About the new fractal

[Nevermore.1089]

@Lalainnia.3598I did the new level earlier in the week T2/T3 (cant remember which), and it felt fine.Today I did the T4, with people that looked capable, and we had an issue with 2 of the phases. A person left and a druid came into the group and then the only challenge was the last phase. During that time, we 'almost' all realized, the jump was an awesome dodge in addition to the normal usage.. so that made things easier but the final stage was still a bit too cheap... even w/ a healer to soak up some of the 'oops' damage. However the issue was (during both groups), if someone went done the new avengers made things much harder (especially if someone downs on the balth shelf). If the instance didn't have the new avengers, I don't think it would be terrible for any group.

[Madara.7435]

So... I played this one on T1,T2 and T4 as of todays daily. I played those with pugs, and I find T1 and T2 well balanced. T4 was at a few points very punishing for "not knowing" the mechanics, but people will learn that over time. I found it to be more challenging than the new moltenboss fractal though, because the last fight is far more difficult.Every time a new fractal is released some people tend to cry about it, because they get their asses handed to them, dont insta burst it on T4 on first try and be done in 5 minutes. That is the main problem IMO. I very much like that ANet is increasing the difficulty for T4 fractals overall, since T4 is meant to be more challenging in the first place (that is why we have a scaling, and not just for "more loot"). What people tend to not understand (especially because it was not necessary in the past ->pre nightmare) is that now that it's harder they actually have to LEARN something about the fractal first. If they would try the new one on T1 first, learn the mechanics, fights, skips and whatnot, they would be far less salty. But that is ofc absurd to some, since they value their time so much they dont get any joy out of challenges and overcoming them.Give it a week or two, and it will be fine. The visual noise is still crazy though. Maybe that is meant as a part adding to the difficulty? lol

[Rising Dusk.2408]

I think my biggest issue with the new Fractal, honestly, isn't the Fractal itself; it's how overbearingly powerful the Fractal Vindicators are when you do the Fractal at T4. The enemies in the Fractal are strong enough to down someone quickly, and then you can rally, chain-down, spawn repeated Vindicators, and have the Vindicators wipe you. More often than not this is what happens in the case where teams wipe. My opinion is that the Vindicators should have a small breakbar (300 or so power) that auto-kills them when it's broken so they feel like a beefed up Avenger without being obscene.

Ignoring the Vindicators, I do think the enemies hit a bit harder than comparable other T4s like Cliffside and Underground. One other consideration is that the Fractal is balanced and designed around the presence of the special action key, which doesn't result in a fun experience because that entails the Fractal having tons of chain-CC's. I would honestly prefer if the stunbreak and evade frames were removed from the special action key and then the CC's and damage reduced across the board here to facilitate a more friendly experience without being too easy.

P.S. Please don't put so many breakbars on mobs like the elite Sunspear Sandbinder. Being able to blind mobs is an important part of damage mitigation! If you want them to be immune to CC, give them refreshing stability stacks, but please allow soft CC's to work for some advanced damage mitigation techniques.

[Vyrulisse.1246]

Visual Noise is reaching the realm of visual pollution with the boss of this Fractal. It's going too far in general and I wish Anet would pump the brakes on such things.

[Malediktus.9250]

Just pugged it on t4 with the first pug i could find on lfg, everyone had low AP and mastery points, so I expected the worst.A shame that it does not seem to have a challenge mode

[Hydroclasm.8572]

Some more thoughts on the fractal boss after the daily (the events up to the boss I don't have any complaints about length or difficulty).

-The AoE attack at the very start of the fight that inflicts 5 stacks of confusion is the only attack I couldn't see any telegraph for.-The daze from lightning strikes in the Dwayna phase becomes more aggravating when you jump up to kill the priestess, due to the random(?) nature of the lightning on that platform-Amala seems to react very quickly after a group kills or fails to kill the Balthazar priestess. Being targeted by her jump/dive attack after leaving the ledge (worse if you get knocked down due to the timer expiring) is really punishing.-Like others have mentioned, the instability combinations are pretty punishing and snowbally (though most instabilities would also be crummy; the least dangerous ones for the boss might be toxic trail/last laugh)-Suggestions to bring a dedicated healer seem reasonable, but I find them kind of disheartening. I'd hoped that there would only be serious pushes for healers in raids/CMs. If a healer becomes the easiest/meta way to finish the fractal, its going to take longer to form groups and get the fractal done.

