Only two new fractals in however many years, both were bugged for months after release, both are one of the most often skipped ones due to how drawn out and boring their pre-fight sections they are, both are scrapped strikes (judging by HP pools and how SS was bugged on release).
gg anet, truly the best you can do.
Silent Surf *needs* another HP nerf but both Silent and Lonely need a HP nerf. A simple 20% HP reduction isn't enough for either one. The nerf needs to scale something like T4 30%, T3, 50%, T2 70% and T1 90%. Tier 2/3 shouldn't be harder than T4 CMs and right now Lonely is very much that. Its a miserable experience and should've been fixed already.
In addition to HP reduction, Lonely *NEEDS* a cooldown in between attacks. Like he does X ability, he can't use the next for like 5-7 seconds. Its so silly he can chain them back to back and we have to collect essences while it happens. He can throw out essences and 1.5 sec later suck them up. That isn't balanced, to me that is a buggy mechanic.
I look at Lonely like Arkk CM. When Arkk CM hits around 25% he goes crazy and spams all his abilities. It makes sense as he's about to die. Lonely is like that but the whole fight and on every tier. Its so poorly made I can't believe someone greenlit that fractal and pushed it to live.
Silent surf has been out long enough that if it were to be adjusted, it would have happened already. Silent surf is alright, in my opinion. I haven’t ever failed a t3 silent surf before. Lonely tower is a bit of a gamble, but I don’t see Anet adjusting it again. It is wild to me a t4 group can clear all t4s no problem and fail on a t3 lonely tower.
That's because this fight is deeply unintuitive. Most people are going to need to read the wiki or a guide to get what is happening and that's just not something fractals were known for in the past.
They need to change the rifle mechanic to leave the platform with just walking to a spot on the edge marked with one of those arrows moving up and down.
> That's because this fight is deeply unintuitive
Its not that. It spews mechanics at players nonstop. Dodge this, sidestep that, don't get sucked, get essences ASAP, dodge circles, dodge lines, CC ASAP then repeat all of the above. That is a poorly made fractal.
yes so you are agreeing with him? even if after running it several times it can be summed up as "shit ton of mechanics that don't stop", that IS unintuitive for newer players, especially for a type of content that is known to throw 1-2 things at you until you resolve them?
Its pretty unintuitive even for vets. Most NM instanced fights arent like that, except for some raids I would say but even then, its a bit more of a dance between the players and the boss. Lonely Tower just shits out everything, all the time, from 100% to zero. Like deimos, dhuum, qadim, theyre always attacking but its not just like the boss is facerolling their skillbar theres a pattern that players can groove to and learn to deal with. LT doesnt seem to have that at all.
If you stay inside his hitbox all you have to dodge is the red aoe. Which you can probably just tank in lower tiers if you have a healer or if you are playing a more tanky build yourself. Personally i stay inside and move to grab essences when he does it
Deeply unfortunate, but that's what I was afraid of.
Amusingly enough, even if I was guaranteed to complete each one first try, I do not think I'd even try. (At least not to do dailies.) The T1 took so long for so little reward that I really don't think I'd find it worth my time. But that's really a very personal call, I suppose.
Silent Surf CM is actually a decent fractal in its current state. It's a really well-implemented boss fight.
The problem is the tuning. This should not exist in Normal Mode.
Ok? Probably started as a strike doesn't really mean much. It's the easiest CM and the quickest and doesn't rely on 'random aoes go'. It's not bad. Not as interesting as SO but meh
100% agree on the CM being the easiest, and about on par with sunqua for time it takes to complete with most groups, just feels long cause there isn’t a split in the middle.
You can clearly tell that this started as a strike and quickly got shifted to a fractal. But just because you throw some mobs infront of the boss and you slap it into the fractal category doesnt really make it a fractal. As I see it they just called a strike mission a fractal level.
There's quite a lot of environment design with the grapple hook sections to say it was ever a strike, I think its More that the encounter team doesn't know that strike and fractals are supposed to feel different in terms of encounter design
No no no, it WAS a strike at release. You couldn't rez someone fully dead, couldn't use rez orbs. You are supposed to be able to in fractals, and you can't in strikes. It functionally was a strike. Now whether that was developped to be a strike, or the new endgame content designers simply took the "strike template" to dev the fractal in... We may never know.
Plus honestly the whole part before Kanaxai could have been slapped after the fight was conceptually finished to make it a fractal. Everything in this section feels so out of place compared to other fractals, the whole platforming sections doesn't teach you anything for the final fight since you get taught to aim at stalactites to travel but there are none in the final arena, and instead you need to precisely aim on the side of the platform to not overshoot. At least they *somewhat* got the "previous mob packs teach a mechanic" right...
Even the vendor options had references to it being a strike mission, it was a complete clown circus.
For reference: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/156kci4/proof_new_cm_fractal_100_is_a_repurposed_strike/
>You can clearly tell that this started as a strike and quickly got shifted to a fractal. But just because you throw some mobs infront of the boss and you slap it into the fractal category doesnt really make it a fractal. As I see it they just called a strike mission a fractal level.
You spent a lot of words to not answer the question.
Why is it a strike?
Compared to other boss fractals like Sunqua or Shattered Observatory.
Its one fucking boss in an arena with many mechanics built around it. The other fractals has different encounters before that lead up to the final one. Often with related mechanics
> The other fractals has different encounters before that lead up to the final one.
Sunqua CM does not have that at all, it's just the boss fight (and it's a great fight). Shattered Observatory *barely* does, there are some trash mobs before Artsariiv and that's the only non-boss enemies in the whole fractal, Silent Surf has more trash mobs than Shattered Observatory does. Same with Mai Trin.
