Guild Wars 2

It’s honestly mind-blowing that this hasn’t gotten a response yet. This is a product people are spending real-life money on. The fact it wasn’t even noted in a patch is bad enough; the lack of a response afterward is terrible.

It’s honestly mind-blowing that this hasn’t gotten a response yet. This is a product people are spending real-life money on. The fact it wasn’t even noted in a patch is bad enough; the lack of a response afterward is terrible.

I’ve noticed this in solo queue the past week or so. I seem to be getting Skyhammer at least one in three matches.

Everyone is getting Healing Signet.

FenrirSlakt.3692:

Lopez.7369:

We should be able to buy any ascended gear with Pristine Fractal Relics.

I wouldn’t go as far to suggest Ascended gear, but some components would be neat.

Why not? It could be an absurd amount of relics. I’m thinking 30 pristine fractal relics for one weapon.

We should be able to buy any ascended gear with Pristine Fractal Relics.

I was just wondering this.

My guess is it only drops in the lv. 41-50 tier.

Nightshlin.5234:

If you did the legendary shaman fractal on level 36 you would know how annoying reduced control is trying to save the people. The level 36 instability it really badly designed because it only makes this one fractal so much harder than the rest.

That does seem pretty awful.

I think it’s a legitimate concern that Legendary Imbued Shaman becomes far too difficult with a lot of the instabilities. It just seems like that fight wasn’t tuned with the wiggle room for even more mechanics.

I think the best way to eliminate rolling for swamp is to either make swamp longer or add fractals that are equally short.

If the choice is to make swamp longer, add a section with some trash mobs beforehand.

If the choice is to add equally short fractals, I recommend cutting the krait portion entirely from the underwater fractal. That would make it a puzzle and a boss, just like swamp.

Another addition could be the first part of the dredge fractal with just the switch puzzles followed by a boss. (Trash mobs would obviously have to be reduced as well, but I’ve always thought that all the normal mobs and veterans in each of the switch rooms should be replaced with an elite or champion mob with more interesting mechanics that fit better with the puzzle.) That would also be a puzzle and a boss.

Splitting up the dredge fractal would also allow the developers to take the rest of the dredge fractal, shorten it and perhaps put it in the medium or long tier.

That’s only because of bleed cap. We can handle it with just two condition builds. Obviously, I would never recommend more than that.

I don’t hate berserker builds. I think the game should have opportunities for every playstyle and role, including berserker builds.

But I think, regardless of what the metagame is at any given time, instabilities should be about shaking up the current metagame and how players approach encounters. That’s also the developers’ stated goal for instabilities, according to the stream they did on Monday.

If anything I would argue that lower-level fractals are much harder in PUGs because people generally play much worse at those levels.

I climbed to Lv. 50 since the update came out with only PUGs.

Lv. 48: Tainted Renewal – Regeneration, protection, and vigor have unintended effects. (Regeneration becomes poison, protection becomes vulnerability, vigor becomes weakness.)

This is much more interesting than its condition counterpart — Ill and Chill (Lv. 38) — because it hits all classes and particularly impacts the berserker metagame by reducing survivability that isn’t attached to traits and armor. But this instability hits a really nice sweet spot in which it’s not impactful enough to require gear changes but still notable enough to cause a player to pick up a few traits or utility skills that otherwise remain dormant.

Lv. 49: Stamina – Outgoing damage is reduced when endurance is low.

This is essentially a better version of Lethargic (Lv. 42). By giving players the option of dealing with less endurance or less damage based on how they manage their roles, the instability manages to avoid becoming an overly burdensome damage or survivability throttle. It essentially punishes mistakes that force a roll by causing the player to deal less damage, but it also rewards players who are attentive enough to only roll when necessary. That’s the kind of decision-making that instabilities should encourage.

Another bonus: It boosts condition builds because they’re not affected by the damage reduction.

Lv. 40: Agonizing Expedition – You are frequently afflicted with agony.

I like how this plays as a gear check and warning for those beginning to progress through the 40s. There are just two issues: First, it’s pretty uninteresting; it doesn’t change fights at all because the right group will just equip enough agony resist to negate it. Second, it fails as a gear check because it’s easy to simply skip lv. 40 once a few people beat it legitimately.

