Guild Wars 2

DivineSlayer.5039:

dutchiez.7502:

DivineSlayer.5039:

Does anyone have the numbers for Thief or Warrior with the 30/30/0/10/0 fast hands pure axe build?

30/30/0/10/0 does not have fast hands…

Dual wield agility* My bad.

But don’t you mean 30/30/0/0/10 then? Unless there are some other changes I’m unaware of.

DivineSlayer.5039:

Does anyone have the numbers for Thief or Warrior with the 30/30/0/10/0 fast hands pure axe build?

30/30/0/10/0 does not have fast hands…

Hm, didn’t know those weren’t available in the gem store anymore. I have some of those, guess I’d like a refund too then.

You misread. Only the promotional items (things you got when you visited PAX or something along those lines) will be turned into endless tonics. The other non-outfit items will become armor skins you can trasnmute onto your in-combat armor.

Source: https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/45944258-Town-Clothes

Not really with the fractal itself, but the last chest is really weird. Sometimes I’ll get 2 greens and 1 blue and sometimes 3 rares, a lodestone and a core. But that might be because of the difficulty scale, not sure.

DigitalKirin.9714:

They should make a leaderboard. And take away everyone’s skins so that it starts fairly.

And then tell everyone they weren’t really ready when the patch launched and remove the entire wardrobe altogether.

Zhaitan decided he didn’t give a kitten we killed him

Clyan.1593:

Lindbur.2537:

Clyan.1593:

Lindbur.2537:

It’s not that I kick rangers, but rather people with terrible attitudes, the list of which happens to have you at the top.

Get off your high horse.

Look, mate, there are plenty of people who judge/kick someone only because he plays a certain class, which i am free to find wrong. I’m not defending those who play bad, only the class itself. I rarely have problems with playing any class (i got them all on lvl80) and i really don’t see why people sometimes kick me even before i am able to say “hi” (at least they could give me a chance, to change my char). They have no idea of how bad or good i play. Those are the people on a high horse.
Everything i do is to decide on my own what class i play and if anyone complaints about those issues we all are aware of, it’s absolutely okay to give them an advice as i did. So i apologize if you are incapable of understanding this, but i have to let you know i really don’t care. Have a nice day.

You still don’t get why you’re being kitten on in this thread, do you? It has nothing to do with you playing your ranger, but rather your sucky defensive attitude in here. Right off the bat you’re assuming that I’m a ranger hater. Guess what? I’m training a ranger too for dungeons. If I hated the class, would I have bothered?

Good day to you too, although I hope you dismount that horse before someone shoots you off it with your own bow.

Wow, you must be a special kind… You don’t like my bad attitude? I’m okay with that. It’s absolut correct to throw ignorance and contempt at anyones face who tries to force other people to do no matter what. I refuse to support any kind of nonsense, even if it means to join the minority. What a pity there seems to be no hope for you to ever understand that.
Keep the horse blabla going, it doesn’t afford any defence at all.

Neither does your pvt gear and longbow.

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

If ya’ll just Trained your dratini’s, we wouldn’t have a problem! Train harder. I delete all the empyreal fragments i get.

I trained my dratini so hard it became a full ascended zerk warrior.

Clyan.1593:

dutchiez.7502:

Clyan.1593:

Sylv.6514:

I repeatedly get kicked out of groups for not playing a Guardian or Warrior, and sometimes even receive major hate for maining a ranger. I don’t know what has to be done to change this, but something needs to change. I am getting sick of getting kicked from fractal groups for simply not playing a heavy armor class. Nerf heavies into the ground, buff mediums and lights, add a report option for kick abuse. I don’t care which, just do it so I don’t have to be forced to play 2/8 classes from fear of being kicked otherwise. The foundation of this game is supposed to be about playing what you want how you want, but with the way things are now, that is impossible to do without getting some sort of grief in return.

Patience is limited. Sometimes this crap just makes me want to quit the game for months at a time.

