Guild Wars 2

Oh and if you visit that merchant, you’ll notice that you can upgrade your agony infusions cheaper by using him as soon as they are +3 (the step to +6 only costs 6 +3 infusions instead of 8 if one where to craft it, ans so on).

And I hate the ring “improvement”. It only works on some infused rings, so it’s:
normal -> attuned -> attuned infused
OR
normal -> infused (→ attuned infused iff it’s the right ring, dont know how to distinguish them)

hope they just forgot the recipes, had to look through my pvp chars to find uninfused rings …

edit: correction not all infused rings cant be upgraded just some cant.

Jarvis.9540:

How are you getting the +7 basic infusions that you can put in armor/weapon slots? I’ve not seen them.

Get Mastery, talk to Mast-Er <Number>, get ported up, talk to npc, buy.

Since march 16th of this year i tried to do 50,40,30 and 20 daily to fill up my set before Hot comes out. I was not able to do it every day, only about 90% of the time, so >180 days or > 720 runs. I started with 10 skins unlocked from runs before that date, now I’m at 16 and got 39 extra skins on the bank (kept doubles, used anyone that was new), so I got 45 skins, lots of armor/weapon boxes and of course a metric ton of rings (out of which i kept about 300 after they anounced ascended salvaging). Still missing scepter, longbow and trident skins …

The only time she resets for me is when she can not find a target for a certain amount of time ie everyone is either dead, in stealth, logged out or infront of the gates.

This can also happen in cannon phase, if for example the kiter in the group dies and the rest is in stealth she will often “reset” before the stealth runs out. Sometimes you are lucky and only her health gets filled up, if you are unlucky it’s a full reset and you have to do all cannon phases again.

thrag.9740:

Here is a list of exploits that should be fixed. I’m posting it in both red threads. Lets see if anything happens.

…
-Cliffside: cheesing diviner on the rock
…

Well looks like they reacted in negative time. The last group that wanted to force me to jump up there was not able to. A few jumps after we killed him showed that it has either become impossible or much more difficult to get up there.

*cheer*

ProtoGunner.4953:

If I didn’t know that this is such a huge topic in the forums, I wouldn’t know it was a bug. There are tons of tactics like standing on the wooden beam for the CM freezer boss (is this actually an ‘exploit’, too?). Why are people so mad about it? It’s one single boss and the 1st time someone pulled this guy underwater I just though it was a new tactic.

Basically whenever you can hit a mobile boss, but due to terrain he can not hit you and does not evade it is an exploit. It goes back to the early days of dungeon running, when in AC1 or 3 (cant remember which) you could run up the stairs at the endboss (the path to the unfinished jp) and range the boss without any danger. There was a red post which said that it was a bug, and using a bug to gain something is an exploit. It was also said that the safe spot (which was safe of falling rocks) at the other one, was not an exploit because the boss would still hit you, just that 1 attack could not hit that one (or those 3 i think) spots.
Why people are mad is simple: using exploits gives a bad impression of dungeon/fractal running. PvE in GW2 can be made difficult by self imposed challenges (lowmaning, solos, not using frostbow/reflect etc) but in general it is not that hard even without exploiting bugs. Nowadays a lot of people think it is even easier (some even think it’s trivial) because somewhat difficult encounters are exploited (Mossman, Archdiviner i.e.).
People are also mad, because those bugs are not fixed. The 2 I mentioned above were fixed not that long after they became mainstream. Mossman has been known to the “public” for a few months now, archdiviner will soon be (got at least 1 in every low fractal pug i join), you mentioned Frost which is a really old bug … . The dungeon community just feels a little abandoned.

She (is it a female?) was always able to reflect. Does not happen in every group because she only uses her whirlwind attack (kb, high damage and reflect) if someone (pets count) is in normal melee range. If everyone max melees (or ranges) she does not use it and everyone can keep pewpewing without any danger.

That’s strange, whenever I get the wrong popup I just have to hit enter and will be sent to the appropiate level (as long as i did not run into the fractal gate).

Can you give some more information?
- Were all 50 tries with the same error (as in where you always sent into your own fractal instance)? Or were some with the “the world is full” bug?
- Is the fractal level higher or lower than your own personal reward level?
- What happens when you keep the first (normal) popup and they go from lab to the first fractal and you hit enter after that?

So just had one of my worst pug guild fractal 50 runs. There were 3 people of one guild, 1 other (possibly a friend or at least in the same voice chat with them) and me.

Good group setup (guard, war, mes, 2 ele) or so i thought … The guard was mostly running staff, the war was not ps, the ele seldom helped stacking might and the mesmer was using his feedback far to often, expecially against melee mobs. Frostbows were not picked up, they did not hide behind the elemental at old tom (even after advising them to).
In cliffside they rarely picked up the hammer and if they did they almost always dropped it after 1 hit (and i dont mean at the arm seals, but at the first 2 and the middle one). Even at the archdiviner noone picked up the hammer (after picking it up the first 2 times i was so low in hp i could not do it myself) resulting in a wipe (and that was while using the exploit, almost left when they started running there).
And finally at maw they had the other ele switch to necro to fully leech the boss. Took forever because they kept using skill 4 not 2. Thought there was a bug if you did it before killing the elementals? Actually warned them about it but it’s either sporadic or removed.