To be honest, I think this instability is how agony should work in the first place. Agony resist is supposed to be a crucial factor in how players progress through fractals, but it can be largely ignored because it’s only unavoidable in the boss tier.

Lv. 41: Playing Favorites – Untargeted enemies take half damage.

Although it’s a damage throttle, I like this instability because it goes against the berserker melee train metagame by making it much more difficult to stack and AOE clumped-up mobs. It also indirectly boosts condition builds because conditions are not affected by the instability in any way.

So if damage throttles are going to exist, this is how they should be done. Don’t just make them blanket reductions in damage; make them interesting mechanics that can be and have to be played around.

Lv. 42: Lethargic – Reduced endurance regeneration.

This instability adds a huge layer of challenge to all PvE encounters, which justifies it in its own right. But it’s also compelling because it makes it much more difficult to run a glass cannon build, which, as we all know, are all too popular in the berserker metagame.

The issue is that no one is going to realistically change out gear to become tankier when ascended gear, which is needed for agony resist, is so difficult to come by. So while this could actually encourage tankier builds for one fractal level, I have my doubts that it will actually do that because most people will simply tough it out and accept the extra challenge instead of changing out gear.

Lv. 43: Bloodlust – Combat is agonizing. Get a kill for relief. (You take increasing damage each time you hit an enemy, based on your health. A single tick is 0.1 percent of your max health. Each hit causes one tick.)

This is easily the worst instability in the game. It is nothing but a damage throttle. All it does is require people to slow down their damage to avoid dying. That doesn’t add depth to gameplay; it just makes bosses unnecessarily longer and uninteresting chores in kiting.

Lv. 44: Overextended – Take damage on critical hits. (The damage seems to scale with maximum HP; mostly moves between 400-900 damage.)

The exact same problems apply to this instability as Bloodlust, but this one also adds the unnecessary gear issues that surface with Lethargic.

Lv. 45: Frosty – Periodically leave a patch of chilling frost.

This discourages stacking, and can force even good groups to change up how they approach encounters, much like Stormy Weather (Lv. 35).

One issue in terms of progression is that this seems notably weaker than Stormy Weather because the lightning strike effect is much stronger, even though Stormy Weather causes only one lightning strike while Frosty drops scattered chilled bombs. So it might be a good idea to switch Frosty and Stormy Weather in terms of fractal levels.

Lv. 46: Social Awkwardness – Nearby allies reduce your healing effectiveness.

One of my favorite instability effects. It does everything to discourage the current metagame and stacking, particularly because it makes reviving so much more difficult. (In effect, only one or two can revive a teammate.)

My main concern is that it disproportionately affects some encounters far too much. In cliffside, the hallway players must stand in to destroy the two seals effectively requires stacking, which is made close to impossible by Social Awkwardness. This wouldn’t be too much of a problem if there were other means to tackling this encounter, but the hallways is the only realistic approach.

Lv. 47: Antielitism – Elite skills cause death.

This could be interesting by forcing some team compositions to change up skills so they can adjust to not using certain elite skills. For example, a group with a warrior and necromancer might make the necromancer pick up Signet of Undeath to make up for the warrior’s lack of a Battle Standard.

The problem is elite skills are too seldom useful or interesting in PvE for this instability to play a big role, so Antielitism ends up acting as an extremely weak damage throttle for some classes and a nearly negligible hassle for others.

On my climb to lv. 50, I encountered some good and bad instabilities. Now that I’ve had time to collect my thoughts, I figured I’d turn them into constructive criticism.

Lv. 31: Mist Stalker – The Mossman stalks you through the fractals.

I think this is exactly the kind of mechanic instabilities should be going for. It’s interesting and definitely forces a group to change its playstyle a bit — or at least gain a little caution.

My only criticism here is that I really don’t think Mossman should have any stacks of defiant or initial crowd control immunity when he pops up. That would not only make countering the spawn more interesting, but it would also give a higher value to the control role, which has long sought a stronger standing in PvE. (On that note, if ArenaNet is truly interested in boosting control roles, these are the kind of mechanics that should be looked into.)

Lv. 32: Impaired Immunity – Conditions applied to you last longer.

I really like this instability in concept because it could encourage better teamwork and support through condition cleansing. The problem is most PvE encounters just don’t make much use of conditions (or boons, for that matter). So this would be a great instability if there was some groundwork in place that already created some condition pressure, but that groundwork needs to be built first.

