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sunqua final boss unnecessarily hard on T1 and T2?


Cyriades.6198

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@Sniper.5961 said:I was comparing it to t4 because the guy I quoted wrote that t1 sunqua endboss is like fighting a strong t4 boss even though that's not the case.Well, while it may not be a t4 level, it definitely would be considered a strong boss even among t2. It definitely does not belong in t1. Which is all this thread is about.

So I quoted his comment and was referring to it. After I wrote that I also explained why it makes sense for the fractal to be the way it is. People have to learn the mechanics in t1 and need to get enough damage to make failing a mechanic noticeable. Maybe even with stability unavoidable cc instead of damage would work out, too. You could then replace the cc with damage in higher tiers. Doing so maybe even be a decent middle ground. New people would learn the mechanics and not fail the boss over and over again. It would create a false image of the boss fight though.Individual fractals do not exist in a void. They are a part of a greater system. A such, difficulty should not be considered only for different tiers of the same fractal, but also between the different fractals in the same tier. It is not okay for some t1 fractals to be on a level that places them significantly above other t1s (and many t2s).

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Honestly the fact that this fight is considered hard is not because of the damage deal or his hp for ounce.But because it's one of the rare fractal boss with shattered that relly on mechanics, which what is really hard for newbie, scalling hp and damage do not work as well as other fractals do.Not sure if it's a good things to do but if they want to make it easier, you need to make either the mechanics for forgivable (which should be), or remove some (which souldn't).

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The thing about T1/T2 players is that they're generally very weak in analytical and pattern-recognition skills. They panic instead of calming themselves down and observing whether the attacks occur under certain conditions, in certain patterns or have various static vectors such as Sunqua's final boss. Generally speaking, rather than talking or discussing amongst themselves they tend to assume that the encounter is "broken," "too difficult" or "badly scaled." Whether it's 23/24/25 or 48/49/50 in T1/T2 these Fractals are meant to be benchmarks, litmus tests, for whether you're ready for more challenging fractals. It's okay not to be ready.

When Fractal Instabilities start coming into play it really does help to have a better understanding of how to take advantage of swapping your traits. Whether your group needs a little more healing, a little more condition cleanse, crowd control (CC) or stability. Lots of players these days take to blaming a lack of dedicated support classes. It's more difficult for them to accept that they have the tools to solve their own problems and look towards dedicated support classes to be their problem-solving panacea. The problem is, when they rely on a dedicated support class like Healbrand or Alacragade, they don't learn how to contribute towards a group-wide solution.

"The Lost Knowledge" of Fractals is understanding how to acquire more sustain or support-utility independent of support builds at a minimal damage loss. The thing is, you shouldn't really consider DPS the be-all/end-all paradigm for Fractal progression. What are your problems? What are your solutions? Where are they? How do you work together to make best use of your individual build, class and "identity" to eliminate specific problems? Dedicated Supports are a relatively new part of GW2.

The game functioned without dedicated supports from 2012 to October 2015 w/ Heart of Thorns. It's all about intelligently using your traits and utility skills to provide momentary support; anticipating and preparing for problems ahead of time. The problem isn't Fractals are "too hard," - it's that players don't know their classes. When I was leveling my Engineer on my alt account and did Mai Trin in a T2 group I was cleansing conditions like a madman with Healing Turret & Elixir Gun (Super Elixir, Blast Finishers & Fumingator). It's not that you "can't do X, Y or Z" it's that you're unwilling to look more deeply into your repertoire of class traits and utilities.

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@"LunarRXA.5062" said:The thing about T1/T2 players is that they're generally very weak in analytical and pattern-recognition skills. They panic instead of calming themselves down and observing whether the attacks occur under certain conditions, in certain patterns or have various static vectors such as Sunqua's final boss. Generally speaking, rather than talking or discussing amongst themselves they tend to assume that the encounter is "broken," "too difficult" or "badly scaled." Whether it's 23/24/25 or 48/49/50 in T1/T2 these Fractals are meant to be benchmarks, litmus tests, for whether you're ready for more challenging fractals. It's okay not to be ready.

