New Fractal Buffs: Costs & Effects

This week's LS4.1 release also included the new NPC Deroir (available in the Fractal Lobby, as well as the Mistlock Sanctuary) who offers some new sinks for relics/pristine relics and agony infusions. There are four tiers each of:

• Agony Impedence (adds AR+5 account-wide resistance per tier)
• Fractal Empowerment (boosts core Tyria XP gain from fractal completion)
• Karmic Retribution (boosts karma gain from fractal completion)
• Mist Attunement (adds titles plus AR+5 accound-wide resistance plus increased DPS, plus health per second, plus extra relics)

The Mist Attunement in particular is intended to be a very long term prestige reward for fractal veterans. In addition to the substantive benefits, it also adds four new titles (on per tier), respectively: Fractal Savant, Fractal Prodigy, Fractal Champion, & Fractal God.(See more below.)

So what's it all cost?

• Maxing Agony Impedence (offering a total of AR+20 to each toon) costs nearly 1100 gold and over 1000 pristine relics (equivalent). For comparison, you could include two AR+10 at 35 gold total to thirty-one (31) characters for the same gold cost (and without spending relics).
• Just one level of Mist Attunement also requires leveling the other three to Tier 2. That costs nearly 800 gold and 2100 pristine equivalents (with the prerequisites costing about 376 gold & over 400 pristine equivalents). That offers AR+15 to each toon (from two tiers of Agony Impedance plus one of Mist Attunement). For the same price (without relics), you can add two AR+8 (~8g) to 100 characters.
• Maxing Mist Attunement on its own costs nearly 3200 gold & 15k pristine equivalents (3600g, 19k with the prerequisites).

tl;dr these are very expensive convenience buffs to accounts. They are definitely not worth it for "casual" fractalers. Of course, for those among us who do their daily 3-6 religiously, this is a great way to spend all those relics & AR taking up space in wallets and storage.

Methodology

I converted all costs into their equivalents in gold and pristine relics. For example, Agony Impedance requires giving Deroir various amounts of AR+11, which have a market value on the TP (I used the average of the highest buy | lowest sell). Similarly, all of these require Integrated Fractal Matrices, which require 10 Stabilizing Matrices and 15 relics. The s-matrices also have a TP value I could use and since 1 pristine relic can be obtained from converting a pristine relic, I count each IF-matrix as "1 pristine relic" to make comparisons easier. Your mileage will vary, especially since the market is volatile just after an upheaval like this.

You can currently save some of that gold cost by being careful about which agony infusions you buy (or in some cases, selling what you have and carefully purchasing others); that's not worth it unless you like to play the TP generally.

The relic costs are, however, misleading: pristines are only required for the mist attunement levels. I thought it would be simpler to display just a single number and pristines make more sense for that, since they can be converted into plain relics, whereas you can't buy pristines; they must be earned. However, actual pristines are only needed for two tiers of the Mist Attunement; you can get by with just 3200 of them.

added: I did not include potential benefits when estimated the costs. There's no way to predict which fractals or how many someone is going to complete later, plus I'm only looking at spending, not acquisition.

Developer comment

ANet Ben wrote in the recent AMA

The idea behind mist attunement is to provide a very long term prestige reward for people who have been playing fractals for years. It's not intended to be an accessible reward, it's something that you work towards when you have nothing else to buy. The power boosts are there to make the augmentation feel rewarding and make long term fractalers feel more powerful, but the boosts are small enough that nobody in their right mind should require it based on the power. They may require the title as they do already for 100CM, but due to the cost they will be waiting in LFG for a very long time to get a full party. The encryption and relic boosts are there to help recoup the gold cost (which is very high) but even then it will take you a very very long time to break even, so you shouldn't be buying this for the increased rewards either. All those things are just icing on the cake, the real purpose is prestige.

There are people out there who have been daily fractaling since day one, this is for them.

Other Resources

Deroir's guides are some of the best for learning about fractal mechanics.

edit: thanks to @Ojimaru.8970 for pointing out the titles, the most important 'Prestige' part of the prestige of gaining the attunements.

-> Ask relic sink-> (In reality) get a gold sink"All is vain"

@RSLongK.8961 said:-> Ask relic sink-> (In reality) get a gold sink"All is vain"

There are other sinks for relics that were added; this thread is meant only to cover the account-wide buffs at Deroir.

