That’s how long they’ve always taken. It’s actually slightly better because aether and molten fractals are on the short side.
Grind gold and buy them – way more efficient. That’s just how the game is designed.
Not new, but good money. SoR usually has a commander running around there if people are interested.
I’ve had 2 ascended weapon chests and a lot of exotics/rares getting up to 40 from 30; that’s probably a bit of an outlier. I still think it’s fairly ridiculous that non-infused rings drop above 30 though.
^^^
Did dredge two days ago with the 34 no crits instability – the ultimate staying awake challenge!
A very nice summary. Hopefully when holiday is over some of these will be looked over.
If you run fractals wanting balanced rewards, you’re gonna have a bad time. They have always been about prestige, challenge, and a measure of masochism. That hasn’t changed just because there is a small gold reward at the end.
^^^
There’s nothing to “fix” about the invincible spawns – they intend them to be that way. It used to be that you could DPS them right out of the car, so people generally just stacked on the car. It was changed a few months ago so that at 30+ more than five will be alive at a time, causing you to hit the AOE limit and make the whole thing take longer.
It’s a small thing but I point it out because I feel the need to show where some of the frustration is coming from – every time it is changed it is changed specifically to make it take longer. Dying on buttons was only arguably an exploit at most, the pipe things really didn’t seem to be. But really, AOE’ing the clown car required their attention to fix? With all the glaring ridiculous stuff and total lack of balance in there they thought, “Gee, the dredge need to be arbitrarily invulnerable for a few seconds because this part is too short”? It’s really annoying to people who have been doing this stuff a while because the dredge fractal has been neglected for a year or so, and when changes come they are inevitably in the direction of making it take longer.
Happened last night with warping right back in the fight. Scale 33 I think.
I love everything except that the dredge need to be toned way, way down. The new fractals are fun and quick, and the changes to the old fractals – tuning, rewards, etc. – are mostly for the good. It just confounds me that they left the most hated fractal alone. (Well, not alone – they fixed what was not really a bug on the gate part to make it more annoying.)
We were also lucky to never get the dredge fractal while pugging.
Could you please, please, please send me some of your luck? Three nights in a row now.
^^^
Every thread like that has to have its share of “2L33T4U just L2P nub dredge frac is fine my guildies run it in 15 mins” responses. As someone who has also routinely run 30s and 40s since the introduction of fractals, I can say:
1. There are strategies to speed up dredge, but those strategies still leave it far longer than any other fractal, and too long overall for something that is supposed to be completed as part of a series of four.
2. Dredge has always been the most exploited fractal because of how pointlessly long it is. Most people before the patch at the very least died on the buttons because that was just easier, and most did and still do make use of at least one of the exploits to bypass the gates in the beginning. I have not seen the gates done legitimately in months.
3. Many of the criticisms cannot be pushed aside with “L2P nub.”I have learned to play and play with people who also know. Sadly, I cannot L2P making the stupid bombs respawn faster (it even slows down doing it with thieves), or have fewer dredge in the clowncar, or make Rabsovich have less health than the bosses of most of the other fractals.
Same. Didn’t seem to be any. More “challenge” I suppose.
Despite all these firestorms of criticism. Anet has remained mysteriously quiet. Can I get some input please? yes, you Anet.
Yeah, I’d like either a response or a stream of the devs, sitting in separate rooms with no voice chat, running frac 33 with bomb door, no thief. If they can do it in half an hour I promise I’ll never make this complaint again.
This is like the fifth thread about this but… dredge still sucks so I approve. It’s stupidly longer than any other fractal, even if you do it right. Every little detail makes it take longer. Like the bomb part where most parties wind up suiciding; even the darn bombs take forever to respawn. It’s built in – it takes long no matter whether you land the bombs or not. At least one of the major elements – the gates, or the bombs, or the rabsovich fight, or the clown car, just needs to be cut out.
After Dredge we were happy to get Molten boss at 34.