When Fractal Instabilities start coming into play it really does help to have a better understanding of how to take advantage of swapping your traits. Whether your group needs a little more healing, a little more condition cleanse, crowd control (CC) or stability. Lots of players these days take to blaming a lack of dedicated support classes. It's more difficult for them to accept that they have the tools to solve their own problems and look towards dedicated support classes to be their problem-solving panacea. The problem is, when they rely on a dedicated support class like Healbrand or Alacragade, they don't learn how to contribute towards a group-wide solution.

"The Lost Knowledge" of Fractals is understanding how to acquire more sustain or support-utility independent of support builds at a minimal damage loss. The thing is, you shouldn't really consider DPS the be-all/end-all paradigm for Fractal progression. What are your problems? What are your solutions? Where are they? How do you work together to make best use of your individual build, class and "identity" to eliminate specific problems? Dedicated Supports are a relatively new part of GW2.

The game functioned without dedicated supports from 2012 to October 2015 w/ Heart of Thorns. It's all about intelligently using your traits and utility skills to provide momentary support; anticipating and preparing for problems ahead of time. The problem isn't Fractals are "too hard," - it's that players don't know their classes. When I was leveling my Engineer on my alt account and did Mai Trin in a T2 group I was cleansing conditions like a madman with Healing Turret & Elixir Gun (Super Elixir, Blast Finishers & Fumingator). It's not that you "can't do X, Y or Z" it's that you're unwilling to look more deeply into your repertoire of class traits and utilities.

This is one thing I wish more T4/CM players would do, honestly; modify their build/performance to suit the group's needs. I've been in groups that struggled or had a much harder time than if just one or two players had swapped in a different utility or trait to deal with an instab or mechanic that was seriously wrecking the group. For instance, I always see a lot of griping about Siren's, but projectile denial skills often turn the final fight into a cakewalk. All too often I see groups vainly trying to DPS through Crowe's health while everybody's getting wrecked by Sugar Rush/We Bleed Fire bulletstorms, then they get mad and blame the supports for not being able to keep them up. If, say, the Reaper would just slot Corrosive Poison Cloud, the Rev bring their Ventari bubble etc. it would take a LOT of pressure off the healer and allow the group to keep up damage and worry only about Crowe's slams and the wind gusts. But no, they refuse to touch their build at all and keep on insisting the problem is other people.

To get back to the original topic though, I'm a regular T4/CM player, so T1/2 fractals are naturally a walk in the park for me. That said, I DO think that Sunqua needs some tweaking because right now it strongly favours certain build types over others. Namely, only classes with strong (preferably condi) ranged damage AND good CC work well against Ai. Melee power classes will find themselves at a significant disadvantage in this fight, and I think that's something that needs to be addressed. One possible way to fix this is perhaps lowering Ai's breakbar, and making them more frequent (along with extending the duration of her vulnerability). Currently, you only really want to break Ai's bar while she's in the middle (just talking about T4 here, CM is a different matter); if instead you can break her bar more frequently, this would give melee types more opportunities to unload their bursts (since Power leans more towards higher bursts in a shorter amount of time) and thus compensate for the periods when they're chasing Ai around.

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I love Sunqua fractal!My normal team consists of my wife, daughters (9 & 11), and niece (17). It took us a few hours to learn the fight. We eventually beat it though, with everyone standing. The cheers and pride I saw on my daughters' faces for persevering were great. Bosses should be hard and there should be a challenge. Learning patterns, working together, and thinking of new ways to be successful is what makes games fun.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I had an earlier post in this thread where I talked about the cc. Yesterday I did Sunqua for the first time in T2. According to the agony resistance of the others one must have been very experienced. 1 did not even have the full AR needed for this fractal (he only had about 30+). Others had about the recommended amount (a bit higher).

While we had some smaller problems in earlier fractals (Aetherblade getting downed on the traps and stuff) ... Sunqua almost went without anyone getting downed at the last boss. Surprised how well it went (and how fast) with the cc.

