New Fractal 100 Lonely Tower - NM Easy? - CM Too Hard? - Fat Discussion & Guide For Completing The CM

[Inssengrimm.7924]

The only thing this fractal achieved is that i get one less daily chest since most people just skip it. 

 

[Xanthia.7209]

In my opinion, the CM is far too punishing and rng reliant for what it is. The fact that you can do almost everything perfect, but the moment he gets a single stack of Envy(green), it is basically gg with zero counterplay. I'll post a very short clip below to demonstrate what I mean exactly but it's not required to watch- it just there as proof of what I am saying. So for context, during the fight my 1 sole job is to gather and stack all of the greens and deny Epach from getting any stacks of Envy. Unfortunately about midway through the fight, the boss decides to change up  the order of his attacks and start dropping greens just before his CC breakbar-attack that pulls all orbs on the floor onto him. Yet despite this, I am still able to gather every green orb and deny Epach the buff. That is until about 11% health where in the video you can see, I ran right over the green orbs-the game fails to register it, and thus the game allows Epach to steal the greens.

Now it just two stacks, how punishing can two measly stacks of Envy be? He literally brings my health from 100% to 0 - popping my Mistlock ...just because he had two stacks.....And I fail to see how any of this isn't bullsh*t. What was I suppose to do exactly? Gather the orbs more slowly? He dropped the greens right before breakbar, the game forces  you to gather quickly or he takes all 5 orbs. How exactly am I suppose to gather something "quickly-slowly" exactly hmm? And once he steals those Envy stacks, there is nothing you can do to remove it-every attack, every aoe will now corrupt your boons and flood you with conditions upon conditions.

And before anyone says "you don't know what you are doing-get good" etc etc. I will point this out. That clip? Yea it's from the attempt were we successfully achieved Wavering Ward. That's kill the boss on CM, no deaths. Those two orbs were the ONLY ones he ever got with me being the only primary person gathering them. The only reason we won was because by the time he cheated those orbs, his health was so low that he was basically already dead. Had it happen earlier in the fight, it would had been impossible and to me that doesn't make a "hard" or "challenging" fight. It makes it a bullsh*t one. Sorry, but this isn't it.

I don't want to leave this here, so I'll attempt to be constructive and leave a suggestion. How about you make it so that the effects of Epach getting the various orbs only actually goes into effect once he has say 10 stacks of a certain buff. This way if your gameplay is lax and sloppy, he will still push your junk in as he does now, but at the same time you have a little bit of leeway. This way you don't have to wait until the planets align for that one perfect run where rnjesus finally decides to smile upon you. Because I'll be honest, Epach with no greens is a push over. Epach with 1 green is an instant loss, and given how easy it is for him to get atleast 1 stack during a 7 minute fight, that just isn't fun.

 

[Nemesis Ghost.5782]

3 hours ago, Xanthia.7209 said:

In my opinion, the CM is far too punishing and rng reliant for what it is. The fact that you can do almost everything perfect, but the moment he gets a single stack of Envy(green), it is basically gg with zero counterplay. I'll post a very short clip below to demonstrate what I mean exactly but it's not required to watch- it just there as proof of what I am saying. So for context, during the fight my 1 sole job is to gather and stack all of the greens and deny Epach from getting any stacks of Envy. Unfortunately about midway through the fight, the boss decides to change up  the order of his attacks and start dropping greens just before his CC breakbar-attack that pulls all orbs on the floor onto him. Yet despite this, I am still able to gather every green orb and deny Epach the buff. That is until about 11% health where in the video you can see, I ran right over the green orbs-the game fails to register it, and thus the game allows Epach to steal the greens.

Now it just two stacks, how punishing can two measly stacks of Envy be? He literally brings my health from 100% to 0 - popping my Mistlock ...just because he had two stacks.....And I fail to see how any of this isn't bullsh*t. What was I suppose to do exactly? Gather the orbs more slowly? He dropped the greens right before breakbar, the game forces  you to gather quickly or he takes all 5 orbs. How exactly am I suppose to gather something "quickly-slowly" exactly hmm? And once he steals those Envy stacks, there is nothing you can do to remove it-every attack, every aoe will now corrupt your boons and flood you with conditions upon conditions.

And before anyone says "you don't know what you are doing-get good" etc etc. I will point this out. That clip? Yea it's from the attempt were we successfully achieved Wavering Ward. That's kill the boss on CM, no deaths. Those two orbs were the ONLY ones he ever got with me being the only primary person gathering them. The only reason we won was because by the time he cheated those orbs, his health was so low that he was basically already dead. Had it happen earlier in the fight, it would had been impossible and to me that doesn't make a "hard" or "challenging" fight. It makes it a bullsh*t one. Sorry, but this isn't it.

