How to improve at fractals?

[Cioud.6481]

Hello OP and everyone.
This discussion is really interesting. I'd like to share some thoughts since I remember a time where I was new to fractals and daunted by the prospect of simply doing them. In my case, once I started running fractals things fell into place over a relatively short span of a few days. That was some time between Path of Fire and Icebrood. I'm now a returning player who has done and learnt, in that order, all the fractal content playing guardian.

OP may be interested in the details of my relationship with the objective fractal "progression" enforced by the game.

1. The game requires agony resistance to run higher tiered fractals. AR drops as a reward from fractal dungeons in the end chest, as well as from using fractal encryption keys to open said fractal encryptions. AR is also sold on the trading post. Only 17 AR is required to meet the resistance threshold for fractal 25, but 61 AR is required for fractal 50, up to 150 for the final fractal 100. Therefore, one way to progress fractals is to focus on farming agony. I did the dailies for tier 2 for a handful of days before buying a few stacks of +1 AR from the trading post with spare money to reach 150 AR.
2. Then I still had to increase my Personal Fractal Level, which rises by 1 for every completed fractal at or above that level. The Personal Fractal Level decides whether you can join LFG parties in the next tier. Therefore, doing every fractal of a tier at least once, or running the higher fractals of a tier for dailies is a natural part of fractal progression (and as OP observed, 20+ fractals in tier 1 are harder to find groups for). It also decides if your group can actually host the required fractal. There was a memorable occasion when the daily for tier 3 was fractal 75, but our group had a maximum Personal Fractal Level of ~60, so we ended up running a whole bunch.

I feel like most established players as well as others offering suggestions in this thread have ignored the existence of these two original progression systems, most likely because you only need to do these once-per-lifetime. It's quite fun to look at someone else's AR or Personal Fractal Level to roughly gauge if they are an even newer player, someone at about the same level, or a regular T4 runner popping in to help. The progression system is also the anchor of the fractal rewards system, because the reason why people would like to run tier 4 fractals and challenge modes instead of staying at tier 1-3 forever is that those runs drop much more loot.

That's not to say everyone else's opinions on dps, team compositions and required builds is bollocks. These ideas came about precisely because people want to continue improving after basic progression. New players have it tough because gear is limited. Ascended equipment decides how much AR you have, and you need to obtain extra exotic equipment, preferably stat-selectable ones. I got mine from Warlord's boxes spending time in WvW, and from Heart of Thorns content giving out bladed armor, especially the Verdant Brink meta. Therefore the rush to argue over stats for new players.

It's great to see OP has consciously decided to settle on celestials for now. In line with everyone else's suggestions and arguments for how OP should improve their build and what they should actually settle on, I would actually recommend as a starting point the low intensity build guides at accessibilitywars or hardstuck.

Let me give DPS numbers an actual introduction. The idea of DPS is thrown about so often because it's an objective measurement, but what is underrated is the fact that new players like we used to be have to spend time on and explore the concept by finding and hitting the benchmark golem. I think it's a good line of thought to try to understand what Phyb.6704 means by a full dps of 40-50k, or what Cyninja.2954 is referring to when speaking of 5k dps groups, just in case you want something concrete to go on to. Incidentally, I did not, until recently, realize that there was a massive variance in player dps independent of skill and survivability which Cyninja pointed out so succinctly even in t4s and non-UFE challenge modes.

Finally, I'd like to point out that there are some differences in social atmosphere between the NA and EU fractal LFGs, having played at first and mostly in NA, and now in EU. Which I would say means players posting from NA fixate on different things from players in EU.
Cheers, and good luck to the OP.

Edited 5 hours ago by Cioud.6481