About the new fractal

So after spending over 1h30 in that new piece of content, here are my initial thoughts:

• It's significantly more difficult than 100. It doesn't belong to number 82. There are way too many mechanics happening in a short succession. This is clearly raid tier.
• It's not super creative. Another small aoes + stuns spam fest. A lot are bugged and bigger than displayed.
• The visual clutter from the final boss is insane. It makes seeing things that matter artificially more difficult. There's one particular cast that is hard to see because of that, and it's some sort of one shot (of course).
• The boss is yet another damage sponge. Compared to other fractals of a similar levels, health is too high.
• I don't see it getting any shorter with practice. It's going to be long and rather tedious, just like 100 (which I'm now avoiding because of this reason).

Overall, I didn't have fun at all, the visual clutter combined with the mental health pool of the boss were very frustrating and I don't want to play the game more today.

If previous fractals are any indicator it'll get a health/toughness adjustment soon.

Please keep in mind, as you are new to the mechanics, that the fractal will be more challenging because of it. People said the same thing of Shattered Observatory but now random pugs of mediocre skill are doing it jst fine. Same thing was also said of the new Bloomhunger.

Give it a week of tries before a true review

@UnbentMars.9126 said:If previous fractals are any indicator it'll get a health/toughness adjustment soon.

Please keep in mind, as you are new to the mechanics, that the fractal will be more challenging because of it. People said the same thing of Shattered Observatory but now random pugs of mediocre skill are doing it jst fine. Same thing was also said of the new Bloomhunger.

Give it a week of tries before a true review

Yes I'm fully aware of that. However, I'm trying to speak numbers not feelings. If I compare it to fractals like Thaumanova, cliffside, urban battleground or Mai Trin, the number of special boss mechanics is about twice higher, the reaction time is shorter, and the mechanics internal cooldown is shorter. In other fractals of a similar level, the boss spends most of its time in cleave attack mode. Here, there is always some mechanic or new AoE going on. Not a single second without one. Clearly, that's raid tier difficulty.

@Rennie.6750 said:So after spending over 1h30 in that new piece of content, here are my initial thoughts:

• It's significantly more difficult than 100. It doesn't belong to number 82. There are way too many mechanics happening in a short succession. This is clearly raid tier.

No, no it's not.

At least give it a week or two, and people will run this in their sleep.Aside from that, even the first time around, unlike Fractals like Observatory, we had an amazing time in it.

Very fun Fractal, thank you Anet!

Edit: Our first time doing the Fractal was in T4, and including all achievements like looking for the people to stomp, which took us a while, we completed it in less than an hour.

This isn't Observatory difficulty and it sure as hell isn't Raid difficulty.

Nightmare, Observatory, now this. I could write a very long post, but everything can be summarised into - STOP FUCKING MAKING FRACTALS INTO RAIDS.

WTF is this? After saying that you wont be doing anymore difficult fractals, you practically made (nightmare+observatory)^2. Unbelievable...Very disappointed.

The entire area is ridiculously dark. It's an absolute nightmare to navigate on a first playthrough.

Persistent tornadoes with random pathing make it a headache to melee enemies.

The boss has way too much visual clutter. It's unsafe to melee because you can't even see any of the mechanics that will throw you around. Getting downed is almost always a death sentence because there's too much going on at every second so no one can spare time to res.

Reward vs. Time spent should honestly be on Nightmare/Shattered Observatory levels.

Notice she gets protection, swiftness and 25 might at some point. I'm wondering if boonstrip/corruption has a place here

I'm not sure I did the same fractal as you guys. We gave T4 version a whirl, did all achievements and it was significantly easier than the current 100 or 99 fractals, even without challenge mode (if we look at the first playthrough). The last boss was kinda tanky and we died a couple times on elite mobs preceeding it, but that would be attributed to our lack of knowledge about the mechanics. Overall it was a nice little fractal, more towards the easy side.

I completely agree with Asum's assesment, our experience was very similar.

Two things:1) ANet stated multiple times that fractals were meant as challenging group content.
2) Part of the difficulty is newness of the content. When Swamp was just revamped, people refused to do T4 because it was "too hard". Few minor tweaks which didn't even adjust difficulty but tedium, a bit of practice, and noone even blinks when they get it anymore.

@Tarasicodissa.7084 said:I'm not sure I did the same fractal as you guys. We gave T4 version a whirl, did all achievements and it was significantly easier than the current 100 or 99 fractals, even without challenge mode (if we look at the first playthrough). The last boss was kinda tanky and we died a couple times on elite mobs preceeding it, but that would be attributed to our lack of knowledge about the mechanics. Overall it was a nice little fractal, more towards the easy side.

I completely agree with Asum's assesment, our experience was very similar.

If you did it with raid party, there is nothing to discuss. The purpose of fractals is that you can gather a random group and complete it. Now they're becoming raid-like. Compare this shit with Urban? Molten Boss and Furnace? Uncategorised? Even Chaos, which is not easy AT ALL.

