Guild Wars 2

I’m bais towards power engi and using rifles. I’ve been using power engi for the longest time in T4 fractals ( even when " I wasn’t meant too due to the toughness " ).

I agree netshot doesn’t see much play and jumpshot does get you killed sometimes if you cast it carelessly. Otherwises it’s a pritty great weapon. Blunblast er.. Skill #3 is strong up close and overcharget shot does respectful breakbar damage. Basicly yea, it’s not the strongest although it’s super helpfull and that’s why I like
It.

Muffin Nook.5923:

You could have avoided the whole situation.

Situational Awareness is the ability to identify, process, and comprehend the critical elements of information about what is happening to the team with regards to the mission. More simply, it’s knowing what is going on around you.

Knowing that the oakheart has a KD and choosing to stay and continue to res was your first mistake, not identifying that Bloom was within leaping distance to the downed player was your second, not knowing who the oakheart and bloom had aggro on was your third. If you had the aggro, you should have kited the mobs away from the downed person and not gone for the res. If someone else had aggro, then you should have told them to get away from the vicinity while you rubbed the down person.
Shouldn’t have to mention all this to someone who “pugged their way to 100 and got their legendary fractal backpiece all on their own”.

PuGs NEVER lure the boss away while ressing. I’ve never seen it done by them. It’s always: I’m standing away out in the open while one is down and the other 3 PuGs are trying to res with full agro of the boss. On top of that, if they get the res off, I’m beating myself up for not being more helpfull =/

Rising Dusk.2408:

rfdarko.4639:

The problem is there are people who have saved up the pages since they came out nearly a year ago, so it would be a time gate for people just starting but vets could just dump their savings. Having an artificial time gate solves the problem of the vendor being implemented with an already existing token system. The same goes for pristines. In terms of impeding veterans, you kind of have to if you want the currencies to have any value at all.

Pristine fractal relics currently cannot impact the economy in any appreciable way. Regardless of that, the only people who have inordinate amounts of the currency already have invested in other means to getting ascended gear in order to get to the point where they can easily get so much of the currency in the first place. It would be very different if you could sell ascended gear on the TP, but you can’t. As a result, allowing veteran fractal players to spend 20g + 100 pristine + 1 fractal journal per ascended armor piece wouldn’t be a problem at all, and would actually add value to an otherwise dead currency.

That’s two weeks of grind. If you have all the fractal masteries, you would easily make that coin in that time and you would have left over Pristine relics..
I take it 20g is how mich the raids ask for?

If you HAD to replace that coin cost with X amount of integrated matrix or whatever it’s called, how much would you um.. Think is fair? Again, if you HAD to have them instead of gold.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Sarahfull.4930:

I thought no matter what number of relics anet makes, anyone can " just " do stuff like the level40 farm untill they have enough and that is why we have a high gold cost.

This doesn’t work if you also have journal page and/or pristine fractal relics as part of the cost.

Sarahfull.4930:

The idea of once a week though, I’m coming up blank with a counter to that. Seems like that could work well

I don’t know how many players would buy into an artificial time gate like that. I’d much rather they use pristine fractal relics, which are limited in number per day, to prevent people from speed farming ascended gear. This wouldn’t impede the 10000+ pristine relic veterans by design.

True, pristine are gated as well. That could work. If a completely new person goes for ascendent gear, they need a months worth of laurels. Would it be a months worth of pristine too?

I thought no matter what number of relics anet makes, anyone can " just " do stuff like the level40 farm untill they have enough and that is why we have a high gold cost.

The idea of once a week though, I’m coming up blank with a counter to that. Seems like that could work well

Obtena.7952:

I don’t get the complaint … Engineer is great class if you learn how to play it. The fact you don’t see many has more to do with the level of attention and understanding you need to play it well, not that it’s a bad class and needs to be fixed. It’s got massive rotations and has the most connected number of traits and skills of any class. That learning curve isn’t achieved with a few months of play.

