyes that I can find off of a corpse in the open world, miniscule amounts of guild influence, or bags of coin that are barely worth a few silver.

The skins are notably different, you can check here for more details and pictures:

http://dulfy.net/2012/11/17/gw2-ascended-gear-and-infusion-recipes/

As for the recipe changing I haven’t been paying attention to rumors but I certainly hope not, it would be a huge kick in the face to those of us who have spent 250+ ectos (100g!) on them already to infuse.

Ideally I would like to see something like this:

4 Ascended Rings in MF → 1 Random Infused Ascended Ring
4 Infused Ascended Rings in MF → 1 Random Fractal Weapon skin (rarity loss aside)

IMO this would make everyone happy without making the skins too easy to get, and people would have something to spend excess pristine relics on. Of course, I will be happy with any solution ArenaNet comes up with, as long as there IS a solution and we’re not just left in limbo

Because the rings are awarded by RNG, I figure we should be able to do something equivalent with them… like throw 4 in the forge for a chance at a different ring or a Fractal Weapon skin. I have a bank tab filled with rings that I just can’t bring myself to sell or destroy, this would ease up on my hoarding habits

I’m also hoping for a way to purchase Fractal Weapon skins with pristine relics (like 50!) but I doubt that will happen anytime soon if at all.

Sylvari T2 Cultual, using Abyss and Redemption dye.

Bumping this to see if anyone else has the same issue.

I made a video of the issue, quality isn’t very good as I recorded it on my laptop but it should get the point across just fine.

I understand there are bigger issues ArenaNet is working on, however it would be nice to see this fixed eventually

I figured I’d post this as nobody seems to have brought it up before, and I was wondering if anyone else had the same issue.

When firing the longbow continuously (dual shot on Warrior) it seems to cycle through several different animations, and they don’t always play correctly. In the ‘correct’ animation, you are seen pulling the string back and the bow bends with you. In another animation, which I’m not sure is intentional or partially bugged, you pull the string back but the bow does not bend. And the entirely broken one, which I’ve included a screenshot of, you do not ‘catch’ the string and the bow does not bend but the arrow still fires. Just for clarification, the screenshot is taken before the shot was released.

I’m not sure what can be done with this but I doubt it is my game client as I have verified all of the files successfully. At the very least I’d like to bring this to the attention of the developers.

I would definitely forge the rifle from that list.

Oh wait, there isn’t one.

So I finally finished my fractal capacitor the other day. It was a long process for me but it was completely worth it, especially for the final version.

I did notice one thing, however. I was hoping there would be an area glow similar to the Mad Memories book from the Halloween event, but sadly there is no such thing. Is this an oversight, or was the book a unique item in that regard? I’m happy with it either way, but I would still love to have it light up the area around me.

I’ve attached a comparison shot to show what I’m talking about.

The thing that I really don’t understand from this is what is this all supposed to accomplish? If I am understanding the news statement correctly, if a player on 30+ fractals does level 4 with a pug, he will only get level 4 rewards, and if a level 4 player joins 30 with a pug, he will only get level 4 rewards. I don’t count karma as a useful reward as it is ridiculously easy to get, with 5k per day alone from the daily achievement.

How is this supposed to encourage players to do lower level fractals when it is basically the same exact rewards as doing them currently? And on the other hand, if I could get rewards at a higher level for doing lower levels there would be no point to doing the higher levels.

It seems that all this will do is bring about forced gear checks in PUGs and a lot of hostility in general towards lower level players.

So today while trying to find a 5th member for Fractals 23, we had a few 3-4 level players join us thinking the changes had gone into effect and that they would have no problem doing 23. lol.

Really not looking forward to this.

The main reason I don’t like this idea is that it’s going to bring about forced gear checks for PUGs, and there are going to be a lot of low level players trying to do 20 or even 30 just because of the promise of loot and weapon skins. Leveling is part of the learning process with fractals, you can’t just expect to jump in at a higher level and have it be the same difficulty as 1-10.

Personally I have never had trouble finding a group, the only times I’ve had issues were the occasional odd level after 10, and that only involved a bit more waiting. GW2LFG is a very handy tool and I would rather see something like this implemented in the game.

I am, however, very excited that they are able to implement changes to accommodate disconnects or other unexpected circumstances.

I think they did a very good job this time balancing the event so that it can be fun for everyone. The MKCT was a lot of fun for me and I would like to see more fast-paced puzzles, I can see why that would be difficult for a lot of people. It took me several hours to get it down, and then it was a blast to run afterwards. This one only took me several tries, but was still overall enjoyable. I didn’t even know that the snowflakes disappeared until I heard someone mention it.

Also, I’m sure it’s been mentioned before, but the area above the chest platform is a nice bonus view

This is becoming a real pain for me… especially in Fractals.

I’m not opposed to skipping mobs that either are difficult to get past or take too much time, but I’ve seen way too many instances, especially in PUGs, where people skip easy mobs on Fractals like Jade Maw just because they can. I just can’t fathom why, after spending over an hour to get here, they won’t take the 2-3 minutes extra to kill mobs that have some of the best drops in the dungeon. It’s gotten so bad that even though I request beforehand that we kill, they just ignore me and run down anyway, even on 20+ where you can get shards as drops.

This may sound like a silly suggestion, but since getting the player base to change their tactics is near impossible, why not introduce a reward for killing mobs in situations like this? You could have a small chest similar to the Volcano fractal on the platform before the boss for killing all the mobs (not crabs like the achiev) and drop loot based upon your dungeon level. Maybe make a new chest called a fractal chest that has a very small chance to drop essence or weapons skins?

I tried it the other day and was able to downgrade globs > vials, with the same results (3 vials). I’m not sure if they changed anything, but make sure you are using the full salvage kit (25 uses) as it uses the whole thing.

Green Machine.3710:

masters salvage kit wont go into the forge

It does, you just need the full kit as it takes all 25 to downgrade.

JCWolf.1674:

ATMAvatar.5749:

I would prefer one (or more) of several things occurred:

Vials be purchasable for relics
Vials be purchasable for the perfect relics
Rings become salvageable, from which vials can be a salvage component

It would be cool if globs/shards could follow the above scheme, too, but since they can ultimately be forged from vials, it’s not necessary.

Would be awsome to be able to buy globs and vials for fractal tokens from the vendors!

I’m not a fan of this idea… it would be the equivalent of being able to buy ectos from vendors (not the trading post). Ascended items aren’t supposed to be easy to make, and this would make them ridiculously easy to obtain.

I would, however, be fine with the ability to salvage ascended items for essence instead of ectos in addition to dropping in fractals and think this is a good idea moving forward. Maybe they could make a chance for vials to drop from non-infused items, globs from infused, and unless they plan on introducing a third tier shards should be either drops from fractals or craftable only.

In case you guys don’t read the patch notes…

Cliffside: Fixed a bug that would cause the final boss to spawn too many cultists at higher scales.
Cliffside: The first wave of cultists will now heal the arm seals if no players are within aggro range.
Cliffside: Fixed a bug where players could send their pets in to kill the first boss before the event was active.
Cliffside: Fixed a blocking bug where the cultists would not reset correctly on party wipe at scale 10 or higher in the final boss fight.
Cliffside: Fixed a bug where the Legendary Archdiviner’s health would not reset properly on party wipe.

Everything seems to be in order now, got Cliffside on 20 the other day and we were able to defeat the boss with no issues. The side room is locked off during the fight now (not sure what the reason for this is) but the difficulty progresses normally through stages now instead of hitting an exponential brick wall so removing him from the main room is no longer necessary.

Run crystals before you start the event and have 3 people stay near one each of the stations using ranged attacks.

It’s not one of the harder bosses, but if you have an uncoordinated pug I can see how it would go to hell :P

Personally I’m hoping for something more difficult.

The Mad King’s Clock Tower was a lot of fun to run through, but it got kind of repetitive to just run it for ToT bags. I would like to see something that’s harder but with a chance for awesome loot each time

Thanks guys, that’s exactly the info I was looking for.

Would be nice if ascended and higher that aren’t obtained from RNG would simply be account bound, then we wouldn’t have to worry about what character to use them on.

There are a few threads in the tech support forum on this issue, but the common temporary fix seems to be to set audio quality down a notch from highest.

Had the same problem on Claw of Jormag on an Asus Xonar DX until I did this, no more issues.

Bump, hoping someone has any insight on this.

I agree that bosses need phases, even if it’s just 75% normal and 25% low-hp frenzy. The last thing I want to do in a dungeon is sit there doing the same thing over and over again to wear down a boss, I would rather it be a challenge and progress faster than have it be easy and take forever.

Maybe add unique items as a chance to drop per major boss? Make them account bound on acquire so people have to run the dungeons to get that particular item.

I like the idea of rewards varying by path. Since it seems painfully obvious that some paths are much harder than others, either accidentally or intentionally, it would make sense that doing said paths reward players more. Maybe 30, 60, 90 tokens with the corresponding difficulty levels?