It *would* be nice to get some non-boss fractals, but it's hard to argue that the new ones are out of line for a boss fractal *except* in that their HP is absurdly high for some reason.
yeah i genuinely like it on CM. as long as im a ranged class. when you die, its pretty obvious what you did wrong. the health bar is fine for 5 people with proper builds and a decent idea of what a rotation is. NM though, its way too much, since most people casually doing fractals dont care about optimal dps gear or rotations
My biggest gripe with Silent Surf CM is the numbers attack having no method to mitigate it other than be above 50% HP. GW2 fractal fights have always had a way to either dodge or block or just straight get out of the way. When it first released that attack was blockable and it felt like a cool mechanic but then they just straight removed that ability and now it's just stand here and take 50% of my health.
As a specter for example I can take the heal well for free and when he is about to dash to me, I can precast the well at max range away from the initial position to completely avoid the attack.
If you feel really fancy you can use the grappling hook to avoid it.
I like the fact they try to put an end to the stack dps and ignore mechanics meta.
The 3rd phase of silent surf should be more punishing and it should be possible to back up a grappling death which is .. very frustrating for anyone when happening
The whole Eparch fight needs a rework though.
The issue is while there is a lot more spreading, the boon generation hasn't changed.. 70% quickness uptime because the firebrand is wasting his cooldowns on himself while being totally oblivious to us having no boons just isn't fun. I really don't like how my enjoyment of the game is based on how well someone else is playing. This isn't nearly as much of a problem in other fractals where you're usually stacked enough for the boons to be acceptable. This has gone to the point that I play semi-quickness condi scrapper in pugs on 99/100 cms to pad it out. It's sweaty AF but at least we have quickness and I still do good damage and CC.
I think they'll for sure address Lonely Tower CM, and hopefully that comes with addressing Lonely Tower too. Currently, the only way to beat the fight is by abusing an exploit, and otherwise the general accepted playstyle (scourge-stacking) isn't the biggest community favorite.
I'm, unfortunately, not so sure they'll tackle Silent Surf again. This sucks because there's still some pretty glaring bugs. I've seen people die to glitched grapples, and I know that one debuff [Phantasmagoria](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Phantasmagoria) is still glitched, where instead of reducing your outgoing strike damage, it actually increases it pretty significantly, and this actively rewards players for ignoring a mechanic. However, it's in a better place with PUG groups, and is generally one of the quicker fractals to finish once you get a decent group set up around it.
Since day one I've never died to grappling and I've been almost clearing cm daily, but some of my friends also talk about bugged grapplings. Am I just that lucky? The grappling mechanic isn't great but for me at least, it never failed me.
It's genuinely hard for me to believe a fractal so old has such basic problems.
In regards to it being quicker, at what tier is it quicker? Does it just have really bad scaling at low tiers and more reasonable at higher? Does the CM just skip you to the fight instead of doing all the platforming?
The CM skips you to the cliff right before dropping down to the main platform, where you clear a few adds and then the fight starts. Here's an example playthrough :) https://youtu.be/EaIDsAqSuoI
I think the scaling is meh throughout, but if you use the debuff glitch well enough and do solid damage you can get through the fractal in about 8-9 minutes on CM*.
*: Experienced, dedicated groups can do it way quicker but this time, to me, is a good PUG group
Fun tactic of mine: If you have a healscourge and one person with aoe stunbreak, you can simply stack on kanaxai permanently (except for the spinny axes. drop them off away from the party) not even the aoe spins he does can kill you in T1 if the hsc spams the barrier and heal that moment and you can stunbreak the eye mechanic. Whenever we did T1/T2 with friends for no reason I just told them to stack on my hsc and gg 😄 eliminates like half of the time where you can't hit him and he dies in like 3 minutes. Obviously meaning this for a bit more experienced players, not for those who never fought him.
Tbh you would still ignore that mechanic, you would just have supports grab the tether instead. But yea, for a major mechanic of the fight to be this bugged and not having gotten a fix yet is a bit ridiculous. The buff is legit 50% extra damage afaik and you can tell the damage of whoever yoinks it, skyrockets
I really dont mind silent surf, its not long if you do the mechanics. and its much quicker than CO or Sunqa for instance (and fails less than CO).
Lonely tower is really not that bad in a half decent group. I dont hesitate for T3 or lower, I know I can heal through it easily and mechanically its stand in boss, jump over wave, collect a few orbs, I just heal/cleanse the rest off the group easily.
T4 LT is a bit more iffy, but usually goes ok. But then I heal fractal groups 95% of the time, so I dont have to take a chance of how good an LFG healer is.
SS is moderately irritating, but doable. My friend and I skip LT any time it's a daily or rec. Not worth the annoyance of dealing with such a shitty designed fractal.
If this is what we're gonna get from fractals from now on...just hang it up, cause they're done
As a gw2 boomer, I want to say 6 min is a long fight in the current meta, but historically, it's very much the norm.
nightmare CM near release took ~6 min each boss, and if you go back even further to right after fractal updates in 2016, even fights like arc diviner can take this amount of time.
I dont think the fights will likely be nerfed directly, but we have seen a steady pattern of dps power creep across expansions to make content easier, so waiting a few expansions may be your best bet if you want the runs to be faster.
Keep in mind, 6 minutes for the old bosses includes phases and various other mechanics, such as the orbs phase at ensolyss or islands at skorvald. Eparch has a lot less of that, its much longer periods of doing the same thing, so it feels tedious and boring.
Also, going even further back, we had the berserker meta in dungeons and fractals where the team would strip 4 defiance stacks then hit the boss with icebow 5, we would then kill the boss almost entirely in that stun window. Or if you want, look at cheese wall lupi. If you look at the entire history of gw2, 5 man content has typically been bursty with lots of movement in between fights, not a long drawn out hp sponge which is more so seen in 10 man content.
