blackoil.2673

Pure speculation, but I think when they test bosses they just test scaled-down versions of them, in a way of not having to hire 10 QAs just for testing. On HTCM they probably tested every phase individually, since there are very little bugs within individual phases, but there are A LOT of bugs when transitioning from one phase to another. But yep, for Cerus' CM, please reduce the HP or REMOVE THE TIME HARD LIMIT, or heck, why not both. Does Anet really think that making challenging content is putting a limit to how much DPS players actually have to do? Why are they perpetuating power creep? This only makes some classes impossible to run this kind of content, and pushes players to play OP classes instead (cVirt is massive here, and even more because they have access to the only 5000-range portal as a skill (scourge has 900 range only, thief has one-way only)) For some math, 130 million HP in 10 minutes means 217k DPS for the full squad. If you have 2 boon+heal that can deal 20% damage of a full dps, 2x boon DPS dealing 75% and 6 full dps, you need to have full DPS dealing 30k and boon DPS dealing 22k. And it's not a golem where you can stack and do your rotation, you need to keep moving in and out to deal with any of the mechanics, which anyone in the team can get targeted, and having to waste DPS time dealing with mobs (malice spawns). There are very few classes that can deal this kind of damage with these conditions. The enrage mechanic is the challenging part in this encounter, where the boss gets more powerful for every mechanical mistake anyone does. So it needs practice to get good at clearing the encounter. Having an extremely large HP with a time limit only makes sure that those going for the highest DPS will clear it easier than those learning the actual mechanics.

Not really sure it's the same case though. HTCM had a lot of new 1-shot mechanics that needed a lot of coordination with the team. DPS check was tight, but it always felt like it was possible and you'd made progress on every run, and on each phase you'd see new mechanics that you have to deal with or you get wiped. Febe CM on the other hand has a few interesting mechanics that empower the boss, but once you get the hang of it you still wipe because of the DPS check. There's very little room for improvement as it stands now, other than tweaking with some builds. The encounter is simple mechanics-wise, but the timer and the boss HP really feels off.

It definitely seems off. The additional mechanics feel nice, but it has way too much HP and a way too tight timer. No guild that I know has cleared it yet, and it feels like there's very little room for improvement once you get used to each mechanic.

Yep... it felt like it was a normal mode strike (comapred to other ones). Maybe it was a bit challenging because more health, more damage and a timer, so now it's not a punching bag as it was before. But other than that, meh.

Note that you get an extra 30 AA when completing all the dailies, meaning you get 28 x 65 = 1820 AA for dailies But yep, that's nearly not enough. It's not that they nerfed the daily login reward "to promote actual gameplay". It's that they nerfed every single reward, daily achievement and not. Even if you complete all of your astral vault tasks, you can't get nearly as many rewards as you did pre-patch. Also previously you could get WvW/PvP reward track potions by *also* playing the game, and they also took this out. So it sounds like they actually went against favouring gameplay. They seriously need to buff the rewards. Either decrease the AA price of stuff, or increase the awarded AA from tasks. And add more variety to daily tasks, it's frustrating you can't choose what content you want to play.

The big problem is that before you used to get 7 mystic clovers + 35 laurels + 20 mystic coins every 28 days just by logging in. Plus other rewards like tomes of knowledge (spirit shards), bags of luck and black lion goods. Now just by logging in you get 5 astral acclaim. Which gets you EITHER 2 mystic clovers OR 15 mystic coins OR 14 laurels, but you can mix and match... for instance you can get 1 clover + 4 mystic coins + 4 laurels. That's a pretty hefty reward nerf. Sure you can fill up with daily achievements, but previously you could pick any 3 out of a list of 12, whereas now you can only do the 3 that the game forces you to pick. It didn't help that yesterday one of the tasks was quite time-consuming to do.

The achievement should give a relic of Cerus, however after completing it nobody in the squad got the relic. We got the achievement and the mastery point

Story step [7] has another blocker: It looks like archivist ikur can only talk with one player at a time, and it gets continusouly interrupted, blocking story progress if there are too many people trying to talk with him. Edit: maybe not, in my instance we queued up nicely and it still didn't unblock

You are not forced to do anything. You can even select if you want PvP, PvE or WvW. **And** you get 5 free astral acclaim daily just by logging in, which means that you don't even need to do the dailies to get your stuff you wanted. Not really sure what your post is about.... feels like you're complaining just to complain.

The boon steal mechanic also steals from pets, mechs, necro minions, phantasms, clones, etc. Related to this, if the boss phases at 66% or 33% with regeneration, it will go to 67% / 34% respectively, which will trigger the 66% / 33% phase again. On some run we've had this happening 2 times in a row (reach 66%, succeed on mechanic, do it again, succeed again, do it again, failed, wipe) Sometimes using the grappling hook to jump off to a platform won't reach it, and you will fall out, instant death, party wipe. Sometimes using the power charge to mitigate [3], will get you stuck inisde the platform (inside the terrain, unable to move), party wipe. The tether mechanic at 66% and 33% sometimes doesn't trigger on time, and then triggers later. Boon dps are not able to kill add in time, leading to party wipe. Can't res defeated allies. Can't use revive orbs when you are defeated (something that you can use on all the other fractals) Mistlock singularities doesn't protect you from damage received by eyes mechanic (not sure if this is intentional, but we don't have any fractal with a mechanic that deals some damage (not instakill) and yet if it kills you the singularity doesn't effect. Edit: added additional bugs from comments below

One of the side platforms at the end boss is extremely high up, and when using the grappling hook to jump to it I usually get stuck on the ledge and fall down. Sometimes I manage to save it by using the power charge (skill 3), but I risk that sometimes this get me stuck inside the platform. This wasn't a big issue in normal mode, as failing that mechanic is not a party wipe, but on CM it's extremely annoying. I try to target as close as possible to the center of the platform, but it looks like my character randomly gets higher or not at all. Is there anything I can do to improve the success rate of this? Otherwise, Anet plz fix. It's something extremely punishing (party wipe) if it's all up to your luck, it's unfair. Or find an alternative (maybe lower down those platforms?

Account-wide bonuses like Fractal Savant, Prodigy, Chapion and God are not active in Silent Surf fractal The icon doesn't show up, and there's no agony/reward bonuses either

Just recently I have a query that fails, the service instead of returning the expected JSON it returns It happens in at least a couple of requests: https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/pvp/standings and https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/account, both passing in the apiKey through Authorization header. It looks like others are fine though.

Same happened here, I was about to report it. The following crash log opens after the crash:

If you do regular non-fast-farming methods, then 660 is a lot. Story content, PvP, WvW, raids, the list goes on. If you add in fractals, that's like 15-20g/day, so that's a least a month of playing some content daily that's probably the most profitable without being considered farming. Not a "few days" worth. Myself I now have ~650 gold, which is the most I've ever had... and it came after I sold a stack of mystic coins before they went down.