I think I’ll expand on my post:

If it’s an organized group you can go with pw but probably wont need it.

If it’s a pug with experienced pug zerkers go with hs, they mostly are not coordinated enough to quad bow spike and therefore a 2nd freeze is used. (Of course it’s a bit boss dependant, you should not have to strip at the dredge fractal final bosses with this group)

If it’s a pug with semi-experienced (no prestacking of might/not picking up bows at all/no stealth skips) pug zerkers you often have enough time to get the 5 stacks down with pw but check with your group.

If it’s an inexperienced zerker pug which is able to follow simple commands check the damage spike at an opportune moment and decide accordingly.

If it’s a non zerker pug they generally dont expect you to remove stacks at all, or only when ib cd is up (hs is better here).

If it’s an inexperienced zerker pug or if you have players just throwing cc’s around (hammer wars/guards, gs mesmers, bow rangers, dd eles, rifle engis etc.) dont bother, it wont help with the run at all.

Pistol whip takes to long to remove anything over a single defiance, using headshot you can easily remove 4 in the same time. So if your groups helps it would probably be better, if not use headshot.

NikeEU.7690:

svensta.6945:

A fractal skin should have a price between 75 and 150 pristine fractal relics.
This is consistent with their drop rate, which is probably around 1%.

Drop rate is like 12% at level 50. So following your logic, they should cost between 7 and 15. Good deal.

On the other hand, a run on 50 does not assure you the wanted skin. So let’s take the average number of frac50 runs for a full collection and divide it by the number in the set: 580 (avg. after my simulation with 1000000 full collections) / 19 ~= 30.

Of course running gives quite a bit of extra skins (67 are found on average) so 20 is prob a “fair” price.

edit: Hmm if skins will still be in the loottable I would say 30 actually is fairer.

Lar.1947:

Bohantopa.5729:

UKADAM.3910:

It was from 6 in the afternoon till I believe 3-4ish sometime in the morning, and I didn’t just do fracts in that time. There was smooth runs for fractal 50 for me. I’m not the best player and majority of the player base isn’t so 45 min was good in my eyes.

Which would make it 9 – 10 hours, so either you gave a wrong number of runs or greatly overestimated the minimum run time. At 10 hours and 18 runs total the average run time is ~33 minutes, easily in the realm of possibility, but it does not include looking for a group (especially in the middle of the night) nor anything else you did. So I’m doubting you even more now.

Jeez, whats wrong with people here? Fella brought a problem to your attention and you are discussing how probable is the case. Why would he make things up anyway? To get your pity, lol?

There is only one “proof” that anything happened at all: his word. It is therefore prudent to check the likelihood of the story. I dont care why anyone would lie about anything, but if our modern society has shown me one thing it is that some just do.

Lar.1947:

On the topic, it would be reasonable to block kicking at some point, after first fract for example. This wont affect normal parties and prevent abusing, likely.

The problem will already be solved by the coming fractal change, but just to discuss your idea: You would need to add a check for people who go afk, currently it’s “oh i got 10 minutes, after that I’ve got to go for 20 minutes so i better dont join a fractal group, i would get kicked”, with your system it’s “oh i got 10 minutes, let me quickly join a fractal group and finish the first one, i can go afk after and come back later”. If you have to add a timer so question remains with “how long is to long”, also you would allow griefers who only help in the first one and start dancing around after it (they are not afk, just not doing anything to help progress).
So while your idea would be possible it could be greatly abused (and I do not believe in the goodness of humanity).

Got another dagger skin today which got me wondering … I got it while on my thief, and some time ago anet changed loot to be character specific, does that include fractal skin drops? Would explain why i have so many axes and daggers (ran mostly with warrior and thief).

UKADAM.3910:

It was from 6 in the afternoon till I believe 3-4ish sometime in the morning, and I didn’t just do fracts in that time. There was smooth runs for fractal 50 for me. I’m not the best player and majority of the player base isn’t so 45 min was good in my eyes.

Which would make it 9 – 10 hours, so either you gave a wrong number of runs or greatly overestimated the minimum run time. At 10 hours and 18 runs total the average run time is ~33 minutes, easily in the realm of possibility, but it does not include looking for a group (especially in the middle of the night) nor anything else you did. So I’m doubting you even more now.

UKADAM.3910:

Last night I decided to spend it doing fractals, in the 18 full fractal runs I was kicked out 4 times at the last boss of them, its making me wanna give up on fractals all together. I whispered some of them to ask why there kicked me and was told cause a guild friend wanted to join. Others responded with a lol or a haha. NOW I wouldn’t mind if there was normal dungeons but these fracts take about 45 mins pluss. THIS NEED TO BE ADDRESSED ANET

While still possible, your story is highly unlikely: 18 runs in 1 night with each run at least 45 minutes (those are what you call smooth runs? I also pug fractals everyday and 45 minutes minumum is bad) this makes at least 13.5 hours of fractals in one night. As I said, possible but unlikely so i doubt your story. Not that me doubting it hurts you in anyway.
BTW: I never got kicked, not even when running with 3 or 4 of one guild. Actually sometimes I’m glad if I get a 3 guild group with my first run of the day. High chance of them being fractal runners who will continue with the other levels, it’s nice to be done with the 4 daily chests in less than 2 hours.