Other opportunities are available

• BUY-2046 PFR: New ascended trinkets, 100 pristines plus 2 Integrated each. The rings come pre-infused and all offer all stats from the expacs you own. (The description might vary; you can still select them.)
• BUY-4373: Obby shards are now 30 relics + 1 silver (previously: 15 relics + 24 silver, so this is the opposite of a gold sink)
• BUY-4373: Mystic Clover: 150 relics + 1 mystic coin + 3 ecto (the forge recipe is roughly 3.3 m-coins, 3.3 ecto, 3.3 obby, so this is a big savings in m-coins and a tiny savings in relics compared to before; bottom line: reduced coin cost)
• And with the increased demand for stabilizing matrices and agony, this week's release is a buff to daily fractal rewards (at least, temporarily)

tl;dr ask for a a relic sink; in reality, get even more

edit: thanks to @Cuon Alpinus.7645 who confirmed that they were able to choose any stats on the new fractal trinkets, not just Core or HoT

It's far too overpriced for the rewards it gives, the karmic one is a bit disappointing and I am one of these persons that does fractals every day since day one.

@JanNier Kryn Yaren.7968 said:It's far too overpriced for the rewards it gives, the karmic one is a bit disappointing and I am one of these persons that does fractals every day since day one.

It's overpriced, by design.

The idea behind mist attunement is to provide a very long term prestige reward for people who have been playing fractals for years. It's not intended to be an accessible reward, it's something that you work towards when you have nothing else to buy.

Look, I said "It's far too overpriced for the rewards it gives" which are very low for its price. It was and still is my opinion on the subject, and I have this feeling that the key rewards from the daily chests are lower than usual before the patch I used to get 16 to 19 keys and for the first time I got only 12. Must be my paranoia kicking in.

@"JanNier Kryn Yaren.7968" said:Look, I said "It's far too overpriced for the rewards it gives" which are very low for its price. It was and still is my opinion on the subject, and I have this feeling that the key rewards from the daily chests are lower than usual before the patch I used to get 16 to 19 keys and for the first time I got only 12. Must be my paranoia kicking in.

fractal encryptions only have 1 guaranteed from each chest, rarely with extra. 12 is the minimum with all 12 daily chests, if youve been getting more than that consistently you've just gotten lucky

@JanNier Kryn Yaren.7968 said:It's far too overpriced for the rewards it gives, the karmic one is a bit disappointing and I am one of these persons that does fractals every day since day one.

They are meant as prestige items, as long term goals. Ben specifically said that the rewards were intentionally quite low so as to not make people feel compelled to obtain these. And while mist attunement will never pay itself off, ever, its pure prestige. As for the others, the bonus rewards are enough to add up without being so much that you are at a disadvantage without them.

Fractal Empowerement T4 is an extra ~100k experience from every single fractal you complete due to the extra writs earned. Certainly makes a difference if you are farming experience for any reason

Karmic Retribution - Even though there are lots of players that have too much karma, there are also lots who never have enough.

Agony Impedance T4 is pure QoL for people with lots of alts. Gold wise its not worth it unless you regularly play T4 fractals with over 30 different characters and don't want to swap gear around. But convenience wise its amazing. 20 less AR that you need on each toon. Its not going to break you to get that 20 AR on a toon, but its nice to not have to anymore. Plus, people have been begging Anet for years now for account bound AR, and this is a pretty damn good implementation of that.

Please clarify,Maxing Agony Impedence and Mist Attunement will provide account wide 40 AR?

I don't get the reasoning behind the rewards.I get that they are intended for veterans, but veterans are also human and need motivation.If the only motivation is to spent relics and get broke, then no thank you. Because, in my opinion, the rewards are totally worthless.The amount of work ONLY for the pristine relics is insane compared to the reward.Someone at Anet should check the meaning of the word reward(ing) in dictionary.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:tl;dr ask for a a relic sink; in reality, get even more

Really :lol:

Are the fractals mystic clovers worth getting? I'm gonna need them for legendary armor so i'm just wondering if that's the cheaper way than making them in the mystic forge.

I love them, I didn't really care much about fractals anymore because it didn't offer any kind of goal after having finished all achievements so this is a great way to get me back into fractals :) + it also makes it easier to run fractals with toons - I'm always lazy when equipping my toons so having to worry less about their AR is great and also makes it easier because you have to switch gear/infusions slightly less when you're running WvW Infusions on some equipment pieces.And finally we have Ascendet Trinkets with selectable stats! No more LS3 Map grinding! :)

And thanks for the Information! Can someone tell me how much bonus Karma the Karmic Retribution gives on each level?

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

• Mist Attunement (adds titles plus AR+5 accound-wide resistance plus increased DPS, plus health per second, plus extra relics)

I assume these buffs to dps and health are for just within fractals?

