I disagree with those who feel its just dandy to have this change cause “we all need to learn the fights.” Please do not foist this opinion on the more casual groups who struggle. What is it to you anyway?
Even when you learn the fights you can still go down with only 2 evades depending on what a given boss may do. Instance runs are already time sinks for limited return (drops are not great and gear is not significantly different from gear attainable from other sources). Many teams run these just for cosmetic skins.
Live and let live – no reason to change everything to make it a larger time sink. Much more of this and instances may be ignored to the same extent many DEs are ignored.
Casual doesn’t mean below average. You are lumping two different groups together.
There are two types of people who welcome the change. First is a small minority of players who want to play the dungeon as the mechanics intended. Second is a large majority of players who plays average and have no problem clearing dungeons. However, under most circumstances, most people won’t be able to carry a below average through a dungeon and have no incentive to do so.
This change forces people to learn or leave. In the long run it will make PuGs less frustrating as every player can be assumed to know the basic game and dungeon mechanics instead of faceroll + res rush through everything.
There are two problems plaguing dungeons right now, bad players and huge enemy HP pools. This change solves one of the two problems plaguing dungeons. Therefore people don’t mind it, or like it.
So, you bring the example of the Volcano fractal. Let me elaborate.
You set down shield of the avenger, the next 3 attacks with firebolts, or the circles on the ground which drop fire from above or knock down will be directed such that they hit the stationary Shield of Avenger.
In the next phase, the fight on the island, every time I set down SoA, the next attack ALWAYS was a fire storm on the stationary shield killing it within 5-8 seconds of casting it.
We did these fights twice for the regular shaman and five times for the infused shaman and it was always the same. You cast the shield, the boss will prioritize killing it. No throwing it down while already taking damage. The shield will start shielding, it’s stationary, the boss will put down an attack that kills it. End of story.
This wasnt happening to us. Our shield of the avenger never died during the elemental phase. It simply ended naturally. We may do the volcano slightly differently though. We focus the elementals over the shaman, and they cant hurt the shield. The shaman I cripple, freeze, pushback, we fear him away, and immobilize too. Oh and stun I guess. Basically we stop the shaman from moving while we deal with the elementals. When the shaman is attacking us again, the shield has already dissipated, it’s job done. Similar things occurred every time it was used. The shield would last as long as we needed it. I fear you may be either unlucky, or using it incorrectly. When my guild guardians get on, ill ask them if they’re doing anything different.
A typical group normally DPS down the shaman shield then duck inside or behind the shield to avoid Agony Bolts while they kill elementals with AoE. Typically when you down the shaman shield, he immediately red circles the group behind the reflect as he normally would. This would immediately terminate the shield spirit and end the SoA bubble at the end of pulse.
I know this change is to encourage a better play style with teamwork which is great, but it also encourages the sale of res orb or as I call it, cheating pay to win tactic. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out in the next couple of months.
Go use a Res Orb first. It basically summons an NPC to res you. Yes, it’s slower than having someone in your group res you. When you are ressed you have 1 HP and move at about 50% movement speed for 10 seconds.
It’s as good of an idea as face rolling Lupi.
People who only do dungeons with VOIP with their level 80 guildmates with full exotic and ascended gear sit on their high horse and tell everyone else the level 35 dungeon they have personally done 30 or more times is “easy” and are baffled why anyone would say its hard. I’ve never been part of an MMO community that was so out of touch.
You don’t need VOIP to not wipe. You just need people that doesn’t try to faceroll through everything then cry about it when that stopped working.
if they realy wanted to gain players ROLL THE PATCH BACK FOR DUNGEONS!
I would be surprised if the comments like this with pure biased personal opinion not at all fully backed up by logic or statistics not being removed.
look at how many people are kitten off about this change then look at your stupid comments. this change will impact this game regardless of what you think. this makes it realy hard to play dungeons anymore. go do ac explore and tell me you can beat kholer without dying and the boss resetting over and over with newbies. then come post here!
