4981

You’re not alone Gedd. I’ve had all sorts of frustrations with the fractals and it’s not going to get any easier going forward. It seems like the difficulty scale between the fractals is way off too. Some are super easier, like the underwater one, while others are just flat out too hard, like the boss in the fire fractal. I’m also not a big fan of the jumping puzzles and especially those stupid spike traps that I can never seem to avoid.

And then there’s all the annoying bugs. I had one happen on the colossus fractal where someone with the hammer fell off and somehow managed to die on the side of the structure WITH the hammer. So we spent the next 20 minutes committing suicide trying to grab it and reset it. It didn’t happen and we called it a night. And then we had two players disconnect during the last fractal transition, which we somehow managed to thankfully complete though it took us about an hour.

That bug on the colossus fractal seems to be affecting a lot of people judging by the reddit thread. I don’t think I’m going to touch fractals anymore until they get this shit fixed.

4982

Regarding pickup dungeon groups: I’ve had good luck with most pugs. Getting a pickup group for the old dungeons typically results in a good experience (except that most groups want to run past all the trash mobs and I’m always the last one to figure that out), pickup groups for fractals above level 10 is often horrible. I can’t count the number of times I’ve tried to do level 10 or 11 on fractals and had the group fall apart after we get stuck on one of them. Especially if you get the flame shaman; he’s brutal at level 10 and up.

Gedd, I don’t understand the lack of repairs in the fractals either. I was in a group where we ported to the lab to repair after the 2nd fractal so we didn’t get credit for completing the level.

I’ve used the personal repair thing before, though at one point using those caused people to disconnect. They may have fixed that now.

I will say that getting familiar with the fractals does make them easier to complete, and I had to do level 1 maybe 3 times before I got a group that could complete all 3 fractals without disintegrating.

I understand the latest patch screwed up the fractal with the colossus/seals, but I didn’t think it caused the issue you saw (are you sure you weren’t stuck on the level of the statue with the left and right seals, where the seal goes invulnerable and you have to run to the opposite side and whack the other one?).

Falling thru the world and living does suck, though.

4983

If was a conspiracy theorist, I’d think ANet was trying to make us buy the repair canisters from the gem shop.

I understand the latest patch screwed up the fractal with the colossus/seals, but I didn’t think it caused the issue you saw (are you sure you weren’t stuck on the level of the statue with the left and right seals, where the seal goes invulnerable and you have to run to the opposite side and whack the other one?).

I’m going off the GW2 Wiki for Cliffside, and it was definitely the chest by that description. There was fire on the ground. Lots of fire.

On a side note, as I said earlier, we were missing our regular 5th last night so I started asking in LA /map chat with no success. I recalled seeing a link to gw2lfg.com/ somewhere and tried that. Within 2 or 3 minutes I had 2 whispers and a full group. It’s sad to have to go out to an external unofficial site to do so, but in our sample size of 1, it was far more effective.

4984

I’ve had great success with gw2lfg.com and now I don’t know what I could do without it. I’d say at least 90% of the PUGs I’ve run with have been a very positive experience. There’s always at least one person who leads and knows how to best get from point A to B with minimal resistance.

4985

That one is incredibly glitchy, shame it hasn’t been fixed yet.

4986

I did the AOE DPS the seal thing the first time and it went fine. Then I ran it a second time and only one guy knew about that trick, but seemed not to want to do it. We tried it, but a couple people went “Waaaah, adds” (it does seem to spawn more mobs while the hammer is out, but it’s manageable) and we went to back to doing it the regular way.

For cross-server fractal runs, the person starting the group needs to be in Lion’s Arch overflow or something?

4987

It’s probably best for someone else to answer that, but I think once the group leader hits the instance portal, everyone gets the option to join, no matter where they are.

4988

When I tried it a couple weeks ago, for Fractals it seemed like everyone needed to be in the same instance of Lion’s Arch. The other dungeons seem to work like you described.

4989

This is my experience. We had one member in overflow, tried to zone in, he got left behind. We played musical overflows until everyone was finally in it and ran the fractal fine. It is certainly on a list of things Anet should address. I should note switching to the last guy to come to LA is the easiest way to fix this, but i think someone in our group had communication issues of some kind.

4990

Rangers are soooo overpowered!

4991

So apparently there are layoffs at ArenaNet in Seattle this week.

4992

My understanding is that they are at NCSoft, not ArenaNet.

4993

We had this bug happen to us last week and the way we fixed it was for the entire group to die, which forces the hammer to respawn at the closest pedestal thingy. Sucks but it’s better than restarting the chain.

4994

This is correct. ArenaNet was unaffected by any layoffs.

4995

I’ve had the same experience with Fractals requiring everybody to be in the same LA instance. It’s somewhat frustrating given that the Fractals have their own “staging ground” out in the Mists from which you load into the actual dungeons themselves. I assume technical reasons, but ANet generally has done a pretty good job about enabling people in the same party to get into the same instance everywhere else, just not for Fractals.

I get you don’t want people to just teleport into your parties Fractals from anywhere in the world just become one guy in your party touched the portal, but if I go through the portal in my LA I should end up in my current party’s Fractal, full stop.

4996

So Anet sent Karka Chests to characters who were logged on during the Lost Shores event but were not able to loot the chest at the end and I’m now in possession of my very first precursor (The Colossus), which leads to the Juggernaut! I’ve got A LOT of grinding to do if I decide to craft it, but I may trade it for another precursor or something.

Anyone else get any goodies from their Karka Chest (be sure to NOT open it on an alt because the loot WILL scale to that character)?

4997

Wow, leveling a new character kinda sucks now. I’ve been having to re-do the same events and grind mobs to get my levels up enough to do the hearts and story quests. The chain quests aren’t happening and the events that take multiple people are pretty much impossible due to the lack of players in the starter zones. ANet needs to tweak the progression in these early zones now that the release rush has passed. It’s not nearly as fun slogging through this stuff compared to how it was at release.

4998

Why don’t you just level up in a different area? I get the sense that Guild Wars 2 is broad enough that you could probably level three characters without seeing too much repeated content. And that’s not even taking into account playing PvP to leapfrog over content.

-Tom
4999

I’m not sure why, but I’ve had much better luck with my new Asuran and my relatively new Norn. Champion events are sometimes impossible, but there are generally enough other players around to support everything else. Better yet, I’m seeing a lot of content I never bumped into while leveling my human.

5000

I managed to get my rewards for the Karka live event, so a few hard feelings have been lost. A 20 slot chest makes a big difference.