My main is ranger and i don’t give a kitten about what other players think is the best way to play it. Wanna know my secret? Be the dungeon opener.

Get off your high horse there buddy.

I really don’t need any suggestions from you, smart boy. If you know how to play ranger there is no reason at all to get kicked out just because some irrelevant people don’t have a clue.

lol

crosknight.3041:

Ariete.6509:

Too bad this will encourage other builds while the PVT-ranged-campers will keep the delusion that they are saving the team and not the reason the others are downed in the first place..

that quote just makes you sound like an elitists

Actually it makes him sound like someone who understands the game and its players.

Clyan.1593:

Sylv.6514:

I repeatedly get kicked out of groups for not playing a Guardian or Warrior, and sometimes even receive major hate for maining a ranger. I don’t know what has to be done to change this, but something needs to change. I am getting sick of getting kicked from fractal groups for simply not playing a heavy armor class. Nerf heavies into the ground, buff mediums and lights, add a report option for kick abuse. I don’t care which, just do it so I don’t have to be forced to play 2/8 classes from fear of being kicked otherwise. The foundation of this game is supposed to be about playing what you want how you want, but with the way things are now, that is impossible to do without getting some sort of grief in return.

Patience is limited. Sometimes this crap just makes me want to quit the game for months at a time.

My main is ranger and i don’t give a kitten about what other players think is the best way to play it. Wanna know my secret? Be the dungeon opener.

Get off your high horse there buddy.

Lindbur.2537:

I have good luck with fractals. This is from 38.

I had a sword from 20

Halcyon.7352:

dutchiez.7502:

Halcyon.7352:

respeccing my engi
have no choice now with my current build’s upcoming reduced damage output

Your edit is ironically correct as well. My current build will indeed suffer from reduced damage output – so much so that to compare, I likely will have to switch to the current zerk bomb meta.

Even with the nerf, zerk BIS meta is still the way to go – even more so now. Critical damage affects more than just pure zerk builds, which was the point of my post.

I was insinuating that you should respec as another class because engis are gonna be even more useless after the patch than they already are.

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

Supremacy is a terrible gamemode, real players play deathmatch where at least you need some type of APM and strategy, no sorry we’re not playing farming simulator so why would managing Eco decide 70% of the game?

u wot m8

IrisTheCasual.3742:

Hmm, where in the game is this Ascalon mage’s Rain of fire?

Urban Battleground aka Ascalon Fractal

One of the blog posts coming for the April Feature Patch is called ‘Looking for Group?’.

So if that doesn’t adress it I wouldn’t hope for an update on it until AT LEAST 2039.

Halcyon.7352:

respeccing my engi
have no choice now with my current build’s upcoming reduced damage output

Gratz, is it a record this time?

Stooperdale.3560:

Mai Trin’s shadowstep is the thief dagger/pistol dual skill. It has a ranged shot component and a shadowstep component and I’m pretty sure that if you dodge the pistol part then the shadowstep doesn’t happen or lands no damage.

For the cannon phase make sure you have extra run speed and a weapon mobility skill if possible.

For Mai Trin herself it can be a good idea to float just outside melee range. You should still get group buffs, you can still dodge her pistol shots, she should always be close to her debuff field, you don’t get may bleeds, and so on. She uses her shadowstep attack on the most distant target.

You can’t dodge her pistol shot, you have to block/reflect/absorb.

Sins.4782:

I think the more interesting question is why he gives Ascalonian Tears from his bag of wondrous goods drop.

Because they probably just copy-pasted the AC troll and changed his model/colour.

I might actually do this path soon for the first time in months :o

Fasalina.6571:

Great job! Really!
Now do it in the middle of the room.
Seriously tho, what’s the record on lupi fighting him in the middle of the room/not in a corner?

13 seconds

Ohoni.6057:

So basically ANet is just going to literally ignore the idea of making Fractals take less of a time investment? Sad.