UKADAM.3910:

Don’t get me wrong its not in any way Anets fault , there create one of my fav games with gw2, its just if there can be a way to stop this I hope there can, specially when its level 50 fractal. Its so frustrating and specialy with new fract system coming with HoTs I just fear itl get worse .

The problem will be “removed”, as you will only have to run 1 fractal they could still kick you before the endboss but you wont have lost much.

edit:
Also I think you should remove ANET from the thread title, iirc it’s against the forum tos.

What I find most discerning, is that anet is making it a lot harder to add new fractals. Currently they design one and plug it into one or more of the 4 groups (first, second, third, boss). Sometimes an instability will make a fractal a lot harder, sometime it almost does not effect it at all.

In the future, adding one new fractal will mean they have to reorder all fractals (they could just do it by repeating the order over and over again sure) and aditionally they will have to design instabilities for that fractal. Yes this is better than before, but more work.

Of course it’s only an assumption that they will add new fractals at all …

Looks like WinAuth was not allowed to save it’s configuration due to some program/process on your machine not allowing it. If you did not write down the secret key anywhere it is lost and you will need to write to support to get it unlinked.

WinAuth is not malware, it works just fine.

edit: If you want to check if it’s just not workind now but actually saved the data, check if the following folder exists and has a file inside:
“c:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\WinAuth”

Umaru.2634:

Nope, if I press enter Fractal, it basically a new instance for only me, at the area with the Golem merchants and the gate to fractals.

That’s strange. I always get to the group if I click on enter (and yes I often get the bug of the wrong window popping up). Also everyone I give that tip when I open (and they cry “you wrote lvl xx why is yy open”) always ended up in my instance unless they ran into the portal and clicked enter on that popup.

Umaru.2634:

I don’t know what happen but this happen to me since yesterday. If my party is already inside the fractal, I won’t be able to join them.
Things happen in this order:
1. I join a party in LFG, a new fractal level selection window pop up in the middle of my screen, can only set to my max level (Like if I’m level 18, and join a level 19, I can’t set it to 19)
2. I will try to walk to the Asura gate, same thing ^
3. I will try to WP far away in LA, the same window pop up but at the bottom left of my screen, no idea why
4. I have to try to find a group that not already in fractal (Still in LA) or make a group myself
5. Or I just rage quit.
This is so annoying, especially with the unstable connection till latest patch, it’s impossible to complete a fractal now without the fear of getting dc and can’t rejoin.

Even if it’s the selection window and not the join window you’ll still join your party if it was a port popup (does not work with the window you get from running into fractals).

Just got my staff from a lvl 20 fractal. Ran over 2k fractals in total, with at least 400 in the last 4 months (almost daily 20,30,40 and 50).

Staff is my 14th unique skin. I’m not sure how many total skin drops i had, can only give the number since this post https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Time-for-a-full-set-of-fractal-weapon-skins/4882796 as I kept all double skins which i now have 21 of. So in total for 4 skins starting at 10 known i needed 25 drops and about 4 months.

deSade.9437:

P.S. The guard’s GM trait IS a strunbreaker and a stability. I don’t see why you’d want to take that stupid tempest shout, unless we see in—- in the… ahem—-challenging group content… LOL, I can’t go on while keeping a straight face [fingers]

Hmm always understood it as self stunbreak and only group stability. Gotta test it next time i’m at archdiviner.

Some things still might find some use:
- the pull is unblockable, means you could pull enemies out of blocking abilities (ooze in thaumanove ie)
- iirc Tempest is the first class with groupwide stunbreakers. So far only groupwide stability was possible (prevents stun, but does not remove it). Someone is going to find a use for it.

savacli.8172:

Gear and traits have already been proved irrelevant to an extent. What I mean to say is that there have been numberous groups that have gone into ‘difficult’ fights wearing no gear whatsoever (except a basic weapon for 1-5 skills) and taking no traits (back before the 6/23 patch) for the lolz.

Did the fight take a long time to clear it? Absolutely. Was the team struggling to complete the fight? Not at all.

So really most teams that are demanding metazerk are disillusioned into believing the gear will do all the work for them. At the end of the day what defines encounters being difficult or easy are they players. Are they familiar with the content? Are they bringing the right class or right utility? Etc.

Knowledge > Gear

Granted, if you’re after Personal Best’s or record times, certain gear is definitely going to be required.

Sorry but “irrelevant” is the wrong word, what you mean is “not necessary”. If you take a group of average players the chance for succesfully completing an encounter (wipefree) is higher with gear, it’s just not 0 without gear. Even if you take a group of experienced players, without gear the chance of faillure will still be higher than the one with gear. So relevance: yes (otherwise the chances would be the same), necessray: no (possible without)

The thing is, most experienced dungeon runners never said that you have to have zerk gear/traits to complete a dungeon. They just ask that if you do not have it, to please not run with them.

