How were your fractals today? remove Silent Surf edition.

[Spawnkuecken.5074]

Hi buddies. How were your fracs today? I give 0 quaggans out of 10. I come home from work and want to happily do my frac, then I see that boring surf is on today and I knew how it would be. Wasted 20 minutes in the frac and people left the group, then looked for a new group, did everything but not 100. After that people are out too. Now again 20 minutes waited and hoped that people come into the rec group and then I gave up, as rec was sunqa. I see the following problem. 100 is too hard for random groups and some are unprepared T4. And they removed the dodging. this isn't a wow point and click adventure.

Edited September 15, 2023 by Spawnkuecken.5074

[Zohane.7208]

I have a different take on this; I virtually never struggle with Silent Surf - in fact there's more problems with people failing on Sunqua. I mean, of course there's the odd person who don't know the flow of the thing, but they're not all that common and can usually be worked around.

Then there's the fact that the boss has w-a-y too much health so the fight is painfully long, but that's another matter...

Edited September 15, 2023 by Zohane.7208

[Nimris.3781]

my experience is very different than yours.

i am going for 4 cm's nearly everyday mostly with 10-20k(+title) groups.  and overall clears go smooth, without issues but it sometimes takes a bit of time to find group ( tho i can do something else in the meantime and just glance on lfg). when everyone has title, its pretty much 1-shot.

i did have few bad groups in the past (mostly when i couldnt find decent group in ~15-20min and go for 5k ufe/low xp etc.) but after 1-2 wipes you can easily tell if this group can succeed or not and just leave.  also that happens very rarely because a lot of people avoid cm100 and 5k are almost always cm(-100) groups. i did 2-3 times cm(-100) with Silent Surf as daily and it was either nm S.S no issue or skipped.

so in short my experience with pugging Silent Surf (cm) is really good, but because not many players do it, it takes time to find group. currently difficulty is simmilar to Sunqua, i dont know why people avoid it 😕

i dont do t4+rec so cant relate to nm Silent Surf without cm group.

Edited September 15, 2023 by Nimris.3781

[Nephalem.8921]

1 hour ago, Spawnkuecken.5074 said:

Hi buddies. How were your fracs today? I give 0 quaggans out of 10. I come home from work and want to happily do my frac, then I see that boring surf is on today and I knew how it would be. Wasted 20 minutes in the frac and people left the group, then looked for a new group, did everything but not 100. After that people are out too. Now again 20 minutes waited and hoped that people come into the rec group and then I gave up, as rec was sunqa. I see the following problem. 100 is too hard for random groups and some are unprepared T4. And they removed the dodging. this isn't a wow point and click adventure.

If this was cm ok justified complain because it has countless bugs but normal mode? There is a very simple strategy in normal mode. Stack mid. Ignore everything except the eyes. Do not cc. Do not kill adds. Do not do the 33% or 66% phase because in normal a failure only does a bit of dmg. it is the easiest boss in the entire game. world bosses are harder than silent surf normal mode.

[TonySu.7942]

The final boss HP is way too high for all tiers.  It offers no real challenge but the fight becomes ridiculously long and overdrawn. 

[Nephalem.8921]

3 hours ago, TonySu.7942 said:

The final boss HP is way too high for all tiers.  It offers no real challenge but the fight becomes ridiculously long and overdrawn. 

It is ~20m in normal t4 which results in a 3min -4min kill. 32m in cm which would make it the fastest cm without the bugs.

More powercreep than ever in the game but people still refuse to do damage at all costs because its toxic. Playing rp hammer rev or something similar is the real issue here.

People reacting with these confused emoji are not getting the boss. phantasmagoria is bugged and increases outgoing damage. There is not just no point in killing adds in normal mode, it lowers your damage significantly from lowering phantasmagoria uptime and the dps uptime loss. Just ignore the mechanics. No point in doing them. Just stack mid in burst. Intended way of doing it.

Edited September 16, 2023 by Nephalem.8921

[Vinceman.4572]

If doing 100CM I could understand the frustration because you need a proper group to succeed and some instabilities make this boss harder for pugs at the moment due to the bugs and because the fractal is relatively new and lots of players still have not adjusted or built up enough muscle memory.

But 100 normal mode is no thing. If you have a healer which almost all T4 groups running anyways the fractal is a breezer. It's way harder to waste time on reaching the boss for some players than beating him. You don't need to do very much as Nephalem.8921 stated in his posts. You can fail so much of the mechanics and still survive. I even kept myself alive with a glass cannon dragonhunter build in a pug group till 22% or so without being a top player.
Bring dps and this fractal in normal mode is one of the most boring fractals alongside solid ocean.

I made a very long break playing GW2 and came back a month ago. Overall I was very surprised that so many T4 and also CM players fail so many mechanics resulting in much harder situations to solve compared to my experiences in the past. Even my fractal buddies eat lots of damage from encounters while just blindly performing rotas and ofc blame pug healers.

[anbujackson.9564]

14 hours ago, Vinceman.4572 said:

Even my fractal buddies eat lots of damage from encounters while just blindly performing rotas and ofc blame pug healers.

Doing mechanics and dodging is useless effort after all right?