@Vavume.8065 said:

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

• Mist Attunement
  (adds titles plus AR+5 accound-wide resistance plus increased DPS, plus health per second, plus extra relics)

From the wiki.

5 agony resistance, 1% increased outgoing damage, and 10 health per second in fractals for every character in your account

The analysis missed considering the additional Fractal Encryption from each final boss chest, which amounts to 6-8 additional Fractal Encryptions from dailies (assuming it's only one, and does not increase with additional Mist Attunement stacks).

Also for clarity's sake, you get up to four new titles with Mist Attunement.

@vpchelko.4261 said:Please clarify,Maxing Agony Impedence and Mist Attunement will provide account wide 40 AR?

@vpchelko.4261 Ben said on Reddit that it will give you 45 account wide AR, as the last tier of mist attunement gives 10 AR instead of 5 like the other tiers of those augmentations.

@Ojimaru.8970 said:The analysis missed considering the additional Fractal Encryption from each final boss chest, which amounts to 6-8 additional Fractal Encryptions from dailies (assuming it's only one, and does not increase with additional Mist Attunement stacks).The analysis only covers the costs, not the benefits; those depend on how much the player visits fractals after spending and can't be estimated with any reasonable accuracy.

Also for clarity's sake, you get up to four new titles with Mist Attunement.Good point. I'll add that to the original post.

@Veprovina.4876 said:Are the fractals mystic clovers worth getting? I'm gonna need them for legendary armor so i'm just wondering if that's the cheaper way than making them in the mystic forge.

If you don't care about the relics, it's cheaper in terms of gold:

• Average cost via forge: 3.3 mystic coins, 3.3 obby, 3.3 ecto, 1.94 spirit shards
• Deroir cost (limit: 2/day): 1 m-coin, 3 ecto, 150 relics, plus 2 spirit shards

So 150 relics lowers the cost by 2 m-coins, 0.3 ecto. (And we can safely ignore the shard difference; anyone with enough relics is going to have fractal XP up the kazoo, i.e. tons of shards.)

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Veprovina.4876 said:Are the fractals mystic clovers worth getting? I'm gonna need them for legendary armor so i'm just wondering if that's the cheaper way than making them in the mystic forge.

• Average cost via forge: 3.3 mystic coins, 3.3 obby, 3.3 ecto, 1.94 spirit shards
• Deroir cost (limit: 2/day): 1 m-coin, 3 ecto, 150 relics, plus 2 spirit shards

@Veprovina.4876 said:Are the fractals mystic clovers worth getting? I'm gonna need them for legendary armor so i'm just wondering if that's the cheaper way than making them in the mystic forge.

• Average cost via forge: 3.3 mystic coins, 3.3 obby, 3.3 ecto, 1.94 spirit shards
• Deroir cost (limit: 2/day): 1 m-coin, 3 ecto, 150 relics, plus 2 spirit shards

Thanks! I'll get them from the fractals then. If i can save a few gold it will help a lot. And 2 a day should be ok for the amount i need, cause it'll be a few months before i can start making a legendary anyway so...

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

• BUY-2046 PFR: New ascended trinkets, 100 pristines plus 2 Integrated each. The rings come pre-infused and all offer stats from core or HoT.tl;dr ask for a a relic sink; in reality, get even more

You can also select PoF stats if you have the xpac. I checked it last night when buying one to fill in my last accessory slot (because I didn't want to farm ember bay for my last Viper's).

@Cuon Alpinus.7645 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

• BUY-2046 PFR:
  New ascended trinkets, 100 pristines plus 2 Integrated each. The rings come pre-infused and all offer stats from core or HoT.tl;dr ask for a a relic sink; in reality, get even more

Good to know. I have the expac, but... it specifically says Core & HoT in the description. I'll update above.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Cuon Alpinus.7645 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

• BUY-2046 PFR:
  New ascended trinkets, 100 pristines plus 2 Integrated each. The rings come pre-infused and all offer stats from core or HoT.tl;dr ask for a a relic sink; in reality, get even more

Yep. I 100% saw grieving and marshal's when selecting. Didn't look too hard for other types though

@Veprovina.4876 said:Are the fractals mystic clovers worth getting? I'm gonna need them for legendary armor so i'm just wondering if that's the cheaper way than making them in the mystic forge.

I'm personally excited about the fractal-clovers. It's only 2/day, but committed fractal runs can make more than enough relics to make up for it, and it's faster than hours of PvP/WvW on the reward tracks. It's also a huge cost savings in Mystic Coins.:+1: