15 chars ……. no.
You can use a variety of builds so if you like condition cleanse on stealth, keep it. If you like vigor on heal then keep it. Full zerker builds of course are the best in guild groups but with PUGs you are putting your life in their hands.
Use all the weapons and all the utilities.
P/P is in my opinion a really poor weapon set. It is pretty much a one trick pony with unload eating up all your intiative to snipe for single target damage. That suits some people in PvP and there will be some PvE fights where that’s exactly what’s needed. Headshot gives a bit of utility but the skills lack movement and evasion and there is no versatility.
I did once get a packet of dyes as a map completion reward. It is probably on the same loot table as the 40 crafting items, the exotics, a black lion key, transformation stones, boosters, etc. Vadik’s reward does look as if it is too poor to be from the correct loot table.
From a design point of view, the ascended armor doesn’t really make sense. If extra AR (infusion slots) is needed anywhere for new content it is just likely to be a gateway that excludes the majority of the player population. Game content will presumably be possible with exotic armor still. So this really only seems like WvW players coming to grind PvE for better armor, which makes no sense at all, or PvE players grinding for better armor to be faster at doing game content that they can already do (fast).
There has been nothing in the living story to do with the human gods and it seems unlikely that they will be shoehorned into it at this stage. Abaddon is not likely to be key to the story since the developers let us vote him out of it. It is quite possible that the alternate fractal would have introduced ‘chaos’ magic and ley lines as well, but we’ve got that info from the reactor and it’s done now.
I think the OP is exactly right. With the right amount of people the tower can be a lot of fun, meeting people along the way to help you get through. Without the right number of people it is awful. Zerg-group-solo scaling for content will always have have this problem.
“See, with the new Thaumanova Reactor fractal, Scarlet says that Chaos Energy is a misnomer for Dragon Energy. I looked up the word misnomer to get an exact definition, and it’s defined as basically giving a name to something before it is fully understood. So according to Scarlet, Chaos Energy IS Dragon Energy”
Mismomer means wrongly named or not taking a meaning from the literal name. So in this case she is saying that chaos energy should be called something else since the name is not literally correct and probably misleading. This could be related to dragon energy or could be referring to the organized patterns of ley lines around Tyria.
I think there is potentially something there. You do need to complete more rooms as you go up levels. I’ve rescued some scientists who say they’ll help but don’t do anything yet. I guess someone needs to complete 50 and tell us.
I’d suggest trying some very simple weapon sets like pistol/dagger and sword/pistol to find some ways to get easy kills. In both cases use your weapon skills for control and let the auto attacks do the damage. Button mashing gets you nowhere. That will give you the platform to experiment with other weapons and utilities.
There are good thief skills/utilities that can make the dredge fractal as straightforward as any other. They work fine on any build even without trait support. You don’t need blind.
Whenever I play my ranger I want ogre pets, the bigger the better.
“The current cost to equip multiple characters with ascended gear is too high in my opinion. "
Expensive compared to what? In the end game there is very little to spend our money on aside from gems. Ascended weapons can really only be compared to legendary weapons, so if you personally think that legendary weapons are better value then you should save for them instead.
My personal view is that ascended weapons are for players who have so much gold that they can ignore the ‘small’ expenses like buying 750 ore. I’m able to do a mix of activities in game, grind out some ascended weapons, and still see my bank balance rising. I’m sure other players can do the same.
At top of the cliffside fractal it is possible to be stunned by the hammer on the seal at the same time that adds spawn that are not sunned. These adds essentially get a free kill of the squishy classes before the stun wears off.
There are two sets of mobs that be removed immediately from this fractal. The first are the mining suit and friends at the top of the stairs above the cages. The second are the ones between Rabovich and the final boss. These are all just filler and nobody would miss them.
There is nothing wrong with having dungeons that separate the good from the bad. The cannons are pretty easy to learn and far more intuitive than most other fractal bosses.
The usual answer is to play a thief. At first you’ll get your butt kicked again and again because stealth isn’t the perfect solution that you imagine it to be. Once you’ve found out how to play a thief properly you’ll know all the counters and be able to deal with them when playing another class.
This is about the adds that spawn at the time you hit the seal, not the four starting enchanters. I’m not sure how players are meant to know those adds are going to spawn at the time someone hits the seal.
A solution that requires a specific class to survive, like a guardian, is broken imho.
Use all the weapon sets and all tactics for fractals. There is nothing to stop you from using every tool in your armory. Other classes don’t need to do that, so I suspect thieves need to be better played in fractals either with better class knowledge or better dodging than other classes.