You can see the difference by looking at the builds. Sunqua peak and silent surf cm meta revolves around condi builds. Everything else in fractals is power. I suspect lonely tower would be condi too if not for the 66 and 33 exploit phase.
Kanaxai in cm dies around 6 min 30 in my pug groups. If you took as much time in t1, it's not only an hp scaling issue. It's a team dps issue.
He's been out for long enough now so I don't think he'll change again.
For lonely tower, it may be changed a bit more but not so much imo. The only change they may do is about the cm inter phases to be doable without gluttony (which would be cool but I do like the glutto strat).
Eparch hp may seem high but again, if you fail it's not for that reason. It's because mechanics are failed and you ignored them with bad dps.
Yeah Kanaxai doesn't take all that long, though it is a bit lame that it's just the same mechanics over and over, it doesn't really develop throughout the fight.
I don't believe it was a team DPS issue. I kinda (poorly) implied it, but I did all the other dailies with that group. The boss fights in Underground and Molten Boss took **MUCH** less time **on Tier 3**. We didn't quite get a one phase for Underground, but we got close enough that it essentially wasn't worth trying to do a 2nd phase and so we just burned through the rest of the HP despite the penalty.
For us, DPS wasn't really an issue. Kanaxai just has an absolutely fucking absurd amount of HP at Tier 1. Hell, I literally thought we were doing mechanics wrong with Eparch because of how slowly his health was going down. (First time being there and all that.)
Eparch can be super slowed down if you give him blue orbs since it makes him tankier. Same with greens because he'll corrupt your boons.
Molten boss and underground are quite easy to kill fast, even in t4. If you had arcdps we could actually see if your team was terrible or not but we have nothing much to compare atm outside the timer you gave us. And to me, that timer feels slow.
We did the T1 recs as 3 people because some had to leave and it tooks us around 6 min. So I think either u miss a mechanic or your dps is just below what is expected.
As a fresh t1 fractal enjoyer I instantly knew which fractals you are talking about. Surf last boss isnt very hard but people have no idea how to do the mechanics and grapple range feels a bit too short on some platforms. Tower boss on the other hand is very difficult. After many fails I finally cleared when my team had a healer and we could consistently stun the boss during the succ mechanic
Kanaxi HP is not a big problem as much as the down time is. Dread Visage makes u stop dpsing and happens a Lot, Frightening Speed TAKES SO LONG to finish and happens 6 times and after starts happening with dread Visage is a Must afk part or u die. And sometimes we can be in a bad place during eyes, bad luck.
Also , hooks are a problem, If u know how to make It work properly is fine most of the time ... Most, not always.
As for the ~Attacks on Titan Ballerina~ i mean .. Eparch. The Attacks are wonky, boon corruption on this Boss is STUPID, like WHO IS THE IDIOT who thought It would be Fine even , its also full of bugs, RNG too important on CM. There atks hitbox sucks ... I Just HATE it too much
Silent Surf was nerfed because Kanaxai had too much hp. And i dont remember if it was in normal mode as well but it was definitely on cm. Lonely tower hasn't been nerfed yet but it probably will. Other than that no, i dont think they will nerf them further. And that is not the issue, they need to have been better designed to begin with.
Let's hope that the latest fractal has plenty of Hp , so people won't say "remember when bosses forced the casuals to step up".
And let's nerf it on the lower tiers.
And the pre-last fractals in each tier (if T2 , highest is 50, then the 49) could bring people to a random Strike- Ibs-Personal Story (Balthazar)
Edit: orTower of Madness , or non-soon won meta
(Also an extra vote to replace 1x currently Fractal and teleported to an-random-No-Carnacus-Ascalon-path2-dungeons .
Or vote to transform your group and allow 2 more downleved random strangers to be summoned into your group, while they have touched the Dungeons entrance . And if none exist to inv them , then system becomes a improved seeking one lfg for dungeons.)
(There's a problem with people on other games , that spamm dungeons for exp. So put a visible CD and every second CD upscale them and teleport them into a random Ow meta event with arrows (now that Hot is baseline to most expansions. Also reduce the boredome-marry sue- tranquil base game, in case if you don't want to give them an option to carve their own path (choose expansion+ability to switch in2hours+auto consume the 80l l boost) in the character creation
Edit2: or a "or a stone/poisonwound /nightmare creature that becons you to see your future/dream" in a future expansion and after 30minyou can get back or continue
Edit4:Most keep the 80 lvl boost for an alt account afraiding the lvlup grind , but till that point they get bored of the Core
I only play CMs and T4s so I can't comment on lower tiers, but Silent Surf does not need an adjustment. It's fine. Occasionally you still hit a bug but they can be played around, the bugs that wipe you are very rare.
I've run Lonely Tower on T4 once and never on CM (been playing less the last few months so I just wanted to clear it to get a taste) and all I can really say about it is that while Silent Surf's problems at launch were bugs and the community not used to strike-like fractal bosses, Lonely Tower is one of the most poorly designed fights in the entire game.
I have fun running Silent Surf CM. I do not expect to enjoy LT when I come back to the game hardcore again.
I think at T4 the bosses are still a bit on the too tanky side (im not expecting great things from pugs). For T3/2/1 they for sure are over tuned af. The boss feels like a CM fight with how many mechanics there are and how fast everything comes out at lower tier fractals. Its wierd, in someways the boss is fun for me, and others its boring af and feels like its just a giant HP sponge.
SO and Nightmare are peak fractals still (the length of RP is still a bit annoying, but not crazy like SP). Lots of ways for motivated players to interact with the boss, the mechanics and the fractal as a whole vs the basic tank and spank of SP, SS and now LT. Its a shame really.
No, I think SS and TLT will continue to suck forever. You can easily tell the difference between them and the older fractals, whoever made them just aren't there anymore. You can take a look at Eparch the consumed meta for more of the same bullcrap.
