Please remove Vindicators from fractals.

I'm trying to get my head around why Anet thought these would be a good or exciting addition to fractals? What was the reasoning? Because as it is, they are simply putting me off wanting to play fractals full stop, not just the ones they are in. They are particularly cancerous in the new Twilight fractal, which at 87 is already challenging enough. I don't see one positive aspect of having them in the game. It isn't "challenge" it's just incredibly frustrating and annoying.

For future reference, when you add instabilities (personally not sure why we need them AT ALL), please think about the fun aspect. There is nothing remotely fun about vindicators or the tendon one for that matter. You're job is to entertain us, not piss us off. Think about the repercussions when you add these things unnecessarily to the game.

Your opinion.

Personally, it's either a drawback or a wasted instability slot. Sure, if you go can't survive and go down a lot, it's gonna seem like it's impossible. I had a Snowblind run where I had four Vindicators running at my face. Not a fun time. Once we got our act together, however, we didn't see a single Vindicator the next attempt. If you manage to survive and not go down, be it through your own ability or someone providing support, you'll never see them, and that's an instability slot that's effectively wasted. It did add a layer of fun, because it added the incentive to not "ERMGERD DPSDPSDPSPDPSPDPDPSDPSP" the god damn fights because if you did, you spawned Vindicators, and they most likely would kill you.

But this is just my opinion as well.

I like the vindicators because they reward strong play and feel like an actual hazard. I prefer them over fractal avengers, who can largely be ignored by good teams and weak ones. I think they are perfectly fair for T4 fractals.

I can imagine limiting the number spawning in succession, to prevent turning small mistakes (with bad timing) into wipes.

Fractal Vindicators are a great addition, and rewards good play, while punishing players who faceroll through hazards. I've noticed many players who are still unfamiliar with the extreme threat these Vindicators pose and ignore them, much to their own peril. Focus them down, and maybe bring some defensive support to these Fractals.

Well .. today daily is Twilight Oasis isn't it.

This instability is OK. It's change your way to approch the encounter a bit.

It's encourage people to... you know... don't eat a big attack and stay alive. Focus on a boss attack more

In case someone go down. Teammate must focus on vindicator with cc and damage.

Too many people die all at once and it's pretty much a wipe and that's all right. It's an instability that encourage people to not die .

@"TarkaTarquol.4856" said:Your opinion.

Personally, it's either a drawback or a wasted instability slot. Sure, if you go can't survive and go down a lot, it's gonna seem like it's impossible. I had a Snowblind run where I had four Vindicators running at my face. Not a fun time. Once we got our act together, however, we didn't see a single Vindicator the next attempt. If you manage to survive and not go down, be it through your own ability or someone providing support, you'll never see them, and that's an instability slot that's effectively wasted. It did add a layer of fun, because it added the incentive to not "ERMGERD DPSDPSDPSPDPSPDPDPSDPSP" the god kitten fights because if you did, you spawned Vindicators, and they most likely would kill you.

But this is just my opinion as well.

This sums it up pretty well. It's obnoxiously punishing for small mistakes and it snowballs hard, especially in the Amala fight. If we're not getting rid of them, they should at least despawn when the player who downed gets up or gets defeated.

I like them, actually. They add an element of real risk instead of just annoyance like most instabilities. Although I think it would add additional complexity if you could rally off them.

They need to buzz off once the downed player gets back up.. why should the rest of the party have to deal with this noise

@Gambino.2109 said:They need to buzz off once the downed player gets back up.. why should the rest of the party have to deal with this noise

Pretty much this. Some of the commentary here is..bewildering to say the least. We don't need motivation to stay alive; we already HAVE that. The fact is they snowball and in an effects heavy fight like Amala, even the loss of one player is an extreme threat. They are stupidly op for their role and far too obnoxious. And as the above comment says, why should the rest of the group be punished? Frankly, I've seen them cause nothing but division IN GAME and the few comments here are literally the ONLY positive things I have ever seen written about them.

@Takoyakii.2146 said:. It's an instability that encourage people to not die .

We already have this. Do you think people liked wiping before their addition?

@"TarkaTarquol.4856" said:. It did add a layer of fun,

But this is just my opinion as well.

