"New fractal" Really?

[Furball.1236]

It was very disappointing the developers copied the combat of Deimos raid, Cerus strike, and the new story fight together and shamelessly called it a "new fractal."

The strategy of making one content for the story with a mind to apply that to a group content later has always been a problem. On one hand, the fight during the story lacks the complexity of combat mechanics due to the simple scaling down system from what was designed as a group content. On the other, the group content offers nothing truly unique in taste.

Edited May 21 by Furball.1236

[Wielder Of Magic.3950]

Lonely Tower isn't it and will be skipped by most people.
Don't get me wrong, it is doable with a good group.
I did 100 last night while completely sleep deprived with randoms and we got to 50% I think before I called it quits at 2:30 AM.
Today I cleared it.

That said, I feel like Lonely Tower manages to combine all the bad things from GW2's encounter design and especially recent instanced content design.

The boss is a health sponge.
Boon corrupt everywhere.
No safe place to stand anywhere.
That leads to near constant AoE everywhere from multiple attacks and it can overlap or happen simultaneously to the point where dodging A will just lead you into eating B or C or D.
It also makes it confusing on where the hell to stand, there is so much kitten flying around it is impossible to rely on your dodges. Dodging well no longer gets rewarded because you will eventually run out of endurance after dodging the first 2 dangerous mechanics and will be forced to eat the third.
And with collecting the orbs you are forced to navigate around an arena where 100% of the floor is now lava, so even if you had a safe spot, sucks to be you because if you don't collect those orbs you are in deep kitten.

It also once again has forced and unavoidable movement with the 'succ' attack, something that has been heavily despiced since its first implementation years ago, yet Anet insists on adding it again and again.

Another encounter heavily favouring ranged condi classes (aka Virt and Scourge).

That is without delving into how this entire fractal is recycled assets, there is nothing new in there. copy pasted wizards tower 1:1, copy paste Deimos+Cerus 1:1 just with lower HP and 1-2 special raid/strike mechanics removed...

Maintenance mode is a stretch, but it is certainly Minimum Viable Product mode.

[crosknight.3041]

this fractal was so lazy they forgot to give eparch different phases lol.

honestly i think this is probably the single worst designed fractal and had no playtesting.... or they didnt listen to the feedback because Silent surf is more fun than this gabage.

[Supernova Starr.2069]

Worst part is Cerus and Deimos being shallow empty versions of the themselves since you can pretty much stack and cleave like two dps golems

[Spawnkuecken.5074]

I thought they were learning from the lack of the last fractal.. Boring surf..

I found silent surf actually not so bad but the bossfight is garbage and takes too long... the 66 phase is kitten and they removed dodge from the fractal... but overall silent surf frac has fractal shares... puzzel jumping 5/5 skips 1/5 boss 1/5 frac lenght 5/5 tricking mechanics 2/5 solid ocean 0/5

I agree with you completely.. I don't want strikes but rather fractals

[Furball.1236]

Just to clarify, I don't think Eparch's combat mechanics are bad. It is a fun fight. My friends and I had a fully blind run at lvl 100 and killed it in our 3rd attempt, so especially after ppl get used to the fight, I don't think the fight is too hard. Positionings, dodges, some utilities and traits can be taken advantage of. Even if it is too hard for everyone to clear, I don't necessarily see a problem of the highest level of fractals not being easy for everyone.--You can always choose to do T3 and that's why there are different levels in the very first place.

But tbh, that's irrelevant here.

The point I'm trying to make is, as I wrote in the original post, that they just copy-pasted Deimos from W4, Cerus from ToF, and Eparch from the story into a same instance and called it a new instance and promoted it as a big selling point of this new release. What's worse is that we won't get another new fractal for a long time because because this copy-paste is considered as a new fractal.

Edited May 22 by Furball.1236

[anbujackson.9564]

I feel ya on the copy paste part. The CM probably just adds more old mechanics or makes them deadlier... whatever.

And about the fractal in general: Just like the new west meta in nayos, epach has a shitload of hp and a pretty big defiance bar (If i would have to guess around 4000+). This makes the boss, which is kind of nice in the beginning, extremely tedious because he basically only has four attacks or something which he cycles through in a fixed order I would say... so pretty much the same issue like with Kanaxai where you feel bored from doing the same stuff over and over again until its dead. There is no variety.

