Guild Wars 2

Sirendor.1394:

Because zerker is keyboard roll most of the time. Spamming as much dmg as you can.

Indeed, cleric’s better. You actually have to time your heals.

BeoErgon.9107:

@NoTrigger
It is strange how you keep opposing good DPS players to lame players that do anything else.
You know what I saw in your video that stucks me as incoherent : perma vigor.
DPS + perma vigor = possibility to void any damage in the game.

Yes, if you do a false movement you are doomed, but this is true for any other build.

AS I said before, the problem is that you can do EVERYTHING by going the DPS route. Dodge, heal, boost, damage, control, …

This is what I talk about when saying there is no downside.
And if you can’t at least remove one of those, it kills any need of diversity in a team.

But don’t worry, I see your point. You are having fun with the game as it is and don’t want any change.
Many of us are not having fun because the game is broken.

Call us bads if it makes you feel better.

You cannot avoid all the damage even in this encounter just by dodging but I’m sure you are aware of that. He’s using blocks, reflects and invulnerabilities as well as abusing lupi’s AI by pushing him into the wall. I’m still waiting to see any solo boss fights completed only with dodging, no blocks, reflects, etc involved.

Try to understand that the diversity you so eagerly wish doesn’t come only from the gear. In fact, it comes from weapons, utility skills and traits. Improving diversity by depending on the gear is the worst possible choice because it’s the only time-gated and time-consuming thing out of those. Retrait, change a weapon? Sure. Get cleric’s instead of rampager’s? Not so much.

If any hypothetical changes happen just don’t make new threads how instead of “lf1m zerk any class” you are forced to advertise your party with “lf1m clerics ele only” and how people do not read your description, join with random builds and you have to kick them. And then you advertised your party too frequently and you cannot do it anymore. All in the name of diveristy obtained mostly by the gear.

Aza.2105:

Its much easier than traditional mmorpgs. Gear is pretty easy to get and respeccing is cheap. In many mmorpgs getting gear with different stats and constantly respec was costy.

It’s still time-gated. If gear was statless, I’m sure most of the people would have nothing against big meta shakes.

DiogoSilva.7089:

So, GW2 is not supposed to have challenging team content for pug players? Not even outside of dungeons?

And defensive stats are not meant to be anything more but training wheels (that don’t even teach much) and thus a rich source for elitism to rise, or to punish players who invest in the wrong stats unknowlingly?

GW2 doesn’t have challenging content at all. But yes, if you want to pug something harder go kill some world bosses, I heard anet is revamping them. Just don’t shout for zerg, it’s fun enough with low amount of people and doesn’t need any coordination. Not mocking you here, just stating my opinion blunlty.

We don’t know, those are our opinions. We’d have to ask designers. But in my opinion they are training wheels since passive defense is not exactly a sign of skilled players in a game that advertise its active combat.

Aza.2105:

Well for solo healer/tank would just spec into a dps oriented build, so it wasn’t the problem. The biggest problem was the responsibility those two archetypes carry. If the group wipes the tank and healer would be blamed. So in short not many people wanted to carry the responsibility.

DPS classes in comparison didn’t have much responsibility other than killing the target. There was much more micromanaging on healer and tanks, thus requiring a higher skill cap to play them.

Respeccing in gw2 is not exactly time-friendly. I’m not expecting everyone to have couple of exotics gear sets, let alone ascended.

Nowadays, most responsibility remains with guardians/mesmers and basically is about putting reflections, aegis and condition removals.

I would like to ask people that complain that zerker is just autoattacking bosses and occasional dodging how having tanky chars that wouldn’t have to dodge would be better than this? Autoattacking bosses without dodging is better than autoattacking bosses with occasional dodging? Oh, and even now you can kill the hardest dungeon boss without even dodging by being tanky enough and having enough support. I’m sure it’s more engaging than occasional dodging.

I would also advise people that are claiming that zerker meta is based on killing before being killed to check up videos of FoTM high level scales bosses fights which last often more than 2 minutes. Moreover, I would recommend to notice the common denominator why those fights are trivial yet still long. The answer is reflections and aegis. Not killing before being killed.

Aza.2105:

Its funny because in traditional mmorpgs dps players are considered the bottom tier out of the holy trinity. The problem was that it was always difficult to find healer and tank, you have to question why that is.

I never played any mmo but I would assume that it’s because of utter boredom, at least the case of healers.

Maybe also because it’s harder to play get gold by farming solo. Just making assumptions.

