Guild Wars 2

When fractals was first announced we were told this would be the ultimate challenge. Players would be able to go as far as their skill would let them, this would be the neverending PvE skill-check.

But it isn’t. There are multiple reasons. The biggest are, of course, artificial difficulty caps such as unavoidable Agony and the fractal level cap. I think over time Arenanet has lost sight of what fractals was supposed to be. That’s why it needs to go back to its roots.

Remove the personal level. Open up scales 1-100, or 1-150 or even 1-infinity. Allow players to choose whatever level they want whenever they want. Remove unavoidable Agony (or remove agony altogether, I don’t really see a reason to keep it like it is, at high levels you will be oneshot by bosses anyway). When players try to enter the fractals from the Observatory, give them a choice. Either pick the fractals you want to play, or get random fractals but with a little extra reward, say 20% increase in gold/karma or something along those lines. Reward each individual fractal instead of one daily chest at the end. Rewards will be based off of difficulty/time spent ofcourse. These rewards will go up the higher level you are playing. Maybe add the option to choose how many fractals you want in a row. If you play more than 4 fractals in a row, the rewards get higher and higher until you’ve done all of them in one run. Give players the option to pick which instability they want for all of their fractals in one run. Reward also based on instability, the harder ones will be more rewarding than the easier ones. This gives players complete freedom in difficulty scales, which fractals they want to play and instabilities and still rewards them accordingly.

When players enter fractals for the first time they could get some sort of tutorial for the difficulty scales, saying that it may be wise to start in the first tier (1-10) and try one level of each tier until they find the level that’s right for them.

This wouldn’t need major reworking of any game elements, I’m sure they still have the scaling algorithm for 50+ scales. This would leave room for the devs to work on new instabilities and new fractals, hopefully full of interesting bossfights with challenging mechanics and not so many puzzles and platforming parts (but that might be personal preference).

Dang, too bad I never read that.

But I would never exploit, of course.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Twilight-Arbor-Story-mode-down-for-maintenance/first#post3742220

What’s going on? Fixing bugs, exploits? Adding more Aetherblades?

robertul.3679:

I know the clones are not fun to deal with while alone if they don’t los fast enough and running away to reset the boxes might either make the boss reset or get you hit by a stray ball.
But why people keep complaining about that pull? It has a very clear tell you can usually see in most scenarios anyways. How do you deal with mage crusher in p3 with that poison attack that has both a minimal tell and hits you almost instantly? Oh you spam reflects. Well guess what you can use for alphard.

Simple, we kill him with a trident.

Rag.3258:

Making the boss twice as big would be an alright bandaid if theyre into aoes that make no sense visually. Bonus points if they make reflects work reliably (or never) and fix the guardian virtue burn.

Reflects are reliable, just make sure that no one (or any npcs/pets/etc.) are standing directly inside her circle.

Then why post this if you don’t want to claim a record? Also, I doubt this was just a fast casual run by their guild, looking at the tactics they used…

It’s definitely not both if that is what you mean…

You should mention it’s unrestricted.

Good job anyhow!

Kusa.6438:

I play with the same 7 – 10 people everyday, who understand the mechanics of the game well enough to melt bosses without having to stack. From experience, about 50% of the paths in arah people skip, it’s faster just to melt through them than spend 20 mins trying to wall jump around things and wait on others. I’m not saying we kill every trash mob, but we do fight every boss as intended and it doesn’t take any longer than people in their speed runs. We have almost got it to the point where we can kill lupi within a min or 2. Maybe I will start posting videos on the forums, just for naysayers like you.

If someone is spending 20 mins trying to skip some part of arah, that person doesn’t know what he is doing. Arah skips are really easy once you’ve done them once or twice. And killing lupicus within 2 mins sounds like you are meleeing him… which means stacking on him. Watch out, you might get banned for exploiting!

noobgood.8762:

Impressing!

See you in Linksville

Way ahead of you :P

spoj.9672:

I dunno how anyone can stomach that dungeon.

truth bomb

Good to see you guys are still alive :p

Nice run!

DigitalKirin.9714:

dutchiez.7502:

I agree with 3 ele, 1 war, 1 ranger as demonstrated here

It would be interesting to talk about the highest DPS team in a scenario where you cannot use FGS (let’s not use blinks guys).