Yeah your idea of "fun" is in the minority I'd bet.

It IS kind of hilarious in Oasis when people keep going down and rallying until an entire army of vindicators has amassed to hunt you down... But in all seriousness, they add a real sense of consequence for downing in fractals where there wasn't one before. It was laughably easy for every class except Mesmer to just down state cc their avenger and bandage themselves/rally/get rez'ed/spam their downed 1 skill to lifesteal, which in turn made it almost impossible for any group to actually fail or wipe. Like, seriously, you'd have to go down like 4 times in rapid succession to actually die in a fractal before.

I love the vindicator instability because you can avoid them ever spawning by playing well, and they punish downs and poor play and forcefully divert player attention to deal with them once spawned. If you're cascade downing in Fractals with vindicators, you should either spend some time learning the encounter and enemies better or bring a proper healer to cover for your inevitable mistakes.

I like the Vindicators. I've done TO first time we tried it at T4 and instantly loved the Vindicators. Hamstrung is a bit too strong sometimes though.The solution is simple, don't eat all the boss attacks. When i play Chrono i still try to distort big attacks when i can, but i'm not using Blurred Inscriptions since they nerfed Distort, so i have it less often. And still i save people a bunch. Too many people just eat up the attacks.Even the most telegraphed ones like the red balls on SO (i'm guilty of dying to them sometimes too, but there's people that NEVER dodge those).

Also they're not so bad, i much prefer them to social awkwardness, toxic trail or Last Laugh. They only spawn once even if you're down repeatedly (or at least they have a decent cooldown).If you're not on a group where all the dps people goes down, they're a step up from most instabilities.

Also to OP: Instabilities are there to provide a challenge. T4 Fractals are supposed to be challenging, not something you faceroll.

Vindicators are fine. If they wreck a group, it's deserved in 99% of all cases.

Vindicators are working exactly as we hoped! I do wonder what would happen if the downed player could rally off them. We want to avoid instabilities that make it easier, but a little give and take might be cool.

@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:Vindicators are working exactly as we hoped! I do wonder what would happen if the downed player could rally off them. We want to avoid instabilities that make it easier, but a little give and take might be cool.

And then you could give Vindicator's a down state and let them be able to rally off of you, so it'd be a face to finish a target--like a lot of team fights in sPvP.

Vindicators seem incredibly boring to me, they do nothing if you're playing well, they only matter in those desperate situations where you've already lost pretty much and everyones just hoping to somehow rally.So in essence: They punish suboptimal groups and promote "meta" groups which ultimatly leads to less build diversity because people with "non-meta" builds have an even harder time finding a group. Doesn't really affect me much since I'm running with a premade group almost all the time and none of us care that we have a power reaper and a FA S/W Tempest for main dps - it works fine and we're having fun. But Things like the Vindicators make me feel bad for everyone that doesn't have a premade group.

Why not introduce instabilities that punish boring meta groups? Introduce more complex mechanics that have to be dealt with and can't be ignored and I'm not talking about those "break the breakbar to avoid getting one-shot" shenanigans. I'm sure you can think of something better. You could introduce a instability that changes bosses into Allies that can still damage you but you can't damage them except by healing them, that would atleast make for a interesting group with 4 Druids 1 Ventari or so.

Anyway, mechanics that result in "win more" or "loose harder" scenarios are bad and boring. And saying they work as intended makes me wonder, do you @Benjamin Arnold.3457 actually think punishing a loosing group while beeing no threat to a winning group at all is a good mechanic in an endgame scenario?

@"TwilightSoul.9048" said:Vindicators seem incredibly boring to me, they do nothing if you're playing well, they only matter in those desperate situations where you've already lost pretty much and everyones just hoping to somehow rally.So in essence: They punish suboptimal groups and promote "meta" groups which ultimatly leads to less build diversity because people with "non-meta" builds have an even harder time finding a group. Doesn't really affect me much since I'm running with a premade group almost all the time and none of us care that we have a power reaper and a FA S/W Tempest for main dps - it works fine and we're having fun. But Things like the Vindicators make me feel bad for everyone that doesn't have a premade group.

