1.30h in Amala with PUG group and it's not fun

Before someone throws the 'l2p' argument I do this fractal since it was introduced and am fairly familiar with the mechanics and its progress. But something seems changed. The increased AoE skills rate from Amala, 'slippery' circles spawning non stop, along with the 'endless' Mossmans - Tentacles - Skyhammers, etc takes difficulty of the specific fractal to another level. Also those ravens instability so annoying.

Honestly I don't see the reason behind this change. Fractals have always been a place for casual players to PUG and have some fun. There is no need making a daily fractal into a nightmare. :)

@"Dreddo.9865" said:

Honestly I don't see the reason behind this change. Fractals have always been a place for casual players to PUG and have some fun. There is no need making a daily fractal into a nightmare. :)

Drop to T3, do it there, forfeit the T4 loot, problem solved since now you can go as "casual player to PUG and have some fun".

Unless you primary motivator is loot.

Or play a class which can carry a bad PUG group, say support scourge or heal FB.

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Dreddo.9865" said:

Honestly I don't see the reason behind this change. Fractals have always been a place for casual players to PUG and have some fun. There is no need making a daily fractal into a nightmare. :)

I didn't have to drop to T3 for the past last year to do 87, thanks for your suggestion.

T4 Fractals include the instabilities. We were all used to the old ones, and now ANet threw us for a loop with lots of new ones and changes to the old ones. It takes time for the best players to get used to it, so of course it's going to take longer for the rest of us to adapt. That doesn't make them good or bad; it doesn't mean things are too difficult or not. If they were already easy, then we'd already be bored with them and be asking ANet to change them yet again.

My group was considering how many people would complain tonight, how many would skip Twilight, because, yes, absolutely, it was pretty crazy. We used to not wipe and tonight we did. Because, yes, we're also still getting the hang of how to handle the changes especially some of the combinations.

What I don't see in your post is how after adapting, you still think it's too hard. That gives the impression that your group tried to run L87 the same way it would have been PUGged 6 weeks ago. If that's the case, it's hardly surprising it took 90 minutes. If it's not the case, maybe you can describe what you tried and other veterans can offer their suggestions on how to adjust in the future.

@Dreddo.9865 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Dreddo.9865 said:

Honestly I don't see the reason behind this change. Fractals have always been a place for casual players to PUG and have some fun. There is no need making a daily fractal into a nightmare. :)

Yes, and you haven't adapted to the new instabilities and challenge and neither have many of the other PUGs.

Turns out, your skill level is lacking for this content currently.

Once again I had to switch to barrier Scourge today and it worked again to carry pugs trough today's horrendous instabilities in TO.Kinda starting to enjoy all this.

Some instabs combination surely are ridiculous but there seems to be a bigger issues with the general skill level of of your pug. The new instabs sure makes the run harder but adapting to change does not require a hefty effort to complete the run as compared with pre-patch. If a pug failed to provide a cumulative effort good enough to complete a run, its a major problem and its everyone's fault there. I dont face too much problem post-patch unless except a few occasions but when I see 2-3 people keep on dying before we even face the final fight.. its an alarming indicator to leave the party.. Thankfully its a very rarely happened..

The problem is that Twilight Oasis was one of the fractals that the majority of the usual T4 groups had already left out before. It was more than obvious to me that this would get out of hands with the new instabilities. It lines up with Shattered Observatory (although I find it's a much easier one in normal mode) and Mai Trin, Thaumanova due to the ooze and sometimes Underground Facility.I'm still not convinced that all of those instabilities serves the purpose that was expected. For sure, CM groups and most of the statics still won't have any issues with the recent fractals, maybe wipe once or twice and then go on but the latest changes have blown a big crater into the T4 community which was already suffering a lot before.It's the main reason I stopped playing fractals completely together with running the same two CMs on a daily basis being boring af and the newer fracs Deepstone + Siren's Reef were a huge disappointment.

@"Dreddo.9865":Just leave those fracs out next time and spend your time complaining in the forums or at reddit with substantial posts. In my opinion that is the better way than wasting a lot of time for a T4 fractal. Don't feel discouraged even if people answer here with "adjust your team comp", "l2p", "l2adapt". The changes are too huge for this community and I'm sure it again leads to players leaving the game mode and the game itself.

People have spent around 5 years drilling the mantra that dps is more important than everything else. It made sense when all attacks was basically instant down, or when healers just could overheal for a short fight.

The new instabilities has currently made this strategy quite bad for pug groups. Great healers or support scourge might mitigate this issue a bit but in the end what I tend to see is a lot of deaths from power engi, thieves, or worse people who has not already swapped away from zerker staff weaver.

Personally I have started to look towards the old condi scourge dps with heal traits. It negate the bird and fire instability, and reduces the stress on the healer. It is sloooow, but it works if all you want is to finish a T4. Sadly a lot of pug DPS are not that old that they played fractals back when all-condi-necro was meta, and won't switch to it when they keeping going down during normal T4s.