[LoopySnoopy.7923]

The only issue I have with this fractal is the light show at the final boss,very hard to tell whats coming at you when you are blinded by all the flashy stuff plus it doesn't help that there is still no colour blind assist but that's best left unsaid.

so tone down the special flash strobe light skills,make the bosses attacks more recognisable,if possible increase her model size by about 10% this way we can see her wind ups more clearly this IMO should alleviate any issues regarding the boss and the explosion in the paint factory that happens when you meet her.

Also maybe add a Warning sign for people who suffer with epileptic seizures ;)

[Gambino.2109]

Final boss is annoying....

Interrupts heals.. resses so if party members go down it's pretty much over within seconds cause of those new annoying fractal avengers and the boss constantly pushing you away from ressing your team mates.

Another issue, after you're done killing the adds before the balthazar phase starts.. The moment you get back down to the arena.. and literally mean just landing.. this crazy Priestess smacks you so hard that instan downs you before you even get a chance to react. I had this happen almost every time coming back down from the platform.

[Cuon Alpinus.7645]

@Gambino.2109 said:Final boss is annoying....

Interrupts heals.. resses so if party members go down it's pretty much over within seconds cause of those new annoying fractal avengers and the boss constantly pushing you away from ressing your team mates.

Another issue, after you're done killing the adds before the balthazar phase starts.. The moment you get back down to the arena.. and literally mean just landing.. this crazy Priestess smacks you so hard that instan downs you before you even get a chance to react. I had this happen almost every time coming back down from the platform.

If you know it happens every time, why not dodge??

[Linken.6345]

@Rennie.6750 said:

@"Benjamin Arnold.3457" said:Wonderful feedback! It's good to hear people's different experiences. I'm gonna paste something I wrote on reddit to give some context behind Amalas design:

"Amala was special in that the aesthetic we wanted for her was to be a crazy powerful dervish with godlike powers, and we wanted her to feel fast, not sluggish. For this reason we spent a lot of time making sure her attacks all felt epic. Her mechanics themselves are very simple, but her skillset is not. She's got the most skills built for any boss in all of gw2 by a long shot, and that's specifically because of the aesthetic we wanted for her. Future bosses will have different aesthetics, and so will play different and will have different skills (read, fewer)

Some of the orange effects can get lost when player skills are overlapping, especially with the lighting, so we will make it more of a focus that telegraphs are readable on boss platforms.

Tldr; This isn't AoE spam for the sake of AoE spam, this is an attempt at creating the most powerful looking dervish of all time."

Basically, no every fractal is not going to go in this direction. We built Amala this way for this specific reason. In my opinion, though she is crazy the first few times you fight her, Amala isn't too difficult to learn, though of course that is subjective.

People are mentioning length, keep in mind we built in purposeful trash skips to reward things such as stealth or using the SAS, that I am confident will bring people's average playtime down to our goal as they get used to the fractal.

OK I understand your point, but I'm still maintaining that it's significantly harder than most other fractals and that the rewards should be higher as a consequence. The balthazar part is probably the hardest one of the final fight.

As someone quite light sensitive, all I can say is that the visual mess is really frustrating. I normally have trouble seeing the thin red line aoes under normal circumstances when my team uses spells with obnixious animations and visuals, but this is really nearly unplayable to me. I normally rely on my memory and knowledge of the encounters to compensate but this time well there's a lot to know and the pacing makes this kind of tricky.

As for the trash part, well I never understand why game devs put stuff that is meant to be skipped. I just don't see the point at all.

Last but not least, trash or not, it's really long. I prefer the old 10-12 mins fractals, the longer they are, the more i'm tempted to make a decent gold/hour somewhere else. Content is fun, but the rewards structure for the newer ones is completely outdated.

So you were only doing fractal 40, old swamp and underwater fractal before then or?Since thats the only 10-12 mins fractal I can think of.

Already stated before the old system was 3 random fractals and took atleast an hour more likely two.

Fractals were never meant to run over and over to grind gold.

[Verthurnax.2784]

@UnbentMars.9126 said:If previous fractals are any indicator it'll get a health/toughness adjustment soon.

Please keep in mind, as you are new to the mechanics, that the fractal will be more challenging because of it. People said the same thing of Shattered Observatory but now random pugs of mediocre skill are doing it jst fine. Same thing was also said of the new Bloomhunger.

Give it a week of tries before a true review

How much time has passed since the new 100 fractal came up ? I don't know but i stoped to fractal just because of it and i was one that did 99cm every day. That's how stupid that fractal is in difficulty..

[Linken.6345]

@Nevermore.1089 said:I loved the old fractals in that they were doable by pug's (of whatever characters people want to play). Basically, join random squad and have fun. I am also semi-ok that the newer CM versions are more raid-like in that you have to be a little more particular in the builds or classes that come along. However, this being a non-CM should be easy with a pug (if you know the mechanics), but it feels like it not. For the fractal itself, the Balthazar phase feel a little too punishing @ T4... there is so much going on that w/o a healer the group is going to have an extra challenge.