I don’t think it’s the berserker. I did it at 34 and it hit hard but it wasn’t ridiculous. I think it’s that “outflanked” is absurdly OP and the fact that AOE’s often seem to hit from side. Find someone with level 34 or higher and just pass 33 on your personal level that way.
There are a lot of “Learn to Play” responses when people discuss dredge, and yes it CAN be done at high levels, but the issue is every other fractal (including the new ones) can be done in much less time. It’s a lot longer than the others. “Get a Fast Team” responses can be countered with, the fast team will be even faster at the other fractals because they are already short!
In any case, if there was one change Anet should have made to FotM it is this: Make Dredge Fractal shorter.
Yeah, a number of the things take a long, long time even if you do them correctly. I did it at 34 (no crits haha don’t get me started on that) and we had a strategy for the bomb part – have guards use sanctuary or line of warding on the bombs so the dredge wouldn’t pick them up. That’s what your supposed to do if you don’t have a thief as far as I can tell. We did it correctly as a team, still took forever. Bombs take forever to respawn. Have to clear a stupid number of dredge when it’s over. Rabsovich HP still haywire. Still had to wait forever for all the clown car mobs.
That was after the stupid gate part. And then there is the end boss. Geez – they can have one stupid long part, but not all in the same fractal.
Dredge with the lvl34 no crits mistlock lolololololol.
I invite everyone to share their thoughts on changes to old fractals here in this one thread. I did my daily today with all old fractals (good luck, or bad depending how you look at it), so I’ll go first.
Ascalon
- Didn’t notice much of anything big. NPCS might have been made a little beefier. Ascalonian Captain didn’t manage to down them. Our mesmer TW’ed the group of NPC’s and they pretty much killed Captain themselves.
Snowblind
- Boss health reduced, seemed to stick around longer to get smacked around before porting upwards. Big improvement here.
- Woods are actually dangerous now, seems you need stealth or time your run between the packs of mobs or you get mowed down. Nice change to an old part that was sort of a throwaway before.
Cliffside
- Boss health reduced. He needed it; far less tedious overall.
- Seemed easier overall, although that might just be running it at scale 30 rather than the 48 I used to do.
- People will hate me for pointing it out, but it’s just getting silly. The stun bug on the boss still works. My group was pretty dumbfounded.
Overall
- Seemed to be a bit better loot wise for that scale. I got two account bound exotics and a rare from the run, probably better than I was doing before at the same level. No one in group got a weapon (not bad or surprising, mind you) but I think all got infused rings.
- Gold rewards still don’t really compete with dungeons, but I won’t say no to gold.
- Got a bunch of empyreal stars from daily chest. Not thrilled about that, but if there’s a chance for the chest to drop dragonite, I’d be interested.
- Looking forward to making another run tomorrow, hope to see some of the new stuff. I love that one of my favorite parts of the game has gotten so much attention (except for stun bug on Cliffside, I mean, really?) after so long.
Wow @ that Dawn Eyrie fight. Good show for both sides.
I’m curious, as BG needn’t face JQ or SoR this week, will ZDs be getting the week off or are they contractually obligated to continue nightcapping this week? (Just making a joke guys, let’s not get too serious here.)
Yeah, if I were anet I’d be trumpeting this to the heavens. The zerg-crippling lag is just… gone.
Two devs last night, one running with us on SoR and one against us, I think on TC. Seemed to just be observing.
I’ve played a warrior, an engineer, and a ranger in T1. Warrior is definitely the easiest, but all three are useful. What I’ve noticed hurts the engi in zerg fights is the lack of much on demand stability vs. rangers and warrs. Warrs have their stance and I run beastmaster signet on ranger so I can stab off that. Engi’s have 4s on elixir b toolbelt (which isn’t all that otherwise useful as a utility) and 1 on thumper turret toolbelt (it’s a turret, need I say more?) It’s less than either of the other two and both require a utility slot that is more precious to engi’s because you’re slotting at least one kit pretty much always.