I don't want to leave this here, so I'll attempt to be constructive and leave a suggestion. How about you make it so that the effects of Epach getting the various orbs only actually goes into effect once he has say 10 stacks of a certain buff. This way if your gameplay is lax and sloppy, he will still push your junk in as he does now, but at the same time you have a little bit of leeway. This way you don't have to wait until the planets align for that one perfect run where rnjesus finally decides to smile upon you. Because I'll be honest, Epach with no greens is a push over. Epach with 1 green is an instant loss, and given how easy it is for him to get atleast 1 stack during a 7 minute fight, that just isn't fun.

 

Or give him a delay after doing an attack so that there is time to gather orbs. Maybe give him some auto attacks. He's the only boss that does not auto attack and only spams abilities left and right.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

4 hours ago, Xanthia.7209 said:

And before anyone says "you don't know what you are doing-get good" etc etc

No way man. Nobody gonna say that.

I just had another night of about 4+ failed hours trying to get the title, due to the exact same things you just explained. So now I'm looking at 3 nights in a row having accrued about 12+ hours training vs. CM Eparch to try and get the title. When we play this kind of content, the more familiar we get with it, and the more we have to say in detail about exactly what the problems are. Here is what I have to say at this point:

1. What we used tonight: - aheal Scourge - Heal Druid that swaps to use celestial shadow for group stealth/superspeed "which greatly helps escape pull & enhance orb collection speed and swaps ancestral grace to lingering light for heavier heals. Also make sure the hdruid has highest toughness so Eparch wants to target the Druid with consumed, which makes him ignore gluttony runners - qdps Herald - a P/P Condi Willbender which has great ranged pressure and lots of mobility - then a Scrapper DPS that drops a lot of additional super speed.
2. We have supports targeting blue & purple - 1x DPS targets orange - 1x DPS targets green - other colors are distribute to other players
3. We are utilizing gluttony correctly to destroy rifts before champ spawns.
4. SEVERAL times we get Eparch down below 33% and we're thinking "ok we're good, we've got this". But every single time, some kind of RNG straight up bull**** happens to ruin the run, and it usually always has to do with envy. Envy in its current state is too strong of a buff for this boss to have, and there are too many wonky RNG mechanics revolving around orbs, which prevents you from ensuring that Eparch cannot get envy.
5. Handful of orb related mechanics/bugs to mention that are straight up bull****: -- "Eparch starts absorbing orbs before he spawns orbs. Orbs spawn and immediately get sucked up by Eparch with no way to grab the orbs before he does" -- "You run across orbs and for some reason you don't absorb them. Why is this happening? No idea but it happens way too often." -- "You actually GRAB the orbs and you see the stacks go on you, but somehow Eparch also grabs those same orbs that you just picked up, like 1/2 a second after you do, and it also counts for giving Eparch orb stacks. This is dumb & broken and it was happening all night tonight." -- "God forbid you fail to kill even ONE rift on a split phase and you may as well GG because Eparch is gonna have envy stacks afterwards." -- "Then just ENVY in general, is way too strong."

The real problems with CM Eparch are 1) too much RNG revolving around orbs to where even the most skilled players can't control/prevent these auto-wipe problems from occurring. 2) Envy specifically out of everything, is seriously way way too strong. It's like if he even gets 2-3 stacks of envy before 66%, you may as well GG because the RNG isn't being kind. And IT IS RNG. You'll have very good players doing everything they can to prevent him from getting envy, but just as you said, there is just unavoidable bull**** that happens that allows him to get envy, and there is too much of it happening too often.

All in all I'd say that:

1. HIS HEALTH BAR IS NOT THE PROBLEM NEVER WAS.
2. They need to clean up these orb mechanics to reduce the RNG to the point where it is more manageable based on player skill, and a lot less luck based.
3. They really should consider nerfing how strong envy is when Eparch consumes it. With the other color stacks, they aren't ultra threatening until he starts getting 10+ 15+ of them. But envy is like "oh look he has 3-5 envy stacks, might as well GG". The envy power creeps him way way too fast with even small stacks.

Edited June 7 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Cyninja.2954]

8 hours ago, Xanthia.7209 said:

snip

Excellent summary.

Now I was eluding earlier in this thread to how some players seemed unaware of how to "clear" this fight pre patch. 2 pages of pointless discussions about how "well designed" the fight is, which composition to run, etc.

Pre patch the best way to run this fight was just minion master it with as many pets as possible. Remember this fix:

Quote

Fixed an issue that caused Eparch to gain conditions from Malice Empowerment instead of inflicting them when hitting enemies.