Manuhell.2759:

The problem is that not only they do more damage, but it is also more safe to wear zerk and kill quickly than to wear defensive items and slug it on. Because defensive items don’t defend much anyway – maybe you resist one or two more hits, but as you end up taking more time, you’ll probably end risk more – and stats like healing power have very small benefits.

It’s safer because of the protection guardians and, in lesser extent, mesmers give.

Aza.2105:

Not really the same. In traditional mmorpgs certain classes had the ability to tank while others didn’t. In gw2 every class has the potential to bunker, support and dps. The problem with traditional rpgs was that sometimes you couldn’t find that class so you couldn’t form a group. In gw2 that wouldn’t be a problem since every class can technically do it.

Except that vast amount of your stats come from your gear which is not easily changeable. You can retrait, change utilities but you cannot magically get 1000 healing power.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Tell me, how do you coordenate CC skills and party support skills between different players in a random pug team, all the while preventing redudancy and wasted skills due to the lack of voice communication?

Can I assume that a hard trinity is more user/ pug friendly than a soft trinity for deep, challenging content?

Keep in mind that I’m not saying that the holy trinity is the way to go, just giving food for thought.

Dungeons in Guild Wars 2 reward players who enjoy organized parties, epic challenges, and delving deeper into the secrets of Tyria

Yes, dungeons should either require higher coordination or you should be force play with training wheels (defensive passive stats).

Yes, soft trinity is less pug friendly but you don’t need to wait an hour for a healer.

Also, gear should have no stats, just pure skins like in pvp and those stats should be easily obtainable. Then no one would cry because they have to farm timegated gear for another year.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Also, people very quickly trash the holy trinity as if it was the worst thing ever. Well, it might not be the best thing ever, but a MMO being stuck to three well-defined roles is far more appealing than a MMO being stuck to a single DPS role.

Not only does the holy trinity offer more build diversity than what we currently have, it also promotes better and deeper teamplaying.

No, GW2 doesn’t needs the trinity. But if teamwork is ever to be taken seriously, then roles must exist in one form or another. And they are meant to exist. GW2 has its own trinity: damage/ support/ control, which in theory is a more sophisticated, broader version of the holy dps-tank-heal trinity.

Tell me how can a game promote team playing without roles. Better yet, tell me how can a game promote an excellent level of team playing between random pugs, without roles.

GW2 trinity is soft trinity meaning those roles are interchangeable between party members. I have no clue why people want something like hammer with mace/mace warriors that would do no damage but would stunlock mobs. Shouldn’t it be required that you have to coordinate those CC instead of delegating one person for the job? Spamming skills on cooldown is never better than coordinating them.

They should nerf zergs instead.

DiogoSilva.7089:

“Play the way I want”

Does not means

“Please, keep this game broken so I can abuse it”

The game is broken not because of the gear but because of how trivial the mechanics are in pve.

Wethospu.6437:

Gear is not the issue.

Nerf stacking by giving boss a cleave with 5 target limit.

No, make all attacks of all the bosses not being affected by aoe limit. Will also help with certain world bosses which are being zerged down.

Belenwyn.8674:

You could still complete it. It would take only longer. Let’s say 30-60s as full bunker team and 3-5 minutes as zerker team to win the encounter.

And that makes sense how exactly? Playing easier builds (yes, bunkers are easier) to complete content faster. Do you want the game to be harder or faceroll? Because what you just said tells me it’s the former one.

You need to get a team, preferably stable and fixed with determined and motivated people. It’s much easier to just randomly run a dungeon. Another reason, conquest is basically a split game. Do you know how many new people liked splitting in gw1? Because from my experience most of them preferred standard 7v7 on the flag stand because it didn’t require from them to think that much. Same in gw2, you might have the most skilled players in the game but you will lose if you cannot split properly.

Belenwyn.8674:

Imagine an encounter forces you to operate a machine or a weapon like a mortar in WvW. No evade, no normal skills for you available. Who could operate the device longer when you get constantly damaged? Berserker or bunker?

So you cannot complete a path if you do not have a bunker? How’s that in line with “you can complete pve with any team build”?

Mintiest Core.5140:

I don’t understand why there should be changes that make zerker gear only suitable for the most “elilte” players. Why not make changes that make condition or toughness gear much more rewarding to those “elite” players and attract them to it rather than sticking the rest of the players who invested in zerker gear with stuff that is worthless to them. That way you shift the meta to make more stuff viable and do less harm to the population. And, you avoid giving the “elite” players who generate more income because of their skill additional bonus income from a mechanical speed advantage in tearing through content.