The problem is both sides often ignore the wishes of the the other side. I’ve had experience with good and bad zerkers and good and bad non-zerkers. I’ve seen entitlement on both sides, often from people who cant adapt to a slight change in tactics (how i hate it when people just start running in ascalon/dredge when I’m on my thief. Dont even have time to write anything like “let’s stealth past, here’s how it’s done: …”). But the worst are the people not fulfilling even a basic requirement. My normal fractal lfg posting is: “xx | bring yy ar, brains and brawn | swamp up” where xx is 20/30/40 and yy the ar needed for 1% ticks (for 50 i use something else). Now the brains and brawn part is just a little fun, but i actually expect people to think a little for themselves and be able to follow some tips in chat (basic things, like “please dont use your hammer kb/stuns, we want to deepfreeze the mob” or “hey <name of guard> could you bring your wall of reflection for this fight, it would help a lot”). Mostly these tipps are ignored and we keep on strugling. And of course there also are those who dont have the ar and you only notice that in the boss fractal (mostly because i dont focus on how other people die) and you have to rez 3 instadead people at the beginning of mai trin … .

But this is the same thing repeated in every thread about the meta: You dont have to follow it. You can succeed without it. Just leave us our groups and make your own. (We’ll try to do the same.)

“Feel the Burn” is ok as a shout. Sure some arcane gibberish would be nice but also much harder for other players to remember what you just did (for or to them).

But “Eye of the Storm” and “Aftershock” dont really come over as something anyone would shout, also the words dont sound active enough. They should be changed into “Bring the thunder” and … (cant think of an appropriate active sounding shout atm).

Upps, must have missed the 0. I did wonder about that high number, but i never questions my first result, else i would also question my second, third etc

Yup, if you want the dungeon skins, go PvP. If you additionally want gold, go Dungeons.

Actually your calculation is not “optimized”, you just calculated the average token price over all armor. If you want to get the skins as fast as possible, always choose the most expansive missing skin from the chest (ie. get light, medium and heavy chest armor first) and get the others with tokens. This will reduce the number of tracks you’ll have to finish to get the full set. In total you would have to run the PvP track 9 times: 3 armorpieces over 180 tokens (gotten with chests) and 3 exactly 180 tokens (bought via tokens) per armor type (and 27 weapon boxes, more than enough).
To get all the skins with dungeonruns you need 10290 tokens (3×1380 armor + 6150 weapons). If you were to run 3 paths every day it would take about 57 days.

deSade.9437:

Question open to everyone: how do you stand pugging for long periods of time?

I got a Sandbag, I hit it … a lot. Got to get a new one soon.

So they did change it, nice.

Thaddeus.4891:

Ya. You would have to make the Empower first and then the ele stack might and see what happen.

Jup that would be a nice test, dont even need a guard, get a ps warrior with the trait might on heal.

Rag.3258:

…

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.

Some time ago (a year or so) on my last test newer buffs overwrote (longer) older ones. They might have changed it but never said so in the patch notes. A test which would prove it conclusively would be:
- get 2 staff eles, 2 instant blasters (warriors with wh ie), 1 guard (staff).
- no traits, naked (except necessary weapons, preferably white ones)
- have the eles + blasters blast to 25 in <2s.
- guard empower
- check in 10s if might drops of

Jerus.4350:

Bohantopa.5729:

Not mine but it works (or at least worked before the trait change)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aILBo_NoxBU

Won’t have the same dodge ability anymore. That said, it seems leaps are no longer crippled by the movement debuff… maybe it just seemed that way to me, but it seemed like my rocket boots worked full strength when I did it today on Engi (did it on a 50, but put in 2 cooling rods).

Yup, leaps work better than before, had it on my war today and using the leaps of rampage I made it almost all the way.

Did not look that deeply into the thief changes but it seems you are right. Not only less dodges, but less damage reduction while in stealth (resilience of shadows now is only 25%).

Not mine but it works (or at least worked before the trait change)

Now they tell us. I used up almost all my weapon boxes to unlock the skins (and get some space i was up to 2 full bank tabs). Should have kept the weapons.

The LFG Tool has been out of beta for a while now. So far I only noticed one change between beta tool and now: the window does not say “beta” anymore.