Turns out you could just overpowered Eparch with having as many entities up as possible, clearing the fight in 1-2 minutes on NM. Which ironically is also what was happening in those "we are running defensive composition and going downstate 17 times" video. You were getting free damage on the boss due to pets speeding up the already painfully long fight.

The CM just took the NM and amplified the issues in design.

The fight is technically complete-able without bug abusing. Realistically players clearing the fight right now are abusing the fact that rifts can be damaged and closed via Gluttony orb stacking (actually an interesting mechanic if it were EVER used in ANY part of the game in regards to rifts in this way). Peak game design./s

Now add in the insane amount of other bugs, which clearly indicate almost 0 play testing. One of which is that the adds and rifts stay up if you gg or die past 66%.

Now add in the rng nature of attacks, the huge visual clutter and instabilities (yeah having Toxic Trail was super fun when having to stand inside the boss hitbox to avoid his Arrow attack).

Now add in bad telegraphs like the ones for the pulls from adds going off every few seconds (technically a "get good" issue, just a very un-fun one).

To come to the conclusion: this fractal is an absolute kitten show. Teapot put it best:"take this out of the game immediately and fix it. Or at least take it out of the daily rotation and fix it.

But here is the actual main issue: it's just not fun. It's not fun design wise. It's not fun to play. It's not well designed for this games combat system (it's completely over-designed).

All of which can easily be attributed to the developers not actually play testing properly the stuff they release. They got lucky with Cerus, where these is actually sufficient time in-between attacks. The intermission phase of Deimos and Cerus is actually a cool idea for this fractal too. The final fight is not. It goes against all fractal design from the past (Silent Surf did too, but not this extreme) and shows a clear lack of understanding how to create engaging fights. Hint: fractals are NOT mini strikes  or mini raids.

TL;DR:

This encounter, paired with the hit and miss strike encounters, paired with the hit and miss open world encounters in SotO does not leave one with high hopes that whatever comes with Janthir Wilds will be any good.

Edited June 7 by Cyninja.2954

[Katary.7096]

I have honestly no idea what they were thinking with this one. Even the structure of the CM implementation is nonsense. For Nightmare and Shattered Observatory the CM changes the entire fractal, thus in CM you end up playing the whole fractal. The Sunqua Peak and Silent Surf CMs only change the final boss and that is the only part of the fractal you play in CM (Okay, in SS there is that one group of trash mobs too). And then there is Lonely Tower, which as far as I can tell, has a CM that changes the final boss and nothing else and yet I have to play the whole fractal with CM active.
There has been a blueprint for a superior implementation in the game already and yet this is what we got.

[Supernova Starr.2069]

Irrelevant note: I haven't tried CM yet cause all of them pugs are avoiding 100 (even NM), and apperently CMs + T4s means 99-96 CMs

This could be related or not but LFGs CMs seem worse than ever

[maxwelgm.4315]

1 hour ago, Supernova Starr.2069 said:

Irrelevant note: I haven't tried CM yet cause all of them pugs are avoiding 100 (even NM), and apperently CMs + T4s means 99-96 CMs

This could be related or not but LFGs CMs seem worse than ever

I think even people who haven't tried it yet just read about the bugs and don't even try joining. Silent Surf left a bad aftertaste on release regardless of how they "fixed" it afterwards and releasing this one in a state that's even worse has really broken people's good will to engage with it.

Edited June 7 by maxwelgm.4315

[Shadowmoon.7986]

Feedback to fix this encounter.

1)  add a  delay between orb suction and the start of the break bar. Give people time to react to the encounter before they are screwed.

2) nerf the effectiveness of envy. 1 stacks should not mean you have no more boons for the rest of the encounter.

3) black list toxic trail instablity. This combined with envy stacks means you will never have boons because his safe spot tends to be in his hit box.

4) Successfully breaking his bar in cm removes stacks like in normal mode. This is the only fractal boss that once you f up you can not stabilize.

5) cm skips straight to the boss. Demon brothers is a lame encounter. This should act like sunqua peak fractal.

6) make split phases happen at 66 and 33 like every other boss. Either make the guardians have much less life or reduce them to 1 for 66% and 2 for 33%. Only after doing both of these changes, fix the gluttony exploit. This is the lamest part of the fight, and notice that only by using this exploit this fight is at least passible, it's not fun, but it is doable.

I believe this is the bear minimum to getting a decent fight, and notice none of it actually lowers the challenge of the fight, it just remove all the annoying or man that not fair parts of the fight.

[Cyninja.2954]

14 hours ago, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

Feedback to fix this encounter.