What exactly is so bad about Kholer? Literally all of his attacks give you incredibly long time frame to prepare for. He’s just hard if you are one of those people who are smashing their faces into the keyboard during the fight…
newbies dont know the mechs of him therefore alot of them may not want to play dungeons anymore
Then I would say let them quit. Nothing worse than a newbie unwilling to learn and threaten to quit if rewards are not handed over on a silver platter. Either way I have faith that this change will improve the quality of GW2 playerbase over time.
Maybe. Or it might encourage elitism, gear checks and L2Play, which have already started becoming an issue since the Nov 15th patch. Or it might turn away new players from doing the dungeons.
Since dungeons are tied into the perma-BiS gear, I’d much rather see an easy and hard mode, with slightly different drops and same tokens. Then the people who want to brag can brag, and the people who don’t care about that can still get the tokens they need for other parts of the game.
So why exactly is L2Play a bad thing again? It’s pretty normal that you’ll want to learn to get better at something. We don’t need to lower every standard to the most common denominator.
As for gear-check, that’s purely something on ANet’s hands. They setup a system with vertical progression for some reason, they implemented forced gear check at Jade Maw. It’d be wonderful if you can speak out against this and let them know how ridiculous forced gear check is.
Videos of Fractals 67-69
Guess it’s not impossible. They even 4 man 67.
Did you do 68 today? Have you even gone in today?
@Sina, I just did FoM lvl 79 with Grimbane. Get on my lvl son! :P
Did you do maw after the patch yet?
he didnt do jade maw. You so ninja editted that post from “how did you get past the infinite agony”
Yeah, realized it. I was hoping people found way to bypass the infinite agony. Got my hopes up for nothing.
Waypointing was there “revival”. They took it out. There are no alternatives any more. So right now it is: “you die, you lose”. Period.
If you think that way, then you probably shouldn’t be doing dungeons in the first place.
@Sina, I just did FoM lvl 79 with Grimbane. Get on my lvl son! :P
Did you do maw after the patch yet?
Dungeons (Besides Arah) are difficult?
If you didn’t find CoE difficult, you would be the first I know to express this. Subject Alpha was a sheer kitten. Hopefully his health downgrade will make it more manageable.
There’s a whole thread on this. A lot of people DON’T find it difficult to dodge. In fact, once you realize how slow the circles are, you shouldn’t be hit by the circles if you aren’t imprisoned.
If you think Alpha is bad, I don’t know how you would do Lupi.
But what I’m saying is, I DID find him much more manageable after I came to understand his AoEs and how they worked. So maybe I will find him easy with a few more runs.
Dodge everything you can’t reflect. Reflect everything you can’t dodge.
Also, don’t panic if you are over red circles. Walk out.
Learn to leash bosses. Most bosses have attacks that require line of sight and range. Use that to your advantage and make bosses move. If they are moving, they aren’t stomping your face. That include keeping their back towards you or people that can’t dodge.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. We are able to reproduce this if players die in the pools of lava during the final shaman boss fight, and I am working on a solution for this.
Did you notice this happening anywhere other than the pools of lava in the final fight?
You can try this in the dredge fractals. There is also a lava river at the beginning people sometimes leap or charge into by accident from the ramps above.
Dungeons (Besides Arah) are difficult?
If you didn’t find CoE difficult, you would be the first I know to express this. Subject Alpha was a sheer kitten. Hopefully his health downgrade will make it more manageable.
There’s a whole thread on this. A lot of people DON’T find it difficult to dodge. In fact, once you realize how slow the circles are, you shouldn’t be hit by the circles if you aren’t imprisoned.
If you think Alpha is bad, I don’t know how you would do Lupi.
I did AC and Fractals 12/20, yesterday with the usual group. Instead of smooth, easy runs we went to a wipe fest.