While the tool is quite useful I believe there are some ways to improve it:
- Split “Open World Content” into local and global. Local would only be visible across all megaservers but only in the same map (ie, every person in any shard of dry top would see the same posts in Local World Content). Global would be visible everywhere (just like Open World Content currently). This would allow to post taxis to tequatl/sw/drytop/whereever and other locally bound groups in a local channel where they dont compete in visibility with the other events. Other posters (looking for leveling partners, jumping puzzles, achievement help) could still post globally.
- Change fractal channels to 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40, 41-50, so that the channels are identical to the level span in which different daily chests are available. This would reduce some player confusion.
- Allow browsing of other channels while having a lfg posted. Currently if a player has posted a lfg which takes a while to fill it is not possible to look for other groups he/she is interested in.
- Allow the window to be kept open while porting/zoning. Some players might be looking for groups while doing other stuff. If they port somewhere the window gets closed and they have to hit u -> press on lfg -> open channel category -> select wanted channel. Another possibility would be for the game to remember what was last selected in the contact window (i.e. you check on groups for ac, close the window, if you now hit u or the contact button the window will automatically open to the ac channel)
- Show full text for other groups on mouseover even if you are in a group/dungeon, below their text add the currently shown message in red. (even better, always show full text without mouseover. Enforce a max of 3 lines)
- Allow whispering by right clicking a players symbol.
- If Gw2 is in the background, have the icon flash (and maybe play a sound) if someone joins your lfg.

One thing that might be asked in here I’m against:
Enforced filters of the type:
- AP (not really a measurement of skill just of investment into the game. Also this would lock out secondary accounts)
- Class/Lvl (locks players out of seeing lfgs they are interested in just because they are on an alt. Could be added if the filters checks the whole account instead of just the currenct char.)

Xcorpdog.2840:

Does anyone have any idea’s why the Epidemic will work but Necro axe 3 fails to hit it even though they have the same skill radius?

Probably because not all radius skills have a spherical area of effect. Or because Epidemic does not apply it’s effect on ground level but axe 3 does (or vice versa). Could probably think of some more, we would need more skills to test it. Now i want a:
SELECT SkillNames FROM FullSkillList WHERE Radius>=600 GROUP BY Class
I’m not going through the whole list by hand again.

But at least we know it’s still possible.

phys.7689:

Bohantopa.5729:

phys.7689:

dont count the new trait line, thats only for HOT, better compare same with same, which gives you 10 options.

Why? It’s about the total number of possible trait combinations now and in HoT. Yes you can currently not specialize, but in hot you cant take more than 3 lines.

because if they hadnt done this change, you would have had a 6th line with 13 possible options and be able to use lower teirs in higher teired slots, which would have been an even greater variety of choices than before.

Who says anything that we would have gotten a 6th line if they had not changed the system? That is just an assumption. Maybe they said “when we change the trait system we take away to many possibilities, so let’s add a new trait line”, which would mean only because they changed the trait system they added specializations. (also only an assumption of course, but based on as much information as you have)

Lishtenbird.2814:

You can either take 3 core lines or 2 core lines and 1 elite line, not always 3 lines.

For the moment those are identical, only when they add a second specialization does it get difficult.

edit: Ok it does not get difficult, the number of possible trait line combinations would become:

 5! /((5-3)!*3!) + 5!/((5-2)!*2!) * number of specializations
(3 core lines)  + (2 core lines) * number of spec
currently: 10 + 10*1 = 20 

This also shows that every spec they add, adds 196 830 new trait builds.

phys.7689:

dont count the new trait line, thats only for HOT, better compare same with same, which gives you 10 options.

Why? It’s about the total number of possible trait combinations now and in HoT. Yes you can currently not specialize, but in hot you cant take more than 3 lines.

For those who think that the number of possible builds is low:
You get to chose 3 out of 6 (5 old + 1 new spec) trait lines. This gives you:

6!/((6-3)!*3!)) = 20 possible ways to select trait lines.
each line has 3 points of 3 choices so: 
3*3*3 = 3^3 per line or 
(3^3)^3 = 19683 in total. 
This results in 19683 * 20 = 393 660 different builds by traits alone.

Yes this is lower than the current number of possible different trait setups (only calculated the number of builds with 2 lines with 6 points and already got ~250k different builds), but i believe that is enough so that people can be different if they want to. Optimal builds will always only be a handfull or less, no matter if it’s the old or the new system. That some current builds will not be possible is also not surprising, every trait change destroys some old build but also allows some new ones.

phys.7689:

spoj.9672:

phys.7689:

no comments on some stats being profession specific? i would think that would effect dungeon meta maxers a lot.

Those stats are hardly relevant. And half of them are getting implemented baseline. Thats a buff to most builds.

well its not clear exactly what they mean with the profession attributes, if its like thieves get 150 more precision that might be huge, but that would seem odd.

hopefully they explain that better today.

Profession attribute are those attributes only a single profession has and (except for the ranger one) only that profession has any use of that attribute. They are always in the fifth trait line:
Ele: Atunement cd reduction
Warrior: Burst skill cd reduction (kitten i was so sure i remebered it correctly)
Thief: steal cd reduction
Guardian: virtue recharge rate
Engi: Toolbelt recharge rate
Ranger: Pet attribute bonus
Mesmer: Shatter Skill recharge rate
Necromancer: Life force pool increase

edit: corrected warrior

While most of the time the racial skills are not optimal and often not even useful in a dungeon, every now and then one can be used for great effect. Quite sure everyone was happy having or being a norn in the thaumanova fractal to just bearform charge the hot room.