1)  add a  delay between orb suction and the start of the break bar. Give people time to react to the encounter before they are screwed.

2) nerf the effectiveness of envy. 1 stacks should not mean you have no more boons for the rest of the encounter.

3) black list toxic trail instablity. This combined with envy stacks means you will never have boons because his safe spot tends to be in his hit box.

4) Successfully breaking his bar in cm removes stacks like in normal mode. This is the only fractal boss that once you f up you can not stabilize.

5) cm skips straight to the boss. Demon brothers is a lame encounter. This should act like sunqua peak fractal.

6) make split phases happen at 66 and 33 like every other boss. Either make the guardians have much less life or reduce them to 1 for 66% and 2 for 33%. Only after doing both of these changes, fix the gluttony exploit. This is the lamest part of the fight, and notice that only by using this exploit this fight is at least passible, it's not fun, but it is doable.

I believe this is the bear minimum to getting a decent fight, and notice none of it actually lowers the challenge of the fight, it just remove all the annoying or man that not fair parts of the fight.

These are all excellent suggestions and might make the fight decent. They would mitigate some of the design issues which make this fight deviate from most (in fact all) other fractal fights (and to a greater extend even strikes and raids, though some elements are in strikes and raids which have a place there but not one in fractals).

Keeping it simple, past fractal fights are designed with different phases (I am not talking boss phases or encounter phases, but rather player engagement phases) in mind. The typical transitions will be:

1. avoid mechanics

2. cc bar

3. damage phase

4. intermission mechanic phase

We could break these down even more individually but this is what these boil down to. The order these phases happen in might get shuffled around. Let's apply this to 3 fights:

MAMA

cc bar -> damage phase -> avoid mechanics (this loops until 75%/50%/25%) -> intermission phase

Rinse and repeat. A dated fight but one of the I believe still more enjoyed. Player skill and performance can drastically shift how many phases players will see, but overall the fight will always divide into these 4 phases. Most important phase of note here are: damage phase and intermission phase. These allow the player to mentally "cool down" and regenerate. Mechanical pressure is limited during those and players do not need to focus on much more than doing damage (or playing the intermission phase properly, which is actually a part where inexperienced groups might struggle due to initial mechanic overload).

All the mechanics in this fight are predictable and have specific placing. The "dance" to clear the fight will remain always the same. Again: dated fight but fun.

The aforementioned rhythm and design applies to ALL fractal CMs since then, even Sorrowful Spellcaster.

Kanaxai

Kanaxai is one of the first fights where we see a deviation from the established design, at first glance. His abilities are a lot more fluent and not as fixed as other CMs, especially his ax throws which players still have agency over as to where they are placed. His phase 1 looks like this:

avoid mechanic -> damage phase -> cc bar -> avoid mechanic (loop until 66%/33% for intermission phase)

Let's look at this intermission phase at that: it's move out and clear add, come back

All of these phases happen faster and less scripted (actually everything is scripted except for the placement of his ax aoes) but in the end it all comes down to those 4 phases up top. Mentally this is already more draining for some players (and some to this day avoid now 99CM) but overall the fight is clear enough to complete.

Eprach

Let me summarize this: random kitten goooooo, more more more, just more and everything at the same time.

- There are no clear damage phases for player to cool down. His cc phase barely counts given all the random aoes one has to dodge.

- There are no clear avoid mechanic phases, it's all avoid mechanics, usually stacking mechanics on top of each other (which leads to this nice interaction of Toxic Trail and Arrows).

- the intermission phase is just as stressful as the regular fight, completely over designed hp wise and for most groups only doable due to bug abuse

- the boss design in regards to how he places orbs (which need to be collected) and his aoes is completely rng, with the boss moving around on top of all essentially forcing players to burn dodges only to do a mechanic properly while transitioning between attacks which mandate players be inside his hitbox and outside

 

That's just not fun encounter design. Good encounter design is not about just stacking more and more layers of "stuff" players need to deal with. It's about stacking "fun" stuff to deal with and giving minor reward phases in-between. Shadowmoon.7986 's suggestions clean up some of these issues or alleviate others. Ideally there would be a comprehensive redesign from the ground up.

Now the good things: some of the design ideas or attacks are interesting. Denying a boss orbs and making this an entire mechanic, GREAT STUFF. You get a mechanic and pay-off phase in one. Designing this so it stresses the player out (or is bugged to this extent) and dependent on so much damage rng: not good.

Alternating between stand inside the boss, jump and move away to avoid attacks: GOOD. Doing this while crowding the arena in ground aoe effects, a not compatible instability, while adding a collection mechanic on top: BAD.

