Fractals - What is the allure? What are the rewards?

[Rysdude.3824]

Good day everyone,

I'm one of those 95% WvWers but recently that environment has gotten a little stale for me so now I'm looking at Fractals. After reading the wiki and a few guides about fractals, my question is, what is the draw of doing this instanced content? Are there any unique rewards besides the back piece? Is it a stepping stone towards doing raids?

 

I've settled on this build for starting out: https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Warrior_-_Core_Power_Banners but just not sure what the selling points are for doing the same thing over and over again.

 

Any insight from Fractal Guru's would be much appreciated!

 

Rys

[TexZero.7910]

Fractals are a mixed bag.

You can get some unique weapon skins, as well as a tonic. They can be a stepping stone to raids if you're patient and work your way up while focusing on improving. Ultimately though as they are currently played they are mostly a loot pinata with some decent gold generation for your time.

 

 

[Overlord RainyDay.2084]

Unless you're coming in with a set of full ascended gear already, fractals always seemed to give a good sense of progression. You start out learning the basics in tier 1, then when you finally get that first piece or two of ascended gear, you can do 25 and the first couple of levels of T2. As you get higher up, you get better rewards, and each piece of ascended loot, even the recipes and ascended mats, feed into making you strong enough to climb higher. By the time you reach personal level 100, you should have a full set of ascended gear that you've built over the course of your journey. The various collections, and legendary backpack journey helps make it interesting as well. Some of the challenge motes for the legendary backpiece are a decent challenge, especially if you're pugging it.

 

Fractals do also reward a decent amount of gold and decent equipment rewards. And there's plenty of unique skins (of debatable quality) aside from the backpieces (of which there's actually 7) Fractal weapons, gold fractal weapons, nightmare and caustic nightmare skins, mistwild greatsword, unique infusions.

 

Now, once you get to the top, there's nowhere to go except the grind for titles and infusions, but with almost 25 different fractals there's enough variety to keep it interesting. Is doing the same raids week after week any different? I haven't yet got to the point of doing CM 99 and 100, but I could see those get boring if you did it every day.

[Rysdude.3824]

> @"Overlord RainyDay.2084" said:

> Unless you're coming in with a set of full ascended gear already, fractals always seemed to give a good sense of progression. You start out learning the basics in tier 1, then when you finally get that first piece or two of ascended gear, you can do 25 and the first couple of levels of T2. As you get higher up, you get better rewards, and each piece of ascended loot, even the recipes and ascended mats, feed into making you strong enough to climb higher. By the time you reach personal level 100, you should have a full set of ascended gear that you've built over the course of your journey. The various collections, and legendary backpack journey helps make it interesting as well. Some of the challenge motes for the legendary backpiece are a decent challenge, especially if you're pugging it.

>

> Fractals do also reward a decent amount of gold and decent equipment rewards. And there's plenty of unique skins (of debatable quality) aside from the backpieces (of which there's actually 7) Fractal weapons, gold fractal weapons, nightmare and caustic nightmare skins, mistwild greatsword, unique infusions.

>

> Now, once you get to the top, there's nowhere to go except the grind for titles and infusions, but with almost 25 different fractals there's enough variety to keep it interesting. Is doing the same raids week after week any different? I haven't yet got to the point of doing CM 99 and 100, but I could see those get boring if you did it every day.

 

That's very insightful, thank you. Most of my characters are all in full ascended already. No AR yet but I can buy some when the time comes. Ill gear up my warrior, study the mechanics at the low levels and work my way up from there. Seems like there are some cool things to see, receive and learn so will give it a shot. Thank you!

[zealex.9410]

> @"TexZero.7910" said:

> Fractals are a mixed bag.

> You can get some unique weapon skins, as well as a tonic. They can be a stepping stone to raids if you're patient and work your way up while focusing on improving. Ultimately though as they are currently played they are mostly a loot pinata with some decent gold generation for your time.

>

>

 

Like everything else in the ame u do them for cosmetics, qol and gold.

[cyfinity.2078]

I've been doing fractals since a bit before HOT launch, nearly everyday since then, and i've amassed a massive amount of gold from doing so. after reaching fractal god im making even more gold on top of what i was making previously. so far i till now have been able to make a legendary weapon solely off of fractal gold farm every month. and after the attunement updates i make them even faster.