Your opinion is yours, but don’t mistake it with how the game is actually designed and interpret that difference as a ‘problem’ that needs to be fixed, including a minute by minute report from Anet on the progress to satisfy you.

Agree, plus it’s awesomr being rare

To me, I don’t see it as a bad thing, or that it’s over cost. To others though, it is. And no matter what I say people will pick it apart.

When I PuG fractals I’ve never had a problem with class on engi. I’ve even join some PuGs as a duo with friends and they were engi too and no problems.

Edit: This is with the power rotation: nades, Eg, Ft

I wish I could spell.. The slaying potions from that dungeon are very, very handy in fractals well for one fractal although still.. 10% dmg reduction and 10% more dmg is always nice, just people would rather pay the coin on the tp than make alittle coin off doing the dungeon it’self. Speaking of which are you Na or Eu?

Astralporing.1957:

Sarahfull.4930:

Astralporing.1957:

Sarahfull.4930:

You do realise that you can choose the stats from a pool. With crafting your going all in on one stat. Like you can choose from all stats with powet major etc.. That’s also included in the costs..

Compare the prices of stats that cost most to craft then… It’s still the same… (and that’s even when ignoring that you can craft the cheapest version and stat-change in forge nowadays).

It’s meant to be more expensive. Your paying for not having to carft, timegate, pool of stats, not using T6. It’s just more options and like you say, you can just craft if you really want to

Pool of stats is the same – as fluffy said, that you can choose stats at a slightly different stage doesn’t really matter. And the fractal option is timegated too (as it requires pages). Except you can skip timegate on crafting by buying those mats from TP.
Also, i don’t understand what kind of advantage “not using T6” is compared to say, “not using matrices”. Yeah, it uses different materials, but you will most likely end up buying those anyway.

Different stage yea, slightly I don’t think so. Haha I forgot about the pages, I was still doing the recommended so I have enough to not look at that =) good point with that, that would sloow down much more than the crafting. In terms of T6 some people might want to keep them for legendaries and/or other things that use T6 blood etc

Fluffy.1932:

Sarahfull.4930:

You do realise that you can choose the stats from a pool. With crafting your going all in on one stat. Like you can choose from all stats with powet major etc.. That’s also included in the costs..

I don’t really understand what you mean by this. You can’t change stats on the fly, you have to pick one in order to use the armor, which makes it no better than crafting. Also, it only takes about 10g to change stats either way. Are you buying/crafting before you know what stat of armor you want or something?

Yea nah, fair point.

littlebabyprincess.9786:

Daddicus.6128:

I agree 100%. The changes were almost universally bad in fractals.

not all bad. it’s just the recycled content thrown into every stage is. new name for fractals = “recycled wars 2”

To be fair, people would LOVE lupi from arah to be recycled into a fractal boss. They wouldn’t even need to change much/anything

Hesacon.8735:

Malediktus.3740:

If anything they should add a way to trade ascended armor and weapon boxes from fractals for gold relics or weapons. I am drowning in ascended items

I’m drowning in weapons while I can’t get the types of armor I’d want. Even a 2:1 deal where I trade 2 weapons for a helm or pair of boots would be nice to have.

Yup, would also love this

Astralporing.1957:

Sarahfull.4930:

You do realise that you can choose the stats from a pool. With crafting your going all in on one stat. Like you can choose from all stats with powet major etc.. That’s also included in the costs..

Compare the prices of stats that cost most to craft then… It’s still the same… (and that’s even when ignoring that you can craft the cheapest version and stat-change in forge nowadays).

It’s meant to be more expensive. Your paying for not having to carft, timegate, pool of stats, not using T6. It’s just more options and like you say, you can just craft if you really want to

Love the new instabilities! I will amit when I first heard of the mist convergence, I pictured a party doing a fractal then suddenly out of the blue you all hear " FOR ASCALON uuggahhh!! " and Captain Ashym comes out charging with his FGS

You do realise that you can choose the stats from a pool. With crafting your going all in on one stat. Like you can choose from all stats with powet major etc.. That’s also included in the costs..