Arena fucked up. Especially considering that they did the opposite of what they told us.

@Zania.8461 said:and noone even blinks when they get it anymore.

Really? People are still rage-quiting because they simply cannot do it.

No idea what kind of world some people are living in...

@Zania.8461 said:Two things:1) ANet stated multiple times that fractals were meant as challenging group content.

2) Part of the difficulty is newness of the content. When Swamp was just revamped, people refused to do T4 because it was "too hard". Few minor tweaks which didn't even adjust difficulty but tedium, a bit of practice, and noone even blinks when they get it anymore.

Well a challenge is a relative thing. What if I told you that I consider chaos challenging due to the very high amount of cc and incoming cleave attack damage? The thing is with subjective words such as "challenging" is that you're navigating in murky waters when trying to give it an objective meaning, like you do. There is no objective measure of challenge, this is why I'm comparing the new fractal to shattered observatory for good measure.

I did intentionally not mention swampland earlier because the fractal, while reasonably challenging, is the least fun to me. Bosses moving too much and having obnoxious long "no melee" aoes are tedious. However, all I'm saying is that this new fractal should definitely be the new 100 just because it requires some korean mastery of clicking and key pressing. if you compare this to SO though, it's more difficult solely because in SO you're given ample time to react to mechanics or AoEs. Here you get nuked after 0.5s maybe and you get a new one immediately. And you better avoid them otherwise you're stunlocked, which was certainly not the case in SO.

@Rennie.6750 said:

• It's significantly more difficult than 100. It doesn't belong to number 82. There are way too many mechanics happening in a short succession. This is clearly raid tier.

If people stay together and move as a group you clear though any mobs and the early on "bosses" with ease.

• It's not super creative. Another small aoes + stuns spam fest. A lot are bugged and bigger than displayed.

I love the "urban" look and feel to it. You're searching for sunspears in a city while they're hiding and being aided by the villagers. It's great. I love the music and dark tones to the visuals. The "execute the wounded" is also a well thought out achievement. Better than Urban Battlegrounds "chicken hunt".

• The visual clutter from the final boss is insane. It makes seeing things that matter artificially more difficult. There's one particular cast that is hard to see because of that, and it's some sort of one shot (of course).

The main thing to pay attention to are the aoe and knockback markers, once you know what to expect it's not that difficult.

• The boss is yet another damage sponge. Compared to other fractals of a similar levels, health is too high.
• I don't see it getting any shorter with practice. It's going to be long and rather tedious, just like 100 (which I'm now avoiding because of this reason).

Overall, I didn't have fun at all, the visual clutter combined with the mental health pool of the boss were very frustrating and I don't want to play the game more today.

i have a feeling your and/or your group were trying to kill the Champion Earch Elemental during the Melandru channeling phase. Ignore it. It's there to kill you. Have the fixated player pull it away form the group while everyone else attacks the boss. She should only need a min or two between channeling phases.

The hardest one in my opinion is the Balthazar fight. Due to the meteor like attacks. Overall, if your party is workign well together, and is quick to CC the boss and take out the priests you shouldn't have too much of a problems.

Good thing that i fully expected Anet to kitten up with this new fractal as well. While i still am disappointed, i was already prepared for that.Oh well, one more reason to give up on fractals.

I'm okai with this fractal, good challenge as it's really hard to stay melee and grouped (you'll need to carry yourself, no more "it's the healer/chrono/**** fault") . The first part with 15 minutes of trash is a bit too much.Final boss, just it's too loaded on screen ; closed room, aoe's marks + visual effect + boss/trash that's teleporting every 10 seconds ... hope you're not epileptic ; and the Vindicators are too punitive in this fractal as you can't really be reactive (cause of epilepsy and aoe/stun/os everywhere), you'll want to kill them before they kill you and before rez your downed friend if that's not too late.

Comparing this to 100 is ridiculous. I formed a group with 4 pugs from lfg and we had some troubles with the final boss at first. After like half an hour we had msot mechanics figured out and were able to consistantly make it to Balthazar.From that point on it was just trying to figure out where you can be greedy and where you have to take a few steps back. A thread like this gets opened every time a new fractal is released and they are always wrong. They were wrong with Chaos and they were wrong with shattered observatory that was deemed almost impossible to pug.

An easy way, go range, spam the jump, forget about your 47k DPS and take 2 or 3 panic skills with invu/sustain/heal/block etc, long range support skills as Shouts, stone spirits, teleports, and stab for Grenth and balthazar's priest ... and it'll be okai.

I have played a different fractal as well then.

We went in with 1 player unexperienced in T4 constantly downed/dead, had some "learn to know mechanic" wipes at start and a few (3 or 4) wipes at the final boss. We succeeded with no problems, no adjustments or changing classes and did all the achievements in this first run. And this is the day of release!

If people really think this fractal is hard on level 82 I definitely have to say it's a l2p issue. I mean, since there is no social awkwardness anymore you can literally focus pull via chrono, stack and burn all foes down before the final encounter like in every other fractal and not to mention: like you do/did in dungeons.During the final boss fight you have a "third dodge" (special action key) which makes it really easy to prevent incoming damage.