Dutchiez, in the video you posted (very impressive, btw), do you guys wait for that first kick to start your DPS cycle and have him “stuck in animation” for the swarm summon to bypass the invulnerable phase changes?

Yes, although actually it’s the grub summon animation.

Without wall (and no reflects needed) I’m thinking 1 ele, 1 thief, 2 rangers and a war.

Ele could stack might with blasts from others, rangers will have traited and untraited frost spirit and warrior will have banners. I’m just not sure whether taking the ranger over another ele or thief maybe will be a DPS loss, someone will have to crunch the numbers to see if spotter + frost spirit is worth it.

Note that with the right builds the ele’s will give 25 vuln stacks with the FGS anyway.

I agree with 3 ele, 1 war, 1 ranger as demonstrated here

It would be interesting to talk about the highest DPS team in a scenario where you cannot use FGS (let’s not use blinks guys).

To fix it make someone who is inside the instance leave it, then enter yourself and then he can come back in.

Well, I’m sure it’s all subjective, but I’d say it should be something like

Dungeon progression blocked -> Bugs making encounters harder/impossible until reset -> Graphical/audible bugs -> Rest

(although I have to add that LFG Merging should be in the Dungeon progression blocked category).

Edit: ninjad by iris

Gotta say, that’s a good rocket strategy.

Run furious speed and manage your endurance better so you won’t have to eviscerate to close gap/gain endurance.

maxinion.8396:

SE p3: npc yells “nonono we must go to the armory” about seven times when you enter the room before the clown car with the fire ring boss.

This happens with a lot of dungeon dialogue, I think it’s because the trigger for it is someone walking into an area, but the triggers for it to stop aren’t well done and if multiple people walk into the area at the same time it triggers more than once.

Not completely dungeon related:

When your weapon swap is on cooldown and you enter a cutscene, your weapon swap will bug and you will not be able to swap weapons until you have done so manually by opening the hero window and pressing the arrows.

Sometimes when you swap in a skill that you also have in your underwater skills, it will have the same cooldown as one of the skills already on your bar. (e.g. my Banner of Discipline is on 100 seconds cooldown, I swap in Signet of Fury and it is now also on 100 seconds cooldown.)

AC p2: Detha can bug at the first event with the spike traps (not sure how).

Arah p3: the NPC can bug and not trigger the cutscene before the ritual starts (not talking about her dying next to the chicken cage). She will be standing in the middle of the Altar with the chicken in her hand but not trigger the cutscene and she will start following nearby players when you get to her.

HoTW p1: You can safespot the boss on the stairs (not sure what he is called).

CM p1: I’m not sure if it’s a bug, but the NPC will often not come to you when you spam interact on one of the items you have to destroy as the first objective of the path. I have once been spamming interact for ~30 seconds and she still didn’t come.

SE p3: The conversation between the champion and silver dredge (before the destroyer) will often not trigger and they will become agressive right away.

Edit: Also Lilith, you might want to consider making it a priority list (listing the more important and pressing issues at the top). Right now ‘Dungeon runes are soulbound’ and ‘TA light mantle clips’ are at the top, which I don’t think many players would find very gamebreaking bugs and things like dungeon paths not finishing when you kill the last boss would be much more appreciated if they were fixed.

Yes, this was changed a couple of months ago.

You can get the bonus chest with 40 tokens + 1 to 3 gold only once per day per account. The 20 tokens + 26 silver + exp and empyreal fragments you can get as many times as you want, but DR will kick in if you complete the same path too many times in a row (it resets in about 30 minutes I think).

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

@lilith i that read wrong, 600 Second flood control ohhhhhhhhh baby

I that read wrong too!

spoj.9672:

Adding dragonite into fractals would be nice. Atm dungeon runners are forced to do wvw or open world to get their dragonite. And they have no shortage of emp fragments and bloodstone dust.

God yes! Please add dragonite as a reward to fractals or dungeons in general, so the dungeon runners who don’t enjoy zerging content but do enjoy having BiS gear can stop grinding temples!

Ethics.4519:

Barbarka.9362:

-All bosses would be fought as intended.

Please enlighten us on how all bosses are intended to be fought.

Start with AC spider queen and work your way up to the bloodstone, in ascending order of course.