I had a thaumanova t4 group on wednesday (casual people, everything else is boring in normal t4) and of course they wanted to stack the whole fight at the boss. Dps was low and at <50 the boss nuked them with aoes and agony. Then they complained why the last two people (me and another guy) with  SAK still unused dodged out without using it. So they went downstate/fell down and got carried by the two people with a brain while complaining if the strat is too hard. Just sad.

Edited September 16, 2023 by anbujackson.9564

[rawisz.6439]

11 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

Doing mechanics and dodging is useless effort after all right?

I had a thaumanova t4 group on wednesday (casual people, everything else is boring in normal t4) and of course they wanted to stack the whole fight at the boss. Dps was low and at <50 the boss nuked them with aoes and agony. Then they complained why the last two people (me and another guy) with  SAK still unused dodged out without using it. So they went downstate/fell down and got carried by the two people with a brain while complaining if the strat is too hard. Just sad.

Tactic depends on trusting that other party members press SAK at right moment. You could use SAK and then dodge out, in that case if they got down it would be on them but in this situation you basicaly killed them. They could mitigate dmg by using blocks, invul, etc, but they couldnt prevent falling down, you abandoned tactic without warning so in my opinion they had right to compain...

[anbujackson.9564]

3 hours ago, rawisz.6439 said:

Tactic depends on trusting that other party members press SAK at right moment. You could use SAK and then dodge out, in that case if they got down it would be on them but in this situation you basicaly killed them. They could mitigate dmg by using blocks, invul, etc, but they couldnt prevent falling down, you abandoned tactic without warning so in my opinion they had right to compain...

Fair enough.

But ye, its not like you can rezz through agony, so there is that. They would have been dead either way. And i dont feel like wasting time like that.

[Vinceman.4572]

18 hours ago, rawisz.6439 said:

Tactic depends on trusting that other party members press SAK at right moment. You could use SAK and then dodge out, in that case if they got down it would be on them but in this situation you basicaly killed them. They could mitigate dmg by using blocks, invul, etc, but they couldnt prevent falling down, you abandoned tactic without warning so in my opinion they had right to compain...

Low damage on thaumanova is critical for most groups due to ooze being harder plus anomaly fight as well. For anomaly low dmg is usually far easier because the fight is easy without stacking. People just move way too much, even triple the time I do and panic because they have no platform to go. But stacking with low deeps often results in a wipe. Players are either too bad to use the SAK more than once or you die while boss dmg cannot be outhealed that long. For ooze you often see a complete lack of brain. Even when I'm top dps and the first try we fail hard most of the group try over and over to immediately burst the boss without having any chance to do so. It's astonishing how stupid people are and you still need to teach or tell them how to succeed even after years of existance of this fractal.

[Aaron Forestman.4758]

I don't mind the health on CM100 now; it's been reduced to a more reasonable amount compared to where our dps benchmarks are now. It's the stark contrast between the mechanics in CM100 and those in all the rest of the fractals that bothers me. Losing the ability to dodge anything of consequence is the worst, as that's a core mechanic of this game's combat. Obviously we shouldn't be able to dodge the 66%/33% aspect attack, but everything else should be fair game. We've pretty much been forced to just sit and watch mechanics unfold while we scatter and run all around the arena, waiting to be allowed to play. That type of thing might fly in strikes, but it's terrible in fractals - especially when right after this mess we go into the masterful use of the game's mechanics in the other CMs.

[Efar.8153]

same experience here.

i've been unsuccessfully attempting to do that lvl 100 fractal for quite some time now 😅

Edited September 20, 2023 by Efar.8153

[TheNurgle.4825]

If you check daily schedule https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractals_of_the_Mists, then you can see that some days are better than others. Compare set 9 and set 12. Set 9 is Silent Surf, Swampland and Volcanic and set 12 is Aetherblade, Chaos and Nightmare. Most PUG groups will struggle on Set 9 Silent Surf and Swampland (wisps at start), but noone will struggle on Set 12. Now lets talk about rewards set 9 will take longer and rewards are not better than set 12.

 

Issue is that GW2 want to be balanced for casual players with 10-15k dps and veteran players with 40k dps and it can not work. Of course it is not only about DPS like use portals in Swampland and starting wisp phase is trivial and finished in 10 secs. PUG in Swampland not knowing that you can jump over "walls" and bypass it can struggle for 10-15 mins there.

[ArcanistSeven.8720]

was ez af as it always is

[gousgou.5438]

On 9/16/2023 at 4:34 AM, Nephalem.8921 said:

Just ignore the mechanics. No point in doing them. Just stack mid in burst. Intended way of doing it.

This mentality will be the doom of Guild Wars 2. Mark my words!

[Nephalem.8921]

2 minutes ago, gousgou.5438 said:

This mentality will be the doom of Guild Wars 2. Mark my words!

What do you mean with mentality? This is the fastest way to do the encounter in normal mode and honestly there is barely any point in doing cc and adds in cm either. In cm you have to do the 33/66 phase splits though. In normal you can ignore everything except for the eye.

