Quick Guide for Power leveling Fractals

Thought I gave a quick insight into how to level up fractals quick ( This works best for static groups but you can suggest this to pugs as well )

It comes down to this:

1. Always roll a swamp fractal first (this is the shortest + easiest fractal of all)

The time it takes to reset over and over is nothing compare the time its takes to do other fractals, swamp is the easiest after you know how it works.

edit: If the team is being lazy/impatient, the water level (dolphin, luminous plants) is okay too.

2. Always reset the group if the 2nd fractal is cliffside (aka stone giant/collossus)

This goes hand in hand with one, the thing about cliffside is, the time you finish it, you can already do 3 swamps already, if not 4. Never waste time doing cliffside unless its a 3rd fractal. If 2nd fractal is cliffside, all leave to lab, and roll swamp again.

3. Remember to always try to study the fights, a lot of them you can benifit A LOT from having a stun breaker ultility skill on, and more so for projectile defense skills.

Most things that hurt you the most are melee attacks you can dodge, red rings you can dodge, but projectiles in large amounts will be too fast too track so make sure to have a skill to deal with it handy, this especially works well for the dredge boss, elemental boss, shaman mini boss, lv 10+ harpies, lv 10+ golem final boss, ice level elementals....etc (pretty much usefull in most levels)

I have full confidence in the accuracy and usefulness of these 3 simple fractal rules, hope it gives a good start for people. And don't worry about thinking you won't have enough chance to practice cliffside because of this, you will get plenty of chances to have it on the 3rd fractal if you do intend to climb up fractal levels.

4. Useful Tips for a few fractals

- Swamp:

~ look carefully on the ground and you can avoid most if not all the traps

~ most walls that form have a gap that you can jump over with a few attempts

~ if you are to pick up the spider wisp, head in from the side and jump on the rocks so you don't trigger the eggs

- Water:

~ if everyone can drag the jelly fish boss to "charged" cages, it will die faster, usually teams will be scattered and everyone pull the boss too slow then the cage is gone by the time boss arrives (discharged)

~ not everyone need to be holding a luminous plant to avoid being attacked by fishies, stick close to obtain the buff.

- Cliffside:

~ at the part with 2 seals and a hallway, DON'T kill both mobs on one side, you start with 2 on each side, make sure you leave 1 alive on one side and it won't heal that seal and spawn mobs.

- Ice:

~  haste effect improves your speed of melting down the wall if you keep poking at the fires at the start (time warp does well here)

~ on the 2nd part try to drop your torches under the bonfire you guys want to stick at, this helps identifying the location of the bonfire when the snow storm is blowing and you can't see anything (and you poke randomly trying to lit a fire)

(i am suspicious that if your turn graphic settings low you might not see the storm at all; but i kind of doubt thats the case)

- Shaman (fire elemental boss)

~ you must learn his animation to dodge his ranged attacks that put a fire shield around  you, most teams takes too much damage before he even bubble up and wipes pretty soon after that

~ all his range attack + the grubs' attack are projectiles, so put on ultility skills to block/reflect and you won't take any damage

~ taking down his bubble asap (instead of fighting grubs) will make sure he doesn't go eat a villager and heal

- Dredge

~ if you die on the button, it still count as you pressing it, so don't freak out and leave the button then die anyway

~ as of now Ash Legion Spy Kits bought in Plains of Ashford works really well on the buttons part

- Bonus level

~ if you see a skull on your head and no crystals are nearby, dodge right after the skull disappears

Swamp was the hardest when I did it with a guild group. What's the trick?

The key to beating ANY difficult situation in GW2 is always the same: bring a Mesmer!

We levelled to 10 pretty easily by doing whichever fractals came up. Mesmers are great in the swamp because you can portal back and finish it without having to kill much. Other than that I think the trick to fractals is having a regular group learning together, and doing them for a few hours at a time. @Charlatan: Starting the group again after Christmas day!