Lv. 33: Outflanked – Enemies do more damage when attacking from behind or the sides.

Another interesting instability just because it requires players to be more cautious and change their playstyles. More survivable builds in particular deal with this instability much better, which is a welcome change from the berserker metagame. The problem is it seems really buggy, particularly for AOE attacks.

Lv. 34: Fleeting Precision – Your critical chance is reduced.

This is the first boring instability, and I think it’s the kind of damage throttle that ArenaNet should avoid for these abilities. This kind of instability doesn’t make anyone change their gear set-up. (There are too many issues with that, considering fractals require ascended gear.) Instead, it just makes encounters unnecessarily longer without adding any depth.

Lv. 35: Stormy Weather – Lightning periodically strikes.

This is similar to the Outflanked instability in that it adds depth and caution to all encounters while indirectly boosting non-berserker builds. It also could encourage stun breaks if the stun on the lightning strike lasted longer, which is perhaps one area ArenaNet could look into. The one difference from Outflanked is the lightning strike directly discourages stacking, which is a tactic that can often trivialize encounters if done correctly.

Lv. 36: Losing Control – Outgoing control effects have reduced effectiveness.

This instability seems really pointless. Control effects are already trivialized by the defiant mechanic on bosses, and control builds have long been trying to find a niche in PvE. I don’t think ArenaNet should be weakening a type of effect that’s already too weak.

Lv. 37: Keep Them in Line – Damaged enemies gain boons when unattended.

This instability is just too negligible. It’s extremely rare that a damaged mob would go unattended for long enough for the instability to trigger. Even if it does happen, chances are a few boons aren’t going to make or break any encounter. The only time it became a problem is on Mai Trin, which produced a few unwanted bugs.

Lv. 38: Ill and Chill – Poison, chill, and confusion have unintended effects. (Poison inflicted by players becomes regeneration, chill becomes protection, confusion becomes fury.)

Another negligible instability. Poison, chill and confusion don’t play strong enough roles in the current metagame or encounters for their conversions to make a big difference.

But the bigger problem with this instability is it unfairly targets some condition builds that rely on poison and confusion. Considering the vast majority of the playerbase already considers condition builds too weak, nerfing them even more seems unnecessary.

Lv. 39: Last Laugh – Enemies explode when killed.

One of the best instabilities. It completely changes how a few encounters are approached, hurts berserker melee trains more than other builds and discourages stacking.

My only concern is it might be a little too much in certain areas of the game. Legendary Imbued Shaman — already one of the most genuinely difficult boss encounters in Guild Wars 2 — becomes a total disaster with this instability because players have to kill the spread-out worms as quickly as possible.

I actually want a fractal trident.

Punishing berserker gear isn’t really a punishment, though. It’s just proper game balance. There should be mechanics that require bringing in a lot of roles. For too long the PvE in Guild Wars 2 only had mechanics that opened the door to berserker and nothing else.

I would argue they haven’t gone far enough, either. I’m still waiting for the day bosses and mobs make greater use of conditions and boons. I’m also still looking forward to that one boss that finally requires some sort of crowd control.

I already own one, but I really want a response for this issue. Seems like a big deal, given the sale.

Lord Kuru.3685:

All PvE content goes faster with zerker gear if you have a party that knows what its doing.

The nature of stat scaling means power, precision, critical damage interact better with each other (damagewise) than other stat combinations. The way bosses are designed (slow attacks with big damage) means armor is unnecessary as long as you know how to use dodges, evades, blocks, etc. properly.

I’m not disputing whether it would be faster in a perfect group. I’m just arguing that it’s not necessary or even easiest, as some have implied.

I am questioning how much faster it would be, though. A lot of the mechanics in higher-level fractals are very unfriendly to the theoretical berserker melee train.

As the screenshot of my PUG shows, not really. (Doctor Derek and I are condition builds.)

We got swamp, cliffside and Thaumanova Reactor. Our only wipe was on a puzzle in Thaumanova Reactor.

I’m actually not sure how much easier some of these encounters would be if all of us were heavy classes with berserker gear, particularly since conditions aren’t affected by the lv. 49 instability (lower stamina reduces direct damage).

I’m well aware that easy content, such as COF and Arah farming runs, goes much faster with full berserker heavy classes and elementalists. But I’m not sure how much that applies to difficult content.

