Introduction to fractals

Fractals of The Mists, frequently called "fractals", or simply "fracs", are 5-man repeatable endgame dungeon-like instances with a large scale of difficulty and rewards. 100 levels are structured into 4 different tiers, each consisting of 25 levels.

As you move up in fractal level, the content becomes more difficult – but also more rewarding.

You can find the portal entrance to fractals in Fort Marriner in Lion's Arch. There are no gear requirements for tier 1 fractals, allowing anybody to try fractals out.

Starting at level 20, players need to deal with Agony which requires increasing amounts of Agony Resistance to counter effectively as you move up in fractal level. Without enough Agony Resistance you lose a percentage of your HP every second while under the effect of Agony. Click on the Agony icon to learn more about the scaling of the damage by Agony.

Defiance bars

Have you noticed the blue bar under the boss' HP bar? Whenever you use a Crowd Control skill (a skill that throws the enemy around, stuns, or applies movement impairing conditions) a chunk of the bar gets removed. The bar is called a defiance bar or more commonly in pugs a break bar. When the entire bar is broken the boss gets the Exposed debuff which increases the incoming damage to the boss for power damage by 10% and 20% for condition damage. This is one of the most important mechanics across all fractals as this allows you to deal huge amounts of damage in a short time. The idea is to always break the defiance bar and then burst. Ideally, everyone in the team contributes to breaking the bar as it appears.

Skills that damage the defiance bar are highlighted turquoise in the tooltip. Bosses have varying sizes of CC bars. Commonly, champions have a bar of the size 600, while bosses in CM-fractals range around 2000. However, it is important to note that the tooltips are incorrect for many skills (list of all missing or dead). Often, the displayed numbers are off by a large margin and therefore do not even serve as a rough estimate. We suggest instead consulting the wiki for finding out the exact values.

Differences between fractals and raids/strikes

Navigating the Discretize website

• General: Learn more about the mechanics you encounter in fractals and how to deal with them.
• Builds: A collection of builds, which work reasonably well. Please note that the builds are incomplete due to missing contributors. The quality of the build pages is of utmost importance to us; we'd rather have fewer builds but higher quality ones, than listing only rudimentary information about all possible builds. Most build pages also contain variations. For example, there is no dedicated page for DPS Condi Firebrand, as it is played almost the same as the Quickness version.
• Fractals: An overview of each fractal including possible skips and shortcuts. Also mentions what kind of utility should be brought to mitigate damage at specific encounters.

Fractal Masteries

Tiers and Expectations

Trouble finding groups? Looking for training runs?

Guild Wars 2 University is a discord-server-based community that focuses on helping and guiding new and returning players to learn everything that Guild Wars 2 has to offer. GWU provides a friendly and judgment-free environment where veterans from all areas of the game help teach and train anyone interested in learning.

For more information, check out their Discord

External tools

1. arcdps: DPS meter. Almost everybody uses it, no one has gotten banned for using it.
2. log manager: helps you organize your logs, which can be optionally recorded by arc DPS.
3. gw2wingman: compare your performance against the averages of the community
4. Fractal farming by [fast]: find out which fractals are best to farm; which daily fractals reward the most
5. Killproof.me: Website for sharing your killproof for raids/fractals/strikes.

Acquiring gear to counter Agony

Tier 1: max 17 Agony Resistance

• Start working towards the accessories that you can buy with guild commendations or - if you have a lot of spare laurels - buy them for laurels. Keep in mind you need 30 laurels later for crafting your ascended armor.
• Save up relics to buy ascended rings (5 days of T1 fractal dailies are required)
• Alternatively, buy Living World Season 3 Episode 3: A Crack in the ice and farm

  for trinkets (or any other living story maps: Bloodstone fen, Dragonfall). The fastest way is to farm both Bitterfrost Frontier and Dragonfall.
• Craft

  or buy an equivalent via laurels (if your build uses base game stats)

Tier 2: max 61 Agony Resistance

• 18 Agony Resistance: Two ascended accessories of your build of choice. Example:

  and

  .
• 36 Agony Resistance: By attuning ascended rings. Example:

  and
• 9 Agony Resistance: Getting a back item such as:

• Start leveling the profession for your armor class (Armorsmith, Leatherwork, Tailor) to 500. Use gw2crafts.net for the cheapest leveling.

Tier 3: max 106 Agony Resistance

• You need 5 more

  to fit the maximum requirement of 106 Agony Resistance.
• Suggestion: craft 4 ascended armor pieces and hope to get a

  to upgrade one of your rings to
• Alternatively, do strike missions and open the weekly chest for a chance of receiving an ascended armor box.

• Start leveling the profession that can craft your desired weapons to 500. Use gw2crafts.net for the cheapest leveling.

Tier 4: max 150 Agony Resistance

1. Finish your ascended armor
2. Infuse your remaining ring(s)
3. Craft ascended weapons (easy way: Caladbolg alternatively profession weapons from Path of Fire)
4. Infuse your backpack (and/or begin working towards

   )
5. Upgrade - if necessary -

   to

Abbreviations for navigating the LFG

General

Usage of /gg

You can use the chat command /gg within fractals to immediately kill your character (dead, not downed). This is used generously in fractals and serves as a tool to reset to a checkpoint together or avoid unnecessary areas of content.

It is a useful tool in fractal skips, as it allows the entire party to teleport to a checkpoint once one player activates it.

It can also serve as a full skill reset in key moments. If everyone in the party is dead at the same time, cooldowns will reset for all players. Therefore it is advised for the entire group to use /gg at certain key positions to reset long cooldowns, like between Siax (2nd boss) and Ensolyss (3rd boss) in Nightmare CM. Never resurrect as long as another player is still alive. If another player tells you /gg, they are probably doing a skip that you are unaware of or they simply weren't ready for combat yet. Either way, avoid wasting time questioning it, just /gg and reset.

Note that resource bars such as Warrior's Adrenaline bar, Druid's

and

for Reaper will fully recharge after the resurrection. Also the Mistlock Singularity resets once everyone in the party is dead.

Pre-stacking at Mistlock Singularity

After maxing the fractal masteries to level 4 you get access to Mistlock Singularities. Taking one of these will reset the cooldowns of all your skills! This allows you to precast certain skills before entering the battle without a penalty. It makes sense to precast Quickness, Alacrity and use blast finishers on certain Combo Fields.

The most common applications are Might-stacking using blast finishers inside a Fire Field (3 stacks for 20 seconds with boon duration) and Stealth-stacking inside a Smoke Field (3 seconds).

Do not use other combo fields than fire on the Mistlock Singularity! All combo fields but the Fire Field are useless in terms of prebooning.

Might stacking for groups using

from Soulbeast.

• Renegade:

  (Staff 4)
• Firebrand:

  (Focus 5),

  (Staff 2),

  and

  (Hammer 2)
• Berserker:

  and

  (Utility),

  (Warhorn 4),

  (Warhorn 5)
• Weaver: Use

  (Scepter 2),

  (Dagger 4) and

  (Scepter 3) in

  /
• Soulbeast: Take the trait

  and use

  to make boons last longer, use

  (Warhorn 5)

Fire fields Might stacking

• Elementalist:

  • (Staff 2,

    )
  • (Dagger 4,

    )
  • (Focus 4,

    )
  • (Warhorn 5,

    , )
• Berserker:

  • (Torch 5)
• Ranger:

  • (Torch 5)
• Firebrand:

  • in
• Renegade:

  • (

    Elite Skill)

Line of Sight (LoS) and stacking

Mistlock Instabilities

In tiers 2 to 4, the fractal will always have Mistlock Instabilities active, which add additional mechanics to the fights. The selection is random for each difficulty level and changes daily. More information can be found on the official wiki.

Below is a list of all current instabilities and their possible countermeasures.

Key findings

• Don't use your heal skill while under the effect of Agony.
• CC the boss first, then use your burst skills. Everyone has to contribute!
• Only use Fire Fields on the Mistlock Singularity during pre-stacking.
• Always stack together, boons are shared nearby.
• Don't be afraid to communicate with your team if you are new. People will help you out!

Trouble finding groups?

Guild Wars 2 University is a discord-server-based community that focuses on helping and guiding new and returning players to learn everything that Guild Wars 2 has to offer. GWU provides a friendly and judgment-free environment where veterans from all areas of the game help teach and train anyone interested in learning.

For more information, check out their Discord