Because they are supposed to be “weak”, as not to give one race an advantage over the others and thereby forcing players to play that race, a lot of people dont even consider these skills. But are there other situations where they are helpfull?
I know of only two other situations:

• Sylvari in Thaumanova fractal Grasping Vines to root the slime before it gets to its spot
• Asura in Uncategorized fractal Summon D-Series Golem as a zero elementalist earth ele substitute at Old Tom

Anyone else got more?

edit:
Some nice ideas in here, let’s make a list:

Asura

• Summon Power Suit unmanned as a wall for projectiles (i.e. soak up Old Toms poison spin)
• Summon D-Series Golem to tank (can also soak projectiles but the Power Suit is better)
• Technobabble (Ranger) with Moment of Clarity trait it’s a 6s daze (zero Ele “Deep Freeze”)

Charr

• Hidden Pistol (Necro) an extra dodge for the poor class

Human

• Avatar of Melandru – Binding Roots long lasting immobilize (usefull ie. in grawl and thaumanova fractal)
• Avatar of Grenth unblockable chill (usefull ie at grawl fractal endboss)
• Hounds of Balthazar as a damage spike (ie CoF1 gate)
• Prayer to Dwayna (Necro/Mesmer) burst heal

Sylvari

• Grasping Vines source of immobilize

Norn

• Become the Bear – Charge to get through the heat room in Thaumanova Fractal
• Become the Snow Leopard stealth to help skip

HoT will lead to new meta builds, that was expected once they released the information that it will be an expansion.

The removal of stat points from trait lines will allow for more different builds one will have to sift through to find the optimal one. Currently almost all builds go heavily into the first 2 lines because they give the offensive stats, this makes analysing a build in terms of offensive power “easy”, will be harder in HoT.
On the other hand, the new trait lines reduce the numbers again, only 3 choices per step and you cant take 2 from the same step (like some current meta builds do).

Under the assumption that we get 18 points (picture only shows 15), the number of possible trait combinations can be calculated as follows:
6!/((6-3)!*3!) = 20 (different traitline combinations including elite spec)
(3^3)^3 = 19683 (trait combinations)
so total: 393 660 possible differnt trait builds (as long as i remember my stochastic class correctly)

For only 15 points it’s far less:
combinations of 654: 3^3 * (3^2) * 3 = 729
combinations of 663: (3^3)^2 * 3 = 2187
so (729+2187)*20 = 58 320 possible trait builds.

Currently it’s not assured if pure damage groups will be possible in HoT, but I expect it will only take some time till new content is studied enough to know where more or less defensive skills/traits are needed.

Personaly I welcome the coming change. I always though it strange the some damage centric traits were in heal centric lines. This could actually allow Ele builds/weapons where fire is the best heal, air the best defense, water the best single damage, earth the best aoe damage.

edit: removed one error.
edit2: forgot elite spec.
edit3: should have really looked at the picture

Aidan Savage.2078:

Who deals more damage? The crap zerker running “meta” that dies 10 seconds into the fight, or someone running stuff with vitality and toughness and solos the last 70-80% of the boss?

Mirta.5029:

and that person probably runs in professional premade groups, while the population tries to emulate the meta set by him and ultimately ends up less useful than that guy in PVT.

Bad players are bad players no matter the gear they equip. Sure sometimes they would live longer by equipping some gear without full damage stats, but sometimes they would also deal more damage by equipping more gear with full damage stats.

I pug a lot and have experienced both situations, full zerkers dying early and often, and full tanks/healers being unnecessary even hindering or dying despite their equip. I’ve seen 2 guards running heal/tank dying early at bloomhunger, without placing one wall, another player followed soon. Managed to get it down from 50% as a zerk d/d thief with the help of a zerk gs warrior, just using dodges and the occasional smoke screen. I’ve been in groups at mai trin with people dying left and right and I was forced to solo her last 25%, once as a zerk warrior, twice as a zerk guardian. In a group consisting of a warrior, thief, ele, ranger and me as a guard I had to beg them to equip more damage gear at the grawl fractal because while we could root/cripple/freeze/stun/knockback the spawning shamans, we could not get the first one down before the second one spawned. Resulting in us being overrun when the 4th spawned while second and third were still alive. I’ve also managed to join a 4 person [KING] fractal group a few times via the lfg tool. I felt like a 5th wheel while running with them. They did not need me, they could have finished without my help. I actually had to carefully follow their lead, because they did some things differently than i was used to.

I’m not a perfect player. I still do mistakes by wasting endurance, aegis, block skills or by overlooking a tell. But since I switched from a more balanced equip to pure damage I learned a lot about the encounters: tells, target selection criteria, blockable attacks, order of attacks, even a feel for the ability cd of boss mobs. All these things can be learned and once learned will make it easier to overcome the encounters.
Equipping pure damage gear forced me to learn all that, but for me understanding an encounter is fun. For others it’s work.