Making intermission phases which thematically fit the encounter: good. Making intermission phases which are more stressful than than the actual fight: bad.

As to skipping to the boss, sure that would be a nice bonus but I personally would put my attention on fixing the encounter first.

TL;DR:

One of my favorite quotes from years past was from a WoW developer about when they were designing elements in WoW they would always return to the question:"Are the players having fun?" There are multiple recipes to fun and challenging encounters and unfortunately Eparch misses that mark.

Edited June 8 by Cyninja.2954

[maxwelgm.4315]

I've been playing Lonely Tower CM quite a bit the last couple days and it seems to me Eparch has quite some "desync" issues where his attacks are supposed to have a fixed pattern but don't in practice. For one it seems the pattern doesn't reset on resetting the encounter (only if you reset the instance). For instance, if he starts with the slam attack 5 times, it maybe on the 6th he for no reasons starts the fight with the arrows and then proceeds normally with the "succ circle".

The CC is the most egregious example where people have repeatedly told me he would never put up the bar right after dropping the Envy from the arrow attack, and yet sometimes exactly this has happened due to this desync issue. It's like his set pattern of attacks is set to go off with a mismatch in between the animations and the actual hitboxes, such that eventually an animation or hitbox will "force" the pattern to skip by one.

Other than that, the fight becomes far more doable if we ironically follow just what the OP suggests for NM. We had much more luck (and even more DPS) during my successful kill with dps scourges that take consume conditions+plague signet+ the 332 traitlines in Scourge (not to mention parasitic contagion ofc). Likewise power DPS have decided to take Relic of Zakiros so we'd be able to be on top of orbs before they finish the spawning animation and still have enough leeway to get back and heal just enough with DPS alone before the healer can finally top up.

Finally it's baffling people would consider the rift skipping exploit to ever have been planned and intended as a mechanic. I was doing it as Scourge and you can clearly see the Rift takes multiple dozens of hits at once even though it cannot be targeted or interacted with in other ways before you kill the champions. My opinion is they somehow realize this but still didn't decide what to do with the awful champion HP and quick stacking on Eparch's part. It's pretty much undoable without the skip if only because it becomes a 30min ordeal even if you can prevent every single add from reaching Eparch.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

3 hours ago, maxwelgm.4315 said:

Finally it's baffling people would consider the rift skipping exploit to ever have been planned and intended as a mechanic. I was doing it as Scourge and you can clearly see the Rift takes multiple dozens of hits at once even though it cannot be targeted or interacted with in other ways before you kill the champions. My opinion is they somehow realize this but still didn't decide what to do with the awful champion HP and quick stacking on Eparch's part. It's pretty much undoable without the skip if only because it becomes a 30min ordeal even if you can prevent every single add from reaching Eparch.

I've been in groups where we were running it how to say... organically? But you will need very specifically HEAVY control builds in play to be able to do it. It seems that Condi DPS Druid is best. It has enough elongated Immobilization jacked up from expertise, to stop all those adds easily from getting to Eparch and buffing him. Massive soft CC immob spam is probably the best route here.

2nd picks, I'd say probably DH with F1 & GS5 or Reaper with GS5 and Grasp, could probably adequately keep adds away from Eparch but it won't be as easy as mass immob spam that stacks 30s+ immob on 10 things at once.

Other classes could probably deal with it organically, but the problem is they'd need to change way too much on their general build structure for it to be practical. Druid/DH/Reaper can still pretty much roll meta builds and have enough control to deal with it.

Edited June 8 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Player.2475]

I've done this on NM and CM and I just have to say this boss is just really unfun. I find it the worst designed encounter of any encounters in the history of GW2, maybe ever, and I would even go as far as to call it artificially difficult. I don't care what sort of copium people present to think that groups will be able to deal with it better in the future when the fight itself is just terrible design, even on NM. For the boss to be palatable you'd have to remove or severely reduce several of its mechanics.

My problems apply to both NM and CM, but hit CM harder because the consequences are permanent and you might as well restart the fight if you make ANY mistakes. There is absolutely no way to recover in CM if you fail any of the mechanics, but at least in T4 NM you still have a chance if you make one minor mistake:

• Massive healthpool
• Spamming damage fields that limit the ability for the party to deal damage
• Spamming mechanics (essences) that players have to collect, which again limits the amount of damage you deal to the boss, and the +20% damage you get from the essence doesn't compensate for the fact that you spend 80% of the fight running around
• Envy is the worst as every source of damage in the entire fight will corrupt boons. Getting rid of it on NM is difficult enough, on CM you have to reset the fight if he gets even 1 stack. Even removing this essence entirely wouldn't save the fight, however.
• Consumed: the entire party has to melt through a CC bar that's far too big for how important it is to break it asap. If you don't, Eparch will steal your essence (if you have any) and stats if you don't have any. On CM this effect is permanent no matter how much essence you consume, so unless you wipe his CC bar within 2 seconds, you can either reset the fight or have fun with a party with less than 8k hp and 200 damage. If he steals essence from a player with envy, it's game over, if he targets any other player, it's still bad if he stacks enough essence for enough time
• OFTEN HE WILL LITERALLY EAT ESSENCE WITHIN 1 SECOND OF SPITTING IT OUT. IF YOU ARE NOT STANDING ON TOP OF IT; IT'S GG.