Maybe MMOs, or games that require a large time investment in the first place, are not for you…

wot

Since the thread is closing soon I’m just going to give a summary of my thoughts on every subject:

Rewards: Should definitely be looked at. The way it is right now doing higher levels is actually less rewarding than doing lower levels. Improve ascended/skin drop rates in higher levels, lower the ring drop rate and maybe make higher levels give karma too. Replacing the empyreal fragments with dragonite would be a nice change too for the dungeon regulars. I don’t think adding profession-specific rewards before anything else is the way to go, but if it doesn’t take away from any other aspect of fractals I wouldn’t mind it. Also adding ascended earrings/amulets to the pristine merchant would be a nice change and would incentivize a lot of players to do fractals.

Difficulty: More scales need to be opened up with higher difficulty. I would like to see AR reworked. Removing it completely would be my first suggestion, but removing the unavoidable boss Agony would be a great change. New fractals should have encounters that scale mechanically at higher difficulties instead of only changing numbers. There should be less puzzles that just stay the same at every level. Removing randomness would be a good thing. Also changing the way fractals are grouped would be benificial to the player experience in my opinion (rewarding per fractal based on difficulty, choosing which/how many fractals to do in one run/choosing instabilities and being rewarded more for harder ones).

Dredge: Make it shorter, less annoying, remove it. Do something!

Rolling: I don’t see it as an issue, so leave it as is.

Reworking current encounters: I’d personally rather see new encounters which keep in mind and try to avoid the flaws of previous encounters before any big reworks.

Crafting: I think people shouldn’t need to do things in the game outside of fractals to partake in fractals.

Keep in mind these are just my personal opinions of things.

I think adding rewards that require the player to complete difficult content instead of just forking over an amount of gold or relying on RNG is a really good idea. Maybe doing this through special achievements, or multiple instabilities at the same time or adding additional mechanics to bosses.

videoboy.4162:

dutchiez.7502:

Nike.2631:

Then post something inspiring instead of poo-pooing other people’s conversations.

Give me an interesting idea and I’ll elaborate on it.

I’m just stating my opinion and disagreeing with others’ opinions.

Which is entirely not the point of Brainstorming. You’re supposed to take an idea and build on it, not come in being super negative and crapping all over everyone else’s ideas.

Rangers and Engineers are the only two classes that have a weapon type that they can’t get new skins for. There’s no legitimate reason not to add pet/kit skins to the already existing set of Fractal Weapons.

That’s why I suggested adding something that everyone can use, such as armor skins.

I wonder how hard that Nike’s kitten gets when he thinks about his epic suggestions.

Nike.2631:

Then post something inspiring instead of poo-pooing other people’s conversations.

Give me an interesting idea and I’ll elaborate on it.

I’m just stating my opinion and disagreeing with others’ opinions.

Lindbur.2537:

Impressive as always.

Definitely.

Nike.2631:

dutchiez.7502:

Yes, ranger should be changed to be better suited for certain types of content (dungeons/fractals), but so should other classes (necro, engineer). This, however, has nothing to do with improving fractals and I don’t see how adding rewards only for a class that isn’t played that much because it’s not that great is improving fractals in any way for people that don’t play ranger, and I don’t see why devs should waste precious resources on adding stuff like pet skins in the game that are only going to be used by a small percentage of the playerbase.

Rangers are the only class in the game that has to go out and find their class mechanic. If Guardians could gather multiple virtues and assign them to slots f1 to f3, if the Elementalist had 20 attunements to choose from to fill the f1-f4 bar, if necromancers gained new deathshroud skills depending on which creatures they’ve killed… if any other class had expansible class mechanics I’d be lobbying for new elements of those sets to be placed in fractals too. If there is a way to make fractals play more appealing for more players, it should be considered. Just because only the Ranger actually has a hook of this nature doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be used to increase fractal popularity. Arguing against it based on what amounts to “we don’t want those filthy rangers around anyway” is just spiteful.