Icethorn.6570:

Just wanted to get everyone’s feelings about the latest changes to Fractals.

I ran Uncategorized today and had Flux on. It make it extremely annoying because you constantly had to hop to platforms on top of the harpies instant knocking you off.

Also in Swampland the mistlocks were Flux and Random condition. I would often get the flux bomb and torment at the same time. So no matter what, you get hurt.

While these were intended to add to enjoying, I feel like they have deterred people from wanting to do fractals. As they have now become more of an annoyance than enjoyable.

Quite honestly I liked the old way alot more. Am I alone in feeling this way about them?

Depends what you mean by old. I loved the old way of 4 fractals = 1 run although that’s just me

What?! Calm down, it doesn’t kill your condi build. It means you do more damage as some of your skills do direct damage as well.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

FrostDraco.8306:

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Fractals were meant to be about playing through Tyrian history.

This is factually wrong. It was confirmed several times that fractals could also be mythic history. Meaning things that never actually happened in the Tyrian timeline. Uncategorized, is not a real place in Tyria, nor has it ever been.

Also I might have to add, have you forgotten that someone is messing with the fractals? That’s what Chaos was all about, and now it’s bleeding over into other fractals. It’s an event.

You’re also forgetting the concept of original content.
Splicing bosses from one fractal and placing them in another and creating a new fractal that is just a sequence of existing ones mashed into one is nothing new. The biggest QQ from the add on’s in dark souls was the re-use of existing bosses and just changing their colour.
Making a clean martini is one thing..adding various ingredients of a pina colada to it doesn’t make it better, it just makes a drink that is muddled, confused and makes you spew.

All you’ve done is affirm the state of fractals.

At launch is was Tyrian history..then unicorns and mythical events got added.
Then everyone’s fractal level got reset for leader boards, which never happened.
Then the promise of new fractals, which turned out to be a short term dungeon rehashed and put on steroids.
Agony resist was never needed, you could avoid agony, then you got unavoidable agony checks.
Then agony got increased, and infusion slots got removed.

Essentially the only reason people mostly play fractals is the loot tables now. The idea of playing for fun doesn’t exist. Try posting fractals levels outside the dailies..you’ll be waiting all day for a group, because no one plays them for fun..only for the rewards.

Original content should be the priority, not change for change sake and making T4’s a hotch potch of scrambled fractal elements.

Since the start, people have cried over the rewards in fractals and the time it takes to get them. How it is now.. Was inevitable.

After doing my fractal dalies I surf the lfg for more fractals to do.

Khisanth.2948:

Sarahfull.4930:

Those masterful writs of strength that your talking about is 8g eqch in the tp. If you don’t want to pay that much either find a lvl500 scribe friend who will make them for you or get to lvl500scribe yourself. Last time I checked, they were about 2g to make if you buy all the stuff..

More like 2g50s. Scribe only goes to lv400 and that cost around 400g. Only takes around 100 writs to break even.

Opsy my bad. Interesting, 400g to max out? Might work on it then. In my own case, I go through alot of them so for me it would make sense.

Those masterful writs of strength that your talking about is 8g eqch in the tp. If you don’t want to pay that much either find a lvl500 scribe friend who will make them for you or get to lvl500scribe yourself. Last time I checked, they were about 2g to make if you buy all the stuff..

otome.2673:

Sarahfull.4930:

Cynz.9437:

I play zerker thief in t4s daily and doing more than fine, never understood whole necro stacking thing – we kill bosses there just as fast with random groups consisting of anything really. Yes, having necro for boon thief is nice, but 1 is more than sufficient, imo.

I also melee most bosses so idk what you are talking about. Especially bosses you named – they are easiest to melee in fact (mai is cone – stabby stabby her in the back, shaman has obvious animations to dodge – drop dat smoke screen in his face, arch – just poke him in the back 24/7). Only bosses i range is like molten duo when my entire team is dead and i have to solo the boss or chaos fractal because boss needs to be kited 24/7.