By “Elite” players (as like to put it into quotation mark) you mean champ trains participants? Very good pve players are rather poor since they spend time on pointless things like soloing since there’s nothing hard in this game for them.

I like it, my ele will finally dust off the Kasmeer’s staff and offer superior control plus support to my team instead of spamming 1, 2 and 5.

My best team was hgh rampager’s engy + rapid epidemic necro. The 2 of us steamrolled old fractals 48.

Anet, could you please nerf this ridiculous condition bursting? Mobs were dead before they even got in a melee range because how chill is strong.

DiogoSilva.7089:

That’s why pve mobs should auto-attack. Zerkers won’t be able to dodge every single little auto-attack, forcing them to take some damage. And when that happens, everything will change. Zerkers will require more support or control team mates to help them out, or they’ll need some defensive stats, or they’ll need a more balancing trait setup. They’ll need to escape more often, and condition damage will indirectly get better due to having more defensive stats available and due to being able to tick the enemy’s health away even while escaping.

In addition to auto-attacks, giving to enemies the right boons or conditions can make a difference. Retaliation, Protection, Weakness and Confusion can greatly tone down zerker bursting.

Mobs autoattack and even if they would autoattack more frequent, say hi to black powder or just requirement of more guardians. Squishy professions like eles would be non welcomed because warrior’s innate survivability is stronger than probably sentinel’s or cleric’s ele.

Retaliation isn’t antiburst condi, it’s anti-fastattacks condi.

DiogoSilva.7089:

The problem with the zerker meta, is that zerkers have too much survival. There’s no need for support or control builds to exist to mitigate damage. There’s no need for defensive stats to mitigate damage. And condition damage gets indirectly useless this way, because zerkers never have to spend time kiting, escaping, weakened, blocked, etc.

To fix this problem, PvE needs to learn a bit from PvP:

• Enemies need to have auto-attacks.
• Enemies need to apply more boons and more conditions on a regular basis.
• Enemies need to have some sort of self-defense skills.

Play a zerker ele without guardians/mesmers in your party and then revisit your points. Zerker survivability is mostly high because of reflects and blinds.

JonPeters.5630:

We are trying to take steps to address some of the dominance of Berserker/DPS players. More info next week, I think.

Jon

What happens with “play how you want” if we hypothetically need defensive passive stats to survive?

Derek.6017:

• Allow bosses to cleave.

Bosses already cleaves unless they use ranged attacks and most of them do not cleave by the defintion.

Exedore.6320:

One of the big problems that PvE has is damage is almost always fully avoidable. Dodge the big attack and learn to stay out of circles and you’re home free.

Having the highly telegraphed heavy damage attack is fine. It promotes saving dodges/blocks/etc for the right moment. But it needs to be complemented by enough moderate damage attacks such that no player can avoid them all. When everyone has to take damage over time that will eventually kill them, defensive stats matter. A balanced character won’t kill as a fast as a berserker, but has a higher uptime, which balances out the time to kill.

Mobs could also use more defenses against CC or burst like the protection boon on a cooldown or just plain dodging out of 100blades spam. While these wouldn’t stop full berserker groups from being better, it would reduce the gap between berserkers and balanced characters.

So what would be the point of going full glass cannon if balanced would do similar amount of dps because of better sustain achieved solely by his gear?

What needs to be done is to increase the difficulty (coordinated mobs in teams like in gw1, give them boons, more conditions, especially weakness) so that going with full zerker groups in dungeons should be reserved for coordinated teams, not random pugs.

Another culprit, reflections. You can trivialize a lot of encounters by putting a wall of feedback and just dps-ing everyone down.

fadeaway.2807:

What would you say to frequent low damage attacks which are enough to kill you via attrition if you don’t bring enough toughness/healing, mixed with a dodgeable high damage attack?

That would mean I cannot play how I want anymore which is the selling point of this game.

bobomb.5209:

I agree. PvE content is fairly easy and the only really hard content is Teq and he requires a group of over 100 to complete. I think they should just increase the difficulty of higher level dungeons. The only problem is Arah. The dungeon is so hard that people just skip through all the mobs. And by hard I mean 1 hit kill ranged attacks, scores of incredibly high level enemies, and other badies that has incredibly damaging attacks. So to sum it up. Buff dungeons levels 60+ while giving them all different/more interesting mechanics.