(With all that said, a thief would have absolutely been a hindrance in this group. That class needs a total revamp in PvE.)

It’s not my idea in the slightest. But I agree. That’s the problem.

I think it’s pretty amazing how many “shortcuts” and exploits people find in this place that aren’t even faster than just doing it like normal. The bizarre obsession with skipping the first two switches as if they’re difficult or time consuming will always be beyond me.

Well, I’m glad I’ve never had that problem. It’s easier to jump toward the waves, anyway.

Cynz.9437:

the bigger issue is…you can’t even dodge them well… since in 90% of the time they hit you anyway, even if you are in dodge animation

You’re probably trying to dodge the wave you can’t jump or dodge.

That doesn’t justify the lack of rewards, though. Basic game design dictates that the most difficult content should be the most rewarding.

They nerfed karma gain across the board a couple patches ago.

I’ll just re-post what I said earlier:

But if fractal skins and ascended items dropped more frequently, they would no longer be prestigious. The content would also be short-lasting because everyone would get their skins and ascended items quickly.

That’s why equity in gold rewards is good. It’s a universal currency that gives content long-term relevance.

The ideal strategy would be to make all content — champion farming, dungeons, fractals, world bosses and everything else — equal in gold but drop unique skins. That way people can do whatever they want and work toward a universal goal, such as a legendary, while getting other skins.

It’s obviously not going to happen overnight, but it’s what ArenaNet should aim for.

You need to properly dodge and jump. That is the point of the fight.

I usually clear it on my first attempt with PUGs at lv. 40 and higher.

Vena.8436:

Considering I’ve bought (and ascended) four backpieces and gotten (an ever increasing) twenty+ 20 slot bags, I’d say Fractals are actually rather rewarding if you’re not looking at just pure GPH.

Comparatively, I’d have to run 10-15 dungeons runs for a single 20 slot bag, and god knows how many dungeons to buy all the T6 mats to make even just one backpack.

GPH Fractals suck.
Alternatives value though? Not so much.

I suppose when you run out of toons and bag slots, the value drops off steeply but… eh.

This might be worth considering in the short term, but, like I said in an earlier post, the idea should be to give fractals long-term relevance. What happens when people get all their 20-slot bags through fractals after eight daily runs?

To the people pointing out that some fractal runs can produce a handful of rares and one or two exotics: That’s great. I’m happy for you. But an outlier is not statistically significant. Content is only rewarding when it’s consistently rewarding. There are fractal runs in which I also end up with a bunch of rares and exotics, but those are outweighed by the two or three fractals that produced one rare each.

Besides, four rares and one exotic aren’t impressive for a 1-2 hour run at lv. 31-50. Every dungeon in the game is two or three times more profitable than that.

How would it be easier than lv. 31-39? At best it could be the same difficulty, but we know enemies scale up in health and damage, so that can’t be true, either.

Healix.5819:

Fractals are meant to be something like a raid where you need to get the gear in order to progress. It’s meant to appeal to that type of player. Infusions are the vertical progression of fractals, rather than the higher tiers of gear you would normally see in other MMOs.

Considering they’re going to release leaderboards, which will remain stagnant, I’m expecting them to regularly add new fractal levels. Maybe something like 1 level every other week or a tier a month, as long as people reach the end that is. It wouldn’t take much development time after all to increase a number, though coming up with unique names/instabilities will become more challenging over time. With each tier, they’ll probably do what raids usually do and multiply the requirements needed, which in this case is agony resistance.

The ability to skip instabilities sounds broken since they’re like tests. Eventually, they’ll probably include multiples of them and ones like Agonizing Expedition will be made permanent.

This is what I was going to post.

It has always been extremely obvious that they didn’t test this fractal past lv. 20. There is no way the developers saw the amount of mobs that spawn and concluded it’s OK unless they don’t understand basic game mechanics like AOE cap and dredge immunity to blind. Even then, having so many trash mobs in any game is just tedious.

Dredge fractal is doable and even easy, but it is horribly designed and laced with poor mechanics.

But if fractal skins and ascended items dropped more frequently, they would no longer be prestigious. The content would also be short-lasting because everyone would get their skins and ascended items quickly.

That’s why equity in gold rewards is good. It’s a universal currency that gives content long-term relevance.