The player base can not only be divided by their risk mentality but also by their willingness to invest time into the game.
Group A is the “It worked once, so i’ll continue doing it this way” group. They avoid risk and are not interested in learning about the encounter. Being part of this group is Ok.
Group B is the “It could be done faster, but better safe than sorry” group. They also avoid risk, but invest time to understand an encounter. Being part of this group is Ok.
Group C is the “So that’s how it works, can we get it done faster/better” group. They enjoy the increased risk of optimizing and invest time to understand an encounter. Being part of this group is Ok.
Group D is the “X said that’s good/ideal so i’ll use it” group. They enjoy the risk but do not want to invest time into understanding the encounter. Being part of this group is Ok.

These groups are not absolute. Some people enjoy only a certains amount of risk but stop at some point, some invest some time to understand an encounter but dont want to understand every encounter. Still these groups can be used to classify the playerbase sometimes even by looking at the meta threads on this forum:
“pure Zerker is faster” vs “a dead person deals no damage, so a tank/heal spec helps the run go faster” (C,D vs A,B) both points are correct depending on how you calculate the risk for you.
“learning an encounter makes it go smoother” vs “I only play for fun, I dont want to ‘work’ in the game” (B,C vs A,D) again both points are correct depending on your understanding of fun and work.
In some form or the other these statements have been in almost every thread on the meta and will continue to be used to refute arguments in threads yet to come. All points are correct for the corresponding groups, because the mentality of the person behind each point is different. Arguing about it is not much different than arguing about some people prefering apples over oranges (those heathens ). Just accept that they are different and want different things in life, you don’t have to play with them, just like they don’t have to play with you.

Rising Dusk.2408:

• [Fractals – Thaumanova] The eastern event where you have to break open the doors to save the Asuran engineers is broken insofar as the door to the collider is open even if you never save any of the engineers.

This is only the case in fractals were you need to activate all 4 colliders (iirc 40 and higher). Yesterday, at level 30 or 20 (cant remember in which I had Thaumanova), it was closed (as it was before the patch in the same situations).
This is most likely intended! That part can FAIL by having one asura die, resulting in the door not opening, making it impossible to activate the collider in that area. It’s even noticeable by the audio “Never mind that collider”. If it would fail in a situation where all colliders are needed, it would mean the end of that fractal run.

I’ve seen him skip a phase once on fractal 20. Don’t know how we managed it though, the only thing I can say for sure is, that he only bubbled twice before he died. Could have been, that we froze him before 75% and pushed him below 50% in the freeze. Don’t think that is possible on fractal 50.

I believed most bearbow stories to be focused on dungeon and low level fractals.So far all rangers I ran into at high level fractals were experienced, used traits, gear and pets appropiate to the situation. Not today.
I joined a fractal 50 group as a guardian, it allready consisted of a ranger, mesmer and warrior, while in the loading screen a second ranger joined the group. I dont have a problem with suboptimal groups as long as everyone is doing their “job”. While I was setting up my skills for double wall I glanced at the rangers buff bar, both had signet of the hunt, one also signet of stone. “Maybe they are underwater, most people dont have their underwater skills set up for max dps” were my thoughts till i saw them allready engaged to Bloomhunger. I should have left at that moment. The mesmer and 1 ranger died in the first 10s of the fight (not due to agony, so they had ar at least). The warrior managed to hold on till bloomi was on 50%, the other ranger shooting his longbow from max range managed to make it to about 15%. I tried to get it down and when it had only pixels left, i relaxed and promptly missed a dodge. Second attempt worked somewhat at least, both rangers down before 50%, but the mesmer, now using gs, was close enough to rez them.
Second fractal: harpies. Wanted to double wall again but they engaged so fast that i was locked in traits. Managed to get through and engaged the foursome. That went suprisingly well, except for all those knockbacks (2 rangers and 1 gs mesmer destroy 5 stacks of defiance really fast). At Old Tom I was actually happy, both rangers had some type of bear outside from time to time, so I hoped for some tanks to stand behind. We engage and I see 1 dog … the second ranger kept his pet close to him. With a little luck and after the first pets died it was finally possible to kill the boss from melee. The asura took 2 tries due to knockbacks placing the golems all over the area, could not hit all with gs pull.
Third fractal: Thaumanova. I went low, 3 went high, 1 switched to low midway. We killed the skritt, the 3 wiped. At ooze I specifically said “no cc, so the warrior can use signet of might and fear me” and what do I see 5s into the fight? 5 stacks of defiance. Wiped once, managed to get the defiance down, engaged again. Somehow the damage was low. When the ooze went into shield and got feared into a wall at about 30%, I expected some sort of burst. I looked around: only the warrior and me were fighting the champ, the rest were having fun with far away small oozes. Barely managed to get it down before the next shield phase. At the dormitories we rescued to npcs to get the damage buff, i soloed a door before the rangers together opened theirs. Rest of the fractal was uneventfull.
Boss fractal: Mai Trin. It went as expected. The rangers standing as far away as possible making it near impossible to remove her stacks, complaining that Mai always teleports to them. We only managed to get it done because it bugged in the last phase and we could rez inside twice. Had allready managed to get all her stacks of solo but I always forget to not place myself in between horrick and the center of incoming fields, first time I was the only one who got up fast enough, second time we were two and managed to get her down.
During the whole run, whenever I looked at the buff bars, the signet of the hunt was visible on the rangers, sarcasm on the passive must be such a damage/survival boost.sarcasm off
This was my bearbow experience today, it was not the only thing off in the group. The mesmer ran signet of inspiration and at the asura i noticed that he was also not running time warp but mass invisibility, not at the harpies (or at least he did not use it there) but at the boss. The warrior was OK, he ran a ps build and kept might up high enough even if he only placed one banner.

edit: Oh boy i did rant for a bit.