Not my fault that the devs can not design punishing mechanics. Well when they do the hyper casuals start screaming because apparently it is impossible to have sub 5sec reaction times as soon as you get kids. 

[gousgou.5438]

Just now, Nephalem.8921 said:

What do you mean with mentality? This is the fastest way to do the encounter in normal mode and honestly there is barely any point in doing cc and adds in cm either. In cm you have to do the 33/66 phase splits though. In normal you can ignore everything except for the eye.

Not my fault that the devs can not design punishing mechanics. Well when they do the hyper casuals start screaming because apparently it is impossible to have sub 5sec reaction times as soon as you get kids. 

The mentality of "DPS hard to burn down the boss, support will get us through everything with stab, aegis, prot, reflects and heals. This is how everybody is doing it, no need to play the mechanics of the fight, we need to be fast".

 

[Nephalem.8921]

10 minutes ago, gousgou.5438 said:

The mentality of "DPS hard to burn down the boss, support will get us through everything with stab, aegis, prot, reflects and heals. This is how everybody is doing it, no need to play the mechanics of the fight, we need to be fast".

 

You dont need stab for that strategy. You dont need aegis. The mechanics of the fight are trash and most people don't understand them anyways. Like i wrote multiple times there is absolutely 0 reason to cc in normal mode. In fact it is the opposite. Not cc'ing and ignoring adds on platforms results in faster clears because they give players a 50% dmg buff when they are up. You also do not need supports to provide that. Actually in better groups you have dps builds bringing that stuff and skipping the healer completely because the fight has so low dmg pressure and only condi pressure.

Yes healing through stuff only works when the mechanics are garbage and only do some dmg. That is exactly why nobody does vg greens anymore. Outhealing mechanics should never be an option. But in gw2 it is most of the time the best strategy because of ultra hyper casuals starting tantrums every time a mechanic wipes them. A lot more mechanics should oneshot through everything. Even in t1.

Edited September 28, 2023 by Nephalem.8921

[gousgou.5438]

3 minutes ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

You dont need stab for that strategy. You dont need aegis. The mechanics of the fight are trash and most people don't understand them anyways. Like i wrote multiple times there is absolutely 0 reason to cc in normal modes. In fact it is the opposite. Not cc'ing and ignoring adds on platforms results in faster clears because they give players a 50% dmg buff when they are up. You also do not need supports to provide that. Actually in better groups you have dps builds bringing that stuff and skipping the healer completely because the fight has so low dmg pressure and only condi pressure.

Yes healing through stuff only works when the mechanics are garbage and only do some dmg. That is exactly why nobody does vg greens anymore. Outhealing mechanics should never be an option. But in gw2 it is most of the time the best strategy because of ultra hyper casuals starting tantrums every time a mechanic wipes them. A lot more mechanics should oneshot through everything. Even in t1.

Well everything I made bold for you is the problem and it is not coming from casuals. This mentality only comes from experienced players that only care for speed for everything, brute forcing everything because Anet has allowed builds reaching braindead 50k dps and a metric ton of durability for them at the same time.

It's not only fractals, it's raids and strikes as well. I've seen 8x scourge plus 2x quickness "bots" in 10man content brute force burning through every encounter.

That needs to change. It's one thing coming up with clever ways to play the encounters and a completely different thing ignoring everything because we can burn through the boss fast enough to cancel entire phases of the fight.

[Nephalem.8921]

1 hour ago, gousgou.5438 said:

Well everything I made bold for you is the problem and it is not coming from casuals. This mentality only comes from experienced players that only care for speed for everything, brute forcing everything because Anet has allowed builds reaching braindead 50k dps and a metric ton of durability for them at the same time.

It's not only fractals, it's raids and strikes as well. I've seen 8x scourge plus 2x quickness "bots" in 10man content brute force burning through every encounter.

That needs to change. It's one thing coming up with clever ways to play the encounters and a completely different thing ignoring everything because we can burn through the boss fast enough to cancel entire phases of the fight.

You have to change the mechanics if you want that to stop. When there is no reason to do mechanics people will just ignore them. Happens in all games and in irl too. Just hoping for people to use things the intended way never works and never will.

Edited September 28, 2023 by Nephalem.8921

[gousgou.5438]

16 minutes ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

You have to change the mechanics if you want that to stop. When there is no reason to do mechanics people will just ignore them. Happens in all games in irl too. Just hoping for people to use things the intended way never works and never will.

Well I agree with you but having every single mechanic being unavoidable and maybe extremely punishing needs to be implemented with great care.

I think we don't want ultra fast reaction times for example as people play from regions with high ping (Oceania people for example) and we also don't want to punish and exclude people that have some disabilities and/or are a bit old (maybe?).

For example the hammer that breaks seals at Cliffside is a do or you do not progress mechanic that is solid (AoE and adds spawning can be tuned so that you don't need to do everything at break-neck speeds but they can overwhelm and wipe you if you don't get your feet moving).

Having to do rope jumps like playing Worms with the ninja rope in Silent Surf sucks @ss. Having to clear the platform adds there or else you get a -33%dmg, -33% hit points debuff for each you do not kill would also be something that forced people to do the mechanics.

I hope I've given you an idea of what I mean.