How could dungeons be possible changed without a dungeons team?

Adding mobs more conditions, especially weakness and blind, could solve some of the problems.

fadeaway.2807:

Uncategorised fractal ogre (harpy level, first boss) is a good example of this. This would increase the usefulness of mitigation such as toughness and replenishment of health via heals.

He one shots most of the classes with his autoattack.

D/F is nice for some of the world bosses.

Sanderinoa.8065:

Fun sidenote there, she was the warrior in my initial 80 fractals team

I knew you were “not playing as intented”, to not use an “e” word.

Embers too strong, ban them from dungeons.

Sanderinoa.8065:

I never really got this distinction, is rush less legit cause it does more damage? Or is there another reason?

Ban Hundert Klingen, it does way too much damage.

BeoErgon.9107:

And as Nemesis said, I don’t really think that the devs intended it to end like this.

They might have not intended this but that’s what happens when you design your game that way. That includes limited radius of boon sharing, cleaving of most melee attacks, virtually no punishment for getting interrupted, abundance of reflects and many other culprits.

Nemesis.8593:

No no no… of course it is playing as intended from the Devs…

Let me see if i “too” can read the devs minds…
Attempting to read devs minds, please stand by:

“When we said play the way you want… we actually meant that you could do it, but you shouldn’t… because we have actually created only one viable way of playing.”

“We have created the most complex build system of any MMORPG, but that is just for show… you only ever need to use 20% of it…”

“No more holy trinity ! That is our moto… no longer will the players have to suffer the burden of choice… no longer will our players have to suffer diversity and decision making… all you need is one build to rule them all”

“We have also created long dungeons and filled them with monsters because we want players to skip them, jump with weird angles on weird pieces of left over terrains… go over the map, under the map… do what ever it takes to get to the final boss without fighting where you can…”

“… no longer will our players have to suffer through 30 minutes or longer of meaningful harsh PvE experience, for the first time ever… in any MMO… in our game all dungeons can be completed in under 4 minutes…”

“Buy Guild Wars 2 now and see what has never been seen before: One Build, Speed Runs, No complexity, No choice, No problems !… But wait… just when you thought we were done, we have a special offer for you… Buy Guild Wars 2 now and get free VIP status (some of you will know soon enough what i mean by that)”

For those of you who are confused right now… fear not, i have not given up… in fact i have given in… It’s obvious that this is how the devs intended their game to be, and how the “majority” of the community wants it.
So… this is just a few small ideas for my next video, going to use it to advertise the game on a lot of MMORPG websites… it’s going to bring in a lot of new players. What do you guys think ?

/peace my brothers, Nemesis has come to join you… let’s make this game what it can truly be…

PS: If it were up to some of you, the game would go into the ground in less then 1 month.

Check this piece of knowledge…

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

@Trigger; I don’t think it’s fair to ban consumables selectively. I think the best way is to ban all consumables from one type of run (excluding food/nourishment). It’s also best to have a consistent timing scheme across all dungeons and paths, rather than unique timers.

I would be in favour of selectively banning consumables which are basically “too good to be working as intented” and in ideal world where anet has dungeon team or at least cares about them those consumables would be nerfed (fixed) with high probability in the near future. Consumables like feathers and embers would fit in that category because they have no cooldowns. On the other hand, for consumables like both spy kits and pet ogre whistles which cooldowns were nerfed or had cooldowns from the start I would assume that any nerf that would affect them even in our ideal world is highly unlikely.

I know it might be hard to follow this rule but it should guarantee that any future run that would want to stay as “legit” will be seen as such.

Kalarchis.8635:

Golem Mark II – Another boss in a good place. The shock fields are great. Golem could attack a little more often, but otherwise this one works.

Good place as in tens of zerglings afk autoattacking him from the distance getting fully rewarded? You know you can use summons/pets because they don’t get hit by shock field and then go afk to get a gold medal?

Shatterer – Most challenge I’ve had out of this fight is the achievement for breaking people out of crystals. This is your new champ, Kral? Glint would have kicked this guy’s kitten . He’s all spark and no bite.

You stand in the safespot and complain about the lack of challenge? Come closer to him to melee him (for about 3x more damage) from time to time.

Lyssa – One of my favorite bosses. Keeps you active (the defense points will troll you if you’re not careful) and the fight mechanics are very fitting of the boss. Would be nice if that gorilla despawned on victory but otherwise this one is great.