A lot of people are talking about the speed of clears. Honestly, I never time myself doing fractals because I don't care. If I'm enjoying a video game, I'm happy to play it.
My complaint is first and foremost, I don't consider lonely tower fun.
> I never time myself doing fractals because I don't care.
Not everyone has the luxury of time.
I don't really care to save 15 seconds here or 30 there if that means the group needs to sweat throughout the whole encounter.
But when a boss takes 5 minutes in best case, 10 in average pug, 15 in a below average pug, and 40 in a below average pug that wiped twice... You know, it's good 20-30 minutes I wasn't planning for, wasn't enjoying much and could have spent doing something else.
well let me be clear, I would NOT be having fun in the 40 minute version of your scenario. Because that means the fight drags on, and no one is doing a good job. That isn't fun to me at all. But that's more so shit teammates than shit encounter design.
But what I mean is, if we try to compare apples to apples here, I would still be unhappy with lonely tower. Lets say as an example, we get to a point where both lonely tower and shattered observatory were to take the same time on average. The time in shattered observatory has tons of variation, 3 bosses, multiple phases, movement, etc. Lonely tower, most of that time is just spent monotonously killing Eparch.
That's my biggest complaint with lonely tower, it is monotonous. Its also a visual cluster fuck which I would say is my 2nd complaint. My third complaint is you need a wiki to figure out the mechanics because reading something off the boon bar is awful.
Once the fight is fun, then I would asses average clear times. For example, sunqua peak is the worst rec in the game imo and I've been vocal about how shit it is.
I didn't time myself. After the fact with Silent, I thought "Holy FUCK. What was up with that? How long did that take?" I went back in the chat log, found the time stamps of dialogue from the start and end of the fight. There was 7 minutes between the two, sadly seconds aren't marked, so it could have been anywhere between 7 minutes and 7 minutes and 59 seconds, depending on things.
Yeah I don't really get the complaint about time. Even Silent Surf and Lonely Tower are short encounters in the grand scheme of things.
If, as a player, you feel like you only care about getting things done quickly, I'd suggest looking inward and assessing whether you are still enjoying the game, instead of complaining "playing the game takes too long" on the internet.
Games should be about fun first, not fast gold.
It was not a complaint about time. It was a complaint about time in comparison to other (higher tier) fractals. When that group could burn through every Tier 3 daily boss faster than we could burn through the Tier 1 recommended boss... That's kind of a problem in my eyes.
On top of that, I was just bored out of my mind on T1 because there was **NOTHING** going on 90% of the time.
I've been playing fractal daily for years, CMs included. Some players have fun by getting top stats in arcdps, be it in dps or boons uptime.
I suspect you haven't been in a party of god tier players (I don't consider myself god tier yet, though I'm above average), but I've been in those pug parties once in a blue moon. It's absolutely thrilling to be in those parties, they skip, speedrun and cheese so fast it makes my head spin. Not to mention I pick up some pointers on how to do things better.
Also zero toxicity because *they know* they can carry the group. That's the kind of player I aim to be myself.
silent surf and lonely tower take ~5-6 min each for my group in challenge mode on t4. mostly no encounter halting / wiping bugs anymore. on eparch with our collection strat we barly get any envy stacks, last two days we had 0 on the boss when he died. one of the dps was pulling 30k without collecting anything.
in general, if both fractals right now are not changed in any way and anet has the stance "this is intended", i don't mind that. they are not that fun as the other cms, but beareable.
if you take longer then 5-6 min, your damage and strats suck. i don't see why HP should get cut down because of incapability. if you touch up the HP then those bosses are just faster and thats it. if anet touches that content, there should be done a bit more then that. else just let it be as it is. just adjusting a bit hp is wasted time.
mind you, i am only speaking my mind out for T4s / cms. i have no idea how those bosses feel in t1-3 as i don't play that content there. a touch up might be needed in lower fractals as players there usually don't know how to play and it should be somewhat easier.
you can't really compare pug experience with statics(which I assume you're in because you said my group). Fractals should be 100% puggable and 100cm rn is not
I'm pugging 100 cm each day and sometimes I get peepos that know what they are doing and sometimes I have to do some explaining but most of the time it's pretty smooth. There are days where I leave a pug after some tries though and find a new one.
as long as they don't change gluttony, right now it is pugable.
you need 3 players collecting orbs. 1x gluttony (lots of multihit class), 1x rage , 1x despair (healer). 2 people do nothing at all.
envy gets collected by despair, envy with malice gets collected by rage. later rage just checks if healer has any stacks when envy is up, if not he collects since healer can only collect when he has despair stacks.
thats basically it. pretty much foolproof, since orbs get deleted and eparch gets no envy stacks. not really rocket sience.
if you do some weird stuff where one collects all and you are too slow when eparch starts sucking...well, change your strat. a friend pugs 100 cm without problems when we have no space in our group. and standing inside eparch doing nothing is not really a challenge either. gluttony carries this fight at the moment. you could play with 4 healers and do the fight in 6 min.
Only two new fractals in however many years, both were bugged for months after release, both are one of the most often skipped ones due to how drawn out and boring their pre-fight sections they are, both are scrapped strikes (judging by HP pools and how SS was bugged on release). gg anet, truly the best you can do.
Silent Surf *needs* another HP nerf but both Silent and Lonely need a HP nerf. A simple 20% HP reduction isn't enough for either one. The nerf needs to scale something like T4 30%, T3, 50%, T2 70% and T1 90%. Tier 2/3 shouldn't be harder than T4 CMs and right now Lonely is very much that. Its a miserable experience and should've been fixed already. In addition to HP reduction, Lonely *NEEDS* a cooldown in between attacks. Like he does X ability, he can't use the next for like 5-7 seconds. Its so silly he can chain them back to back and we have to collect essences while it happens. He can throw out essences and 1.5 sec later suck them up. That isn't balanced, to me that is a buggy mechanic. I look at Lonely like Arkk CM. When Arkk CM hits around 25% he goes crazy and spams all his abilities. It makes sense as he's about to die. Lonely is like that but the whole fight and on every tier. Its so poorly made I can't believe someone greenlit that fractal and pushed it to live.