I have no idea how to fix this fight without removing or reducing the impact CC, Envy and Consumed have on this fight, as well as reducing the frequency of Eparch's attacks so he doesn't instantly suck in essence within 1 second of spitting it out.

Other fractal CMs might have been challenging when they first came out, but they built on the existing mechanics that were present in the NM. There may have been harsher punishments for failing a mechanic like wiping your party, but at least they wiped your party. Lonely Tower CM doesn't have explicit 1shot mechanics, but failing any of the NM mechanics permanently makes the fight harder and allows you no chance to recover from them. I'd rather the entire party gets automatically wiped if CM Eparch gets 1 stack of envy, or instantly killing players if they get more than a few stacks of consume, instead of turning the entire fight into a grueling, miserable experience that you cannot recover from except by telling your entire party to /gg and try again. The health pool doesn't help.

 

[Maria Murtor.7253]

I quote myself from a Discord conversation:

"I joined a T4 + Recs run this morning. Our group had the basic stuff: Heal Scourge, Quickness Herald, 3 x DPS. And we failed hard. For some reason the people clearly had no idea what they are doing. Like when you get hit by a devastating (and easy to dodge/jump over) shock wave attack over and over and over again, that's clearly on the player. But then, there are mechanics simply too frustrating. The suck attack from the boss is too strong. RNG involved in the way he spreads emotions and snatches them in a short period of time. This arrow attack, which doesn't even indicate a safe zone to stand in (the arrows show where cracks in the floor appear. But even in areas where no arrows are pointing you will receive damage from projectiles). This attack alone makes melee a horrible experience).
Someone in the forum quotes a WoW developer. This developer said something like "Are the players having fun"? This Fractal is clearly not fun to engage with, that's for sure.

I like the idea and some of the mechanics. And I also love how ridiculous the power creep can get (when I as a bad DPS see 24k bleeding ticks, you know how high experienced players can get). Unfortunately, I simply can not deal proper DPS, because I run from resurrect to resurrect or collecting to collecting. The skill issue of average players is easy to see. I don't struggle so hard, and keep standing tall. Others are not that lucky. Unfortunately, there's simply no way a healer alone can carry you through this. At some point Epach get's so strong, you simply can't deal with it (only by ignoring all your mates and craft a build especially for this encounter). This is the very first Fractal I would agree with Mighty Teapot's opinion: Scrap it or remove it and fix it in many ways. It's simply not a fun content."

[The Ghost.3087]

100 needs serious rework, starting from the attacks to the globes spawn to the stacks. 

I would start with something simple, when Eparch does his ground attack that splits the ground with red lines, those red lines are bugged, you can't jump over them since it is 50/50 if you will get damage or not, the damage is way too high, like ENORMOUSLY high, that needs to be nerfed with at least 50%, if not 75% (which is more accurate nerf) or if the red lines are on the ground, then Eparch cannot use his spinning skill that sucks everything towards him since you are guaranteed 100% death. When the spin attacks happen it needs to happen in the middle, Eparch teleporting and giving a chance of at least 5 seconds for the players to rush out from the center and then he spawns in the middle with the red circle instant KO if anyone is there and then starts sucking you in turning the red circle from instant KO to high damage one but not as high as it is currently, or it should be lowered down on the activity time from 5-8 seconds, to 2-4 seconds or something among those lines if it will do that much damage. On the second part when he sucks you in, if you fall in his red circle on normal mode you need to lower the damage, with at least 50%, again too much damage and the players are too spread out, no healer can reach them on time to heal. On CM mode, the damage could be lowered with like 25%. 

Phase with the orbs, during that phase, Eparch should stay in the middle, after he used his AOE, I would suggest here having him stick his sword into the ground and remain there, giving the players a chance to gather those globes, at least 10 to 15 sec time for normal mode, 5-10 seconds for CM mode. So it could give a fighting chance for the player. The amount of orbs that he tosses are the right amount players should have plenty of time to gather them if they have like 10 sec in CM, and 15 sec in NM.