"Let's punish players for playing a good team!"

Cuz that make sense right? No.

Playing terribly and you should be punish. Vindicator do that job pretty well.

I play with suboptimal group most of the time. This instability isn't that bad. Just mind your downed teammate,damage cc vindi and res him up.If you can't do that then the team deserve a wipe.

Also your instability suggestion is terrible. It's will do nothing but to annoyed people and make the fight too long (meta or not).

I tend to avoid fractals using them, not because I die often, but because mistakes happen in pugs, and that it punishes the entire group if someone does something wrong. I'm not a huge fan of raid design leaking into fractals and that's traditionally raid stuff. It also forces the team to go for a rally with random trash instead of a revive, which by itself increases the risk of snowballing due to the disruptive nature of that NPC. Overall it's just punishing fun gameplay like being greedy for dps and forces me to play more conservatively than I like, it's boring but doable. The one that slows us down is more interesting because it preserves the risk/reward balance even if putting it in aetherblade is a bit sadistic.

@"TwilightSoul.9048" said:Vindicators seem incredibly boring to me, they do nothing if you're playing well, they only matter in those desperate situations where you've already lost pretty much and everyones just hoping to somehow rally.So in essence: They punish suboptimal groups and promote "meta" groups which ultimatly leads to less build diversity because people with "non-meta" builds have an even harder time finding a group. Doesn't really affect me much since I'm running with a premade group almost all the time and none of us care that we have a power reaper and a FA S/W Tempest for main dps - it works fine and we're having fun. But Things like the Vindicators make me feel bad for everyone that doesn't have a premade group.

Why not introduce instabilities that punish boring meta groups? Introduce more complex mechanics that have to be dealt with and can't be ignored and I'm not talking about those "break the breakbar to avoid getting one-shot" shenanigans. I'm sure you can think of something better. You could introduce a instability that changes bosses into Allies that can still damage you but you can't damage them except by healing them, that would atleast make for a interesting group with 4 Druids 1 Ventari or so.

Anyway, mechanics that result in "win more" or "loose harder" scenarios are bad and boring. And saying they work as intended makes me wonder, do you @Benjamin Arnold.3457 actually think punishing a loosing group while beeing no threat to a winning group at all is a good mechanic in an endgame scenario?

While I gave you a thumbs up for the conclusion, I'm not sure I agree on the fact that you'd like builds doing zero damage to be suddenly made optimal by some RNG factor. It would be so blatantly frustrating to deal with with your average build that it couldn't be done outside of some very specific encounters that would not rely on instabilities to get that result, and even then, it's hard to make that fun. I've seen one case of this and it was in warframe, I'm not sure how the game is now but they used to have some horde mode coupled with toys you had to carry to survive longer and get more rewards - how you survived didn't matter, all that mattered is that you did. And that was fun. However, I'm not sure GW2 can do that and make it fun without adding a ton of additional mechanics to a game that already has a lot so that sounds a bit complicated.

But back to meta builds. The most fun off meta builds are usually close to meta ones. I for instance play firebrand in t4 fractals, which is basically recommended by no one, and a custom fractal build on top of that. It's doing very respectable damage (last time someone told me about it it was like 26k in 99) and it has more burst potential than the raid build, but the fun part is that the tomes give me access to tools no other profession has access to in such large quantities. With my firebrand, I love phases. They let me use my burst better, they let me fully heal the group if i want to, they let me use resistance, reflects, spam stab, add a ton of toughness to the group and so on. I do like mechanics, but what I like even more is showing them the middle finger, like, nope, I'm not doing that and i'm killing the monster faster because yeah reward me for facerolling the content. That's what I've always liked doing in repetitive group content in MMOs and a slightly off-meta build gives me a ton of fun right now. One of the achievements that I'm quite proud of is being able to turn the final boss of Chaos into a mere tank and spank for a moderate dps cost. It felt awesome! And it's so much faster. But the important part is the more than appropriate damage IMO. I'm sure a lot of professions could do this too, as I very rarely see other firebrand players using the entire set of tools at their disposal to do the same thing, so I'm assuming there are some untapped cheesing resources everywhere.