And honestly, the precious time required to repaint a critter skin and copy an existing stat blocks seem pretty low to me

Believe me, I know all too well what a ranger can do. I don’t mind having a ranger in my party, as long as he knows what to do. Fact is 99% of rangers in this game have no idea how to play their class effectively and I would never let a pug be a ranger unless they ping their gear and traits. And I do think devs’ time is precious, because if they can’t find the time to fix enormous problems such as LFG merging/instance destroying they must all have very tight schedules.

Now please, let’s get off the topic of ranger rewards and get back to improving fractals as a whole.

Nike.2631:

((pulls at hair))

New pet skins in the fractals wouldn’t make them more desirable. FIXING THE #)%&) CLASS so its not a GIVEN that bringing one is a detriment would make them more desirable – and is something that needs to be done regardless of if anything new is ever done for fractals ever again. Its a much bigger, vastly more important problem that will take care of host of truly minor objections to them actually having some nice cosmetic rewards once in a while.

So lets just pretend that Rangers are worth a crap and allowed to play in fractals by their betters and see if there’s anything neat or fun comes of the brainstorming.

Yes, ranger should be changed to be better suited for certain types of content (dungeons/fractals), but so should other classes (necro, engineer). This, however, has nothing to do with improving fractals and I don’t see how adding rewards only for a class that isn’t played that much because it’s not that great is improving fractals in any way for people that don’t play ranger, and I don’t see why devs should waste precious resources on adding stuff like pet skins in the game that are only going to be used by a small percentage of the playerbase.

Why are we even talking about adding specific rewards for rangers? Because they are undesirable? Adding rewards exclusive to rangers won’t make them more desirable, it will only make the other members of the party feel annoyed because they have someone in their party that is intentionally handicapping them to get better rewards himself. It’s the Magic Find gear all over again.

Shinki.8045:

dutchiez.7502:

I honestly don’t think putting class-specific rewards will do anything but annoy the people that like to have an effective party composition.

Easy enough to remedy by making the cosmetic item purchasable with relics, or on a character swap during a non-combat portion of the Fractal.

There’s still the problem of why you would add rewards for one class but not another? Why not add something everyone can use like armor skins?

Wethospu.6437:

Pets and whatever won’t really make the content any better.

And that’s very true aswell.

I honestly don’t think putting class-specific rewards will do anything but annoy the people that like to have an effective party composition.

Emanuel.9781:

No.

Shameless plug for adding dragonite to fractals!

AFAIK it’s still bugged, I haven’t gotten it yet and have made it through without being hit tens of times.

timmyf.1490:

dutchiez.7502:

I like it, but how about this:

And now do this:

Scales 1-19: No turrets, no champs
Scales 20-39: Turrets, no champs
Scales 40+: Champs instead of turrets

Or something along those lines. Now you have an interesting fight with different mechanics that change (and become more difficult) as scale increases.

But noobs are still welcome at the lower scales. Even if they click the endurance bar to dodge. ;-)

I was just taking a shower and thinking about how I left this part out :P.
That’s exactly the kind of thing that could make for interesting mechanical scaling (changing the bosses/champions attacks, adding/replacing turrets and champions) and also numerical scaling (numbers on boss buffs).

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Jumping puzzles could scale too:

• Decreasing timelimits
• Increasing jump difficulty
• Increasing puzzle lenght
• Increasing punishment for failure

They could, but they don’t at the moment.

timmyf.1490:

Let me give an example of a boss encounter that could incorporate player choice and skill and give multiple paths for completion. I’m not going to add lore or background or anything, we’ll just call this boss Boss.

Boss is like a normal boss but has two buffs which are being applied by some sort of magical turret devices on opposite sides of the room, let’s say at 1500+ range from the boss. Turret 1 applies a Toughness buff to the boss which, like the Husks in the Wurm fight, negates most direct damage. Turret 2 applies the Condition Reflect buff to the boss, like the one from Scarlet’s Knights.