There are almost no encounters any more where you can stand still long enough (30 seconds?) to resurrect a downed player without major risk to your own life. It usually ends up in a chain reaction and 2 people trying to res a downed player die themselves.
Give us a heal class. Or at least, give us spells to pick up players with a reasonable cast time (5s?). The only reason players WP rushed in the first place was because ressing is so screwed up that just reviving at WP and running back in was the only viable way.
You weren’t supposed to be alive when you have 2 people who simply drop everything and res. Never have more than 1 person res, learn to res a few %, back up, then go back in again. If you are giving bosses 2 stationary targets for 30+ seconds, then it’s your own fault for dying.
If you are dying in fractals and AC, you are doing it wrong. Stop face tanking anything and learn to hit and run. Unless you are running all necros, you have access to reflect/block skills. So use them accordingly and position as such.
As for me…. I’m on fractal L17. I’m bored of it honestly. I got 2 ascended rings out of it, and a back brace, but now I sort of feel like I shouldn’t go with L20+ groups until I’ve managed to get at least 20 agony resist, more out of respect for those groups than anything. I’m sure by the time I’ve got that 20 agony resist the bulk of the population will be on L40s and I’ll be undergeared once again.
The thing is, many builds will not survive the trash on 40 without being carried. Most people cannot dodge well enough to survive the agony without being overstacked in AR.
Unfortunately, ANet decides that until these same people can reach 40, they won’t open up the cap on fractals. Why even make a scaled dungeon in the first place.
i will say the same thing which i posted in one other thread.
The dungeons had become pathetic aoe fest and hae been nerfed to the ground.I think Anet want more casuals.That is my personal opinion only.
Nothing wrong with casuals. Some casuals are highly skilled, some hardcore players are pathetically useless. Overall, I think ANet is telling people to stop doing fractals given how they hardcapped it.
Not just dodging but knowing how to play and build your character.
When you start low level fractals they’ll be filled with 5 signet warriors that never switch from greatsword. They die out the higher you go. There’s players who clearly have no clue how to play their character properly. When I run AC I frequently see eles that run a 4 signet build (last run had an ele with signet of restoration, signet of fire, signet of water, signet of air) that almost never switch attunements and it just makes me think “wow I’m so glad I don’t see these guys in my fractal runs.” I don’t say that to them of course.
That’s why I look at the name and builds for red flags before entering any dungeon with people.
You SHOULD tell them their builds suck and why their builds suck. It helps them improve their own gaming experience.
Only laurel vendor but in the next patch with earings. Amulets will be droped from chest in FotM, will be obteined for pristine fractal relics the same as rings are now but earings will by only in laurel vendor.
I’m quite interested in your source.
So there’s a pretty basic rule here:
- do fractals 5 until you’ve seen them all. Takes half a day to learn the mechanics, they aren’t difficult.
- stick to fractals 10 to get the daily as long as you don’t have AR.
- Start doing fractal 20 when you have 5 or 10 AR.That’s what I’ll be doing. I like the update.
Higher health pools and damage don’t mean anything once you’ve got the mechanics down. I don’t get what all the QQ by elitists is about. Learn the mechanics, go up as high as you can based on your AR. Done.Short Answer: Dodging.
Long Answer: People can’t dodge. A lot of times people in higher level fractals are more practiced with dodging, but not enough to take down a boss with only 1 or 2 players or simply do not want to carry others through. It used to be only a few classes gets a free pass for going down in fractals due to their innate usefulness. Now, anything goes.
Dodging has a place in every encounter in the game. People who don’t dodge have a problem with the game mechanics in general, not just with fractals.
It’s a lot more apparent in fractals so people notice it. For example, you’ll rarely notice a keyboard turner or a clicker in world PvE or most other dungeons. There aren’t any mechanics that punishes these styles of play. Certain fractals makes them apparent in a very close team environment, so people tend to notice. They would also start caring because one person is dragging down the group.
We never kick anyone but yesterday we took one random guardian and on the end we was so close to kick that !@#$.