Very good groups with experience will breeze through this with ease if they aren't already doing. Please stop the qq if you are not able to play your class because a nerf will definitely make this fractal into an easier thing than Solid Ocean is at the moment.

Fractals have tiered difficulty and if a newly realeased fractal is too hard for you at the first try you can step down one or more tiers to practice.

For some reason, the final boss on T4 was fun for me. Don't know why, because I still don't like Observatory, which I still try to avoid. The important thing is to figure out how and when to use the special action key, because that is the most important if not essential damage mitigation. As soon as everyone learns how to not go down, this is probably a not too straining fight. In the new fractal, the special action is better, because it is more direct. The floating jump in Observatory is not precise enough, and the air time is too long.But I think is not necessary to tune up fights this way. It's still a bit too much effects, too much mechanics and too much distractions. The bosses in the chaos fractal have the right balance between mechanics and damage dealing. Nightmare is a bit unbalanced, Observatory is totally unbalanced with mechanics, and the new fractal is somewhat like Nightmare with mechanics. I like the many enemies you can fight, but I fear the community will see this as challenge how to skip as many mobs as possible and kill only the 4? esssential targets to activate the final boss.

Praise Joko!

2h>RQ. You will die instantly from fucking knights. They deal something like 10k dmg per hit. If somebody will down, this fucker, after he killed your mate,will switch to you. I was on auramancer, mirage. I cleansed conditions, i could dodge 90% of incoming stuff. Np with boss phases, melandru's and balthazar's phases will not forgive more that 2 mistakes. But no chance you can escape from death from that broken knights. You can't even rally from them!!!Also poor meele characters how do they survive in that mess? Permanent stability? Pocket druid? Perma aegis? 3 veteran mobs are equal to champions(charr, ogre) from Uncategorized fractal. It's much easier doing this fractal with ranged class. But i hadn't chrono in group, it could give huge contribution to survivability...In total I like that fractal is challenging, but i can't go to sleep because i did not make new fractal + did not receive achievement from lw4 1st mission. Failed everything today. I will try it ~~tomorrow ~~today 2:08 AM at the moment :) What a game!

@Rennie.6750 said:

@UnbentMars.9126 said:If previous fractals are any indicator it'll get a health/toughness adjustment soon.

Please keep in mind, as you are new to the mechanics, that the fractal will be more challenging because of it. People said the same thing of Shattered Observatory but now random pugs of mediocre skill are doing it jst fine. Same thing was also said of the new Bloomhunger.

Give it a week of tries before a true review

The kitten? You speak of 'numbers not feelings' yet you've tried this fractal exactly one time and have nothing BUT feelings in your 'data' except for how long it took you to learn the fractal, which is consistent for every new fractal to date when first learning.

Again, wait a week of trying every day and then review, until then you have nothing but feelings to go on since your data point here is exactly 1.

@ddamico.4798 said:Notice she gets protection, swiftness and 25 might at some point. I'm wondering if boonstrip/corruption has a place here

Maybe it was the No Pain No Gain instability? I don't like having to run Domination, but the perma boons this instability gives is annoying. If the new fractal have this instability I'd really like a Spellbreaker or a Scourge on the group to deal with it.

T4's are meant to be challenging. If you want to play the content at a more relaxed pace, go down a tier or two. The counter argument to that suggestion is people want their Master chest loot from T4's, or that there is too much attack spam or DPS sponges. So instead of rising to the challenge, you are asking for a nerf to end game content where challenging content is already limited (and there are already comments saying it was easy). Also, not everyone can get a 10-man group for Raids. There should be more options for challenging content other than Raids.

Now playing devil's advocate to my own comments... I rolled my Magi Druid (Ascended armor and trinkets) for the new fractal at T4 (so many lfg's with '87 at last boss, need druid', was a good indicator what was coming) and it was the most frantic healing I have ever done in this fractal content. I felt like I could barely keep my party healed at times, I was mentally exhausted after finally beating it 5-6 tries later. Though as we learned the mechanics better, it was easier to avoid the damage and the panic heals (spam all the things!) were less and less... though I agree that the AoE spam feels pretty excessive.

However, I was super happy that Social Awkwardness was not among the applied instabilities!

If you think I've written that this fractal is too difficult then you're imagining things. I've merely said it was too hard to sit at lvl 82 with urban battleground, cliffside and others. Clearly they're not on par in terms of difficulty, and it's much closer to 100, if not higher. Having a few very difficult fractals is fine, but then it shouldn't be at 82. 80s are normally very relaxed levels, and if anything, relaxed was the exact opposite of how i felt after this one. Clearly the goal was to make something easier than what we experienced or else it would have been fractal 101. It's extremely dishonest to say that it's on par with cliffside or molten, because it's not true at all. In terms of pacing, it's immensely more difficult.

Aint it fractal 87?