CC bar, I don't know how many times I should tell you, but pushing way too big CC bar gives even the CC classes a hard time. You should stop giving bosses tons of CC simply it doesnt work we don't have that many skills to cover that much CC. 

Buffs/Boons phase after you gather the globe. If you are going to have like 20 mil HP for Eparch on 100 or 10 mil HP on 50, at least give those orbs a proper damage boost. Otherwise, it simply takes way too long to take the boss down. He literally becomes a fortress that kills the joy because it is a damage sponge which is not fun if you don't have the top DPSs and all boons from your party members and Eparch. 

Fix Eparch's AOEs, like seriously, this should be your top priority, animations are not synched with the damage wave and this tricks players to jump earlier or too late, aka taking huge amount of damage. The AOE wave damage should be lowered for normal modes by at least 50-60% and for the CM mode by at least 30-40%. Simply too much damage, healer cannot manage they are not close to the players and the survival skills players have who do not play healer give like 25% to 40% maximum, life back. So you can imagine how unfair and punishable it feels for players. 

Eparch should be a serious threat if players do not gather the globes on time, I am 100% behind that and totally agree with that, but fix the bugs. If we manage to break the CC bar for Eparch, as far as I understand, it strips him from his boons, currently this happens 80%/20%, 80% failure, 20% success. You can imagine that this is definitely a bug. 

Pre Eparch parts, lower down the requirements for releasing the energy beams, it should 5-6 sigils less for NM mode, for CM mode it should be 2-3 sigils down. Its annoying to do it and has no end. Furthermore, I would suggest here that if a second player joins the sigils break, it should go faster and add their progress to the main progress. Simple like that.

Ground AOE pools during the running phase. Lower their damage, or their stacks. I think they are a bit too much, maybe from 10% to 20%.  You can leave them as they are currently for the CM mode.

I think that is from me. But you should definitely run proper betas and tech bugs crushers before you release a content like Eparch. Since it is filled with bugs. Or do not release it until it is properly tested and completed. And played by you as developers. Do not just watch numbers or videos, actually sit and play your game, especially those who are responsible for levels difficulty and other things without adding to yourselves Legendries or end game gear. Because you base all the content on that when it shouldn't be so, since we do have new players that are utterly disheartened when they run into a content like Eparch. It doesn't help the game, it damages it. Teapot has mentioned multiple times on his videos and during his CM run and he is absolutely right. This is damaging the game and it feels like the devs didn't do any testing or gameplay with the new meta event or the new fractal, themselves. And that is disheartening for a veteran players like me, as well. 

In the future, when you are building end game content, make it realistic, stop trying to push it hard and powerful to be harder to be stronger, etc. It is not what players enjoy, especially when the reality is different. Players skills play huge role here, you are pushing out content here for very skilled, very precise players and those are like what? Around 10% of the whole player base? Be realistic, and match the bigger audience skills. Not the smaller audience and the smaller audience, if they enjoy that much such punishing, hardcore mechanics, should probably consider the bigger playerbase here just like the devs should. 

Edited June 8 by The Ghost.3087

[AllNightPlayer.1286]

Why does every new fractal reveal huge design flaws at release? The team(s) in charge seem to forget, what fractals (not raids, not strikes) were about. The only thing worse is, that ANet is unwilling to adjust it. It will take months to see a proper rework. Silent Surf with it’s either excessive JP in NM or the continuous spreading (you can’t even attack in the later phase due to the eye) in both modes is still bad.

Edited June 9 by AllNightPlayer.1286

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

I'm sure someone will get around to making a better guide than this, but here you go, help get the community started:

 

[Radiancee.6537]

I finished the CM + Title today with my guild mates. We figured some things out and were done in ~ 40-45min after we had a safe, clean and fast strategy  + optimal group comp (ofc with 1 gluttony reaper). While we progressed kinda fast, we are above average players. The thing is .. this CM is a total mess no matter what and ArenaNet should go back to the drawing board and avoid such encounter designs in the future. While we were successful, it wasn't fun at all to play.

The boss just spams mechanics all over the place and critical things can illogical overlap and ruin your whole run. I can't imagine how unfun it must be if you are a "normal fractal CM" enjoyer. We had such good CM fractals in the past .. what happened? Even many normal T4 groups skip this fractal in NM. They didn't even care about implementing a fun little CM for Cerus & Deimos .. what a wasted opportunity - so why keeping this NM encounter in the CM?

And holy kitten .. could ArenaNet finally stop releasing extremely bugged content? How about a PTS for actual playtesting?

