Difference Between Open World & Fractal Builds

[Bladeheart.8369]

Could someone be so kind as to explain to me what the differences in choice for an Open World build and a Fractal build?

Many thanks.

[Ashantara.8731]

Builds for instanced content are different, because everybody gets assigned a certain role. It's group synergy. As you have dedicated healers, you don't have to worry about self-sustain. You are also getting boons like Quickness and Alacrity that speed up the damage dealt and the heals received.

In the open world, you don't have people that follow your every step to support you, therefore you need to make sure your build works for you. Your priority should be damage, but you should also see to decent healing options as pure glass cannons will spend a lot of time in downed state (especially when not very experienced in dodging/evading/blocking damage).
 

Edited September 19, 2022 by Ashantara.8731

[Farohna.6247]

Think of it as open world you are a one person army, fractals you're part of a team.  In tier 1, you can use your open world builds typically and not worry.  Higher tier to want to have a dedicated fractal build.

[Danikat.8537]

That's basically it, you can guarentee you'll be part of a group in Fractals and so you can afford to be more specialised, and may also prioritise things like maintaining boons even if you're not using them that much yourself, because other members of the group will benefit from them.

There can be other practical changes too, for example I often use Unnatural Traversal on my open-world untamed build, but I took it out in Fractals because the battles usually happen in a relatively small space so a skill which teleports me to an enemy wasn't often useful. I used one of the spirits instead, for additional boons.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

Due to the almost blind focus on DPS as the main/only priority, a lot of so called 'Open World Builds' only work for experienced players, who have already mastered their class.

"Everything works for Open World"

This is correct. BUT not everything works for everyone in Open World. 

That said, you will find a lot of full glasscannon/dps builds recommended as Open World builds on most of the websites. 

[Kaltyn of Torbins Deep.294]

And, since no one else mentioned it, some open world builds are designed as "tagging builds".  You purpose on a tagging build is not killing stuff, but zerging around and making sure you get hits on the widest number of mobs possible.  This "maximizes" your profit for certain situations.  Generally they are lower DPS builds as well to insure that mobs don't die in the shortest amount of time, allowing greater numbers of players in the zerg to tag the mob before it dies.

There is less than zero reason to run an open world tagging build in Fractals.  Well, I guess ignorance is a reason, but it isn't a good one!

[Bladeheart.8369]

Thank you all for your replies. 🙂

 

[AliamRationem.5172]

22 hours ago, Bladeheart.8369 said:

Could someone be so kind as to explain to me what the differences in choice for an Open World build and a Fractal build?

Many thanks.

It's difficult to get into specifics as every class/build is going to have different choices to make, but the gist of it is that in group play such as fractals you have support in the form of boons and healing.  That means you don't need to provide your own boons and you don't need to run defensive traits/stats/utilities.  Your build choices should reflect that.

So, for example, this is a fractal/raid build for condi weaver.  Every trait, utility, and stat is pure damage.  No defensive options have been selected.

If I were to tweak the same build for solo play in story/open world I'd probably change it to something like this.  I've swapped out earth for arcane.  This gives me some access to boons like protection and regen, heal/cleanse on dodge in water, area blind on dodge in air, and an emergency stunbreak + block when my health dips below 50%. 

That would be the bare minimum, though.  I could also change my stats and add more defensive traits or even swap out utilities.  For example, something like this.  I've gone beyond just using arcane trait line here.  Now I have cleansing and energy sigils for extra dodge and cleanse, barrier and vigor on dodge, and I've taken celestial stats so I have a bunch of extra healing, armor, and health. 

The result is a build that is dramatically more resilient than the first build I linked.  Where a simple mistake can easily get me killed and a series of minor mistakes can be difficult to recover from with the fractal build, the solo play build has excellent healing for rapid recovery from mistakes on top of being able to take a ton of punishment.  It's going to take some very poor play and many mistakes in sequence to get myself killed with this setup.