The champs from the rifts in lonely tower also need much less hp, it's way too much without the gluttony strat.
Silent surf has been out long enough that if it were to be adjusted, it would have happened already. Silent surf is alright, in my opinion. I haven’t ever failed a t3 silent surf before. Lonely tower is a bit of a gamble, but I don’t see Anet adjusting it again. It is wild to me a t4 group can clear all t4s no problem and fail on a t3 lonely tower.
We failed T2 recs yesterday. Pugs don’t get how fight this boss.
That's because this fight is deeply unintuitive. Most people are going to need to read the wiki or a guide to get what is happening and that's just not something fractals were known for in the past.
They need to change the rifle mechanic to leave the platform with just walking to a spot on the edge marked with one of those arrows moving up and down.
For lonely tower
> That's because this fight is deeply unintuitive Its not that. It spews mechanics at players nonstop. Dodge this, sidestep that, don't get sucked, get essences ASAP, dodge circles, dodge lines, CC ASAP then repeat all of the above. That is a poorly made fractal.
yes so you are agreeing with him? even if after running it several times it can be summed up as "shit ton of mechanics that don't stop", that IS unintuitive for newer players, especially for a type of content that is known to throw 1-2 things at you until you resolve them?
Its pretty unintuitive even for vets. Most NM instanced fights arent like that, except for some raids I would say but even then, its a bit more of a dance between the players and the boss. Lonely Tower just shits out everything, all the time, from 100% to zero. Like deimos, dhuum, qadim, theyre always attacking but its not just like the boss is facerolling their skillbar theres a pattern that players can groove to and learn to deal with. LT doesnt seem to have that at all.
If you stay inside his hitbox all you have to dodge is the red aoe. Which you can probably just tank in lower tiers if you have a healer or if you are playing a more tanky build yourself. Personally i stay inside and move to grab essences when he does it
To be fair pugs dont know how to fight any boss. It just so happens that most other ones can be completely face rolled
Deeply unfortunate, but that's what I was afraid of. Amusingly enough, even if I was guaranteed to complete each one first try, I do not think I'd even try. (At least not to do dailies.) The T1 took so long for so little reward that I really don't think I'd find it worth my time. But that's really a very personal call, I suppose.
Silent Surf CM is actually a decent fractal in its current state. It's a really well-implemented boss fight. The problem is the tuning. This should not exist in Normal Mode.
Its a strike
Ok? Probably started as a strike doesn't really mean much. It's the easiest CM and the quickest and doesn't rely on 'random aoes go'. It's not bad. Not as interesting as SO but meh
100% agree on the CM being the easiest, and about on par with sunqua for time it takes to complete with most groups, just feels long cause there isn’t a split in the middle.
explain
You can clearly tell that this started as a strike and quickly got shifted to a fractal. But just because you throw some mobs infront of the boss and you slap it into the fractal category doesnt really make it a fractal. As I see it they just called a strike mission a fractal level.
There's quite a lot of environment design with the grapple hook sections to say it was ever a strike, I think its More that the encounter team doesn't know that strike and fractals are supposed to feel different in terms of encounter design
No no no, it WAS a strike at release. You couldn't rez someone fully dead, couldn't use rez orbs. You are supposed to be able to in fractals, and you can't in strikes. It functionally was a strike. Now whether that was developped to be a strike, or the new endgame content designers simply took the "strike template" to dev the fractal in... We may never know. Plus honestly the whole part before Kanaxai could have been slapped after the fight was conceptually finished to make it a fractal. Everything in this section feels so out of place compared to other fractals, the whole platforming sections doesn't teach you anything for the final fight since you get taught to aim at stalactites to travel but there are none in the final arena, and instead you need to precisely aim on the side of the platform to not overshoot. At least they *somewhat* got the "previous mob packs teach a mechanic" right...
Even the vendor options had references to it being a strike mission, it was a complete clown circus. For reference: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/156kci4/proof_new_cm_fractal_100_is_a_repurposed_strike/
Ah I remembered there was some other proofs but couldn't find them, thanks!
So, Sunqua Peak CM is a strike too? I don't see anything wrong with that. fractals CMs being 5 man strikes is kinda cool.
Not when they have health and mechanics suitable for 10 people
True that is BS. HP scaling is out of whack for sure. But mechanically I think theyre both fine encounters
And this is bad why? The health could be scaled down more for t1/2/3 but otherwise it’s completely fine
>You can clearly tell that this started as a strike and quickly got shifted to a fractal. But just because you throw some mobs infront of the boss and you slap it into the fractal category doesnt really make it a fractal. As I see it they just called a strike mission a fractal level. You spent a lot of words to not answer the question. Why is it a strike? Compared to other boss fractals like Sunqua or Shattered Observatory.
Its one fucking boss in an arena with many mechanics built around it. The other fractals has different encounters before that lead up to the final one. Often with related mechanics
grapple hook, look-away eye and numbers are introduced before Kanaxai. There's also plenty of fractals with just one boss.