Players can “turn off” the buffs by standing on a pressure plate at the turret, but by standing on this plate, adds spawn in the vicinity.

This means a few decisions: should we turn off 0, 1, or 2 plates? Do we need players defending the player on the plate(s)? Etc.

In advanced Fractal groups, the answer will most certainly be to only turn off the Toughness turret and that player shouldn’t need any defending leaving 4 players to DPS the boss. But the encounter would still be accessible and require coordination by lower-skill groups.

I like it, but how about this:

Change the turrets into 4Champion-Level bosses. These champions have a few melee attacks that make them challenging, and 1 range attack. They use this range attack every once in a while (differs per champion). One of these attacks buffs the bosses toughness, one of them buffs his condition resistance, one of them is a 900 range AoE oneshot but it can be reflected back to the boss and one of them gives regeneration, protection and retaliation to the boss.

These champions do not use their ranged attacks when someone is fighting them in melee. Now this fight becomes tactical and skillful. The tactic lie in your group composition. If you have a lot of reflects, obviously you are not going to disable the oneshot, but if you don’t have any or only unreliable ones you will disable it. You could ignore the champion which gives boons if you have boonstripping, e.g. mesmer or thief etc. The skill comes in the soloing of the champions, which would be attackable by only one player at a time. You could opt to kill the champions before engaging the boss, but this will take a lot longer, or you could disable one or two of the champions and deal with the other’s attacks, or disable them all and let one player fight the boss, which would obviously take even longer and might even be harder for that one player at that point. I’m aware this isn’t near a perfect scenario, I just came up with this off the top of my head.

timmyf.1490:

dutchiez.7502:

timmyf.1490:

Fractals get harder as you progress. That part is true. I get the feeling you just think the ceiling should be higher. I agree. That’s fine by me. Open up the next 10, 20, 30 scales. (And remove the unavoidable AR ticks.)

But increasing the skill ceiling in higher levels doesn’t mean you can’t also do the other things that have been suggested here.

I do think that the ceiling should be higher. But I do think this excludes some of the things mentioned in this thread. (Crafting, many boss ideas, puzzles that do not interact with combat or scale in difficulty etc.)

I imagine it’s been FOREVER since you’ve done a low-level Fractal, but I always thought it was cool how the Cliffside path changes between the 1-9 (or 10?) and 10 (or 11?) and up scales. Do you think that tying different options to scales could help?

I actually do low-levels quite often for quick karma. And yes, that’s one of the things I’m talking about. Right now “mechanic-scaling” only happens below lvl 10 (Cliffside path, harpy knockdown, Old Tom needing tears) with the exception of the Thaumanova Fractal, which requires more objectives to be completed each tier. This is what I’m talking about, mechanical scaling for each tier. 50+ would be different from 40-50, which would be different from 30-40 and so on. It doesn’t have to be by each tier specifically but you get the idea: true difficulty scaling that only affects higher levels and is not just number tweaking and more AR slots.

timmyf.1490:

Fractals get harder as you progress. That part is true. I get the feeling you just think the ceiling should be higher. I agree. That’s fine by me. Open up the next 10, 20, 30 scales. (And remove the unavoidable AR ticks.)

But increasing the skill ceiling in higher levels doesn’t mean you can’t also do the other things that have been suggested here.

I do think that the ceiling should be higher. But I do think this excludes some of the things mentioned in this thread. (Crafting, many boss ideas, puzzles that do not interact with combat or scale in difficulty etc.)

Randulf.7614:

That’s one of the reasons I love Fractals so much and why (for me) it’s such a cool concept for an MMO to have. I can happily pootle around on the lower levels and enjoy the story and not having to push myself too much after a hard days work, but shoudl i ever want that challenge…the skill climb is there with no loss to any other aspect of the instances.

