Fractals Takes More Skill Than Raids

[Cobrakon.3108]

I find that raids are mostly boring rotations. Its just tedious work, but the best gameplay for pve content imo has been fracs. Yeah you can speed run etc, but fracs is more dynamic especially with pubs. DPS has to actually think a lot more about healing and surviving for themselves instead of just mindless rotations. I feel like the roles are more fluid. For instance if i want to play medi thief..... I can deal a lot of damage, then see team mates downed and drop a shadow refuge and heal them etc.. With raids it just feels so monotonous. So even if finishing a fractal can seem easier its only because you can pick of the slack of the group and make more of a difference. In raids the bosses can sit in one spot too long... its just so meh...

 

It just makes dps meters just ridiculous. It should be more like.... dodge> run> strong ability>back out>come in> etc

Auto attacks are too important. In fact for a lot of classes auto attack only vs max dps is only like 10-30 percent difference. That's insane. The group shouldnt be able to tank so much damage and just sit there maxing dps for so long. It should be more dynamic where you are in and out causing big hits then coming back out.

 

I would say that raid bosses need less hp but are harder to just stand there and max dps.

 

Then instead of certain classes or rotations easily maxing dps, you would have those who have more skill maxing dps.

 

I just feel the balance of raids is off. Its too generic. 10-30 difference between auto attack only and max dps.... thats just not right. Its like someone took your soda and watered it down.

[Magnus Godrik.5841]

Um no. Especially with the new elites. You can now pretty much just stack and melt the enemies and most bosses without moving. The only exception is 99 and 100 which actually do have mechanics. But even those are easy when cm aren't involved.

[Amicable Pugs.4503]

Yeah fractals are so hard, i rly focus on survivability as seen here:

Totally not just doing rotations.

[Cynn.1659]

The only challenge fractals present is running away from LFG randoms as they try to hug you with social.

[czerwoni.9563]

> @Cynn.1659 said:

> The only challenge fractals present is running away from LFG randoms as they try to hug you with social.

 

Omg right

[Nephalem.8921]

Fractals are more Dynamik? You usually burst all bosses down before they do anything with a good Group.

The difference between only aa and Rotation is much greater on everything that isn't thief too.

Condi engi grenade only is terrible dps. same for holo and don't even start on staff weaver aa damage.

 

And bosses are too stationary in raids? Which bosses aren't in fractals? You even skip most mechanics in fracs because of high damage.

[savacli.8172]

> @Cynn.1659 said:

> The only challenge fractals present is running away from LFG randoms as they try to hug you with social.

 

Amen...

 

I mean even fractal CM's can be made trivial with high damage teams. The thing is that fractals cater to both core and expansion players while raids cater exclusively to HoT players. So naturally raids can present more challenges because players have more tools to overcome said challenges. Yet we bring those same tools into fractals and watch things melt.

[Aceofsppades.6873]

Fractals are actualy stupid easy due to breakbars. It's just that fractal pugs are worst.

[Zenith.7301]

Weaver is hilariously broken with tempest's defense on fractals. The burst is just dumb. They easily do double the DPS of the next best DPS with a quick enough fight due to the humongous boost they get on a CC'd boss.

[nsleep.7839]

> @Zenith.7301 said:

> Weaver is hilariously broken with tempest's defense on fractals. The burst is just kitten. They easily do double the DPS of the next best DPS with a quick enough fight due to the humongous boost they get on a CC'd boss.

 

You say this as if they weren't easy already with HoT specs, specially the Tempest.

 

The only hard thing about fractals is dealing with some instabilities RNG when pugging and/or playing with bad group comps. All bosses that aren't forcing you to go through some kind of phase are just "stack," stand still and burst. Mechanics are optional if they aren't do-or-die or can be distorted.

[Raguel.9402]

Take random pugs with 0 class knowledge and no support into raids and see if you can mindlessly dps then ;)

[Feanor.2358]

> @Cobrakon.3108 said:

> I find that raids are mostly boring rotations. Its just tedious work, but the best gameplay for pve content imo has been fracs. Yeah you can speed run etc, but fracs is more dynamic especially with pubs. DPS has to actually think a lot more about healing and surviving for themselves instead of just mindless rotations. I feel like the roles are more fluid. For instance if i want to play medi thief..... I can deal a lot of damage, then see team mates downed and drop a shadow refuge and heal them etc.. With raids it just feels so monotonous. So even if finishing a fractal can seem easier its only because you can pick of the slack of the group and make more of a difference. In raids the bosses can sit in one spot too long... its just so meh...