Oh funny story! As a theif you can steal the invulnerable whiskey from the chaos boss. So while hes channeling his big aoe doom spin and pull ( he does this at 50% then every 18sec) you can drink whiskey right infront of him and laugh as you take nothing.

Or you just do your job as thief and cc this attack..

Yup! That too, let everyone know before hand you’ll call out the breakbar move (copy and paste it) then at 52% hp call that it’s incoming then again after counting to 18 untill hes dead

Please can you send me some too! Always in the need for more as you can never have enough 5/9 infusions

Astralporing.1957:

I’d go even further here. It says a lot not about the classes themselves, and not even about the fractals, but primarily about the people running those fractals. Specifically, that most players do not care about challenge and would rather go for a safer run than a faster one.

You might change the classes, you might change the fractals, but you won’t change the people.

Oh my, this is so, so true. Nice wording, it really makes you think and it’s scary..

Cynz.9437:

I play zerker thief in t4s daily and doing more than fine, never understood whole necro stacking thing – we kill bosses there just as fast with random groups consisting of anything really. Yes, having necro for boon thief is nice, but 1 is more than sufficient, imo.

I also melee most bosses so idk what you are talking about. Especially bosses you named – they are easiest to melee in fact (mai is cone – stabby stabby her in the back, shaman has obvious animations to dodge – drop dat smoke screen in his face, arch – just poke him in the back 24/7). Only bosses i range is like molten duo when my entire team is dead and i have to solo the boss or chaos fractal because boss needs to be kited 24/7.

Oh funny story! As a theif you can steal the invulnerable whiskey from the chaos boss. So while hes channeling his big aoe doom spin and pull ( he does this at 50% then every 18sec) you can drink whiskey right infront of him and laugh as you take nothing.

The state of fractals..

A couple of weeks ago I complained to my guild that some PuG had no idea about cliffsides hammer and how it worked. I complained how it was lvl 30 something and by now they should of known better. A guild member taken back alittle by this joking said “that’s me aswell XD” and that made me think.

I looked up how many times you do cliffside before hitting lvl30 and it was twice. If your just going through the lvls you get to experience cliffside twice.. That was embarrassing for me to find and and to think I just raged about it to anyone . I really miss the old style as you are forced to do them over and over and it gets the machics more stuck in peoples heads.

This is true for other things also, people are failing at the wisps at the start of swamp and even some reset if it’s just the back ones. That to me blows my mind how somone at T4 can’t get them although they haven’t run them to see the comon easy paths we take.

That and other examples of it is what I see for the state of fractals

Edit: spelling (getting better)

Get a party together and work out a plan fot a reflect roation you can all do together. Old runners used to do this in the past. ( some classes could even solo protect the whole group)

Edit: please note you have to reflect now-a-days as aborb or destory projectile effects don’t work anymore

Haha I alway camp around the fractal portal and thia is news to me!

When I first hear those npc’s talk , my first though was some kinda of mulan thing going on and then never thought about further

CptAurellian.9537:

Rednik.3809:

Jerus.4350:

How do pugs affect your ability to evade big attacks and play well?

Because you cant break all breakbars alone?

Most obvious answer. Besides, trying to melee Bloomy in a pug will most likely be pointless anyway because you’d spend most of the time chasing him when he charged or jumped at another player again.

This is the only problem I find with melee, chasing after him or watching him groundpound of fsomwhere random or while invul and/or the champ go invul while being stuned. PuG aren’t very awear and keep up with the green areas.

Thank you for the info on the Bb rfdarko.4639. I don’t have the pet unlocked so I use moa/fear hound instead for simplar effect.

I understand that you can’t break him yourself although I’ve started to let people know that I will close in and CC him when he gets around 11 stacks of might. That is about the time the rings open up for me to melee. Of course I use my pet’s CC earlier while I wait.

Yup having the same thing. Because of the depay, it’s better for me to dodge/evade than pick up a crystal unless I do it WWWWAAY in advance

Thank you for the laugh.. Can’t melee bloom pft..