It might not be as efficient as meta farming, or sw or istan farming, but it has its own unique rewards, and its less mind numbing.

[Sublimatio.6981]

Let me just say that as a person who bought **every** buff from Deroir NPC at max tier.

 

I still do CMs+T4+Recs daily (recs almost daily)

Here are my thoughts about the fractal rewards.

 

- Pristine Relics - this has no issues whatsoever. There's a permanent sink which involves ascended amulets and salvaging them. Just few days ago I dropped the 700g item from it.

- Integrated Fractal Matrix/Stabilizing Matrix - zero issues. There's an infinite sink in form of extra encryption keys, buying ascended amulets or filling up your alternative weapons with +5+5 infusions for the bonus stats.

- **Fractal Relics - this has no end-game sink.** As I play the game, I don't have a way to get rid of them anymore and it will eventually reach numbers like tens of thousands or more. I suggested many times to allow us some wvw/pvp items like transmutation charges. Even things like food primers or account bound food would be great. Or at least let us convert them to pristine relics so I can buy ascended amulets at a higher rate.

 

Edit: If things like transmutation charges+other things suggested would break the economy or for whatever reason shouldn't be available for everyone - maybe only allow Fractal Gods and Goddesses to buy them, as prestige privilege?

[Klipso.8653]

You make ascended gear and then farm agony resist, so you can slot it and farm more agony resist.

 

Honestly there's no point to high level fractals when the best stuff that drops is ascended gear that you already had to make to get there.

 

I have a bank tab almost full of ascended armor and weapons and rings that I'll probably never use.

[Dante.1763]

> @"Klipso.8653" said:

> You make ascended gear and then farm agony resist, so you can slot it and farm more agony resist.

>

> Honestly there's no point to high level fractals when the best stuff that drops is ascended gear that you already had to make to get there.

>

> I have a bank tab almost full of ascended armor and weapons and rings that I'll probably never use.

 

Unless you have a bunch of characters to kit out in ascended gear still like i do, in which case fractals are perfect for to run for that chance at ascended loot boxes dropping. :)

[Hesacon.8735]

I do fractals for ascended gear boxes, and use those ascended gear boxes to equip alts in wvw. Fractals have realistically outfitted 5-6 toons in a year of off and on doing fractals.

[cyfinity.2078]

Yea i got so much ascended gear when i started doing raids i just salvaged all of it for extra shards and sold ghostly infusions there, with fractals its more of a liquid gold farm, i get around 75-82 boxes from doing 2 cms 3 t4s and 3 daily recs, which amounts to about 22-32 gold per day. i've gotten so many ascended boxes since doing the dailies every day that i needed extra mule characters to hold all the gear. think i'm up to somewhere like 26 maybe 30 ascended sets, i lost count ages ago.

[StabbersTheThird.6053]

(Not thread jacking, but this seemed the appropriate place to ask)

 

I just got into them because I got my first piece of ascended (pink) gear, which was an amulet. I was hyped- then told I couldn't have picked a worse first pink gear. Then I was told that I could get both of the rings I need in 2 dailies worth of fractals which got me thinking that maybe it was faster to get ascended gear doing fractals. People say they drop here and I'm not sure where/when. Does anyone know what ascended gear drops? Armor, weps, rings, amulets, back pieces? On top of that, since I have an attuned ring and a basic amulet- how much agony should I add to those? I'm pretty poor to be honest.

[Sephylon.4938]

All of them drop in fractals, also you can buy rings with core stats for 10 pristine fractal relicss ea. If you don't plan on doing fractals, there's no point to ar. If you plan on progressing, your aim is to get 150 ar total

[Cyninja.2954]

> @"StabbersTheThird.6053" said:

> (Not thread jacking, but this seemed the appropriate place to ask)

>

> I just got into them because I got my first piece of ascended (pink) gear, which was an amulet. I was hyped- then told I couldn't have picked a worse first pink gear. Then I was told that I could get both of the rings I need in 2 dailies worth of fractals which got me thinking that maybe it was faster to get ascended gear doing fractals. People say they drop here and I'm not sure where/when. Does anyone know what ascended gear drops? Armor, weps, rings, amulets, back pieces? On top of that, since I have an attuned ring and a basic amulet- how much agony should I add to those? I'm pretty poor to be honest.