The ideal strategy would be to make all content — champion farming, dungeons, fractals, world bosses and everything else — equal in gold but drop unique skins. That way people can do whatever they want and work toward a universal goal, such as a legendary, while getting other skins.

It’s obviously not going to happen overnight, but it’s what ArenaNet should aim for.

AKGeo.6048:

Fractals are for those who want the challenge and the prestigious rare skins. The skins and chance of ascended boxes far exceeding other methods are more than enough to make up for the lower gold per hour.

I can’t repeat this enough.

Judging by the general response to this thread, most people disagree.

Basic game design dictates that the most difficult content should be the most rewarding. So making it equal gold to other content and then adding those other goodies you describe just makes sense.

As it stands, it’s not just that fractals give less gold. They give a fraction — one-fourth or one-fifth — of what someone can get in a dungeon, and the reward is even lower in comparison to champion and dolyak farming.

Besides, there’s no reason not to make all the content equally rewarding when it comes to gold. Everyone should be able to work toward a broader goal, such as legendaries or other skins, while doing whatever content is possible. Equalizing the gold reward allows that. That’s the reward equity ArenaNet should be aiming for, even if it will take some tricky balance.

It also looks like ascended armor might not have infusion slots, although they probably add those at the last possible moment.

You’re not making an affirmative argument with these posts. You’re just status quo stonewalling. Of course people who play purely for gold will resort to other outlets, but there’s nothing that says it has to be this way.

In fact, it’s very basic game design that the most difficult content should be the most rewarding. That’s clearly not the case at the moment.

Besides, you’ve yet to explain a downside to increasing the gold reward in fractals. Why shouldn’t ArenaNet increase the gold reward to make it match other content?

MassDelusion.9130:

Ascended gear and Fractal weapons are the reward, gold is just a bonus.

This philosophy makes little sense in the long term. There is a point where people don’t need or care to get ascended items anymore. That’s what happened with ascended rings before this patch, which left fractals fairly dead compared to other modes of content.

That’s especially true since fractals are nowhere close to the best source for ascended items outside of rings.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Not to sound rude..but why don’t you take the 10 minutes to CoF, another 15 to do twilight..i’ve been part of team that did arah p3 in 16 minutes..45 minutes and you’ve got your daily gold..now go do fractals where agony infusions are currently selling 1.5G for a +2 and your reward. I played a lvl 9 today and although i have fairly usable magic find I received 1 vial of mist, 4 powerful blood, 1 exotic from chest and 3 rares..it made the entire lvl 9 worth all up 5.5g in drops/rewards. I personally think that is fairly adequate and I was only lvl 9.

Right. Dungeons are better gold. That’s the point of this thread.

Supply and demand.

What AR do you need for lv. 41-50? Is it 55?

If your average is two exotics per fractal run, I want your luck.

I usually end with a two to four rares. I sometimes get an exotic.

But the same actually applies to dungeons when accounting for general loot and dungeon tokens, except dungeons are considerably shorter.

The strange thing is the two-week patch cycle doesn’t seem to be getting that much media hype or word of mouth, so I’m not sure what purpose it serves if most of the people actually playing the game are upset with the poor quality of recent patches and the storytelling.

Sure, but that applies even more to infinite fractals.

Considering higher fractal levels don’t seem to be much more challenging, making it a first-come-first-serve leaderboard makes much more sense. If the content is always going to be easy for hardcore players, turning it into a time trial is the only way left to gauge player skill and creativity.

Nope. But part of me is glad the current crop of “storytellers” didn’t have a chance to ruin the fall of Abaddon.

Comparing rewards from dungeon to dungeon almost makes as little sense as comparing dungeons to fractals.

I’m also not sure why the most mindless content — champion and Dolyak farming — is way more rewarding than difficult content that requires organization, including fractals or dungeons.

It’s been pretty obvious to me since this fractal was introduced that they only tested it up to lv. 20. There’s simply no way the developers saw the amount of mobs that spawn at later levels and thought it was OK — unless they don’t understand fundamental game mechanics like AOE cap and dredge’s immunity to blind.

It’s doable and much easier than people let on, but I’m certain it’s all a happy accident.

You’re giving it too much thought. This was supposed to be another “LOL, SCARLET DID IT!” instance. Nothing else.