Her main mechanics, corrupted gaze, makes completely no sense – turn around for ~45 seconds. I guess you could go destroy risen catapults but who does that? Her mimic attack and zerglings mindlessly using ranged attacks just makes this fight longer because of her constant blocking.

Dwayna – Far and away my favorite. Plenty of great lore. The escort and priestess recently got buffed, which is great. Prodding Malchor is relaxing and the statue battle is tough without being overwhelming. Could use some unique mechanics but otherwise wonderful.

Final boss is a pushover for a zerg because of aoe limitation. On top of that, with enough people, the delay between her attacks is unnatural, which causes her doing nothing for a vast amount of the fight.

Melandru – Too easy. Priest is a pushover and defense event is no challenge. His second phase is more of an annoyance than anything else. Fortunately it’s bugged so you don’t see it very often. Buff that priest up up.

It’s too easy because of the same reasons as dwayna – aoe limitations and delays between attacks. Similarly to dwayna, with enough zerglings, this boss doesn’t do anything for a long time, in-between attacks, he just stands around watching autoattacks. His second phase might be an annoyance but so is the corrupted gaze of lyssa.

Grenth – Right where it should be. Scales well and plenty of challenge.

The defense event doesn’t scale well at all. Two champions that spawn there never scale up, even with 100 zerglings they still have 3 defiance stack and level 80 which makes them dead faster then scaled up level 84 veterans. To add even more, those two champions spawn always, regardless if there are enough people to trigger champion spawning. On top of that, there are no champions beside those two, even with the biggest zergs (100+ zerglings).

To sum it up, if you want to really know what’s wrong with the world bosses, go do them with 2-5 people, by guesting on empty servers. Try to melee them, instead of ranging to add some difficulty. Then do them with zergs on populous servers and compare. My conclusions are that the bosses aren’t the fault, it’s the game mechanics like 5-persons-limit aoe and lack of punishment for ranged players that makes them too easy with zergs.

Edit: One final thing. Scaling of all of the world bosses improves just their hitpoints, not damage and mechanics. They deal the same amount of damage to solo-er and to one of the 100 zerglings. That’s also another reason for lack of difficulty.

Obtena.7952:

I have to agree with your first statement because that’s what you like. If you don’t recognize that cosmetics are the reason for PVE, I doubt I’m going to convince you otherwise. What I do know is that the level of challenge from PVE content in this game is relatively low and has been since it started, so it’s a stretch to make generalizations that people PVE in this game for a challenge.

If you have tried SWTOR nightmare mode raids, you know what I’m talking about.

Again, like spoj mentioned, cosmetics have no relations with challenging content. It’s the similar system to what we had in gw1. In fact, I prefer this system than chasing a carrot with +5 power. I just want to have something remotely hard that rewards you with unique skins. Similarly to what arah skins could be considered at the start if you excluded “shard farmers”.

TKiller.6829:

Grenth wants to call bullkitten on you.

Edit: now rereading you said “bosses” which makes your statement correct but I meant that there’s more to Grenth priest event and the adds scale very properly.

Yes I meant just bosses. And to add some interesting fact, Grenth who is legendary mob has champion level of hp (~630,000).

Obtena.7952:

I don’t want you to get the impression I’m trolling here but … after playing the game for the year it’s been out, why would anyone even think the game even attempts to cater to those people? It never has. In fact, I’m convinced it’s the opposite …

I’d like to think they did want to cater but they don’t want to or can’t do it anymore.

When I can team people who have no clue and junk gear in a PUG and complete a dungeon, I’m convinced that the game couldn’t be farther from catering to people that like truly challenging, skill gated content.

I am pretty sure you would have some problems with some of the content like old fotm 50+ or even arah.

Think about it … the whole premise of the game is to collect skins … Sure there is some gear progression but nothing in PVE is rewarded for ‘doing it better/faster’. Don’t be fooled, if you aren’t working on how you look ingame, you better like PVP encounters because there isn’t much for you.

How collecting skins contradicts having something difficult? Correct me if I’m wrong but that’s what gw1 was about. And most people I know really do not like gear progression so I don’t know why you brough it up here. Wasn’t “skill > gear” one of the game pillar?

And I do pvp. In fact, I bought this game for pvp. But after a year it’s still in pre-alpha state so I’m chilling in pve and complaining about its depth.