Pistol whip + black powder is not a combo. Use one at a time. If you constantly need extra blinds then slot signet of shadows, smokescreen, or blinding powder to give more time for initiative recovery.
I haven’t done her in fractals yet but in the original dungeon I was fine as melee support with a greatsword and healing spring. The trick is to stay just outside range and use dodges/block when your health is low, rather than run far away and bait her shadowstep attack.
Warriors are about the only class with multiple available builds that can be made to work well without major sacrifices. Banners look poor only because warriors are not relegated to point defense like many other classes with restrictive builds. Sure, most players seek out optimal builds for PvP, but it doesn’t mean the other builds and utilities are not viable.
The way that I would like the living story to develop would be -
Scarlet is trying to awaken the jungle dragon (and control it maybe). This is what the Pale Tree warns her not to do in the web story. She knows that the jungle dragon is connected to the dream of dreams and nightmare, so she uses the new toxin to create more nightmares to invigorate/awaken the dragon. She is hoping to find the resting place of the dragon by charting ley lines since the dragons must have an effect on those.
On the final cliffside boss there are adds that spawn at intervals once the boss has dropped the hammer. Independently, when you hit the seal with the hammer the players are stunned for a few seconds and cannot activate any skills, even stun breakers. If the adds spawn at about the same time as this daze the mobs are not stunned and essentially get a few seconds to kill a defenseless player. I’m sure this is not intentional so can this be fixed please?
Warriors can go through all of PvE with a pair of simple weapons, like greatsword and longbow, and learn nothing useful for PvP. You might as well level up in the open world and the personal story anyway, since it is fun and it is there, but you’ll need to force yourself to experiment to really learn anything.
In the thaumanova reactor the ranger pets can miraculously avoid falling through the floor when players characters would fall to instant death. I’ve seen both my story mode groups finish with 4 dead people, a ranger doing nothing more than running to keeping safe, and the ranger pet killing the boss. It’s an extreme example but things like that will happen everywhere as soon as you give ranger pets too much help in PvE.
It is annoying but possibly in a good way. A lot of players get some enjoyment from beating challenging enemies. The toxic buff can increase the challenge and add interest to some of the more predictable fights.
The last few updates include more grind for account bound crafting components such as empyreal and dragonite. That’s loot that can’t be bought from the trading post. If that’s what you’re wanting then there will unfortunately be more of that to come.
You have to read Zaitan’s personality from his minions rather than from any dialogue of his own. The minions are systematic, ruthless, humorless, sadistic, arrogant and single minded. At first glance those look like the characteristics of all the dragon minions but Jormag’s minions are more cunning and are adaptable in their strategies.
Without much dialog it is difficult to read anything into the characters of the other minions and their masters.
Thieves can do a lot in dungeons but top guardians can turn hard content into an easy ride for a group with their class skills. You might also find that a group will take a guardian in almost every situation where they wouldn’t want a necro.
I think there are good things in these updates but they really missed the opportunity to fix a lot of fractal problems. They tried to force players back into the developer’s intended tactics without considering how badly designed and unpopular some of those intended tactics are (e.g. dredge). The change to infusions really just create new infusion problems rather than solve any previous infusion problems. It shows a big gulf in understanding between the player base and the developers.
I think the OP needs a sense of humour. The dredge are a parody of a communist society. They look like mole-men. They live in places like Molensk. Their society is a moletocracy (if I remember right). Their government is a moleteriat. You can play whack-a-mole games by hitting dredge with a hammer as they come out of the ground.
Communist governments did declare themselves to be from the working class, even though they actually formed a new political elite over time. So even if you take it all seriously it is still reasonable for the government to take a name from the working class it claims to represent. Alternatively, the moleteriate could be the equivalent of the secretariate rather than the proleteriate.
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The mining nodes in the new fractal are really a bad thing since you want all your group together and not messing about mining while people go down the tunnel.
I agree it is stupid to have a random starting fractal that everyone wastes time resetting. However
“This needs to stop. A party should be locked into their first fractal when they start it so that going to the mistlock hub and back won’t change the first fractal. It should also have some sort of punishment for players who disband their party to try and work around this.”
Players disband their party and restart because there already is a penalty for returning to the observatory and restarting. Adding one punishment after another to make players do something unpopular is only going to make everyone waste time finding even more elaborate work rounds. It just annoys paying customers and that’s bad from a service company surely?
A better solution would be to change these fractals so that they have something approaching similar length and difficulty. It’s all been suggested before, including which encounters should go, and through elegant design a great many problems would be solved, would they not?