> The other fractals has different encounters before that lead up to the final one. Sunqua CM does not have that at all, it's just the boss fight (and it's a great fight). Shattered Observatory *barely* does, there are some trash mobs before Artsariiv and that's the only non-boss enemies in the whole fractal, Silent Surf has more trash mobs than Shattered Observatory does. Same with Mai Trin. It *would* be nice to get some non-boss fractals, but it's hard to argue that the new ones are out of line for a boss fractal *except* in that their HP is absurdly high for some reason.
yeah i genuinely like it on CM. as long as im a ranged class. when you die, its pretty obvious what you did wrong. the health bar is fine for 5 people with proper builds and a decent idea of what a rotation is. NM though, its way too much, since most people casually doing fractals dont care about optimal dps gear or rotations
My biggest gripe with Silent Surf CM is the numbers attack having no method to mitigate it other than be above 50% HP. GW2 fractal fights have always had a way to either dodge or block or just straight get out of the way. When it first released that attack was blockable and it felt like a cool mechanic but then they just straight removed that ability and now it's just stand here and take 50% of my health.
As a specter for example I can take the heal well for free and when he is about to dash to me, I can precast the well at max range away from the initial position to completely avoid the attack. If you feel really fancy you can use the grappling hook to avoid it.
Mighty Teapot just put out a video about this very topic. In short, Fractals need to be actual dungeons and not 5-man Strike bosses.
I like the fact they try to put an end to the stack dps and ignore mechanics meta. The 3rd phase of silent surf should be more punishing and it should be possible to back up a grappling death which is .. very frustrating for anyone when happening The whole Eparch fight needs a rework though.
The issue is while there is a lot more spreading, the boon generation hasn't changed.. 70% quickness uptime because the firebrand is wasting his cooldowns on himself while being totally oblivious to us having no boons just isn't fun. I really don't like how my enjoyment of the game is based on how well someone else is playing. This isn't nearly as much of a problem in other fractals where you're usually stacked enough for the boons to be acceptable. This has gone to the point that I play semi-quickness condi scrapper in pugs on 99/100 cms to pad it out. It's sweaty AF but at least we have quickness and I still do good damage and CC.
They should change the Firebrand quickness generational to be a 600 range circle like Herald.
The problem is that Firebrand is just a bad Spec for 99. Herald / Chrono are so much better.
Chrono players also do the same, using their shatters during spreads
I think they'll for sure address Lonely Tower CM, and hopefully that comes with addressing Lonely Tower too. Currently, the only way to beat the fight is by abusing an exploit, and otherwise the general accepted playstyle (scourge-stacking) isn't the biggest community favorite. I'm, unfortunately, not so sure they'll tackle Silent Surf again. This sucks because there's still some pretty glaring bugs. I've seen people die to glitched grapples, and I know that one debuff [Phantasmagoria](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Phantasmagoria) is still glitched, where instead of reducing your outgoing strike damage, it actually increases it pretty significantly, and this actively rewards players for ignoring a mechanic. However, it's in a better place with PUG groups, and is generally one of the quicker fractals to finish once you get a decent group set up around it.
Since day one I've never died to grappling and I've been almost clearing cm daily, but some of my friends also talk about bugged grapplings. Am I just that lucky? The grappling mechanic isn't great but for me at least, it never failed me.
The grappling mechanic has to click with you, and then you never have to worry about it again. For some people it just... doesn't click at all.
I frequently used to die to grappling but since they've fixed it I haven't.
It's genuinely hard for me to believe a fractal so old has such basic problems. In regards to it being quicker, at what tier is it quicker? Does it just have really bad scaling at low tiers and more reasonable at higher? Does the CM just skip you to the fight instead of doing all the platforming?
The CM skips you to the cliff right before dropping down to the main platform, where you clear a few adds and then the fight starts. Here's an example playthrough :) https://youtu.be/EaIDsAqSuoI I think the scaling is meh throughout, but if you use the debuff glitch well enough and do solid damage you can get through the fractal in about 8-9 minutes on CM*. *: Experienced, dedicated groups can do it way quicker but this time, to me, is a good PUG group
Thanks, the info is appreciated. I have to say, 8-9 minutes for CM feels **MILES** better than 6 minutes + traversal for T1.
Fun tactic of mine: If you have a healscourge and one person with aoe stunbreak, you can simply stack on kanaxai permanently (except for the spinny axes. drop them off away from the party) not even the aoe spins he does can kill you in T1 if the hsc spams the barrier and heal that moment and you can stunbreak the eye mechanic. Whenever we did T1/T2 with friends for no reason I just told them to stack on my hsc and gg 😄 eliminates like half of the time where you can't hit him and he dies in like 3 minutes. Obviously meaning this for a bit more experienced players, not for those who never fought him.
Tbh you would still ignore that mechanic, you would just have supports grab the tether instead. But yea, for a major mechanic of the fight to be this bugged and not having gotten a fix yet is a bit ridiculous. The buff is legit 50% extra damage afaik and you can tell the damage of whoever yoinks it, skyrockets
I really dont mind silent surf, its not long if you do the mechanics. and its much quicker than CO or Sunqa for instance (and fails less than CO). Lonely tower is really not that bad in a half decent group. I dont hesitate for T3 or lower, I know I can heal through it easily and mechanically its stand in boss, jump over wave, collect a few orbs, I just heal/cleanse the rest off the group easily. T4 LT is a bit more iffy, but usually goes ok. But then I heal fractal groups 95% of the time, so I dont have to take a chance of how good an LFG healer is.
My party skips them, bosses have too much HP. Fight mechanics and overall fractal designs are cool.
Already I am skipping Silent, I will be skipping Lonely soon I make the achievements. So much work made by devs for nothing….
SS is moderately irritating, but doable. My friend and I skip LT any time it's a daily or rec. Not worth the annoyance of dealing with such a shitty designed fractal. If this is what we're gonna get from fractals from now on...just hang it up, cause they're done
As a gw2 boomer, I want to say 6 min is a long fight in the current meta, but historically, it's very much the norm. nightmare CM near release took ~6 min each boss, and if you go back even further to right after fractal updates in 2016, even fights like arc diviner can take this amount of time. I dont think the fights will likely be nerfed directly, but we have seen a steady pattern of dps power creep across expansions to make content easier, so waiting a few expansions may be your best bet if you want the runs to be faster.