The ranger is harder to play than the warr, no doubt about it. But it can be fun. The big ole water field is always appreciated by commanders, and you have some nasty immobilize options between entangle and the F2 on Krytan hound. (You probably won’t snag the exact five you were hoping for in a big fight, but you will get some people and they will die in seconds.) I think spirits are impractical, but you can run spotter with no effort and provide nice support between that and warhorn.
Entangle or drakehound in front of a portal when you’re trying to cut off a retreat usually kills at least a few people. Then you have sword, which I run with GS on switch, and it is so much fun. You will fly around zergs, jumping from person to person. You can pretty much murder anyone who attempts to run off, as the stickiness of sword that is so painfully annoying in PvE is absolutely deadly in WvW.
This isn’t a bad update for hardcore PVE’ers who actually want to play the game. Fractals after level 30 are not going to be the equivalent of what they were before the patch. There are new fractals, new bosses, and he overall difficulty will be higher because of the mistlock instability modifiers.
I appreciate that it took a lot of time to grind up from 30 to 50 or higher (I’m one of the people who’ll be losing levels) but that grind was on something repetitive, that had a ridiculous rewards system, and that didn’t get harder so much as it just got longer. This update adds more variety, helps the rewards system some, and supposedly balances some of the absurdities we’ve been dealing with for too long. Does anyone here honestly want to go trudge through dredge 48 again for a tiny chance at the weapon they want, just so they can say “Woohoo I’m level 50!” I’d much rather something new, with a new challenge.
I’m aware that there are a sizable number of players upset about fractal level changes and a few other aspects of the update. Some of those contentions have merit but there are many other threads addressing them; the reason I’m making this thread is just to provide more general feedback that I think is important, because I think it’s clear the devs are listening.
Per the title, this is the kind of update the game needs. It aims to provide permanent, challenging, repeatable content for high level players and aims to refresh and update an area of the game that could use a new coat of paint.
It’s not temporary. It’s not fluff. It’s not something you do once and forget. It’s challenging group content that you can run every day if you want. No zerging, no black lion ticket hawking.
Whatever people think of the specifics of the changes being made – and those changes are debatable, I totally admit – I think it’s important to say that we asked for more permanent improvements and more non-zerging content, and that’s exactly what we’re getting.
There was an extremely tiny number of people who bothered to get up to 80, glitching or otherwise, far fewer than the number of people who went up to 50. The level 50 people didn’t glitch and exploit their way up to that level.
From what’s been said about the new runes, they may not be super useful for fractals but will be in high demand in WvW, which is pretty popular right now. So if nothing else there will be a nice market for fractal runners to sell them.
It was a great video. I thought it a little strange that they didn’t show the new fractals, but I think clearly they want to get people who have never played fractals into playing them on the same level as dungeons, so it makes sense.
I’m one of the players who will be reduced to 30, but I’m okay with it. I’m more interested in actually playing fractals and in them getting expansion and some much, much needed attention, not in being congratulated for things I’ve already done.
That’s wouldn’t be so bad if I had a character at level 49 and she’s being reduced to 30. But having 3 of them up there and 4th on the way is just a slap in the face.
I can feel you on that. The levels should always have been account bound, and there was no way to change to account bound without indirectly punishing the people who did a lot of grinding to get more than one character up that high. There aren’t a lot of people in that position – relative to the size of the entire community – but it is unfair for them, I agree.
My comment was more directed at people who had gone to 70 or 80, knowing that kind of progression was not intended, and are now saying they are being treated unfairly.
I’m one of the players who will be reduced to 30, but I’m okay with it. I’m more interested in actually playing fractals and in them getting expansion and some much, much needed attention, not in being congratulated for things I’ve already done.
This is a serious question, I’m not trolling but rather unsure. A lot of people have brought up the question of whether getting to 80 required an exploit of at least some kind and I’m curious about the truth of it.