@"TwilightSoul.9048" said:They punish suboptimal groups and promote "meta" groups which ultimatly leads to less build diversity because people with "non-meta" builds have an even harder time finding a group.Actually I think they promote player skill over blindly choosing a meta build or comp. Five people running non-meta builds who know how to use them and know their footwork are going to have an easy time; folks blindly choosing a build because it's meta or insisting on a comp are going to suffer some.

However, after reading the comments, I can see that people who PUG often are going to experience more folks who... think they know how to efficiently use their build; statics are more likely to be okay or be able/willing to adapt.

The raises the question: is it better to have instabilities that benefit good play in a manner that ends up hurting PUGs more? In the short run, no; it clearly leads to frustration. I'd think it's better in the long run, since it encourages people to be more thoughtful about what & how they play. The downside is that some people will turn away from fractals/T4 and perhaps even from GW2, because they aren't inclined to invest extra time learning new tricks.

I'm confused @TwilightSoul.9048.The idea of the change is reasonable because the previous Mistlock:Avenger is practicaly non existence. Lets face the fact, every class have and can interrupt it during downed state to make it dissapear. It would be a problem if it remains and continue to perform finisher after interrupting which makes replacing them w Vindicator attacks make sense. The Vindicators can be interrupted but still remains after to try and finish you off while giving a fair chance for allies to rally you. This makes the previous Avenger more boring to me.

Not sure how you're justifying meta here (assuming full dmg) but the vindicators are introducing survival stats(and classes) is a change to me, condi is still ahead in higher lvls but might stacks is what I really look at. For a premade sound like "non meta", you seem to be doing well and what makes you think "meta" ain't suffering. They do take higher dmg being hit by vindicators for being glass. And heck no in forcing more effort asking players to get another set (healing) just for fractal level.

@"TwilightSoul.9048" said:So in essence: They punish suboptimal groups and promote "meta" groups which ultimatly leads to less build diversity because people with "non-meta" builds have an even harder time finding a group.That's nonsense. Vindicators don't punish builds (meta builds are already the most squishy ones), vindicators punish mistakes and bad play. Apart from "git gud", the only thing they promote is the presence of a healer. It's not as if the average group wouldn't profit from one anyway and it still won't save you if people don't know how to play. Instabilities that promote awareness and skill are good - much better than ones like Afflicted, which does nothing except making stuff more annoying.

@"TwilightSoul.9048" said:Vindicators seem incredibly boring to me, they do nothing if you're playing well, they only matter in those desperate situations where you've already lost pretty much and everyones just hoping to somehow rally.So in essence: They punish suboptimal groups and promote "meta" groups which ultimatly leads to less build diversity because people with "non-meta" builds have an even harder time finding a group. Doesn't really affect me much since I'm running with a premade group almost all the time and none of us care that we have a power reaper and a FA S/W Tempest for main dps - it works fine and we're having fun. But Things like the Vindicators make me feel bad for everyone that doesn't have a premade group.

Why not introduce instabilities that punish boring meta groups? Introduce more complex mechanics that have to be dealt with and can't be ignored and I'm not talking about those "break the breakbar to avoid getting one-shot" shenanigans. I'm sure you can think of something better. You could introduce a instability that changes bosses into Allies that can still damage you but you can't damage them except by healing them, that would atleast make for a interesting group with 4 Druids 1 Ventari or so.

Anyway, mechanics that result in "win more" or "loose harder" scenarios are bad and boring. And saying they work as intended makes me wonder, do you @"Benjamin Arnold.3457" actually think punishing a loosing group while beeing no threat to a winning group at all is a good mechanic in an endgame scenario?

It has nothing to do with being "meta", and everything to do with playing well. and/or adapting. You don't have to have anything even remotely close to meta, but you do have to assess what your group needs and bring that. and play well. If you're running 5 dps, maybe someone should switch to support? If my pug is struggling, I swap to something that can help keep us alive. Like blood magic scourge. Certainly not "meta", but it certainly works. Or maybe just a few skill and trait swaps is all that's needed.

And while I do agree that "'win more' or 'loose harder'" is less than ideal, punishing players for playing poorly is ideal. If you mess up badly enough, you should lose.