Fractals

[Cyninja.2954]

> @Raguel.9402 said:

> If you're failing at the post HoT fractals, you would have loved the old scale 50 ones, one shots for everyone :-) No fractal, nor raid is hard if you give it a few tries and learn it.

>

> Any content with Pugs is a pain to run. Which is why open world events are sometimes easier to complete with under 5 players (who are decent) rather than 50 pveers 1-1-1-1ing the boss whilist failing basic dodging and cc mechanics.

 

Exactly, back when fractals gave at most rings and the agony resistance you could get did not cover agony required to tank agony damage (and boss attacks which gave agony were all dodge-able) meant at tier 40+ you had to make every single dodge or go down.

 

I'm still not seeing the issue, there is 4 tiers of fractals, if T4 is to tough or not fun, drop down to T3. What I am seeing though is that arenanet are slowly addressing the design of fractals and fractal difficulty revolve more around player skill than simply agony resistance. Former was always the goal for higher tiers, the later was always poor design and has slowly become obsolete with the amount of ascended stuff getting thrown at players.

[Turin.6921]

Fractals in t4 are challenging 5-man content. They are supposed to be tough....If you do not want to do then just run t3. Which are much easier and relaxed. Plus i find it especially interesting to complain about this now that they actually added Twilight Oasis which is a miles more relaxed fractal than most other new ones.

[Raguel.9402]

> @Turin.6921 said:

> Fractals in t4 are challenging 5-man content. They are supposed to be tough....If you do not want to do then just run t3. Which are much easier and relaxed. Plus i find it especially interesting to complain about this now that they actually added Twilight Oasis which is a miles more relaxed fractal than most other new ones.

 

Exactly. People forget that fractal tiers mean difficulty scaling, not just AR scaling. Essentially if you beat a fractal at T1 and want to up the challenge, you go T2 and so on. If you're satisfied with running T1, you can continue running T1.

 

To quote - With great risks, come great rewards :)

[GrubySzymek.1362]

> @Raguel.9402 said:

> > @Turin.6921 said:

> > Fractals in t4 are challenging 5-man content. They are supposed to be tough....If you do not want to do then just run t3. Which are much easier and relaxed. Plus i find it especially interesting to complain about this now that they actually added Twilight Oasis which is a miles more relaxed fractal than most other new ones.

>

> Exactly. People forget that fractal tiers mean difficulty scaling, not just AR scaling. Essentially if you beat a fractal at T1 and want to up the challenge, you go T2 and so on. If you're satisfied with running T1, you can continue running T1.

>

> To quote - With great risks, come great rewards :)

 

Not in GW2, no. It's objectively more efficient to run SW (0 risk) for profit, than fractals :)

[Raguel.9402]

> @Kheldorn.5123 said:

> > @Raguel.9402 said:

> > > @Turin.6921 said:

> > > Fractals in t4 are challenging 5-man content. They are supposed to be tough....If you do not want to do then just run t3. Which are much easier and relaxed. Plus i find it especially interesting to complain about this now that they actually added Twilight Oasis which is a miles more relaxed fractal than most other new ones.

> >

> > Exactly. People forget that fractal tiers mean difficulty scaling, not just AR scaling. Essentially if you beat a fractal at T1 and want to up the challenge, you go T2 and so on. If you're satisfied with running T1, you can continue running T1.

> >

> > To quote - With great risks, come great rewards :)

>

> Not in GW2, no. It's objectively more efficient to run SW (0 risk) for profit, than fractals :)

 

Yeah well, we're not exactly speaking about grinding gold strategies here :) If you want gold just afk metas or SW :)

[Cyninja.2954]

> @Kheldorn.5123 said:

> > @Raguel.9402 said:

> > > @Turin.6921 said:

> > > Fractals in t4 are challenging 5-man content. They are supposed to be tough....If you do not want to do then just run t3. Which are much easier and relaxed. Plus i find it especially interesting to complain about this now that they actually added Twilight Oasis which is a miles more relaxed fractal than most other new ones.

> >

> > Exactly. People forget that fractal tiers mean difficulty scaling, not just AR scaling. Essentially if you beat a fractal at T1 and want to up the challenge, you go T2 and so on. If you're satisfied with running T1, you can continue running T1.

> >

> > To quote - With great risks, come great rewards :)

>

> Not in GW2, no. It's objectively more efficient to run SW (0 risk) for profit, than fractals :)

 

Not, really. This is absolutely dependent on the individuals skill and social contacts within the game. There is little more profitable than T4 fractal dailies with challenge modes if done fast if one accounts for the value of ascended drops (besides maybe flashing Wings 1-4 in sub 2 hours with raids).

 

RIBA is very high gold/hour IF run perfectly which also requires coordination and it's almost certain you won't get 30-40g/h consistently, more like 20g.

[Vinceman.4572]

> @Veprovina.4876 said:

> Well if they implemented tells then Mai Trin should be pug-able now, at least you know when the lightning aoe will hit, and who she's targeting.

> I'm going by what you wrote here, still haven't done fractals, having fun in WvW now. :relaxed:

 

> @Veprovina.4876 said:

> Wow that's kinda messed up. I don't think mai trin needed to be any tougher honestly. Most pugs can't do her. I'll see for myself when i do her later.

 

I don't know since when you are playing fractals but the Mai Trin fractal is puggable in the highest tier for years now (even the old level 50 was before HoT). But let's assume you started with HoT, this fractal has rarely been a problem for pugs. Of course sometimes a player went down completely during the cannon phases but when fighting her you only had to deal with some condi related downstates here and there.

 

Moreover meta groups especially the "pug meta" ones (viper necro all the way) made this very easy due to necros facetanking the encounter and/or druid spending a lot of heals and condition cleanses. I mean a magi druid is literally able to stand in the aoes and heal through.

 

Groups only struggled there when all random players went in full dps with 0 adjustments, no condition cleanse skills and no knowledge at all about the encounter. And that's a huge l2p issue. It is an perfect sign of players that are not made for this content because they lack too much to be successful in T4 fractals. Still, most pugs have very few problems because at least they know the fight so it's obvious it's not the fractal but the players.

 

I considered Mai Trin to be one of the more easier fractals over the last months/two years.

 

One hint:

Join "P+F" T4 groups so it should be assured that everyone is using the fractal potions (very cheap to get from the vendor inside) and bufffood. Top tier food isn't needed so ppl are bringing cheaper/lower tier stuff. Think about it, 5 players with pots and food are giving such a huge advantage over a group without those, you must not neglect that. People often think this is of minor importance. That's not the case, read their description carefully and you'll ever use them. Always!

And to add that: It's not elitist to ask about it in the lfg. It's standard nowadays and just very inexperienced groups are not using them resulting in having harder times.

[Karnasis.6892]

That's just it, the solution to this problem isn't "Lol you suck, go down a tier". I LIKE Fractals, I have done more fractals than I can count to get the backpack and the Omnipotion. My problem is as a previous poster has said, the amount of on screen effects, things that you have to dodge and if you don't dodge just right, well you die. Or cause a TPK becuase if you somehow survive your team tries to res you and die. That's MY ONLY issue with the newer fractals. They have never been THAT mechanic heavy before, but as soon as Raids get added into the game they have this asinine idea to make FRACTALS the bridge between raiders and non-raiders.... you know what would train people to do raids? Raids. Fractals have always been it's own content. Add new fractals, but don't load it up with 9 different mechanics....

 

And honestly it's not just fractals they seem to like doing this to (I last story instance has some moments like this in the end fight.... there is even an achievement to survive literally turning the whole battlefield into aoes).

[Cyninja.2954]

> @Karnasis.6892 said:

> That's just it, the solution to this problem isn't "Lol you suck, go down a tier". I LIKE Fractals, I have done more fractals than I can count to get the backpack and the Omnipotion. My problem is as a previous poster has said, the amount of on screen effects, things that you have to dodge and if you don't dodge just right, well you die. Or cause a TPK becuase if you somehow survive your team tries to res you and die. That's MY ONLY issue with the newer fractals. They have never been THAT mechanic heavy before, but as soon as Raids get added into the game they have this asinine idea to make FRACTALS the bridge between raiders and non-raiders.... you know what would train people to do raids? Raids. Fractals have always been it's own content. Add new fractals, but don't load it up with 9 different mechanics....

>

> And honestly it's not just fractals they seem to like doing this to (I last story instance has some moments like this in the end fight.... there is even an achievement to survive literally turning the whole battlefield into aoes).

 

This has nothing to do with raids but rather with keeping content relevant and challenging.

 

I'm sorry but the original fractals are beyond kitten easy. Most of them were designed under a very different system and as such, with the current design they have become obsolete. The rest was made obsolete with the power creep from 2 expansions. Challenge mode T4s are were vanilla T4s were at.

 

Now we do not have gear progression thus you can't make things challenging by requiring a higher tier of gear. At the same time the player base has evolved and adapted over the last 5 years. Giving players 1 attack to dodge every 15 seconds is no challenge any longer. Since GW2 combat is active and action based, on of the only abilities to add difficulty is to challenge players in these areas.

 

I do agree on the visual noise though. Between party skill effects, boss skill effects, special interaction or special attack effects and ground markers a huge part of overcoming an encounter is first to adapt and filter out the non-relevant graphical details. This could indeed be improved and needs at the very least an option in the options menu to allow users to disable part of the unnecessary effects.

[OriOri.8724]

> @Ojimaru.8970 said:

> > @Karnasis.6892 said:

> > The reason fractals are referred to "mini raids" is because they are slowly injecting fractals with multiple mechanics. Chaos started the trend with the final boss, where you have to watch for the occasional weapon test, a "floor is lava" mechanic that is also needed to lower the shield, on top of which has occasional adds, and a big aoe attack that can either be cc'd or avoided, IN ADDITION TO the mistlock instabilities. Is it impossible... no, but if you have a bad pug group it goes from okayish fractal to absolute awful. Nightmare and Shattered Observatory follow this same trend (with the latter being the best example for fractals being a mini raid). I understand challenging content, but they have challenge motes for that.

> >

> > Also I just completed the new Mai Trin, I'm still not fond of it, but there are good and bad points to the changes....

>

> I respectfully disagree. If you can't handle the "raid-like" mechanics in Tier 4, there are always the lower tiers, where failure to adapt to the Fractals' mechanics are more forgiving. Just like how you need to step up your game knowledge in order to get the shiny loot in raids or CMs, you should also have to do the same for Tier 4 Fractals. The best part about it is that you still get access to the same loot in Tier 3 and lower, just lesser in quantity.

>

> That said, I really don't understand why they needed to put T4 Mai Trin with Afflicted. It just seems like the same bone-headed decision to have Flux Bomb and Last Laugh in Underground Facility.

>

> > @"Alone.1784" said:

> > They would have been much better served having T4 difficulty remain the same as it had for years and adding a T5 level or challenge motes to things they deemed too easy.

>

> But they didn't increase the mechanical difficulty of existing Fractals. Most of the changes added clarity to the fights, when before you would frequently be puzzling over the cause of your character's death.

 

Devil's advocate here - Some players don't enjoy raids and raid like encounters, yet do enjoy challenging PvE content. T4 fractals is the perfect place for that content, so if it all gets turned into raid like encounters then it removes this from those players. I think it would be a mistake to turn every fractal into a raid like encounter, but a few of them like that is perfectly fine

[zealex.9410]

> @OriOri.8724 said:

> > @Ojimaru.8970 said:

> > > @Karnasis.6892 said:

> > > The reason fractals are referred to "mini raids" is because they are slowly injecting fractals with multiple mechanics. Chaos started the trend with the final boss, where you have to watch for the occasional weapon test, a "floor is lava" mechanic that is also needed to lower the shield, on top of which has occasional adds, and a big aoe attack that can either be cc'd or avoided, IN ADDITION TO the mistlock instabilities. Is it impossible... no, but if you have a bad pug group it goes from okayish fractal to absolute awful. Nightmare and Shattered Observatory follow this same trend (with the latter being the best example for fractals being a mini raid). I understand challenging content, but they have challenge motes for that.

> > >

> > > Also I just completed the new Mai Trin, I'm still not fond of it, but there are good and bad points to the changes....

> >

> > I respectfully disagree. If you can't handle the "raid-like" mechanics in Tier 4, there are always the lower tiers, where failure to adapt to the Fractals' mechanics are more forgiving. Just like how you need to step up your game knowledge in order to get the shiny loot in raids or CMs, you should also have to do the same for Tier 4 Fractals. The best part about it is that you still get access to the same loot in Tier 3 and lower, just lesser in quantity.

> >

> > That said, I really don't understand why they needed to put T4 Mai Trin with Afflicted. It just seems like the same bone-headed decision to have Flux Bomb and Last Laugh in Underground Facility.

> >

> > > @"Alone.1784" said:

> > > They would have been much better served having T4 difficulty remain the same as it had for years and adding a T5 level or challenge motes to things they deemed too easy.

> >

> > But they didn't increase the mechanical difficulty of existing Fractals. Most of the changes added clarity to the fights, when before you would frequently be puzzling over the cause of your character's death.

>

> Devil's advocate here - Some players don't enjoy raids and raid like encounters, yet do enjoy challenging PvE content. T4 fractals is the perfect place for that content, so if it all gets turned into raid like encounters then it removes this from those players. I think it would be a mistake to turn every fractal into a raid like encounter, but a few of them like that is perfectly fine

 

What i a raid like encounter? An encounter with mechanics?

[Myhr.9108]

I'd agree with Fractals being an introduction to raids if it was limited to Tier 4, but the design of the newest fractals slowly bring harder and harder content to even the lower Tier of Fractals, and I do find this problematic.

 

All of you that are saying "if you're not happy, then play lower Tiers", well, I have news for you. I don't play T4 because I know my limits, and I don't want to be a burden for my group. Seems fair right? That's why I limit myself to Tier 2 Fractals. But sadly, the newer fractals are badly downgraded from Tier 4...and I wonder if there is really a good way to downgrade them in the first place...Well, there should be, because the Nightmare fractal is in a good place, but yeah, SO in Tier 2 Pug is a mess, way to reliant on personal awareness.

 

Truth is, Fractals post-revamp used to be the best game mode when it comes to difficulty, with a clear progression from level 1 to level 100, it was smooth, difficulty progression was mainly through Agony resistance requirement and instabilities, so you could just set a bar to your progress. But now the fractal team wants to push the difficulty inside of each tier, and it creates some weird difficulty spikes, and I can't say I'm too happy with that.

[Vella the knight.6072]

mai trin is actually easier and shorter less barrages but more dmg from her when she hits you. the only thing you have to wait for is for her to get hit by the shield removal thing which really kills the fun of the fight.

[Karnasis.6892]

I have no problem with the content being hard, if it's interesting. I'm able to do up to 100, I have done all of the 100's when they were 100's until Shattered Observatory (because it's long... and feels like they want to shove every mechanic possible at us, and punish us when we miss one). I'm not asking to make it easy, I just want to have a CHANCE without feeling punished for not being in the right place at the right time... let us be able to make a couple of mistakes with the ability to recover. Wanna know how to have no chance to recover, having two people go full down... your group has to /gg unless they are god tier players.

 

Honestly the non CM version of Nightmare I feel is fine as far as mechanics go.... maybe pushing the bar a bit, but it's not the worst. Those who want the game to be a Bullet Hell style of content should have it in CM's.

[Rennie.6750]

> @Cyninja.2954 said:

> > @Karnasis.6892 said:

> > That's just it, the solution to this problem isn't "Lol you suck, go down a tier". I LIKE Fractals, I have done more fractals than I can count to get the backpack and the Omnipotion. My problem is as a previous poster has said, the amount of on screen effects, things that you have to dodge and if you don't dodge just right, well you die. Or cause a TPK becuase if you somehow survive your team tries to res you and die. That's MY ONLY issue with the newer fractals. They have never been THAT mechanic heavy before, but as soon as Raids get added into the game they have this asinine idea to make FRACTALS the bridge between raiders and non-raiders.... you know what would train people to do raids? Raids. Fractals have always been it's own content. Add new fractals, but don't load it up with 9 different mechanics....

> >

> > And honestly it's not just fractals they seem to like doing this to (I last story instance has some moments like this in the end fight.... there is even an achievement to survive literally turning the whole battlefield into aoes).

>

> This has nothing to do with raids but rather with keeping content relevant and challenging.