Edit/Ps: lvl77 is emenies give random condi, that’s probely why your dieing alot. I could see a unlucky fear could kill you. Try get enough agony resistance for 89, booon theif is alot less punishing

littlemunster.1059:

MashMash.1645:

But, as mentioned earlier, pugging it is a nightmare. Tumbleweeds and crickets everywhere.

… this … makes the swamp a swamp. not many wants to do it. those that tried pugging mostly failed and you see @ boss in lfg. i ignore them. why bother? it’s fractal and not raid. fractal is meant for end game content that almost anyone can do and should be casual. it became non sense. i run out of patience waiting for people to “git gud”.

No, fractals should be end game. Not for casuals who don’t have enough time to do 4 fractals. It’s laugh-able that people make time for raids although not for fractals back in the day..

DRAK.8643:

Ok, I’m used to using CnD and backstab with d/d, and staff has no reliable stealth outside of utilities so that’s a downside to me, but I’ll keep trying with them both and find the superior

Because I haven’t unlocked ddevil, I run that trait that gives +3 initiative weapon swap. There is a ranger trick were you stagger your weapons er.. Have your main hand dagger in your 1st weapon set and your offhand dagger in your 2nd weapon set. That way whenever I’ve used 3 or more initiative I can weapon swap without lossing anything. So I can CnD ( weapon swap) backstap for inatance

Both are fine although ddevil has more options and suvivral I hear from family. I myself haven’t unlocked my staff so I can’t say personaly. I’ve been running d/d although I must say I am a bais player who also plays ranger sword/x

Theifs are a blast in fractals too if your keen. I have alot of medium gear sets so I shared one with my theif and I’m loving it!!

Iris Ng.9845:

You guys start making me doubt that either all the good players I know either quit the game.

I think this happened. Most players were lost when little to no updates where happening and fractals dealt less damage.

Lendruil.9061:

Cameron Rich.3905:

Just wanted to pop in and say that Ben Arnold (who built the new bloomhunger) and I have been keeping an eye on this thread since we released the updated Swamp. While I can’t promise anything, I can say we agree that the fight could use a bit more tuning to bring in line with the difficulty level we’d like to achieve while still being a fun experience for new and veteran players alike.

When we have more information to share, you’ll be the first to know. For now, know that your thoughts are not falling on deaf ears.

The new bloomhunger is one of the few fights that are actually worth being a t4 fractal. Only the survival fight needs some tweaking, and the rewards should be higher because it’s much more difficult than all the other t4 fractals (more encryptions for example).
Mossman on the other side should have his health increased again because in his current form he is just a joke, which is a pitty when you keep in mind that pre hot he used to be one of the hardest bosses in the game.
I suggest buffing mossman again and in exchange, so that the fractal doesn’t get too long, remove the whisp part, because the whisp part is the least interesting part of swamp, there is no fighting involved, you just have to learn some ways where you can jump over the trees and it usually gets done by three people while the rest afks in la or somewhere else.

Even calling him a joke compared to his former self is giving this new version wwwaaayyy too much credit. Can we have the old version at his hut? Something we can fight after bloom? That way you don’t need to increase the rewards for bloom and just give players more loot if they kill mossman too.

Thought: maybe give an option to knock on his door to fight him at his hut so people who are just in it for legendary hunts don’t get upset.

Jerus.4350:

Sarahfull.4930:

Cameron Rich.3905:

I can say we agree that the fight could use a bit more tuning to bring in line with the difficulty level we’d like to achieve while still being a fun experience for new and veteran players alike.

The wording puts me off here, " new players " when talking about T4 doesn’t sit right..

Yup, I’m thinking(hoping) he’s referring to the t1/t2 versions with the new players in mind.

Yea although, fractals are more everyone with 150ar ( no matter how you got it) friendly more than late game content

Cameron Rich.3905:

I can say we agree that the fight could use a bit more tuning to bring in line with the difficulty level we’d like to achieve while still being a fun experience for new and veteran players alike.