Spyritdragon.6048:

But ive done the thaumanova fractal multiple times, and everytime, id only need to disable two colliders, and both asura were dead as soon as i entered, the dormitories being plainly sealed off.
How does this all work, and how do you save them?

The timer till the npcs die starts when the first person enters the dormitories. The first NPC to die is the one on the far left (poison chamber), rescue him first by quickly destroying the door. Than the one across (close left from the entrance, fire chamber), also rescued by simply destroying the door. After that I’m not sure of the order, but I think the one with one aaxte inside would die first so that door AND the portal inside (aaxte can be ignored), than the last door and that portal (aaxtes can be ignored again). If one NPC dies that event will fail and in “low” level fractals where you do not have to disable all 4 colliders the door to the collider will NOT open.
If you need to disable all 4 colliders, the door to the collider in the dormitory will be open. A lot of players just rush in solo while the other players are engaged elsewhere, ignoring the npcs, just disabling the collider. Some of those think they can do the same in low fractals and are surprised that the door is closed, not able to rescue the npcs by themselves that area is “abandoned”.

Zenith.7301:

Breath is not even that bad. It means the rest of the dps that are not being breathed on can dps freely without worrying about eating melee cleave.

That would be nice, but a lot of pugs (even at 50) still run in cirles around the boss, nicely hitting everyone. I always cry when this happens while I’m on mesmer, all my phantasms gone

Before the patch last week it was possible to destroy the “swirler” on top of the source. Once it was destroyed no more swirling winds knockback would spawn. Experienced fractal runners therefore would use certain skills to destroy it, in fractal pugs it happened rarely and often without the players noticing.

The patch moved the hitbox so it could no longer be destroyed, this of course means the crippling aoe will be there during the whole event giving the illusion that it happens more often.

Also since the patch some swirls are invisible, sometimes completely sometimes you can see the lightning. Even some shots from the source are invisible, knocking you around without a visible reason. This fractal has become quite irritating.

Have not noticed a difference in the shaman, 2-3 ice breaths per phase.

Aleth.9630:

• [Snowlind Fractal] The object creating the swirling wind attack at the Elemental Source can no longer be killed by Ice Spike.

Checked it with a thief Cluster Bomb just now, did not see 2 damage numbers while blasting anywhere close to the Elemental Source.

Out of order patch, with my internet connection this will take a while, but I’m allready done with my runs for today. Nowadays I only do fractals, got everything from dungeons and am bored of farming gold. But I want the rest of the fractal skins.

Currently I have 10/19 unlocked and have not been getting new ones in the last tries (last skins I got were sword, dagger, pistol and greatword iirc, all of which I allready had). Today was really nice with no skin in 20,30,40 nor 50. That’s not really that unlikely, the chance to get at least one skin is only 25% if one does all 4 runs (and the [KING] data is somewhat correct). But this got me thinking: “How many days does it take to get all skins on average?”.

If I remember correctly this would be a multinomial distribution and could be seen as the problem: “I have 4 urns filled with lots and lots of different balls. Some balls are gold colored, the ratio being {0.02, 0.042, 0.099, 0.116} dependant on the urn. All gold balls are numbered from 1 to 19, the numbers are equally distributed (an assumption I know, but I want to believe). If I were to randomly take a ball from each urn in order and put it back after looking at it, how many sets would it take to have seen every number at least once on average”. If I had studied mathematics I might be inclined to solve it that way, but I did not. … So I just hacked together a simulation and let it run a million times. Here the result:

     Simulating 1000000 tries with 4 runs per day.
     Done Simulating
     After 1000000 tries number of days for all skins is: 243 (mean) 147 (median)
     On average 67 skins were found.
     fastest: 44 days
     slowest: 1166 days

So if someone had zero skins unlocked and would run all fractal bonus chests it would take on average 243 days (so ~1000 fractal runs). And because my program is adaptable, let’s assume the fictional player is not interested in running fractals 4 times a day, s/he just wants to run it once a day on level 50.

     Simulating 1000000 tries with 1 runs per day.
     Done Simulating
     After 1000000 tries the number of days for all skins is: 580 (mean) 787 (median)
     On average 67 skins were found.
     fastest: 109 days
     slowest: 3307 days

Takes longer, but less runs in total (not surprising).

I knew it would take some time, but I think this is a little much. So I really hope a fractal weapon skin chest gets added soon. What about you, how far along have you all gotten? I know some people are finished with the “collection” but how long did it take? And do we have a mathematics professor here who wants to give this problem as a small exercise for his/her students?