5 Plaguedoctor Scourge new meta!

@"borgs.6103" said:5 Plaguedoctor Scourge new meta!

It does make a lot of fractals "easy" (although slower).

@borgs.6103 said:5 Plaguedoctor Scourge new meta!

Why? Shaman all the way mix it with some Apostate's for more sustain and see how fractals became a joke :) .Boon duration is so unimportant on scourge. If only Plaguedoctor had expertise instead of concentration

I still see a lot of PuG groups looking for Druid, which just isn't a great support in 5 man content (while incredible value in Raids), especially now that Chrono can't solo carry groups that hard anymore.I highly recommend switching to support FB if you are struggling, ideally with a Diviner Renegade.

@Asum.4960 said:I still see a lot of PuG groups looking for Druid, which just isn't a great support in 5 man content (while incredible value in Raids), especially now that Chrono can't solo carry groups that hard anymore.I highly recommend switching to support FB if you are struggling, ideally with a Diviner Renegade.

Prefer the opposite, harrier rene with diviner FB. Virtually all of the FB's attractive features don't have anything to do with healing power and it does more dps in diviner than a diviner renegade does as well.

Renegade's raw healing is unmatched. It's its reliant on FB utility (stability in particular) that holds it back.

@Zenith.7301 said:

@Asum.4960 said:I still see a lot of PuG groups looking for Druid, which just isn't a great support in 5 man content (while incredible value in Raids), especially now that Chrono can't solo carry groups that hard anymore.I highly recommend switching to support FB if you are struggling, ideally with a Diviner Renegade.

Works as well, although from personal experience Harrier FB carries much, much harder than Harrier Renegade, so if I want a relaxed run, that is the set up I prefer.The high consistent healing of FB just works better in practice in my experience, plus it has much better over all boon support.

If I'm concerned about speed and have good players available, no heal with Diviner Renegade and Zerker FB (with maybe some Diviner) is the way to go.

@phs.6089 said:

@borgs.6103 said:5 Plaguedoctor Scourge new meta!

Just go Full Trailblazer... With 5 scourges pumping barrier you don't really need healing power to make them huge.

It'll take time for the general pug community to get used to various combinations of instabilities.

A classic 'I want top loot, but cant perform for it' example. There is only 1 thing which can significantly change how fractals go and that is slippery slope. Just today I had a thought that instabilities are just weak, more of them make fractals annoying instead of challenging, content is easy. Yes, you wipe here and there, but CMs+t4 usually take less than 1h anyway.

@Jeknar.6184 said:

@phs.6089 said:

@borgs.6103 said:5 Plaguedoctor Scourge new meta!

omg, I forgot about Tralblazer but juts to make an acceptable composition 4 tralblazer +1 ventary scourge, lol.

@phs.6089 said:

@Jeknar.6184 said:

@phs.6089 said:

@borgs.6103 said:5 Plaguedoctor Scourge new meta!

Would be interesting to hear what the average t4 clear speed would be with that composition. Speed clear vs 200kp cms reset pugs vs average t4 pug with zerkers, druid and chrono vs 5 scourge vs byob random pug.

@Belorn.2659 said:

@phs.6089 said:

@Jeknar.6184 said:

@phs.6089 said:

@borgs.6103 said:5 Plaguedoctor Scourge new meta!

It won't be that long, trailblazer scourge deal good damage. Get nightmare runs on it and it will be near or better average pugs in zerker with druid and crono

@Zenith.7301 said:

@Asum.4960 said:I still see a lot of PuG groups looking for Druid, which just isn't a great support in 5 man content (while incredible value in Raids), especially now that Chrono can't solo carry groups that hard anymore.I highly recommend switching to support FB if you are struggling, ideally with a Diviner Renegade.

I think its depend on what you want Harrier FB + Diviner Renegade is more on the boon side which result in some classes into more dps also Harrier FB has more protection . Yours is more on the heal side. But I also admin support revenant does work as well it should be the Renegade built needs too much boon duration for alacrity in compare to chrono . I don't know if a Herald built is possible but I fear it will face the same problem.

I hope Anet can fix this balancing problem

Yesterday's instabilities on TO were hard, it's fact, but imo this is one of the best fractals, next to shattered observatory

Ye yesterday instabilities on Twilight Oasis were though, but doable I did that fractal on full zerk reaper with no premade party nor healer, me the only one running bloodmagic. I mean we were all dead 2-3 times, but we finished it. Takes time to get used to new instabilities, but some combos are definitely a lot harder like the one from yesterday.

@Lord of the Fire.6870 said:I don't know if a Herald built is possible but I fear it will face the same problem.

Yes, you can do Alacrity bot with Harrier Herald but there will be gaps since the only source of alacrity is the Natural Harmony and there are those 10s you have to swap off Ventari into Glint.