>

> I'm sorry but the original fractals are beyond kitten easy. Most of them were designed under a very different system and as such, with the current design they have become obsolete. The rest was made obsolete with the power creep from 2 expansions. Challenge mode T4s are were vanilla T4s were at.

>

> Now we do not have gear progression thus you can't make things challenging by requiring a higher tier of gear. At the same time the player base has evolved and adapted over the last 5 years. Giving players 1 attack to dodge every 15 seconds is no challenge any longer. Since GW2 combat is active and action based, on of the only abilities to add difficulty is to challenge players in these areas.

>

> I do agree on the visual noise though. Between party skill effects, boss skill effects, special interaction or special attack effects and ground markers a huge part of overcoming an encounter is first to adapt and filter out the non-relevant graphical details. This could indeed be improved and needs at the very least an option in the options menu to allow users to disable part of the unnecessary effects.

 

Dodging is only one mechanic out of maybe 12 this game has. Relying on 1/12 mechanics makes an encounter very unidimensional and quite dull to be honest. I don't know about you but I'm not "excited" by the idea of doing the very same thing over and over for minutes. I'm not a factory worker and certainly don't look for that kind of experience in online games, I have a brain and there are other mechanics that would let me use it. If I want games with 1 mechanic clicker heroes does that just well, and it's completely free afaik.

 

What you call "older" fractals do have more mechanics at play. Maybe they're invisible to you but they're here, they simply don't necessarily rely on reflexes and are more a planning/execution thing. They're not that simple. Skill based gameplay is not necessarily tied to some "OMG faster! faster!" mentality. Some very challenging games are also among the slowest to play. If anything, twitch gameplay is a cheap cop-out for not putting too much work or thinking into game design. It's lazy but ffective and there's an audience for it, but it's certainly not the only possible gameplay in MMOs or RPGs.

 

IMO the absolute best 5 man instance design that is possible to achieve is when there's an ever changing environment, and the environment is the challenge and the real boss. I haven't seen that in GW2 yet but wildstar had a couple of top notch dungeons doing exactly this. Far more interesting than some repetitive AoE spam, usually.

[Cyninja.2954]

> @Rennie.6750 said:

> > @Cyninja.2954 said:

> > > @Karnasis.6892 said:

> > > That's just it, the solution to this problem isn't "Lol you suck, go down a tier". I LIKE Fractals, I have done more fractals than I can count to get the backpack and the Omnipotion. My problem is as a previous poster has said, the amount of on screen effects, things that you have to dodge and if you don't dodge just right, well you die. Or cause a TPK becuase if you somehow survive your team tries to res you and die. That's MY ONLY issue with the newer fractals. They have never been THAT mechanic heavy before, but as soon as Raids get added into the game they have this asinine idea to make FRACTALS the bridge between raiders and non-raiders.... you know what would train people to do raids? Raids. Fractals have always been it's own content. Add new fractals, but don't load it up with 9 different mechanics....

> > >

> > > And honestly it's not just fractals they seem to like doing this to (I last story instance has some moments like this in the end fight.... there is even an achievement to survive literally turning the whole battlefield into aoes).

> >

> > This has nothing to do with raids but rather with keeping content relevant and challenging.

> >

> > I'm sorry but the original fractals are beyond kitten easy. Most of them were designed under a very different system and as such, with the current design they have become obsolete. The rest was made obsolete with the power creep from 2 expansions. Challenge mode T4s are were vanilla T4s were at.

> >

> > Now we do not have gear progression thus you can't make things challenging by requiring a higher tier of gear. At the same time the player base has evolved and adapted over the last 5 years. Giving players 1 attack to dodge every 15 seconds is no challenge any longer. Since GW2 combat is active and action based, on of the only abilities to add difficulty is to challenge players in these areas.

> >

> > I do agree on the visual noise though. Between party skill effects, boss skill effects, special interaction or special attack effects and ground markers a huge part of overcoming an encounter is first to adapt and filter out the non-relevant graphical details. This could indeed be improved and needs at the very least an option in the options menu to allow users to disable part of the unnecessary effects.