Its a joke how untertuned old content is in comparison. We can thank mindless class buffs and powercreep for that.

Edited May 22 by anbujackson.9564

[Nasbit.3240]

4 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

Epach has a shitload of hp and a pretty big defiance bar (If i would have to guess around 4000+).

If you play the mechanic correctly, Epach has pretty low HP... An DPS can easily reach 70k+ DPS if you play mechanics.    
Each Breakbar is exactly 2000 with no "hard" time-limit (sure it sucks to be the tethered person if you slack CC, since the stacking debuff the person receives permanently is no joke).

Edited May 23 by Nasbit.3240
Accident early post

[Nasbit.3240]

11 hours ago, Wielder Of Magic.3950 said:

That said, I feel like Lonely Tower manages to combine all the bad things from GW2's encounter design and especially recent instanced content design.

The boss is a health sponge.
Boon corrupt everywhere.
No safe place to stand anywhere.
That leads to near constant AoE everywhere from multiple attacks and it can overlap or happen simultaneously to the point where dodging A will just lead you into eating B or C or D.
It also makes it confusing on where the hell to stand, there is so much kitten flying around it is impossible to rely on your dodges. Dodging well no longer gets rewarded because you will eventually run out of endurance after dodging the first 2 dangerous mechanics and will be forced to eat the third.
And with collecting the orbs you are forced to navigate around an arena where 100% of the floor is now lava, so even if you had a safe spot, sucks to be you because if you don't collect those orbs you are in deep kitten.

It also once again has forced and unavoidable movement with the 'succ' attack, something that has been heavily despiced since its first implementation years ago, yet Anet insists on adding it again and again.

Another encounter heavily favouring ranged condi classes (aka Virt and Scourge).

1. "The boss is  a health sponge."
Yes - but it has to, if you play mechanics correctly, DPS players can reach 60k+ DPS. In my theory even up to  100k+, so the boss dies in no-time if you play mechanics well.

2. "Boon corrupt everywhere"
Nope, only his "Envy" Attack (Arrows and 4 "Flamewalls" shooting that direction) will corrupt boons. You can avoid it by standing not on arrows or directly inside the hitbox.

3. "No safe place to stand"
- Despair is in a spiral with enough space between to stand safe,
- Envy is the Arrow Attack, you can stand directly in the hitbox to be safe, or between the arrows, just not on top of an arrow.
- Gluttony, Yes the it succ pretty heavily (more about it later), but the mechanic itself don't hurt much, (at least if boss don't have too many Rage-Stacks) so even if you get sucked into the red field it is still fine even as DPS
- Malice, Keep moving, just avoid standing in the AoEs of another player. 
- Rage - This are 2 effects, first the Wave, just jump. (Careful, the visual is bit slower, so you have to jump earlier than it seems - yes this sucks... please anet fix the visual matching its effect) and second the Fire-Pattern on the floor, which is pretty easy to avoid since static for long time until he has his next Rage Attack.

He always makes one Attack at the time, as long as you avoid the fire pattern, you can stand pretty much everywhere. Since you wanna collect all orbs, you have to keep moving anyways.

4. "it can overlap or happen simultaneously"
Nope it can and will not, it may seem that way, but if you start focusing on each attack, you even can call when next CC is coming. (Makes 7 attacks, then CC, 7 attacks, then CC, ...)

5. "Dodges run out"
You pretty much don't have to dodge anything, Mostly I use it to avoid the Envy, even there is a safespot in his hitbox, I want my Envy orbs that happen at the same time, so I wanna run after them and not stand in his hitbox. Every other mechanic you can jump or outrun.

6. The "succ" mechanic is to strong
I agree on this point, even with superspeed you cannot run against it. I even stopped trying and focus more on keeping my damage up, and outheal it. So yes the gluttony-Suck IS way to heavy. 

[anbujackson.9564]

4 hours ago, Nasbit.3240 said:

If you play the mechanic correctly, Epach has pretty low HP... An DPS can easily reach 70k+ DPS if you play mechanics.    
Each Breakbar is exactly 2000 with no "hard" time-limit (sure it sucks to be the tethered person if you slack CC, since the stacking debuff the person receives permanently is no joke).