Spoj The Second.7680:

True but melandru doesnt seem to scale at all. He gets melted so fast in a zerg whereas all other temple bosses take considerably longer.

Melandru solo takes longer then melandru in a zerg. Its the opposite for everything else. :P

Nah, he scales but poorly. Probably, most of the group events bosses start to scale with more than 5 people. We could try 5-manning melandru to check it, any volunteers?

soulcakeduck.7036:

Dungeon runners can get ascended weapons from dungeons without crafting. Champions and fractals have a chance to drop weapon chests.

I had more precursors drop than ascended weapon chests since September.

Spoj The Second.7680:

Dwayna is fun until you get a large enough mob that you dont need to dodge anymore. Melandru doesnt scale properly which in a way is good because its boring with a zerg. Mark 2 golem is always worth doing for extra dragonite on multiple chars. But the problem is finding these events with few people and them having set timers. That and they are mind numbingly kitten when doing them in a zerg.

None of the temple bosses scales properly, unless increasing only hp is correct.

Oranisagu.3706:

so if rT is using it (assuming they went into earth for exactly those modifiers) to break records, why are there nearly no builds around using it? =)

I’m just wondering about the reasons, I’ll probably stick to my 30/20/0/20/0 because more often than not pugs don’t max might and this way we have at least an average of around 20.

Pre-fight blasts gave stacks of might and there was no burning hence going into fire would have been a waste. But normally you should picked some points from the fire line.

lordkrall.7241:

If you choose to simply run stuff in a massive blob then yes it will probably be seen as “auto-attack content”, if you do however try to do stuff in smaller more organized groups you will see quite fast that it is not the case.

My massive blob I’m the part of rolls everything on its way.

Good luck getting up the top of the Tower with everyone simply auto-attacking.
Good luck defeating Tequatl with everyone just auto-attacking.
Good luck clearing Temple of Grenth and Baltazhar with everyone just auto-attacking.

Thanks for good wish but I’ve already done those. Can’t say I was impressed. Pick something a little harder please.

There are stuff in the game that is more than just spam auto-attack, but people do seem to ignore that and just join the big blobs simply because that is more rewarding.

Maybe it’s time to trash that idea of “everyone is rewarded for his participation”? Or make champions a bit harder. Removing aoe limit of their attacks would be a really nice addition I’m sure most of the community would appreciate.

lordkrall.7241:

So, run dungeon on level? That would make it quite a bit harder, and just pressing 1 wouldn’t really work all that well.

I do agree though, there should be something in the game that is actually hard enough to even challenge max-level top-geared players.
The main issue is that it is usually a rather small part of the player-base that would clear that, which could be considered a waste of resources.

A developer do want as many people as possible to experience their content after all.

How does something challenging stop people from experiencing it? I thought it just makes it harder to complete.

That’s probably why every single update we receive more auto-attack content is introduced, so that everyone can experience that wonderful content that they would not be able to experience otherwise.

Zelyhn.8069:

Dude … you don’t even need to press 1 ! There’s the auto attack.
“I swung a sword, I swung a sword again Hey! I swung it again, that’s great”

I don’t but I’m sure there are people that do

lordkrall.7241:

So what content is it your big group of players want that does not exist in the game?

Something harder than pressing 1.

lordkrall.7241:

My point however was that the game caters to different type of players, which means that not all parts can cater to all players.

My point exactly. Shame that this “different type of players” doesn’t include us.

lordkrall.7241:

Well it would be quite silly to demand that every single piece of content in the whole game would cater specifically to you. Don’t you think?

I fully agree. Can you show me a single piece of content in the whole game that caters specifically to me?

Arkimedes.8730:

Fractals exist to cater to players who enjoy vertical progression. The idea is to work towards something over time.

It’s all clear now. We’re just wrong audience.

I like those temple events, I can go for a smoke and still receive full rewards. Thank you ANet.

ArthurDent.9538:

Is the certain trick to use the diving goggles to get out of drake form? If so it no longer works last I tried. Same for using mystery tonics.

I’ve done it yesterday and diving goggles still worked.

Khisanth.2948:

For Temple of Dwayna the issue would be the priestess rather than the fight with the statue. The statue is pretty easy compared to the priestess.

Priestess is doable in duo relatively easy.

Yamagawa.5941:

Statue is easy, if your Zerg is large enough, or has enough sense to spread out and dodge the glory spark it sends up into the sky.

Most of the bosses are easy with a zerg. Their damage doesn’t scale at all.