I agree with cc in the middle - like others said already. Mainly because it is easy to time. And yeah: You need to learn the mechanics. The thing I noticed without the video was that after 3 players (in T1 only 2) get targeted by the AoE (need to run away from each other) the CC bar at middle appears. Makes it easy to time and then to rush into melee.

Other than that the doding at the meteors seems to be a problem. (With the group yesterday everyone know about the mechanics.) Can confuse new players if at the first set it spawn them 3 times (2 each) and the first ones break and you can only hide at the later ones. While later you need to directly rush to hide cause it is only one time where 2 meteors appear.

Especially if low on health the panic (someone also mentioned this) can be great - for new players. The AoE circles before the break bar at middle are a problem here. (Even more if 1 gets downed and a guy with circle rushes to rez ... then the AoE hurts them both.)

Personally I find the first phase with the air most annoying. Yeah ... less deadly. But boring. And often missing coordination. Take some time. I do not have that many data on the last phase. Though it seems newbies tend to get pulled into mid - at the water-phase.

I find avoiding the attacks while staying outside - at water phase - to be the hardes. Lol. (Basically the only time I really take damage.)

So yeah ... it is fun. I wished we had straight only the boss. NPC dialague and the boring subbosses ... make the fractal annoying a bit. (Always happy if a group posts that they are at last boss - in lfg. :D )

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  • 2 weeks later...

@"LunarRXA.5062" said:The thing about T1/T2 players is that they're generally very weak in analytical and pattern-recognition skills. They panic instead of calming themselves down and observing whether the attacks occur under certain conditions, in certain patterns or have various static vectors such as Sunqua's final boss. Generally speaking, rather than talking or discussing amongst themselves they tend to assume that the encounter is "broken," "too difficult" or "badly scaled." Whether it's 23/24/25 or 48/49/50 in T1/T2 these Fractals are meant to be benchmarks, litmus tests, for whether you're ready for more challenging fractals. It's okay not to be ready.

When Fractal Instabilities start coming into play it really does help to have a better understanding of how to take advantage of swapping your traits. Whether your group needs a little more healing, a little more condition cleanse, crowd control (CC) or stability. Lots of players these days take to blaming a lack of dedicated support classes. It's more difficult for them to accept that they have the tools to solve their own problems and look towards dedicated support classes to be their problem-solving panacea. The problem is, when they rely on a dedicated support class like Healbrand or Alacragade, they don't learn how to contribute towards a group-wide solution.

"The Lost Knowledge" of Fractals is understanding how to acquire more sustain or support-utility independent of support builds at a minimal damage loss. The thing is, you shouldn't really consider DPS the be-all/end-all paradigm for Fractal progression. What are your problems? What are your solutions? Where are they? How do you work together to make best use of your individual build, class and "identity" to eliminate specific problems? Dedicated Supports are a relatively new part of GW2.

The game functioned without dedicated supports from 2012 to October 2015 w/ Heart of Thorns. It's all about intelligently using your traits and utility skills to provide momentary support; anticipating and preparing for problems ahead of time. The problem isn't Fractals are "too hard," - it's that players don't know their classes. When I was leveling my Engineer on my alt account and did Mai Trin in a T2 group I was cleansing conditions like a madman with Healing Turret & Elixir Gun (Super Elixir, Blast Finishers & Fumingator). It's not that you "can't do X, Y or Z" it's that you're unwilling to look more deeply into your repertoire of class traits and utilities.

Yeah i miss pre-HoT runs. Fractals actually were fun imo, you could run builds based on encounter and not what snowcrows posted on golem benchmark and every sheep demands from you.

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@"Cynz.9437" said:Yeah i miss pre-HoT runs. Fractals actually were fun imo, you could run builds based on encounter and not what snowcrows posted on golem benchmark and every sheep demands from you.