Don’t forget story mode!

wow such post
many joke
much funny

Yes, it’s always worth to bring an ele. In nearly every dungeon there are opportunities for FGS/Ice Bow and ele has very high DPS. I think that in a party with no eles a might stacking LH would be more useful, but I’d still take a staff ele over no ele.

Why exactly is this in the dungeon forum?

Acotje.5689:

boil em
mash em
stick em in a stew

#BestClericEU

tbh best poem EU

RP walk OP!

dat wall

Gambit.8425:

Selling dungeons only means two things in my book: Exploits and terrabad players.

Not everyone has to use exploits to solo. Plenty do it legit. If you couldn’t have thought of that yourself maybe you belong to the latter group.

Gambit.8425:

All the horrible fails I’ve seen on Marionette this past month from people sporting Arah gear with zero skills. Thank you sellers for ruining one of the few cool armor sets :p

Because people can’t get carried through Arah or invited at the last moment by friends/guildies.

wow such blind
many exploit
very mechanic

Victor.8327:

Well the fact that designer can actually make mobs don’t lose aggro, and he doesn’t really grinds my gears. I mean,why not make reasonable mobs that aren’t with short term memory and forget in seconds that a band of heroes just lurked by them? Game would be much more fun and challenging anyway. Add to that a significant increase in the reward at the end, and voila : people don’t skip dungeon mobs anymore.

Please do this, I’ll finally be able to dust off my thief and get another legendary.

Victor.8327:

Boss fights ( a few examples)
In HOTW most of them are low dps and don’t put too much of a threat in players, though they take a looong time to kill. At least make them a bit more thrilling.

Agreed.

Victor.8327:

In AC:
Spider Queen needs to just be allowed to cast aoes even when players are in melee range. A smart spider queen would do that, and all of the sudden exploiters are dead.

Everyone MUST range this boss! Not play how I want, play how you want!

Victor.8327:

Kholer and his minions, maybe some mechanic that will trigger when people stack. If it will amplify the damage, then it will be curtains for stackers/exploiters.

Come friends, grab your trusty rifles and stalwart scepters, we shall unite against this boss from the longest range possible! Oh my god! He is running towards me! He is swinging his sword at me! Wait what, I’m dead? Wtf? Wow, my combat log says I was killed by anti-exploiter protection, wtf anet!!!??

Victor.8327:

For final boss in path 3 really it’s so easy without stacking and exploiting that Idk why zerkers bother with it. Put some rocks to fall everywhere, that will take care of them.

You know that there is actually an NPC that blocks the falling rocks that also stands in melee range, right?

Victor.8327:

So if this changes would take place, I guess many people that posted on this thread will be happy and many ( exploiters I look at you) will rage and whine on how cruel life is and that they need to play the game. Also more people will learn to play right and the success rate on the new Wurm and on Tequatl will increase drastically.

No, these “exploiters” will adapt to the next best thing: quitting the game because of the idiotic catering to the forum warriors.

Phadde.7362:

Adding lethal but easy to avoid AoEs. You can do a hellova lot by just adding a mechanic to the fight, while still keeping it entirely relevant for the fight.

You mean like the Risen Mage’s wells in Arah, or the Illusionist’s chaos storm? Or maybe the Spider Queen’s poison spray? Or Subject Alpha’s numerous AoE attacks? Plenty of mobs use AoE’s while players are stacked, the players use their skills and dodges to negate these AoE’s and kill the mobs before they run out of defensive cooldowns. There are only a few places where stacking in a certain spot truly negates all attacks a boss has, and that is mostly due to terrain.

Anet please nerf sigil of speed! every time i join a dungeon they ask me to ping my weapon and i have a sigil of momentum because i am really squishy as a thief and it synergizes well with my gear (clerics gear w/ venom heal build) and i get kicked evrytime by pugs that only want sigil of speed because you can skip all the stuff faster!!! please buff other sigils because people only use sigil of speed now and more sigils should be good so i can use sigils how i want!!!

Espionage.3685:

Isn’t this what fractals are for though (forgive me if I’m far off with that assumption though; never actually did any yet)? From my “very” limited understanding of them, aren’t they like mini-version variants of dungeons you should be familiar with?

No, fractals aren’t shorter versions of other dungeons, they are unique pieces of content. They are individually shorter than some dungeons, yes, but you have to complete 4 in a row to get the full reward and that reward is usually much less than what you get for completing a dungeon that is three times as short.