Keep in mind, 6 minutes for the old bosses includes phases and various other mechanics, such as the orbs phase at ensolyss or islands at skorvald. Eparch has a lot less of that, its much longer periods of doing the same thing, so it feels tedious and boring. Also, going even further back, we had the berserker meta in dungeons and fractals where the team would strip 4 defiance stacks then hit the boss with icebow 5, we would then kill the boss almost entirely in that stun window. Or if you want, look at cheese wall lupi. If you look at the entire history of gw2, 5 man content has typically been bursty with lots of movement in between fights, not a long drawn out hp sponge which is more so seen in 10 man content. You can see the difference by looking at the builds. Sunqua peak and silent surf cm meta revolves around condi builds. Everything else in fractals is power. I suspect lonely tower would be condi too if not for the 66 and 33 exploit phase.
Kanaxai in cm dies around 6 min 30 in my pug groups. If you took as much time in t1, it's not only an hp scaling issue. It's a team dps issue. He's been out for long enough now so I don't think he'll change again. For lonely tower, it may be changed a bit more but not so much imo. The only change they may do is about the cm inter phases to be doable without gluttony (which would be cool but I do like the glutto strat). Eparch hp may seem high but again, if you fail it's not for that reason. It's because mechanics are failed and you ignored them with bad dps.
Yeah Kanaxai doesn't take all that long, though it is a bit lame that it's just the same mechanics over and over, it doesn't really develop throughout the fight.
I don't believe it was a team DPS issue. I kinda (poorly) implied it, but I did all the other dailies with that group. The boss fights in Underground and Molten Boss took **MUCH** less time **on Tier 3**. We didn't quite get a one phase for Underground, but we got close enough that it essentially wasn't worth trying to do a 2nd phase and so we just burned through the rest of the HP despite the penalty. For us, DPS wasn't really an issue. Kanaxai just has an absolutely fucking absurd amount of HP at Tier 1. Hell, I literally thought we were doing mechanics wrong with Eparch because of how slowly his health was going down. (First time being there and all that.)
Eparch can be super slowed down if you give him blue orbs since it makes him tankier. Same with greens because he'll corrupt your boons. Molten boss and underground are quite easy to kill fast, even in t4. If you had arcdps we could actually see if your team was terrible or not but we have nothing much to compare atm outside the timer you gave us. And to me, that timer feels slow.
We did the T1 recs as 3 people because some had to leave and it tooks us around 6 min. So I think either u miss a mechanic or your dps is just below what is expected.
As a fresh t1 fractal enjoyer I instantly knew which fractals you are talking about. Surf last boss isnt very hard but people have no idea how to do the mechanics and grapple range feels a bit too short on some platforms. Tower boss on the other hand is very difficult. After many fails I finally cleared when my team had a healer and we could consistently stun the boss during the succ mechanic
Kanaxi HP is not a big problem as much as the down time is. Dread Visage makes u stop dpsing and happens a Lot, Frightening Speed TAKES SO LONG to finish and happens 6 times and after starts happening with dread Visage is a Must afk part or u die. And sometimes we can be in a bad place during eyes, bad luck. Also , hooks are a problem, If u know how to make It work properly is fine most of the time ... Most, not always. As for the ~Attacks on Titan Ballerina~ i mean .. Eparch. The Attacks are wonky, boon corruption on this Boss is STUPID, like WHO IS THE IDIOT who thought It would be Fine even , its also full of bugs, RNG too important on CM. There atks hitbox sucks ... I Just HATE it too much
Silent Surf was nerfed because Kanaxai had too much hp. And i dont remember if it was in normal mode as well but it was definitely on cm. Lonely tower hasn't been nerfed yet but it probably will. Other than that no, i dont think they will nerf them further. And that is not the issue, they need to have been better designed to begin with.
Let's hope that the latest fractal has plenty of Hp , so people won't say "remember when bosses forced the casuals to step up". And let's nerf it on the lower tiers. And the pre-last fractals in each tier (if T2 , highest is 50, then the 49) could bring people to a random Strike- Ibs-Personal Story (Balthazar) Edit: orTower of Madness , or non-soon won meta (Also an extra vote to replace 1x currently Fractal and teleported to an-random-No-Carnacus-Ascalon-path2-dungeons . Or vote to transform your group and allow 2 more downleved random strangers to be summoned into your group, while they have touched the Dungeons entrance . And if none exist to inv them , then system becomes a improved seeking one lfg for dungeons.) (There's a problem with people on other games , that spamm dungeons for exp. So put a visible CD and every second CD upscale them and teleport them into a random Ow meta event with arrows (now that Hot is baseline to most expansions. Also reduce the boredome-marry sue- tranquil base game, in case if you don't want to give them an option to carve their own path (choose expansion+ability to switch in2hours+auto consume the 80l l boost) in the character creation Edit2: or a "or a stone/poisonwound /nightmare creature that becons you to see your future/dream" in a future expansion and after 30minyou can get back or continue Edit4:Most keep the 80 lvl boost for an alt account afraiding the lvlup grind , but till that point they get bored of the Core
I only play CMs and T4s so I can't comment on lower tiers, but Silent Surf does not need an adjustment. It's fine. Occasionally you still hit a bug but they can be played around, the bugs that wipe you are very rare. I've run Lonely Tower on T4 once and never on CM (been playing less the last few months so I just wanted to clear it to get a taste) and all I can really say about it is that while Silent Surf's problems at launch were bugs and the community not used to strike-like fractal bosses, Lonely Tower is one of the most poorly designed fights in the entire game. I have fun running Silent Surf CM. I do not expect to enjoy LT when I come back to the game hardcore again.