Fair points. I cant really tell because I only did it once so far on t4 and that was duo with a friend as two scourges and we had close to no idea about the mechs. Too busy collecting essences :') Probably thats why it took 10-15min.

But wow I was way off on the breakbar then >.> It seemed to be more because we used two golems, sg's and so on (torch, pistol, warhorn and a buttload of fear). 

[TheQuickFox.3826]

Pug player. Pugs are failing hard here. We'll have to see how this goes when players have some more experience. But for now groups are failing and skipping it.

[Nasbit.3240]

21 minutes ago, TheQuickFox.3826 said:

Pug player. Pugs are failing hard here. We'll have to see how this goes when players have some more experience. But for now groups are failing and skipping it.

Today is the first day where it is a T4 Daily. We will see. I will have a lot of fun today joining pugs I guess :3

[Sunsetter.5637]

Just spent about 2h on the last boss only for the game to crash to three of us when he was at 5% hp, and the other two died soon after.

I...

Just...

🤬🤬🤬

 

Think I'm gonna get PTSD from that.

[Derktarlms.6213]

The time it takes to finish is incredible and it will be the last one.

Edited May 24 by Derktarlms.6213

[Ashantara.8731]

It's not that bad, aside from the AoE clutter. The criticism of "Where to stand?" is a valid point, but it's still doable.

I like it, because it's new. No idea if I will still like it a few weeks or months from now, or whether I will also consider it "boring" like many here already do.

It might not be super innovative, but at least the pre-events aren't as long as people made them sound. Sunqua Peak NM takes longer.

[Ashantara.8731]

Just wanted to drop a quick note @Rubi Bayer.8493 to say how much I love the Midnight King Combat Tonic we receive as an reward for doing all Achievements. 😁

Very excited to see what the CM will look like and what rewards it will offer. 😉 

[TheQuickFox.3826]

My friend says he can solo t3, but I haven't been able to get any success with a proper group on t4+recs pugs.

We keep getting destroyed quickly in all the AOE that is going around. I can't seem to understand where I should stand to avoid it. Same for the other players. The good thing is that we're all struggling as hard, so we quickly gain consensus to skip it and move on to the other fractals without any toxicity or leavers.

I wish this was the CM and that the NM would be a bit more accessible.

Edited May 27 by TheQuickFox.3826

[Randulf.7614]

I enjoyed the eparch fight, but on T1 he has over double the hp he needs. I didn't like how they demoted Deimos and Cerus to trash mobs with no mechanics either

It was overall better than I expected, but some adjustments needed

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

they need to move some of the health and damage of eparch onto deimos and cerus, and please don't skip them in the challenge mode! basically the whole problem with this fractal is everything is back-loaded onto the final boss, and the other bosses just exist as trash i guess.

 

these are raid bosses, please show them some more respect.

Edited May 27 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[Monarch.7241]

I dont like this new fractal at all, the silent surf is still filled with bugs and anet introduces a new one that is atleast twicely more broken and set it on frequent shedule to disrupt our happy fractal plays. People like me play the game for the fractals and by forcing us in such way will just make us leave the mode or the entire game. If I was in the dev team I would definately be reworking that entire fractal.

[Cameirus.8407]

I'm fine up until the last boss....

in principle its a good fight...for pre-made organised groups on voice comms....

 

Its terrible for a LFG fractal group which is how most people run them. too much going on, too narrow time limits on mechanics,  too many roles to organise (who gets what etc).

As a CM, its fine. as a normal mode, wtf were they thinking?

[Furball.1236]

Please go complain about how you find difficulty of this new fractal in other threads, and talk about novelty of contents on this threads.

[Inssengrimm.7924]

Completely defeats the purpose of Fractals being quick instances for daily completion.

Stop adding content to the game just for the sake of saying you are adding new things, specially when nothing about this Fractal is new, reused bosses, mechanics, scenario... Is literally just filler and a time waste for a game mode that is about speedy, expeditious progression.

This is the equivalent of puting speedbumps in a race track...