 

That's not fractals vs raids, that's playing optimal vs playing suboptimal you describe here. You can do the same in raids, except they are more punishing in general and you're less likely to succeed. Hence, raids actually take more skill.

 

But more to the point, the suboptimal play you're describing takes *different* skills. It took me months to get rid of the habits I built in pug fractals. To learn *NOT* to worry about healing and trust the healer to keep me alive, learn how *NOT* to dodge attacks and rely on the chrono do distort me and so forth. And you know what? I like it better. Because there's actual teamwork here. Everyone plays to their strengths, do what they do best. What I used to play before, what you describe, is pretty much everyone doing the exact same - trying to outlive the enemy - as if they were fighting alone. There's only one interaction with the other players, and that's when somebody gets downed. It's boring. It's not really different than just zerging a world boss.

[Joxer.6024]

Keep in mind, raids are still in diaper (sorry, nappy) stage at this point. Only just 2 years in so a long way to go and I hope its only up. ;)

[Rennie.6750]

> @"Amicable Pugs.4503" said:

> Yeah fractals are so hard, i rly focus on survivability as seen here:

>

> Totally not just doing rotations.

 

Everything becomes easy with enough practice. The challenge is in the learning process. Even IRL, learning japanese is hard, but once you speak it fluently it's trivial. So the right question is "what takes the most practice to master?", not "what remains challenging forever", otherwise we're in the nearly impossible territory.

[Rennie.6750]

> @Feanor.2358 said:

> > @Cobrakon.3108 said:

> > I find that raids are mostly boring rotations. Its just tedious work, but the best gameplay for pve content imo has been fracs. Yeah you can speed run etc, but fracs is more dynamic especially with pubs. DPS has to actually think a lot more about healing and surviving for themselves instead of just mindless rotations. I feel like the roles are more fluid. For instance if i want to play medi thief..... I can deal a lot of damage, then see team mates downed and drop a shadow refuge and heal them etc.. With raids it just feels so monotonous. So even if finishing a fractal can seem easier its only because you can pick of the slack of the group and make more of a difference. In raids the bosses can sit in one spot too long... its just so meh...

>

> That's not fractals vs raids, that's playing optimal vs playing suboptimal you describe here. You can do the same in raids, except they are more punishing in general and you're less likely to succeed. Hence, raids actually take more skill.

>

> But more to the point, the suboptimal play you're describing takes *different* skills. It took me months to get rid of the habits I built in pug fractals. To learn *NOT* to worry about healing and trust the healer to keep me alive, learn how *NOT* to dodge attacks and rely on the chrono do distort me and so forth. And you know what? I like it better. Because there's actual teamwork here. Everyone plays to their strengths, do what they do best. What I used to play before, what you describe, is pretty much everyone doing the exact same - trying to outlive the enemy - as if they were fighting alone. There's only one interaction with the other players, and that's when somebody gets downed. It's boring. It's not really different than just zerging a world boss.

 

There are two primary ways you usually interact with others in group content, first with team chat (a lot of teams do need to be explained things) then with buffs/boons. It's rare to find a team that doesn't do either, even in lower tiers.

[Feanor.2358]

Chat isn't a gameplay interaction, and boons are a pretty passive one. The current meta features interaction on a gameplay mechanics level, which makes it feel a lot more like actual teamwork. And, you know, a *role*-playing game.

[Tarasicodissa.7084]

I tend to agree with the OP, but perhaps for a different reason. As much as I love raids, to this day I still consider dungeons and fractals superior content. Raids have taught us how to produce decent sustained DPS, besides open burst, which was the only thing you needed in dungeons. But at the same time raids have robbed us of interesting gameplay **outside of boss fights**. A HUGE factor dictating how efficiently a team can complete a dungeon/fractal is how well they can conduct themselves in between bosses. Stacking stealth, pathing mobs, pre-stacking might, swapping weapons for maximum mobility and handling some jumping puzzle-like sections. This level of micromanagement is completely irrelevant in raids and will not have any noticeable impact on your clear times.

 

I just wish some future raids will be designed more like dungeons and stealth-skipping will be mandatory if your objective is time efficiency. Also bring back pre-stacking buffs. If my memory serves me right, it used to work in super early versions of raids, but was removed for later on. If you feel it's necessary, you can compensate for that by adding corresponding amount of HP to bosses.