Espionage.3685:

Also, I’m pretty sure either fully clearing dungeons, or skipping through them 400 times will end up pretty boring either way.

Skipping through the dungeon will be boring for 20 minutes, fully clearing it will be boring for 1 hour.

Espionage.3685:

As for your reasoning why you want to quickly clear dungeons; that’s like stating you should be able to insta-boost to level 80 in full exotics because you’ve leveled plenty (plenty being different for every person) of other characters to 80 in the past.

That is a bit of a skewed analogy, since the methods to skip mobs and clear the dungeons fast are available to us and we can’t just insta-level to 80. The one is using what tools you have at your disposal to quickly and efficiently complete a task, the other is asking someone to do the job for you.

Espionage.3685:

I haven’t tried making a group requesting full-clears/no stacks, mostly because I just assumed most people rather “take the easy way”. I’ve never seen any group advertised that stated no stacking and/or no skipping, so with that in mind, I didn’t really assume anyone to be interested in such a thing.

I have seen groups that state no stacking/skipping, but the reason (I think) that there are so few of these is that the people that preach about the evil that is skipping and stacking don’t want to do a 1 hour AC p1 either, so they either don’t do dungeons at all or adapt to the strategies most pugs use.

Espionage.3685:

I honestly didn’t figure this to be a popular issue at all, mainly because… everyone seemed to of done it, without question. But I guess it’s interesting to know it is at least discussed.

We get one of these threads about every day. I think there are multiple on the front page right now.

Charged Lodestone → Watchwork Portal Device → Solo Arah → Exploit → Ban

Use Charged Lodestones at your own risk.

J Eberle.9312:

I’m sorry guys but I’m afraid this thread is going off topic.

We are not here to discuss:

• RP walking
• Vitality
• Night sigils
• Force sigils
• Swiftpaw in dungeons. Even if she is one sassy lady.

CC Danicia, shut this bad boy down.

Please stop derailing this thread by discussing the derailing of this thread. We are discussing the pros and cons of Sigil of Speed (see OP and title).

If you level an ele for me on my NA account, I’ll run it for you

Of course they didn’t delete anything, they don’t have to. You can’t get there without jumping out of the map anyway. And they didn’t remove the bridge, it was always like that until you killed the Defiler, to stop you from skipping him. The gates were obviously also closed until the boss had been killed or some other objective had been completed.

That doesn’t mean I don’t agree with how stupid the removal of that path was. There was literally no reason to remove it other than a bugged boss which they could have just kittening fixed.

So what would be the optimal build for the staff ele in this situation?

xsquared.1926:

Extremely nice run! Though you could probably improve on the nightmare tree. Have the eles considered slotting the Glyph of storms and using the air attunement attack? Each lightning bolt will hit 5 times on the nightmare tree, totalling in 180 strikes. Might be worth checking out to speed up your run. You’d have to drop Arcane Shield for it though, but it shouldn’t be an issue with WoR/Reflects

You don´t need any form of defense at the tree, the guard will blind his first attack (the fist slam) and he will die before he can do any other kind of attack, except maybe the AoE rings which are easy enough to dodge out of.

Last time I was there the gate after the swarms was closed.

Anyone else having a déjà vu?

You have to complete 4 fractals in a row without going back to Dessa’s Lab to advance your personal level.

I’m going to believe that he is a troll because it makes me too sad to think otherwise.

a t s e.9614:

Banning the “wrong” people because they are on your friendlist ? Thats pretty sad trying to defend people who ruin the game for the others . An exploiter could buy all dusks from TP , resell for the price he wants and blow up the market.

Atse, going full kitten 1 post at a time.

Yeah, this was already posted right after the video was uploaded.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

I agree, but I still generally stand by being a little prejudiced against players with less than 1k, unless it’s an alt account, because I’m just not convinced that at that point they have the handle of the game that a speed run requires. There are always exceptions, but I guess I’m always a little wary of those <1k AP. ^^

I started farming Arah ~700 AP. By 900 I ran it a ton of times. So whenever I see low AP person join. I do gear check. If they have zerker gear, with the proper weapons and they had a meta build. Then I trust they know what they are doing. If not, das boot!

Like I said, exceptions!

I know at 700 AP i was still in cleric gear and not understanding how to skip parts of dungeons and had 1 title, combat healer.

I still rock the Combat Healer to this day, my proudest title!