 

The rings are available for pristine fractal relics.

 

Amulett and Accessoires are cheaper to get from other game modes (Living World Season 3 maps or guild missions).

 

Weapons and armor chests are rare drops which can come from any daily chest (T1-T4) but have a very low drop chance in T1-T3. T4 must be around 10-15% chance to get a chest. So you om average might end up with 1 chests per week if running daily T4 fractals.

[StabbersTheThird.6053]

> @"Cyninja.2954" said:

> > @"StabbersTheThird.6053" said:

> > (Not thread jacking, but this seemed the appropriate place to ask)

> >

> > I just got into them because I got my first piece of ascended (pink) gear, which was an amulet. I was hyped- then told I couldn't have picked a worse first pink gear. Then I was told that I could get both of the rings I need in 2 dailies worth of fractals which got me thinking that maybe it was faster to get ascended gear doing fractals. People say they drop here and I'm not sure where/when. Does anyone know what ascended gear drops? Armor, weps, rings, amulets, back pieces? On top of that, since I have an attuned ring and a basic amulet- how much agony should I add to those? I'm pretty poor to be honest.

>

> The rings are available for pristine fractal relics.

>

> Amulett and Accessoires are cheaper to get from other game modes (Living World Season 3 maps or guild missions).

>

> Weapons and armor chests are rare drops which can come from any daily chest (T1-T4) but have a very low drop chance in T1-T3. T4 must be around 10-15% chance to get a chest. So you om average might end up with 1 chests per week if running daily T4 fractals.

 

Do you know if people would carry for a T4? Highest I get is T2 at the moment.

[Sephylon.4938]

> @"StabbersTheThird.6053" said:

> > @"Cyninja.2954" said:

> > > @"StabbersTheThird.6053" said:

> > > (Not thread jacking, but this seemed the appropriate place to ask)

> > >

> > > I just got into them because I got my first piece of ascended (pink) gear, which was an amulet. I was hyped- then told I couldn't have picked a worse first pink gear. Then I was told that I could get both of the rings I need in 2 dailies worth of fractals which got me thinking that maybe it was faster to get ascended gear doing fractals. People say they drop here and I'm not sure where/when. Does anyone know what ascended gear drops? Armor, weps, rings, amulets, back pieces? On top of that, since I have an attuned ring and a basic amulet- how much agony should I add to those? I'm pretty poor to be honest.

> >

> > The rings are available for pristine fractal relics.

> >

> > Amulett and Accessoires are cheaper to get from other game modes (Living World Season 3 maps or guild missions).

> >

> > Weapons and armor chests are rare drops which can come from any daily chest (T1-T4) but have a very low drop chance in T1-T3. T4 must be around 10-15% chance to get a chest. So you om average might end up with 1 chests per week if running daily T4 fractals.

>

> Do you know if people would carry for a T4? Highest I get is T2 at the moment.

 

Do you mean have someone open up a t4 party and let you join so you can help them out?

[Talindra.4958]

Hi.. not sure if this is mentioned.

You get celestial infusion too from doing 100 cm mode

 

[ugrakarma.9416]

the best rewards for me, from fractals, was maximixe infusions related stuff. almost for completionists fanatics.

[ugrakarma.9416]

Also the gold flow is good from fractals.

[Talindra.4958]

> @"StabbersTheThird.6053" said:

> (Not thread jacking, but this seemed the appropriate place to ask)

>

> I just got into them because I got my first piece of ascended (pink) gear, which was an amulet. I was hyped- then told I couldn't have picked a worse first pink gear. Then I was told that I could get both of the rings I need in 2 dailies worth of fractals which got me thinking that maybe it was faster to get ascended gear doing fractals. People say they drop here and I'm not sure where/when. Does anyone know what ascended gear drops? Armor, weps, rings, amulets, back pieces? On top of that, since I have an attuned ring and a basic amulet- how much agony should I add to those? I'm pretty poor to be honest.

 

Hi.. to fully equip your character to do high level fractals up to lvl 100. Get 150 AR. It's the best investment :) if you need help with how to infuse .. let us know.. I remember there's few post on that which I can dig it out for you xD