[Zenith.7301]

> @Tarasicodissa.7084 said:

> I tend to agree with the OP, but perhaps for a different reason. As much as I love raids, to this day I still consider dungeons and fractals superior content. Raids have taught us how to produce decent sustained DPS, besides open burst, which was the only thing you needed in dungeons. But at the same time raids have robbed us of interesting gameplay **outside of boss fights**. A HUGE factor dictating how efficiently a team can complete a dungeon/fractal is how well they can conduct themselves in between bosses. Stacking stealth, pathing mobs, pre-stacking might, swapping weapons for maximum mobility and handling some jumping puzzle-like sections. This level of micromanagement is completely irrelevant in raids and will not have any noticeable impact on your clear times.

>

> I just wish some future raids will be designed more like dungeons and stealth-skipping will be mandatory if your objective is time efficiency. Also bring back pre-stacking buffs. If my memory serves me right, it used to work in super early versions of raids, but was removed for later on. If you feel it's necessary, you can compensate for that by adding corresponding amount of HP to bosses.

 

I hope not. I don't miss the stupid micromanagement of bag windows and clicking items in the middle of a dungeon for efficiency.

 

Nor do I miss the stealth skips. Why even put mobs there if you're going to stealth skip them. Guild Wars 1 had it right, they had tough trash packs like in the Foundry of Failed Creations that you had to approach with some thought. In this game, the burst is out of control.

 

I hope they do a global damage reduction at some point. Phase skipping should never be a thing. The test of fight should be doing mechanics consistently for a set amount of time with unforgiving mechanics. FFXIV gets this right in savage mode fights. Neo Exdeath even on farm takes 10 minutes of properly executing mechanics, and more than 2 deaths lead to a wipe due to the fight's tight tuning.

 

This game needs to reign in the massive power creep they've created with each xpac.

[Feanor.2358]

> @Zenith.7301 said:

> I hope they do a global damage reduction at some point. Phase skipping should never be a thing. The test of fight should be doing mechanics consistently for a set amount of time with unforgiving mechanics.

 

Ew. I hope not. That's too Asian for my taste. I like it how it is now. You can pull off crazy deeps? GJ, you get rewarded. You fail? You wipe. And you still have the option to do it with mechanics (think of Subject 6 for instance).

 

P.S. "Massive power creep"? Like someone coming from Diablo 3, all I have to say is [this](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/37/f8/39/37f839de824c46253cc5515ca1031ad1--the-big-bang-theory-fanart.jpg "this").

[Zenith.7301]

> @Feanor.2358 said:

> > @Zenith.7301 said:

> > I hope they do a global damage reduction at some point. Phase skipping should never be a thing. The test of fight should be doing mechanics consistently for a set amount of time with unforgiving mechanics.

>

> Ew. I hope not. That's too Asian for my taste. I like it how it is now. You can pull off crazy deeps? GJ, you get rewarded. You fail? You wipe. And you still have the option to do it with mechanics (think of Subject 6 for instance).

>

> P.S. "Massive power creep"? Like someone coming from Diablo 3, all I have to say is [this](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/37/f8/39/37f839de824c46253cc5515ca1031ad1--the-big-bang-theory-fanart.jpg "this").

 

I'd rather games not be designed on whether they are as bad as Diablo 3.

 

It is a massive power creep. One expansion brought specs pushing past 30k DPS, then the next one pushed it even further to 37k+. It's retarded.

[Feanor.2358]

I'd advise you not to take golem numbers as a measure of actual performance.

[Zenith.7301]

> @Feanor.2358 said:

> I'd advise you not to take golem numbers as a measure of actual performance.

 

Spare me. Firebrand output is trivial. All classes suffer a decrease from benchmark but a power reaper doesn't suddenly become good in a raid environment.

 

https://gw2raidar.com/global_stats

 

The "oh so hard it's hardly realistic" weaver with a 0.52 popularity is a 4.7k dps gain over power tempest and ahead of everybody else by a fair margin (the other closest in popularity is dragonhunter at 0.48, and it's behind weaver by a whopping 7-10k DPS), and to top it off its advantage is even larger for condi variants. It's a massive power creep if there was ever any power creep in the game.

 

Surprising no one given the stupid amounts of damage modifiers weaver brought on top of the already many damage modifiers elementalist already has.

[Feanor.2358]

Go ahead and check the dps of a weaver in random fractal pug. The profile of the average GW2Raidar user is hardly the average GW2 player.

[Zenith.7301]

> @Feanor.2358 said:

> Go ahead and check the dps of a weaver in random fractal pug.

 

Already do everyday on 100cm and 99cm. It's easily 20k+ while the rest of the specs are lucky to break past 17k.

[Feanor.2358]

CMs are done by meta parties, there's no real diff from raids.

 

P.S. Also everyone can break above 20k.