Ben, I do have to ask a question, when designing the new fractals, are you keeping the pug's in mind... or do you design based of meta/raid squads? Does the team ever go back in and play with the pug's on an individual basis? I have a feeling, the group is creating content for specialized groups, knows exactly everything about the instance and how to get past each phase (well because the programmed it to the n'th degree), playtests with those specialized groups, claim this is awesome & good to go. People that play in specialized groups say... yup easy (because they are awesome you know), and those that play in pug's say wth.

This is what I don't like... say back in the early dungeon/fotm days, you had two types of groups (lets say both are familiar w/ the instance...so not talking about newbies here). 1, The people doing the instance casually for the rewards & 2, the meta speed runners. People from the 1st group had fun (because they could clear it and get rewards), people in the 2nd group had fun (because they could get more rewards from clearing faster). However, 2nd group started saying... it's too easy so the dev's had to throw more at them to keep them interested, but it doesn't seem like the dev's really care about the 1st group... because it seems more are more content is being developed to challenge the 2nd group than the 1st. For every mechanic that is defeated by the 2nd, the 1st takes the punishment. For example, the typical chrono/druid combo... with this these classes the others in the group can defeat/ignore most mechanics thrown at them w/o much issue... so much so, that it's the norm to run them by the 2nd group.

The reason I mention this is because during development of fotm's I don't believe the dev's should be coding for meta. Code for the pug's, let the meta teams get thru it faster and create a CM for meta.

Only played this one with pugs joined a group of randoms at last boss when it was released and killed it after 20 mins of practise so yes its puggable at t4.Next time it was daily t3 did it from start with totaly random people aswell.

If you cant do t4 practice on t3 or t2 even t1 untill you nail the mechanics.

We still have the 1st and 2nd groups and I never was a speed runner, Im clearing fractals still to this day and never bother with it when it was hard 3 random fractals 1-50 only.

EditJust a question to all you people having problems are you useing offensive and defensive mist potions ( can throw in the mobility one if you really want but not needed) and food/utility consumables?If not that will help you alot.

[Nevermore.1089]

@Linken.63452 posts from the one you quoted tells the story about the experience. It is puggable, but the group composition makes a huge difference.

The thing I dislike about the this current T4 the most is that it is very punishing the Balth stage (doable but it feels like they are just throwing a crapload at you for the sake of doing it), that combined with the Vindicators making a bad situation worse (especially if it happens on the Balth shelf).... makes this less fun for a non-balanced group. Perhaps with more experience it won't be as bad... but this thread was the point of view now, not a week from now.

[Vulf.3098]

I have pugged this several times with non meta groups and it is not that bad. The new Mai Trin is way worse with a non meta group than this is.Honestly the special action button makes 90% of the bosses mechanics ignorable.

This is one of my favorite fractals now.

[zealex.9410]

@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:What I've gathered so far:

1. Some people think it's too hard.
2. Some people thing it's too easy/boring.
3. Some people think it's too long.
4. Some people think it's good length.
5. Some people like the trash skips.
6. Some people hate the trash skips.
7. Many people think it's visually noisy.
8. Some people like the visuals.

It's still really soon, I'm interested to see how feedback evolves over time, as it has with previous fractals. I'll of course be watching our metrics for info on average playtime and failure/success rate.

That would be fixed if instead of the 3 daily fractals we had the old dungeon system :3

[Ze Dos Cavalos.6132]

T4 fractals are suppose to be end game content, people shouldn't complain about its difficulty in T4, might be a bit long to finish but everything else looks ok.Didn't try lower levels of the fractal so if it is too hard at t1 or t2 then I guess its ok to complain about those but not T4.

[Terminal Gaijin.5426]

So I figured I would give my two cents along with everyone else. First I enjoyed it for the most part. Its a fun idea, setting, and boss. But I must agree that it seems a little long but that is fine (though I do miss having some shorter fractals).However I do think there are some problems with it.