Did you really play during those times? It was meta or gtfo. Except for necros. It was just gtfo for them. Everyone used berserker aswell or it was a kick. There was 0 experimenting in pugs past a certain level.What you did do was running builds based on encounter but you should still do that now. Its just that hfb outheals everything currently so you dont need the builds anymore unless you play without a healer. Guards who didnt use wor were kicked back then. Most guards now dont even know what the skill does or which bosses have reflectable attacks.

"When I was leveling my Engineer on my alt account and did Mai Trin in a T2 group I was cleansing conditions like a madman with Healing Turret & Elixir Gun" back then this approach just wouldnt have worked. The damage was way too high. Its currently still not a great strategy to use more than healing turret as a dps there. You are not supposed to get hit and loaded with condis in the first place. The hfb turned fractals into classic trinity facetank mode just without the tank mechanics.

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@Nephalem.8921 said:

@"Cynz.9437" said:Yeah i miss pre-HoT runs. Fractals actually were fun imo, you could run builds based on encounter and not what snowcrows posted on golem benchmark and every sheep demands from you.

Did you really play during those times? It was meta or gtfo. Except for necros. It was just gtfo for them. Everyone used berserker aswell or it was a kick. There was 0 experimenting in pugs past a certain level.What you did do was running builds based on encounter but you should still do that now. Its just that hfb outheals everything currently so you dont need the builds anymore unless you play without a healer. Guards who didnt use wor were kicked back then. Most guards now dont even know what the skill does or which bosses have reflectable attacks.

"When I was leveling my Engineer on my alt account and did Mai Trin in a T2 group I was cleansing conditions like a madman with Healing Turret & Elixir Gun" back then this approach just wouldnt have worked. The damage was way too high. Its currently still not a great strategy to use more than healing turret as dps there. You are not supposed to get hit and loaded with condis in the first place. The hfb turned fractals into classic trinity facetank mode just without the tank mechanics.

Yes, i did play. I meant i actually liked that you didn't need to have actual support to finish encounter. And i mean your average group. And no, it wasn't meta or gtfo. Yes, it wasn't so great for necro but i overall i don't recall such class (and especially spec) gating back then as it is now (and yes, i am fully aware of AP requirements bs that been going on back then).

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@Cynz.9437 said:

@Cynz.9437 said:Yeah i miss pre-HoT runs. Fractals actually were fun imo, you could run builds based on encounter and not what snowcrows posted on golem benchmark and every sheep demands from you.

Did you really play during those times? It was meta or gtfo. Except for necros. It was just gtfo for them. Everyone used berserker aswell or it was a kick. There was 0 experimenting in pugs past a certain level.What you did do was running builds based on encounter but you should still do that now. Its just that hfb outheals everything currently so you dont need the builds anymore unless you play without a healer. Guards who didnt use wor were kicked back then. Most guards now dont even know what the skill does or which bosses have reflectable attacks.

"When I was leveling my Engineer on my alt account and did Mai Trin in a T2 group I was cleansing conditions like a madman with Healing Turret & Elixir Gun" back then this approach just wouldnt have worked. The damage was way too high. Its currently still not a great strategy to use more than healing turret as dps there. You are not supposed to get hit and loaded with condis in the first place. The hfb turned fractals into classic trinity facetank mode just without the tank mechanics.

Yes, i did play. I meant i actually liked that you didn't need to have actual support to finish encounter. And i mean your average group. And no, it wasn't meta or gtfo. Yes, it wasn't so great for necro but i overall i don't recall such class (and especially spec) gating back then as it is now (and yes, i am fully aware of AP requirements bs that been going on back then).

People used to ask for a full gear ping and if you weren't running full zerk you weren't joining the group.

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@TrOtskY.5927 said:

@Cynz.9437 said:Yeah i miss pre-HoT runs. Fractals actually were fun imo, you could run builds based on encounter and not what snowcrows posted on golem benchmark and every sheep demands from you.