- 32 fractals and he dont know what is combo field and finisher,
- We start in water. He multiple times click on leave this fractal because “dolphin phase is imposible to make”.
- Mindlesly rush into mobs in Ascalon and die on every group and cry.
- On boss die in the middle of meteors and starts yelling why noone come and ress him.
- In Colossus fractal die 5 times for too many hammerstacks and twice while pickup hammer with low HP.
- He also kill last cultist so mobs spawn in both sides.
- Our mesmer must port him through winds because he still falling (We try him learn how to use stability but after 10 minutes fo chating we found when he dont buy any stability skill at all and havent skill points for that (on lvl 32 fractals kitten .
- At all he die and cry on almost every encounter.
- His failuring dont stop him in writing tons of advices about what we must do what we do wrong and how bad players we are.Some players simply deserve a kick.
Did you check his Fractal lvl, AR gear?
Maybe it was a guy below 30 lvl that jast go for daily without the proper skills.We should be able to see others fractal lvl like character lvl.
It’s his own fault for not kicking and blocking from the very start.
So there’s a pretty basic rule here:
- do fractals 5 until you’ve seen them all. Takes half a day to learn the mechanics, they aren’t difficult.
- stick to fractals 10 to get the daily as long as you don’t have AR.
- Start doing fractal 20 when you have 5 or 10 AR.That’s what I’ll be doing. I like the update.
Higher health pools and damage don’t mean anything once you’ve got the mechanics down. I don’t get what all the QQ by elitists is about. Learn the mechanics, go up as high as you can based on your AR. Done.
Short Answer: Dodging.
Long Answer: People can’t dodge. A lot of times people in higher level fractals are more practiced with dodging, but not enough to take down a boss with only 1 or 2 players or simply do not want to carry others through. It used to be only a few classes gets a free pass for going down in fractals due to their innate usefulness. Now, anything goes.
People often confuse the scale someone is on with that person’s ability to dodge. I’m certain it’ll get sorted out in no time.
They broke fractals, that’s a big thumb down for me.
If the purpose is to make people work better as a team and learn their class then that is all good but I think it also means they should remove revive orbs. These will become pay to win items, this idea makes me want to vomit… I hope this is not one of their intentions, to make more profit from revive orbs and other boosters.
If people need res orbs for anything but Maw…
The purpose is to get players to actually learn their class and game mechanics so they will actually become successful in the upcoming new contents.
As it stands right now, a lot of players simply fail their way through content. This skill cap means more interesting mechanics can’t be implemented because your average player probably can’t handle them despite the game being physically capable.
Once enough players get use to this level of “difficulty”, less simplistic game mechanics can be implemented.
i believe that high level fractals are for hardcores players
There’s no high level fractals anymore.
Balance the game for the average gamer
As it stands right now, there are friends of mine who will never be able to complete a dungeoun. The vast majority don’t want a super tough challenge, they want fun that they can reasonably work to get the skins they want.
I’m sorry to have to be the one to break it to you, but the content ARE balanced around the average gamer.
Silver mobs are unwelcoming in dungeons and bosses hit like a pillow but has tons of HP. These are problems, but they are by no means difficult to most players. At best, an average player sees these as nuisances on their farming run.
If you are certain your friends will never complete a dungeon, then they are below average. Most likely, as they gain experience, they will be able to, have some faith. The dev’s attention should be fixing fractals.
I completely agree that while this is a good change for the overall quality of the game it is somewhat lacking in regards to PUG’s.
A lot of the comments I’ve read in this thread have been of the ‘oh noobs, qq more’ variety and whilst I’m sure there is an element of this in the complaints the larger issue/point is not being addressed: that there is minimal (at best) communication between PUG members. This means that even the best GW2 players on the planet would run into difficult with these changes in a PUG setting.
It’s great and all to up the difficulty of dungeons, I’m all for that but at the expense of PUG’s seems really imbalanced without the introduction of a mechanic that will aid in improving PUG teamwork/communication beyond ctrl + t….