“Actually no, it won’t take a long time. You only need 16 +1 infusions (and some coin) to get to a +5 AR infusion slot. "
If you hadn’t noticed the infusions are in a geometric progression. From 16 it’s going to go up to 32 for +6, 64 for +7, 128 for +8, etc. This is going to push up the quantities required and cost of reagents up massively.
More than that, I’m assuming that once an infusion is slotted it cannot be upgraded. So if you slot a +9 you are going to need to collect two more +9s before you can make yourself a +10.
Yet another reason to get these stupid plague carriers out of these events and off the summon list of the risen acolytes.
A simpler explanation is that these pillars are in the level 15+ zones and will be generating some combat events in the next update. With that in mind, anyone connecting the dots has to decide whether the lack of pillars in certain areas is part of the grand design, or not.
Does Kiel tell us anything new about the Consortium in this update? The way I read it, she’s wanted to find some evidence against the Consortium but the reactor explosion was in fact all about Scarlet as usual. I couldn’t understand why Kiel wanted to arrest Dessa at the end either after Dessa had opened up the fractal for her.
From what we know of the Inquest
- they won’t care what damage they do if it advances their scientific research
- they will work with any disreputable, loony, scientist who can provide results
- they have enough political power in Rata Sum to get away with murder
I see no problem with the Inquest working with Scarlet before or after the reactor explosion.
Exactly. It is a grind and money sink. It also doesn’t do anything to solve the problem of specialist AR equipment for fractals that performs worse that stat infusion items in WvW and elsewhere in PvE. To my mind this update solves none of the infusion problems seen by the player base and creates a new unnecessary gear grind when none was asked for.
They should just get rid of two of the traps and put something better in. Shadow trap has its fans but shadowstep is too similar and works better as a skill. One out of tripwire and needle trap can go and whatever remains should have a better catchment.
In the first section of the dredge fractal, if a player revives on the pressure plates the door will now remain open (needs confirmation).
The pipes have been removed from the room with the dredge general and the clown car.
The grawl totems in the volcanic fractal are larger.
I think the final diviner on the cliffside can still drop his hammer again and skip phases.
I think the mining suit end boss now has some typical dredge dialog that he didn’t have before.
Remember that resetting fractals at the start of a run can cause extra enemies to spawn if the fractal reappears later.
I think other assorted changes were made in the fortnight preceding the patch as well. These might include blocking off the jumps to get up under the Jade Maw.
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I don’t mind her being there but she needs to be better written. It’s not good enough to have her appear at the end, taunt the players, explain the plot, and run off. Yet again!
We always knew that Mistlock Observatory was in the mists, didn’t we? I don’t know where else it would have been floating. Is there anything to confirm that the observatory is specifically a fractal rather than just a place in the mists?
So I think a better question is whether the observatory is built from mist matter or built from real materials that were taken into the mists. Who built the first portal back to reality, and how? How did they test that the engineering of the portal would work within the mists? It’s all rather puzzling. Perhaps the observatory is a duplicate of a Consortium lab in reality, that doesn’t necessarily need to have been successful, and it was the reflection of that lab within the mists (with reflections of Dessa and her krewe) that actually did all the hard engineering to forge the link back to reality.
There’s a champ krait in the dolphin side somewhere and I think he’s spiked me for 28k. There are also some pretty annoying krait in the deep water side with dangerous attacks that aren’t in the combat log.
Pistol/dagger can be a really easy to level up, kiting small groups of enemies using the cripple from dancing daggers. It’s PvE so you can change your weapons around to match your enemies of course.
Thief classes in many games are designed to be ‘twitchy’ with a need for fast button pressing. I’m in the same situation as you and have a low spec graphic card that doesn’t help with spotting animations. You could try a build that uses more blinds as they are less twitchy, and that probably means using the trait giving blind on stealth.
“And do dredge pickup the bombs now or something at the door blasting part?”
They’ve done that for a long time. It’s quite hard to tell what’s going on though as if your group mates do different things those guys can be hardly seen, can pick up the bombs, can wander to the bottom following you, so I’ve never entirely worked them out. If they pick up one bomb they can’t hold a second, but if you kill them they will respawn empty handed.
I think you can create a back story for it, such as the Inquest putting a guardian on the reactor core or the Inquest experimenting to create a new being, but I didn’t see any explanation for it in story mode.
Scarlet’s research has been so far been mostly devoid of draconic influence. The new reactor fractal shows the Inquest researching draconic energy, as expected, and Scarlet may have been interested in that as well or could equally have been researching portals, energy lines, or other stuff. There has been a lot of speculation about Scarlet and elder dragons, since the elder dragons are interesting, but there isn’t much evidence in game to back this speculation up.