1. The small arena seems to limit my camera's ability to zoom out when near the wall. This makes it difficult to see the area and boss etc. (I haven't checked out it works with the camera options yet.)
2. The aoe clutter and flashing seems a little extreme. This makes it difficult to see where is safe especially when the red circles fail to accurately show the damage area. Cleaning up this could make a world of difference in the feeling of it being to difficult.
3. The instabilities combination makes it significantly more difficult than it would otherwise be. This has value in making it more challenging but I worry that this false difficulty spike will establish a large portion of that people believe it is stupid hard and just not bother learning it making either people carry these bad pugs or not create a healthy population for lfgs.
4. The lead up to the boss is not too difficult but the boss, especially later phases seems to be significantly harder than other fractals of similar level (yes I know it is a t4 but rewards are based on every 10 levels not just on tier group)In general I like it but it needs some balancing and/or cleaning up. With a guild group of moderate skill we cleared but only after many many fails on the later phases of the boss. This indicates to me that a normal pug group will be very trying and frustrating. Though it is hard to tell because like I said above I think a big part of the difficulty comes from the combination of instabilities.

unpopular viewAnother concern seems that this fractal is continuing the push towards the idea of dps bursting being the end all be all. The longer fractal goes on the harder it gets so max dps is king. Now groups that want to do this fine so be it but it being the meta can make pugging painful. I find this often leads to one of two situations. Either people want to kick my friends for being non-meta (aka not max dps builds), or we spend half the fight raising the meta builds because they are to squishy and not played well (but hey max potential dps right?... hint your dps is zero when dead).

Edit: Hydroclasm brought a good point. Amala reacts to quickly when you leave the mini arenas to kill the priests on both kills and failure to kills. We had a party wipe after killing the balth priest because she jumped onto us before we could move after being pushed out. Their should be some time, even just enough to stand up from being pushed up.

[Cerioth.7062]

The fractal is awesome! I love the last boss fight, it's my favourite fight now and Nightmare is my 2nd fav. I think the visuals were good. Theres clear tells you just have to learn to look for. Dont stupidly spam your special action key, use it when it is appropriate to do so. I think the vindicators are more punishing than the mechanics themselves from the boss. I also loved the music! Length of the fractal is good.

[Nevermore.1089]

So playing around a bit more, I think it's the vindicators that I dislike... was seeing a similar thing in Ark too... where they seemed a bit too punishing.

[hornswroggle.8023]

@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:

@hornswroggle.8023 said:Tried the frac on launch at 16 solo and got all the way to the endboss with little to no problem. She herself nigh imppossible to solo, but that's totally fine for a boss so I left it there.

Tried it today on T4 with full premade group and failed. (I was healing on Tempest)

Here are a few issues I saw crop up:

• The Defiance on Sand Binders
  does not work
  . In
  any
  way.
• The Endboss fight is an absolute firework of skill effects and telegraphs rendering certain attack-combos (or entire fractal vindicators) completely invisible
• The instabilities chosen for this frac are comboing VERY hard. Into themselves and into Oasis mechanics.
  • Tornados are impossible to escape at health lower than 80%, because of Hamstrung
  • Fractal vindicators are affected by Adrenaline rush making them capable of instantly defeating people.
  • Amalias phase with the most damage (Balthazar) is further buffed by Adrenaline rush.
• The lighning barrage in the Dwayna phase does (too) many things: It follows the player, stacks Vuln and Torment and every strike dazes.
• The AoE telegraph on the arena-wide Cyclone is lying. At first it shows safe spots that grow smaller, when in reality once the attack hits there is none.

Here are a few things I've noticed that might prove useful to players learning the fight:

• The SAS is a stunbreak and evade on a 5s CD - use it!
• In the Lyssa phase: Amalia only Teleports and doesn't lose targeting, so tag her immediately with Ctrl-T to keep track of her.
• In the Melandru phase: the boulder of the elemental is a normal projectile that can be blocked or reflected as such
• In the Dwayna phase: To evade the arena-covering cyclone just jump over it with the SAS.
• In the Grenth phase: Epidemic or reflects work wonders against the worms.
• In the Balthazar phase: There are 3 different shockwave attacks: Her scythe slam, her fist slam and the meteor. Only the scythe has to be jumped with the SAS. the other 2 can be jumped normally.
• If you wipe on the boss the first time, got back through the fractal and grab another Sigulartity. This way you have 2 during the boss fight.

The defiance bar should work fine. It prevents a big attack that also applies boons to the boss, and it stuns for 3s or so. I've broken her bar several times since we shipped.

Singularities also do not stack. Or, should not.

Defiance on Amalia is fine; the Sand Binders are broken, they can be knocked down anytime regardless of defiance. https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/18271/broken-defiance#latestNo Singularities don't stack but the last singularity is available during the fight, you can enter with one on you and reclaim it once you lose the first.

[ProtoGunner.4953]

We tried it several times yesterday on T4 and we couldn't do it. Failed maybe 7-8 times, never got her under ~75%. I like the insane visuals, the pace etc. But we are getting to a point where the game mechanics and the input of what's possible is just not built for such fights.