>

> Dodging is only one mechanic out of maybe 12 this game has. Relying on 1/12 mechanics makes an encounter very unidimensional and quite dull to be honest. I don't know about you but I'm not "excited" by the idea of doing the very same thing over and over for minutes. I'm not a factory worker and certainly don't look for that kind of experience in online games, I have a brain and there are other mechanics that would let me use it. If I want games with 1 mechanic clicker heroes does that just well, and it's completely free afaik.

>

> What you call "older" fractals do have more mechanics at play. Maybe they're invisible to you but they're here, they simply don't necessarily rely on reflexes and are more a planning/execution thing. They're not that simple. Skill based gameplay is not necessarily tied to some "OMG faster! faster!" mentality. Some very challenging games are also among the slowest to play. If anything, twitch gameplay is a cheap cop-out for not putting too much work or thinking into game design. It's lazy but ffective and there's an audience for it, but it's certainly not the only possible gameplay in MMOs or RPGs.

>

> IMO the absolute best 5 man instance design that is possible to achieve is when there's an ever changing environment, and the environment is the challenge and the real boss. I haven't seen that in GW2 yet but wildstar had a couple of top notch dungeons doing exactly this. Far more interesting than some repetitive AoE spam, usually.

 

Maybe 12? Glad you are so vague. How many mechanics to avoid damage at its core does GW2 have which are on a 10 second cycle? The only thing more useful than dodging in GW2 is walking out of an attack. But please, do name the other 10 mechanics which this game has which are this integral to the combat in this game.

 

About the older fractals, please name any fractal which has a mechanic which substantially adds to its difficulty which is not on a 20-30 second timer? Let's not remain vague, give an example of a mechanic where you think:"this increased the encounter challenge, was enjoyable and I can see them scaling this for each fractal tier." The older fractals are terribly easy (to the extent that people can die themselves to victory) and the ones that have not gotten redesigned were made during vanilla with way different power and class balance. The fractals which were redesigned have gotten progressively more difficult both with encounter complexity as well as with the games combat system in mind. Bloomhunger for example is not a twitch fight but a very tedious tank and spank.

 

We've gone from 10-11k damage per second per class to over 30k. Not only that, but in favor of balance, toughness scaling was removed beyond fractal 50. I already mentioned that balance via enemy stats does not work and was very tedious in the past. Would I love to see more fractals which rely on unique skills like reflect? Sure, but then the balance brigade come rushing in again because the fractal becomes un-doable without a specific class setup.

[zealex.9410]

> @Karnasis.6892 said:

> I have no problem with the content being hard, if it's interesting. I'm able to do up to 100, I have done all of the 100's when they were 100's until Shattered Observatory (because it's long... and feels like they want to shove every mechanic possible at us, and punish us when we miss one). I'm not asking to make it easy, I just want to have a CHANCE without feeling punished for not being in the right place at the right time... let us be able to make a couple of mistakes with the ability to recover. Wanna know how to have no chance to recover, having two people go full down... your group has to /gg unless they are god tier players.

>

> Honestly the non CM version of Nightmare I feel is fine as far as mechanics go.... maybe pushing the bar a bit, but it's not the worst. Those who want the game to be a Bullet Hell style of content should have it in CM's.

 

> @Karnasis.6892 said:

> I have no problem with the content being hard, if it's interesting. I'm able to do up to 100, I have done all of the 100's when they were 100's until Shattered Observatory (because it's long... and feels like they want to shove every mechanic possible at us, and punish us when we miss one). I'm not asking to make it easy, I just want to have a CHANCE without feeling punished for not being in the right place at the right time... let us be able to make a couple of mistakes with the ability to recover. Wanna know how to have no chance to recover, having two people go full down... your group has to /gg unless they are god tier players.

>

> Honestly the non CM version of Nightmare I feel is fine as far as mechanics go.... maybe pushing the bar a bit, but it's not the worst. Those who want the game to be a Bullet Hell style of content should have it in CM's.

 

Fractals dont have an enrage timer and dead bodies can be revived. That enough to turn around a situation, esp on 100 fractal.

[miracleHat.2435]

Just play minstrel chronomancer: give boons/alacrity, heals, distorts, dodges (you can use well of precog), condition removal, and soak up a good amount of damage that the fractal now spews out.