People WILL get use to it. AC explorable was deemed impossible to complete at launch by most people. People used to brag all the time pre-launch for clearing AC. Now, it’s a staple farm for most players. They’ll get use to it.
The game already lack quality content that are worthwhile, with the end of fractals, ANet should focus on bringing content to people that have gone through everything and give the rest time to chew on existing content, not bringing everyone to the same bar again and let the older players languish.
Since you are enforcing a hardcap on fractals, it’s only natural that we get more than just a crappy amulet’s worth of AR to get back to our old progression.
Why is it that we must wait 8 days to acquire an amulet to get back into the 40s? Why is it that we’ll end up languish in the 40s until everyone catches up in the distant future?
Ascended gear is for progressing in fractals. Just let them all drop in fractals and let us progress again. If people want them for something else, let them wait.
no, you can only get them from the laurel vendor
Where did you hear that information? I have not been able to confirm either way.
I don’t understand why people have to kite the Magg room pre-patch. Killing them is much faster.
I do intend on putting more waypoints into dungeons, but due to the work required for this upcoming patch we didn’t get enough time to make it happen.
I’m not a fan of “punishment running” wherein your punishment for failing is having to run a long distance back to the fight. To discourage res rushing potential we went initially with fewer waypoints. Now that we are implementing a new tech, I would like to add more to reduce the time spent running back to an objective.
We have more info coming soon to how the system will be working.I just want to let you know that your grand fix to CoF path 3 did not make that path any better.
I’m almost done with this game simply because of your ridiculous design and failure to listen to your customers about anything.
Good work.
How are people failing CoF? How are people even dying?
So is this fixed or not? I don’t want to spend 2 hours into level 50+ and get stuck at jade maw when I get home. Can anyone verify this?
I’ve seen reports of 99% still working.
Res Orb and Infinite Agony on res, honestly seems like a bug. If you want to play it safe, wait till tomorrow as more info comes out and the devs wake up.
Inside source said update made sure 99% won’t work over 40+ as it’s considered an exploit along with res orb and ranger res.
However, I see a single scenario where the 99% would work. It’s a high risk situation where you have to repeat it twice, which makes it unreliable. Unfortunately, I very much don’t want to waste hours only to screw up this scenario and fail at Maw.
RIP for the time being. Hopefully there would be enough outcry for them to reverse this.
Already asked someone at ANet, they’ve intentionally capped it at 39 currently and 49 for those with amulet AR.
Whoever enters makes the instance.
So whoever starts the dungeon makes the instance, not the party leader? That would make more sense.
Yes, you are correct. There is actually no party leader in the game.
Whoever enters makes the instance.
You ressed Detha triggering another pack of ghost to spawn. That is why you ALWAYS kill everything before bringing her up if you wipe.
AC is pretty much the training mode dungeon.
It’s an easy dungeon that gives you a variety of enemies and game mechanics to test out:
Event types: Timed events, last stands, button pressing, scavenger hunt, boss fights, tool assisted boss fight.
Mob types: ranged projectiles, melee aoe, ranged aoe, massive attacks, rapid attacks, evasive mobs, condition damage, tool assisted mobs, zerg mobs, bullet hell projectiles, ground burst.
I did two runs so far with 2-4 people in the group with little or no experience and we got through it just fine. I welcome the challenge. I bet this update will make Wethospu happy since he probably won’t have to run after lupi quite as much.
What changed, if anything.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks challenge is a good thing in a game.
No, this is why the fractal hardcap angered a lot of people. They basically made a lot more of the game faceroll and cut off the challenging part.
hello guys i finaly found a grp to get a progress at level 43 … and second map was dredge with final boss ice elemental hmm any1 have any idea how can u survive the agony i mean u cant even dodge it .. is it a abug or u have to wait untill u get amulet 30 days / or we have to find exploit..
Nope, good luck with that. Hard capped.