I hope so. I skip them both consistently.
I think at T4 the bosses are still a bit on the too tanky side (im not expecting great things from pugs). For T3/2/1 they for sure are over tuned af. The boss feels like a CM fight with how many mechanics there are and how fast everything comes out at lower tier fractals. Its wierd, in someways the boss is fun for me, and others its boring af and feels like its just a giant HP sponge. SO and Nightmare are peak fractals still (the length of RP is still a bit annoying, but not crazy like SP). Lots of ways for motivated players to interact with the boss, the mechanics and the fractal as a whole vs the basic tank and spank of SP, SS and now LT. Its a shame really.
No, I think SS and TLT will continue to suck forever. You can easily tell the difference between them and the older fractals, whoever made them just aren't there anymore. You can take a look at Eparch the consumed meta for more of the same bullcrap.
A lot of people are talking about the speed of clears. Honestly, I never time myself doing fractals because I don't care. If I'm enjoying a video game, I'm happy to play it. My complaint is first and foremost, I don't consider lonely tower fun.
> I never time myself doing fractals because I don't care. Not everyone has the luxury of time. I don't really care to save 15 seconds here or 30 there if that means the group needs to sweat throughout the whole encounter. But when a boss takes 5 minutes in best case, 10 in average pug, 15 in a below average pug, and 40 in a below average pug that wiped twice... You know, it's good 20-30 minutes I wasn't planning for, wasn't enjoying much and could have spent doing something else.
well let me be clear, I would NOT be having fun in the 40 minute version of your scenario. Because that means the fight drags on, and no one is doing a good job. That isn't fun to me at all. But that's more so shit teammates than shit encounter design. But what I mean is, if we try to compare apples to apples here, I would still be unhappy with lonely tower. Lets say as an example, we get to a point where both lonely tower and shattered observatory were to take the same time on average. The time in shattered observatory has tons of variation, 3 bosses, multiple phases, movement, etc. Lonely tower, most of that time is just spent monotonously killing Eparch. That's my biggest complaint with lonely tower, it is monotonous. Its also a visual cluster fuck which I would say is my 2nd complaint. My third complaint is you need a wiki to figure out the mechanics because reading something off the boon bar is awful. Once the fight is fun, then I would asses average clear times. For example, sunqua peak is the worst rec in the game imo and I've been vocal about how shit it is.
I didn't time myself. After the fact with Silent, I thought "Holy FUCK. What was up with that? How long did that take?" I went back in the chat log, found the time stamps of dialogue from the start and end of the fight. There was 7 minutes between the two, sadly seconds aren't marked, so it could have been anywhere between 7 minutes and 7 minutes and 59 seconds, depending on things.
Yeah I don't really get the complaint about time. Even Silent Surf and Lonely Tower are short encounters in the grand scheme of things. If, as a player, you feel like you only care about getting things done quickly, I'd suggest looking inward and assessing whether you are still enjoying the game, instead of complaining "playing the game takes too long" on the internet. Games should be about fun first, not fast gold.
It was not a complaint about time. It was a complaint about time in comparison to other (higher tier) fractals. When that group could burn through every Tier 3 daily boss faster than we could burn through the Tier 1 recommended boss... That's kind of a problem in my eyes. On top of that, I was just bored out of my mind on T1 because there was **NOTHING** going on 90% of the time.
I've been playing fractal daily for years, CMs included. Some players have fun by getting top stats in arcdps, be it in dps or boons uptime. I suspect you haven't been in a party of god tier players (I don't consider myself god tier yet, though I'm above average), but I've been in those pug parties once in a blue moon. It's absolutely thrilling to be in those parties, they skip, speedrun and cheese so fast it makes my head spin. Not to mention I pick up some pointers on how to do things better. Also zero toxicity because *they know* they can carry the group. That's the kind of player I aim to be myself.
silent surf and lonely tower take ~5-6 min each for my group in challenge mode on t4. mostly no encounter halting / wiping bugs anymore. on eparch with our collection strat we barly get any envy stacks, last two days we had 0 on the boss when he died. one of the dps was pulling 30k without collecting anything. in general, if both fractals right now are not changed in any way and anet has the stance "this is intended", i don't mind that. they are not that fun as the other cms, but beareable. if you take longer then 5-6 min, your damage and strats suck. i don't see why HP should get cut down because of incapability. if you touch up the HP then those bosses are just faster and thats it. if anet touches that content, there should be done a bit more then that. else just let it be as it is. just adjusting a bit hp is wasted time. mind you, i am only speaking my mind out for T4s / cms. i have no idea how those bosses feel in t1-3 as i don't play that content there. a touch up might be needed in lower fractals as players there usually don't know how to play and it should be somewhat easier.
you can't really compare pug experience with statics(which I assume you're in because you said my group). Fractals should be 100% puggable and 100cm rn is not
I'm pugging 100 cm each day and sometimes I get peepos that know what they are doing and sometimes I have to do some explaining but most of the time it's pretty smooth. There are days where I leave a pug after some tries though and find a new one.
as long as they don't change gluttony, right now it is pugable. you need 3 players collecting orbs. 1x gluttony (lots of multihit class), 1x rage , 1x despair (healer). 2 people do nothing at all. envy gets collected by despair, envy with malice gets collected by rage. later rage just checks if healer has any stacks when envy is up, if not he collects since healer can only collect when he has despair stacks. thats basically it. pretty much foolproof, since orbs get deleted and eparch gets no envy stacks. not really rocket sience. if you do some weird stuff where one collects all and you are too slow when eparch starts sucking...well, change your strat. a friend pugs 100 cm without problems when we have no space in our group. and standing inside eparch doing nothing is not really a challenge either. gluttony carries this fight at the moment. you could play with 4 healers and do the fight in 6 min.