I know that at one point it was possible to get above 50 by using various exploits to get around getting killed by agony on Maw. After that was no longer possible, what people did was have a higher level player open an odd number fractal above your level, so that you didn’t have to worry about agony from Maw but could still increase level.
So my question is, was or is there a way to reach level 80 without either exploiting oneself or enlisting the help of someone who had exploited at one point? I think the answer really matters to how we ought to view folks who are being reset down to 30.
I’m personally sitting at 48 so I’m not thrilled but I know 30 onwards are being made harder so it also wouldn’t make sense for us to jump in at at 48.
SE 1+3 are nice to run if you don’t run a lot of dungeons. The groups vary in quality, but even a bad group will rarely mess them up too badly. If you’re bringing a guard especially then a total disaster is unlikely.
1. Do activities that give you gold, like dungeon runs.
2. Save.
3. Buy precursor.
4. Save yourself the ridiculousness of the forge and start believing in goodness in the world again.
Oh, I take it as a little vengeance on their part.
HOW DARE YOU BUG OUT OUR 46 MILLION HP HAMMER BOSS! WHY AREN’T YOU ENJOYING ALL THAT CHALLENGE?
Complete the clown car event 1000 times and you get a bonus chest with a rare chance at the new, coveted dredge backpiece!
OP, the thing is for dungeons there’s no way to ignore the loss of the 20+ stacks of perma vulnerability from grenades. That’s such an enormous boost to team DPS that whatever you run is going to be weaker from a damage support perspective.
There won’t be a rewards overhaul overall; they will change to something that makes almost no difference like “Convert Shards of the Mist into Pristine Fractal Relics! Empyreal fragments for every run! Bloodstone dust has a chance to drop from Jade Maw! Happy now?” just to let us know that they looked at the absurdity that is fractal weapons, laughed heartily around the conference table, and decided to leave the only RNG in the game that can rival Zommoros’s cruelty in place. Also, expect no tweaking of dredge, and for all new fractals to be so long that people will groan when rolling them and go back to hoping for the underwater/ascalon/swamp trinity on every roll.
I guess I would say 10/10 in the sense that I’ve done all the leveling that I’m going to do (8 level 80’s.) It needn’t be raids, though, so I don’t mean endgame in that way.
However, I think the major problem with the game – which is fantastic, innovative, and fun overall – is the simple lack of rewarding, challenging, repeatable things for geared up level 80s to do. As I see it, the available activities are:
Dungeons – the obvious one. Not much of a challenge with any of these other than Arah; the others are just a question of how fast you get them done, and most lack interesting mechanics of any sort and are just “stack and dps, repeat” type encounters. As they lack any aspect of randomness, once you’ve done them a lot (and I have) they are worth running for gold, but not that interesting.
Dynamic events – the first problem is that these aren’t really dynamic, they are just chains that can complete or fail. The second is that the rewards system pushes people into just a few zones. Outside of the world bosses – and I think pretty much everyone is sick of these by now – the only events that get run are the Orr temples and the Risen High Wizard. Even of those, Melandru, Grenth, and Lyssa get run more than any other because the loot – bag drops from adds, which the other temples mainly lack – is better. Ascended crafting gave people a reason to do temples again, but didn’t make it any more interesting.
Fractals – oh boy, I could write a tome. Fractals were supposed to be the answer to the very problem I’m posing by providing challenging, repeatable, somewhat randomized PvE content. It does those things better than dungeons, to be sure, but fractals have withered on the vine with almost no real improvements for about a year now. The loot is inferior to dungeons overall, there is too great a disparity in how long individual fractals take to run (dredge vs. swamp) and ramping up the level provides no additional challenge except absurd HP pools, making 48 and above less about challenge and more about struggling to stay awake. And then there is, of course, the most patently absurd, unfair, bizarre rewards system in the game, providing for an hour+ run a tiny chance at a completely random weapon, with absolutely no way of getting a particular one. Fractal weapon ticket? Buyable weapons with pristine relics? Something to do with the piles and piles of pointless shards and globs (like, you know, ascended crafting, which pointedly and insultingly made absolutely no use of these materials)? People have been asking to change this for months with no response at all.