Actually the patch made it there is no point in having more than 1 person with AR. You can’t clear any fractals over 39 anymore. There is literally one single encounter where you just need 1 person with AR to do fractals as it stands.
try again when you have 40ar, with amulet maybe?
40 AR won’t keep you alive at 50. It’s stupid they put a hard cap on this.
You can no longer progress beyond fractals 39. You can’t use res orbs, ranger res, or 99% res anymore.
The famed infinitely scaling dungeon is now hardcapped at 39.
Poor play? Wtf are you talking about? In every god kitten PuG at least one person dies in that fight. You are over punishing players who can’t spent all day preparing for Arah.
How is having decent gear and having played the game for long enough to be able to dodge/recognize attack patterns/listen to someone who’s done it before “spending all day preparing for Arah”?
Also if you pug and they’re terrible, you’re doing it to yourself. If you pug the hardest dungeon in the game and someone can’t keep up, then you only have yourself to blame.
Don’t take this as a personal attack, mind. It’s like if someone wanted to enter the pro starcraft scene and they’d never played an RTS before, they’re obviously not ready but you’re claiming they should get some kind of crutch that lets them get there. It’s not a personal attack, it’s a fact – if you can’t do arah, then you shouldn’t be able to rely on a blatant and broken crutch (waypoint zerging) to finish something that normally they wouldn’t be able to do (because they’re not able to dodge lupi’s attacks).
And this is exactly the problem as this new patch discourages even more teamplay.
It’s even more about solo builds who can handle themselves on their own and rely on no teamplay.
Let me requote you again :(…)
Also if you pug and they’re terrible, you’re doing it to yourself. If you pug the hardest dungeon in the game and someone can’t keep up, then you only have yourself to blame.Don’t take this as a personal attack, mind. It’s like if someone wanted to enter the pro starcraft scene and they’d never played an RTS before, they’re obviously not ready but you’re claiming they should get some kind of crutch that lets them get there. It’s not a personal attack, it’s a fact – if you can’t do arah, then you shouldn’t be able to rely on a blatant and broken crutch (waypoint zerging) to finish something that normally they wouldn’t be able to do (because they’re not able to dodge lupi’s attacks).
I’m still not clearly understanding the definition of “something that players wouldn’t normally be able to do”… applied to a mmo playable to all.
It’s actually about not having to carry people who have no business being there in the first place.
Is there a hardcap on fractals now? Apparently Maw does endless Agony even on ressing at 50+.
Is this a bug or can we all pack up and go home?
well any ranger who uses search and rescue is going to be popular in dungeons now :P
Or better yet, just get players that know what they are doing! No need to even res anyone in the first place.
Blah, blah blah, I cant farm tokens, karma and so, blah, blah, blah – isnt it supposed to be a challenge?
I don’t see any challenge at all in it. What’s the point anymore of doing a dungeon that will require you an hour to get ~40 silver and spent 11+ on armor repairs ?
Really challenging and fun…. not !
Start learning your class and stop dying really helps making dungeons go fast. You shouldn’t be dying in dungeons in the first place.
Gigantic Lupicus is easy. Actually, Arah in general is easy. It’s just tedious. Also, I love Gigantic Lupicus.
Wait till you pug it. People apparently don’t carry ranged weapons these days.
Never happened for me. Besides, if they didn’t have a ranged weapon I’d just call off the stack method and get everyone to dodge the grubs. If it’s only one person they can just sit at the back of the room, it’s what you have to do with thieves with 25 points in shadow arts anyway…
Not an issue for phase 1, problem is people trying to melee the boss on phase and not surviving because of it, repeatedly. You’d think after a few tries and they’d stop doing that, but nope, meleeing away at the boss and dies on the first aoe barrage.
Gigantic Lupicus is easy. Actually, Arah in general is easy. It’s just tedious. Also, I love Gigantic Lupicus.
Wait till you pug it. People apparently don’t carry ranged weapons these days.