Did you really play during those times? It was meta or gtfo. Except for necros. It was just gtfo for them. Everyone used berserker aswell or it was a kick. There was 0 experimenting in pugs past a certain level.What you did do was running builds based on encounter but you should still do that now. Its just that hfb outheals everything currently so you dont need the builds anymore unless you play without a healer. Guards who didnt use wor were kicked back then. Most guards now dont even know what the skill does or which bosses have reflectable attacks.

"When I was leveling my Engineer on my alt account and did Mai Trin in a T2 group I was cleansing conditions like a madman with Healing Turret & Elixir Gun" back then this approach just wouldnt have worked. The damage was way too high. Its currently still not a great strategy to use more than healing turret as dps there. You are not supposed to get hit and loaded with condis in the first place. The hfb turned fractals into classic trinity facetank mode just without the tank mechanics.

Yes, i did play. I meant i actually liked that you didn't need to have actual support to finish encounter. And i mean your average group. And no, it wasn't meta or gtfo. Yes, it wasn't so great for necro but i overall i don't recall such class (and especially spec) gating back then as it is now (and yes, i am fully aware of AP requirements bs that been going on back then).

People used to ask for a full gear ping and if you weren't running full zerk you weren't joining the group.

Not true. I still have accessories with valk stats from those times lying around and nobody cared.

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@Cynz.9437 said:

@Cynz.9437 said:Yeah i miss pre-HoT runs. Fractals actually were fun imo, you could run builds based on encounter and not what snowcrows posted on golem benchmark and every sheep demands from you.

Did you really play during those times? It was meta or gtfo. Except for necros. It was just gtfo for them. Everyone used berserker aswell or it was a kick. There was 0 experimenting in pugs past a certain level.What you did do was running builds based on encounter but you should still do that now. Its just that hfb outheals everything currently so you dont need the builds anymore unless you play without a healer. Guards who didnt use wor were kicked back then. Most guards now dont even know what the skill does or which bosses have reflectable attacks.

"When I was leveling my Engineer on my alt account and did Mai Trin in a T2 group I was cleansing conditions like a madman with Healing Turret & Elixir Gun" back then this approach just wouldnt have worked. The damage was way too high. Its currently still not a great strategy to use more than healing turret as dps there. You are not supposed to get hit and loaded with condis in the first place. The hfb turned fractals into classic trinity facetank mode just without the tank mechanics.

Yes, i did play. I meant i actually liked that you didn't need to have actual support to finish encounter. And i mean your average group. And no, it wasn't meta or gtfo. Yes, it wasn't so great for necro but i overall i don't recall such class (and especially spec) gating back then as it is now (and yes, i am fully aware of AP requirements bs that been going on back then).

People used to ask for a full gear ping and if you weren't running full zerk you weren't joining the group.

Not true. I still have accessories with valk stats from those times lying around and nobody cared.

Sorry, but as someone who has been running fractals since 1.5 weeks after their initial release I have to agree with Nephalem.8921 and TrOtskY.5927 . High-end groups DID ask for gear pings constantly (I even got in trouble once for having the incorrect runes on my mesmer, funny enough from a guy who I had run with days before without issue). At least if you were doing level 30+ runs (later 45-50 runs). It was literally ping full zerker with correct runes or you are going the way of the Dodo for most groups.

That said, life wasn't hard on necro. It was damn well impossible. A friend of mine had to re-roll guardian just to be able to do group content. Rangers were not far behind necros with actual LFG hate versus both.

I was mesmer or guadian, depending on what I felt like. On any other class and with no guardian or mesmer, certain fractals were hell. Volcanic was a nightmare without reflects.

I will give you that a lot more players at the top end knew how to play their class. Elementalists actually knew what Sandstorm was. It was more out of necessity and size of the community. The fractal community was tiny compared to now. It was not unusual to run into the same people over and over when puging.

Today the crowd of players doing fractals is much larger. In part because the rewards were bumped multiple times compared to before, as well as way easier accessibility (personal fractal levels? offensive, defensive and omni infusions any one?) and due to the shift to a more similar play style compared to other MMORPGs (healers covering the dps butt).

On the flip side, this obviously brings a lot of less skilled players with it.