I am an avid solo player who loves games like Devil May Cry or newer stuff like Nier: Automata, but these are single player games with a pad and good accessible buttons, you can act faster. It just doesn't go too well here in GW2. Anyway, just tone her a bit down. As a Guardian main I go down so fast, it's insane. Nearly all the bigger attacks just insta down you and the visual clutter really makes it hard to see what's important do dodge, but maybe I get better if I learned everything more.

[Assumption.9753]

The new fractal was very intriguing . I love the new story for it, however, the fractals are taking longer and longer. I really don't like this approach. It could be due to newer players not experienced in the fractal or it could be the fractal itself having more mechanics and filler. I'm not certain which is the case. Some people say with time it will get better this was true for chaos and nightmare, but for shattered that is not what I have seen so far. Even still I have to explain to people what to do in t4 shattered. That was insane, and I can't believe some of the people coming to t4 don't know what to do. I unfortunately don't have much time to play games. Fractals being longer and longer is making it difficult to enjoy them. I used to be able to finish the t4s within 40-45 mins and with a really good group 30 mins. These days I am taking 1.5 to 2 hours to finish them. One thing I have been noticing is that for me the fractals are becoming more raid like. What I mean here is that it's becoming more and more like I need to have a team with specific builds and professions. I really hate that. I used to play fractals with any kind of build and we would succeed if we knew what to do. I am now starting to be forced to form my own team who I trust and know very well what to do. I am a huge fractal person, in fact it's the only mode I have been extremely dedicated to. Today while I am posting this I came after fractals the team I was in started at around 12 am and I quite at around 3 am. It took 1 hour to finish recs (yeah for recs I don't know why that took long), 1.5 hours spent on shattered, 15 on swamp, 15 on volcanic. I am becoming more and more against pugging, and being on a dedicated team. I never thought I would have to resort to this for fractals.

[Silmar Alech.4305]

I did T4 the second time, and the group still wasn't able to beat the final boss. As soon as in the Balthazar phase one team member goes down, it is usually the end for all, because the avenger kills not only the downed member, but the added damage makes the remaining team crumble sooner or later. As soon as the second team member goes down, it is definitely the end. In my opinion, the new avengers as instability are too much in this fractal. It essentially makes the encounter fail as soon as one team member goes down in the final phase. You can as well make the mechanics explicit: instant fail and boss reset as soon as one member goes down in the Balthazar phase.

Suggestion: the avenger is persistent as with the new instability, but vanishes if hit by a cc skill as with the old avengers.Or reload the singularity after each phase, so you have one downstate free per phase and not per whole fight.

And another suggestion: move the phases. Make the most difficult phase (Balthasar) the first or second phase. It's very tedious to do all phases again and again only to train the Balthasar phase.

[Rennie.6750]

@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:What I've gathered so far:

1. Some people think it's too hard.
2. Some people thing it's too easy/boring.
3. Some people think it's too long.
4. Some people think it's good length.
5. Some people like the trash skips.
6. Some people hate the trash skips.
7. Many people think it's visually noisy.
8. Some people like the visuals.

It's still really soon, I'm interested to see how feedback evolves over time, as it has with previous fractals. I'll of course be watching our metrics for info on average playtime and failure/success rate.

I don't want to sound like I'm nitpicking, but why not looking at the median run time instead of averages? Averages are too prone to be skewed by extremes, rarely reflect the typical experience, and looking at the delta between median and average may even tell you some interesting stuff about the learning curve and who plays what flavour of fractal.

[Bugabuga.9721]

@Evolute.6239 said:Many professions bring steath and smokefields. Any ranger, a thief, or engineer is able to bring stealth and every class has some form of blast finisher really. There are also NPC items you can buy for copper (!) that will give you stealth. Saying it forces raid like compositions is beyond silly and almost makes your entire post ignorable.

Fractals are not just and should not devolve into 1 boss 15-minute-finish-your-daily content. That's stupid. Nor should anyone really complain about T4 difficulty when T3-2-1 exist. You can simply go down a difficulty scale and get 3 chests instead of 4 if you're not good enough. Oh no!

Again, this is more of a question of why even add the mob for skipping. Party of 2 eles, warrior and a necro won't be able to stealth unless they buy kits (which have been repeatedly nerfed because hey, only thiefs should stealth for reasonable amount of time). 15 minutes one/two boss or a short journey would be fine though. As you have to rely on random party to work well enough it simply reduces your chances of actually doing it. I mean it's fine to skip it because in off hours nobody will run it. We're back to "these new extra long fractals don't have regular pugs running them". Stable groups will breeze through them anyway and probably busy doing raids.