The wording puts me off here, " new players " when talking about T4 doesn’t sit right..

I though it’s a given condi will out do the zerks on higher fractal levels

Oh Snapalope.1378:

You never take PS for MT 100 because you get 1 shotted because horrick will get 100% 25 might and fury. He one shots the entire team if you do the face tank method.

Don’t forget to moa so he attacks faster as well..
I mean what?

Vinceman.4572:

This run proves nothing for me tbh. And especially not from this player. ^^

And I repeat myself: I haven’t said power isn’t fine anymore but we are talking about pugs. Most temp cannot hold their dps rotation without going down.

I agree, condi is better =/ ugh, I do and don’t wanta say it although I think power is harder to play at higher lvls cause your more involved in the fight.

I agree most, MOST PuGs can’t be bothered putting in thr effort needed to fight in power and not get hit/go down

Meh, I’m still a zerk and don’t mind. Although I don’t think it’s " way " worst, worst yes although not wwaayy.
Also didn’t know MT was mai’s nick name xD

You don’t see any zerkers anymore cause everyone is told go condi. You could almost say, just the last remaining old generation of players are the ones left playing zerk..
Almost anyway, I know it’s not 100% true

Alex Shatter.7956:

Sarahfull.4930:

People want the rewards and would rather play safe than practice something hard and get better. I personality enjoy fighting for my life in a sense on zerk and feel a sense of pride coming out un-touched.

Saying this, there is alot more to nerco than what people pick up and use just to get the T4 rewards

the after-patch increase in AR availability (through money rather than fractal experience) probably thrust a lot of new players into t4s who don’t know how to hang

Fair point! You reminded me of a PuG who told me: It would be waste of potential for her to do T3 bloom instead of T4 because they had 150 agony resistance

People want the rewards and would rather play safe than practice something hard and get better. I personality enjoy fighting for my life in a sense on zerk and feel a sense of pride coming out un-touched.

Saying this, there is alot more to nerco than what people pick up and use just to get the T4 rewards

Senario.2038:

snip

This is my mind set: This is my first MMO, so when I hear " late game content " or " challenging content " I picture content that you HAVE to make time to do, that you have to work on, that you have to um.. Upgrade yourself. Weither this is right or wrong, that’s the first thing that comes to mind and what I will uses as criteria to judge such things.

I believe you are wrong about chao’s boss with his attack chain. I understand your veiw and this boss adapts this perfectly. Idk if it’s becuase I was playing a fighting game before this or what, although that boss teaches or forces you to respect his atuo atk chain and use active defence and/or dodge his finall hit. Yes, I agree the first hits do ALOT of dmg, although I don’t wanta see people cheese backpedaling so the boss only ever does one atuo atk because people got out of range. For me it’s kinda like learning there is a high atk in a atk chain and you can duck it and punish them.

I agree that chaos isn’t bad and it’s interesting to see a fight were the kill order matters.

Sarah

Senario.2038:

snip

I do see your point every day, PuGs who shouldn’t be in T4. I thought it was just me because I have set a VERY high bar for myself and applied that personal rule to myself for awhile.
Still.. I don’t want to be one of those people who go " oh nah, anet said this ages ago! " although fractals was one of the late game content for people to test themselfs..
Maybe I’m too bais to see straight.. I’m still salty over the change to a fractal run being one island and the buff to rewards but that’s just me.

I don’t like the idea of time being an out for harder content. You say if it got too hard, only " good " people would be able to do it around reset and the number of people in fractals would drop as there would be lots of failing PuGs. I think that’s how it’s meant to be, you do it with friends and sometimes you PuG and come across a gem and make friends.

I never played guild wars although you hear often about this underworld dungeon, surely that also has the same effect. Dead times when you don’t have enough people to do it. Isn’t that one going strong still and was/is popular now?

Sarah.

bearshaman.3421:

Just because you use Druid doesn’t make healing your job. If that was the case, the build would have staff as one of its weapons, and would have healing power statted. It doesn’t.

I find running base ranger is easier than explaining this to people =/