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@TrOtskY.5927 said:People used to ask for a full gear ping and if you weren't running full zerk you weren't joining the group.I was running the Altruistic Healing bunker guard completely fine then, and noone ever called me on it (even though, as i have learned much later, the dps of that build was next to nil). Sure, some groups asked for gear ping, but there was enough groups doing the very same content equally succesfully that didn't that it was not a problem at all.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@TrOtskY.5927 said:People used to ask for a full gear ping and if you weren't running full zerk you weren't joining the group.I was running the Altruistic Healing bunker guard completely fine then, and noone ever called me on it (even though, as i have learned much later, the dps of that build was next to nil). Sure, some groups asked for gear ping, but there was enough groups doing the very same content equally succesfully that didn't that it was not a problem at all.

You did lvl 50 with such a build? It was dead weight. Actually ive seen lots of players getting kicked for that and kicked a few myself.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"TrOtskY.5927" said:People used to ask for a full gear ping and if you weren't running full zerk you weren't joining the group.I was running the Altruistic Healing bunker guard completely fine then, and noone ever called me on it (even though, as i have learned much later, the dps of that build was next to nil). Sure, some groups asked for gear ping, but there was enough groups doing the very same content equally succesfully that didn't that it was not a problem at all.

The dps and essentially the healing was nil. Unless you were running this AFTER agony resistance and ascended gear availability was changed, which was quite a bit after fractals were added.

Healing was meaningless in fractal boss fights because agony resistance was not high enough to prevent 1 shots from boss agony attacks, which initially could and had to be dodged for survival.

So my guess is: you weren't running fractals at the top end. Which is fine, but means you are not giving an accurate representation of what "endgame" fractal groups looked like. Which this discussion has moved towards given how no one cares what people run in T1 or T2 or even T3 currently.

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@Nephalem.8921 said:

@TrOtskY.5927 said:People used to ask for a full gear ping and if you weren't running full zerk you weren't joining the group.I was running the Altruistic Healing bunker guard completely fine then, and noone ever called me on it (even though, as i have learned much later, the dps of that build was next to nil). Sure, some groups asked for gear ping, but there was enough groups doing the very same content equally succesfully that didn't that it was not a problem at all.

You did lvl 50 with such a build? It was dead weight. Actually ive seen lots of players getting kicked for that and kicked a few myself.Oh,
now
i know this was a dead weight. I didn't know that then - i mean i knew its dps was lower, but was unaware of
how
lower it was. And my very point is that
it never came up
. Nobody ever commented on it. It took me a looong time to realize something was wrong, and i had to find that out completely on my own.

And yes, i was doing level 50's.

So, while i do know there were groups like that, i am a bit suspicious about claims that the practice was all that prevalent.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"TrOtskY.5927" said:People used to ask for a full gear ping and if you weren't running full zerk you weren't joining the group.I was running the Altruistic Healing bunker guard completely fine then, and noone ever called me on it (even though, as i have learned much later, the dps of that build was next to nil). Sure, some groups asked for gear ping, but there was enough groups doing the very same content equally succesfully that didn't that it was not a problem at all.

You did lvl 50 with such a build? It was dead weight. Actually ive seen lots of players getting kicked for that and kicked a few myself.Oh,
now
i know this was a dead weight. I didn't know that then - i mean i knew its dps was lower, but was unaware of
how
lower it was. And my very point is that
it never came up
. Nobody ever commented on it. It took me a looong time to realize something was wrong, and i had to find that out completely on my own.

And yes, i
was
doing level 50's.

So, while i do know there
were
groups like that, i am a bit suspicious about claims that the practice was all that prevalent.

It was that prevalent if you were running this content daily.

Maybe this was also something where NA and EU differed. I can only speak for EU and as someone who was running fractals daily always months at a time, it was very common to have to ping gear. Not every run, but given I recall having o ping very frequently and players not showing up on certain classes at all, it was not something rare.

Also again, the "50"s fractal meta was AFTER the first revamp with HoT, which suffice to say was long after fractals were added.

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