LS – mostly not repeatable, totally lackluster of late. “Look up the map on Dulfy and go click 20 of these random obelisks for achievement” is not content, challenge, or anything else.
Mindless mat farming for legendaries – Champ farming being the obvious one, though there are others. I don’t think anyone really wants to do any of these things for more than half an hour or so, and they certainly provide no challenge or interest of any kind.
WvW – the one bright spot, if somewhat hampered by technical issues. But WvW is really a shell of what it could become. Commanders need real tools to work with beyond the blue dorito and teamspeak, which encourages the boring blob v. blob dynamic. Commanders need to be able to list all the players on the map, break them up into squads, and give those squads visual directions visible on the map, so that players know where to go and what to do.
As others have said, Mesmer DPS is situational but generally high. Most boss fights I can keep up at least two duelists most of the time, three on super clueless ones. Highest DPS is probably duelist and swordsman, but for utility purposes you will likely run with a focus on switch so you’re stuck with duelist and warden. Your wardens will die, but that’s life.
One of the really nice things about mesmers, though, is their ability to add to team DPS with minimal traiting/slotting. Boon copying with signet of inspiration is great if anyone else is providing might, and timewarp is a real boss burner. Plus, enemy pulling with phantasmal curtain (focus 4) effectively increases team DPS by positioning multiple enemies together so they can be cleaved or pulling bosses against walls so ele’s can cheese them with fiery greatsword.
I don’t mind people TP flipping because it doesn’t cause inflation – with the TP tax it actually destroys gold. It does raise prices in a few categories of things because it creates a small clique of people that can spend enormous sums on certain items, but it cannot cause inflation. As for fairness, I think in a game the most rewarded activity should be playing the game rather than something ancillary like the TP. But I can’t deny the flippers are bringing more skill and craft to the table than running around frostgorge in a zerg and spamming 1.
Champ farming, by contrast, brings gold into the economy – too much gold for far too little effort. It draws players away from doing more interesting stuff; it feels harder to find people to run temples and dungeons than it used to be. It’s true that it is not the most rewarding activity per hour – there are a few besides TP flipping that give better – but is by far the easiest, and is not as time-gated as dungeons or ancient/ori farming.
So much +1. There is basically only one real human beard; at one point I was rocking it on three characters at once. But beards are awesome, and we need more.
Plus you can sell hair kits that way, so win-win.
It isn’t a horrible choice, it just doesn’t bring much in terms of DPS support, which is the main kind of support that matters in PvE. There are necro builds that can stack vuln decently while still doing damage, although less efficiently than a grenadier engi.
You all do know that fractals, not only but especially the dredge fractal, are an elaborate, now year-long flame by the devs, right?
I happened to show up in Lion’s Arch today, and the Mad King was walking around telling jokes. For a minute I thought of last Halloween – how fun that was, what a spirit it had. The ending this year has been overshadowed by one of the thinnest patches in months, an especial letdown when I had thought that the next patch was to be a real whizz-bang affair with how much of Halloween was recycled. But I have to say, just walking around with the Mad King and doing the little laugh emote, it felt a little like the spirit of last time, and that was nice.
Fear not, while you do have to fight the trash now, the NPC in SE p3 still hilariously repeats “NO NO NO” “NO NO NO” “NO NO NO” as he always has. And if they change that I’ll be upset.
gotta love me more braindead 1 spam $$zerkfarm$$
Gotta farm so you can pay to have your blue glow plant weapon while you farm.
I thought buying the gem armor, but then I remembered how Braham’s armor, which is designed for burly norn warriors and clearly built with Vikings in mind, DELETES BEARDS! Ram’s horn helmet, horn shoulders, fur chest piece, no beards. Seriously.