Exactly, players who don’t enjoy the difficulty of the higher levels can still play the lower ones and experience the same story. The only thing left to do is open up higher levels for which encounters can be designed to be more difficult and challenging, while at the lower levels the challenge would be toned down and difficult mechanics removed (such as the time-limit put on Old Tom after level 10, but on a much bigger scale).

timmyf.1490:

You’ll be pitted against a series of unique “fractal” mini-dungeons that get harder and harder as you progress, giving you unlimited levels of challenge! With great risk comes great reward, including new weapon sets, a back-slot item, new Ascended loot, and much more!

timmyf.1490:

Explore great moments from Tyria’s past and test your battle skills in this never-ending chain of dungeons that become more and more challenging the farther you go! Begin your battle through time and space in this infinitely challenging series of dungeons

timmyf.1490:

they’re like mini-dungeons which string together and present more of a challenge as you progress.

timmyf.1490:

unlimited levels of challenge, infinitely challenging, more of a challenge as you progress

Guess this is what put me on the wrong track.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

‘To provide a highly repeatable 5 man strategic instance experience that scales in difficultly as you progress in fractal levels whilst providing the opportunity to tell old and new stories from within the Guild Wars Universe.’

I interpret this to mean that the difficulty keeps scaling so only the most skilled players can beat the highest levels. But that might just be some kind of optimism that comes from my deeply buried hope that there might someday be some kind of encounter that can only be completed by actually skilled players.

I have to say, I think what most high-level fractal regulars came here to do is complain about rewards, gear-gating and dredge and suggest higher difficulties, new interesting encounteres and revisions to old ones. But what it has come to is a lot of people, who I imagine don’t do the highest levels very often, suggesting things that don’t have a place in fractals at all or are directly against the wishes of the regulars and will only make things more tedious and uninteresting.

Please remember everyone, that fractals is supposed to be the place where the top of the PvE community can come to test their skill. Lore/puzzle mechanics can work in the background, but they need to make way for skill-based encounters.

Nike.2631:

“The fight is with a great beast and its tamer – but the beast is trained to lie still while the drums are played. If you have a drummer (only one class gets it natively, but other characters can be taught via a rare drop) you can fight the tamer one man down as they drum, and then fight the beast afterwards with your whole party. IF you don’t have a drummer, you must face both bosses at the same time.”

The world of Tyria has more ways of interacting with it than “I hit it.” Using those other mechanics for inspiration can add humor, introduce variety, and create a vibrant, memorable experience – if used well. And some of those ways involve spending time in game doing other things than combat and grinding gold.

One of the big things GW2 wanted to change is that everyone can complete any content in the game, regardless of class/gear/etc. Adding a required drop/crafting level you need to collect before you attempt the content isn’t really in line with the goals of the game. Taking your example of the beastmaster and the pet, why not place the drums on the ground as an environmental weapon anyone can pick up? This doesn’t exclude anyone from participating and doesn’t require any external grind/luck with drops.

In my opinion crafting or anything like that has no place at all in fractals. Fractals is supposed to be the endgame of GW2 with difficult encounters and allowing you to grind outside of fractals for a chance to skip those difficult encounters goes against the reasons we play fractals in the first place.

Ofcourse dungeons are easy when all you have to do is stand in a corner, press 1 and get carried by your teammates.

timmyf.1490:

The artificial caps, in my view, exist to give the devs the ability to change things up without having to do another progression reset.

That sounds like a reasonable explanation, but think about this:

Fractals consists of 3 base “elements”: difficulty scale, instability and which fractals you get to play. Right now you can only choose 1 of these, that is difficulty scale. What I’m proposing is giving players complete freedom to choose all 3 and reward them accordingly. If a group of players does scale 70 everyday, and Arenanet adds new fractals or instabilities, these players will still play scale 70, but maybe pick some of the new fractals or instabilities. There is no need at all to force them to go back and play the new content, they will play it if they like it.