Edited June 9 by Radiancee.6537

[ZenDrake.8316]

There are 2 relative easy fixes for the fight:

1. Nerf Envy. Boon corrupt is HORRIBLE to play with, and even with 1 stack he demolishes your boons.

2. Reduce the HP of the Avatars of Spite. Preventing them from reaching Eparch in the 33% phase is such a pain, even with strong power-based classes with AoE and mobility (like scrapper) or condi spam like with scourges. This ties in with point 1, as 1 stack of envy already ruins the fight.

The champion's HP pool is another story, the phases take longer than the rest of the fight and it's just a slog. But it's not necessarily fight-breaking.

The gluttony/lifesteal exploit is obviously unintended, so that's no solution and I am sure it will be patched. They overlooked lifesteal multiple times in the past already.

But even then - the fractal just isn't fun for me (and a lot of other people I know). Massive AoE spam with constant random movement to collect the orbs, only for him to insta-consume envy orbs if your fractal spawned with the wrong boss rotation. Or he decides to suck out your envy orb collector. Nice. This encounter broke me and I am starting to reconsider my interest in this game after 8k+ hours, a lot of which was spent in fractals, raids and strike CMs. If THIS is the encounter design they go for...

Edited June 9 by ZenDrake.8316

[Kunavi.2407]

Regardless whether or not people find this or Surf CM easy(Some people find TOP or DRS in FFXIV easy for them)- The design they're going for isn't a good fit for GW2 even if they polish it. One recurring worry I've been having is that ANet may be trying to FFXIVise their encounter design, for lack of a better term. If I wanted that, guess which MMO I'd still be playing...

[Moonfang.6087]

This boss mechanic are very bad honestly.

First about the orbs on the ground.

The boss sometimes consume too fast after he drop orbs. Even you can see he consume the orbs before the orbs drop to the ground when he throw the orbs to far away.

No way to stop he consume the orbs. If the orbs are green, we can just /gg. No reason to keep  fighting with him having six envy.

Second about random colors and not really random consume target.

Players have to remove envy and rage on their characters, especially envy, it's really deadly.

When the boss consume, he can takes the attunement from said player.

And we don't know what color next, who is the consume target first and next, although the boss prefers targeting the same person for consume but not always.

Therefore the most reasonable method is one assigned orange, another one collect all other colors.

Is the five colors mechanic just for making one player exhausted?

This buff mechanic usually design for making a easier fight, but in this case, we have to clear this buff for a easier fight, unless Anet think gluttony can kill the rift is not a bug.

Conversely, if Anet think gluttony can kill the rift is a bug, they should stop the boss takes the attunement when consume, and reduce the health of the champions from the rift.

The worst thing is,

You thought Anet designed all 5 color orbs for buff,

Actually, only orange orb is buff, others are debuff.

======================================================

Tried one collect all other colors today. Too busy lol, it's not a really good method.

I think another way is everyone knows which attunement he got and try to clear it, especially envy.

Or every time when you have envy, tell your teammate "I have 6 envy, let me take orbs next".

Edited June 11 by Moonfang.6087

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

13 hours ago, The Ghost.3087 said:

All I see is full usage of the bugs for the boss fight. From standing in the middle, to gluttony orbs taking down rifts in seconds, etc. 

By all means brutha, you can go right on ahead and make us a no-bug completion guide as to enlighten us on how practical & realistic it is to do.

Would love to see it.

Thanks in advance.

Edited June 9 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Janitsu.6284]

11 hours ago, The Ghost.3087 said:

All I see is full usage of the bugs for the boss fight. From standing in the middle, to gluttony orbs taking down rifts in seconds, etc. 

Oh they flew the mother plane into the world SLAYed center mama 🥵😜

[rotten.9753]

12 hours ago, ZenDrake.8316 said:

The champion's HP pool is another story, the phases take longer than the rest of the fight and it's just a slog. But it's not necessarily fight-breaking.

Champs have more than 6mln hp each, with Eparch's 32.5 mln hp it's around 65 mln hp. Just a reminder, but ToF LCM has 130 mln hp for 10 man squad. 2 champs from the first split have more hp than Arkk.

[Nimris.3781]

1 hour ago, rotten.9753 said:

Champs have more than 6mln hp each, with Eparch's 32.5 mln hp it's around 65 mln hp. Just a reminder, but ToF LCM has 130 mln hp for 10 man squad. 2 champs from the first split have more hp than Arkk.

cm AI is 2x 15m and cm Kanaxai in silent surf has currently about 34m which is fine. also both fights dont have frequent boon corrupt that lowers overal dps as well

i dont know what they were thinking when giving us fight with double dmg required that also has a lot more annoying mechanics and boon corrupt on a top of it...