I haven't done any fractal so I'm totally clueless. I'm level 80 ele and any tips on how I should play my char would be appreciated. I usually use fire, however for bosses I bring up my earth ele's, both of them and switch back to fire with staff. I use the remove condition sig (passive) which really has helped me. I usually don't use water (healing rain) as it doesn't seem to be effective for mass healing or damage. My char is set up for doing a lot of damage. Since I mainly solo and don't like to die (due to repair costs) I've set myself up for damage output and kiting my rear-end off! In other words run for my life! LOL

@ Sekkerhund a few Keys to swamp: 1) make sure you roll a good pattern first, if 3 wisps are all on the furthest side of the map, I think you can reset by picking up a wisp and dropping on the ground 2) Know how to deal with the few key locations, for instance: -spider eggs wisp: don't just walk in over the eggs or you drown urself with spider, jump on the rocks - far away wisps: make sure you can stun breakers and swiftness on you (of course try to avoid traps, keep an eye on the ground) - rmember u dont need to fight mossman or the champion drake, mossman goes a way after a while if u just run away, champion drake is near a wisp but you can always get someone else to aggro it when ur about to pick up the wisp after enough experience with fracs you will see why swamp is the easiest, but at lower fracs it might not seem that significant... either way the cliffside frace is still the longest, so lowering the chance of having it by not proceed when its a first pick is just a good strategy to abide too (same for dredge level)

Also on the fractal swamp: one thing to know is that you only need to get 3 people to go after the wisps and leave the other two at the beginning because there will be fewer things to fight or avoid when returning. This helps a great deal and the last group I went with did it on the first try! ;-)

Our problem was the walls would go up as you got close and create very long runs to go around them.

You can climb over them afaik.

Hm, well the one run I ran was full of folks that were all new, so maybe I should try to get in with some that are experienced. I'd love to learn them, because we have such a gap in Fractal grouping, especially for late nighters/oceanics.

Alright it's been forever! so I decided to update this guide with a few tips that requires the least amount of demonstration, and are ones I find vital to power level through fractals Good luck getting what you set out to seek.

I need to do these some time. We've made a couple attempts in the past without much success but a few good laughs. Now our toons are higher level though so I bet that'll help.

Once Anet patches the level changes in, there will probably be a lot more groups being made. Right now its just such a pita, its almost not worth bothering with for even the Monthly.

I run these on every mon and wed. I know sometimes my health has caused me to cut them short so been looking for help with nighttime runs. As for Seks strat. Its a good one so dont get me wrong but I think he was more refering to people who have some experience already and want to hit 10 + faster. Doing this strat if you have never been in a fractal can put you at a disadvatange later on and the 10+ fractals are very unforgiving and dont allow much in terms of a learning curve. So aoviding maps at lower levels may not be a good idea. The swamp is one of the easiest ones to do when your higher up because there isnt much involved with it. But for new people it tends to be one of the hardest. I have been in groups where they spent 2+ hours in a swamp trying to get through and been in groups where it took 1 min. It all comes down to knowing when to call it quits. Another good tip is if your going to do the hammer seal map make sure you dont use group speed buffs on the plank area. I have seen soo many people cause others to fall off and die with that. Getting to the top doesnt need to be a speed race. It may take alittle longer but waiting on that dead person takes alot longer. I have been trying to teach people how to run things at rank 10 while helping them get there. Most of the time I am ending up running rank 1 to 4. I am only rank 7 but I have alot of experience also past that from playing a family members account for awhile they borrowed me to allow me to get used to the zones higher levels it was on rank 21 so I could try to give people insight. The biggest thing I have noticed with people doing fractals is the inexperience with using active dodge, jumping and running on small platforms. Also the wanting to rush through it as fast as possible. These issues can really extend the time it takes to get through a zone. One of the best things I can tell people is if they want to rank up in fractals make sure you allow at least 1 hour and 30 mins to run the 3 or 4 needed to rank up. Eventually you will cut those times down but at the start your always going to be alittle awkward. Also do not be in a big hurry to finish them. the fractals are basically end game content and are designed to be challenging and use skills not normally used all the time aka the active dodge and that. Most people plow through everything like the dungeons and explore and sotrymode you can NOT do that in fractals past lvl 10+.

hey Toros, the reason i said to roll swamp first and skip cliffside is because it comes down to the mentality for learning fractals for swamp, if they are no mesmers around to rely on, your group needs to really know the fractal to a good extent to beat it, there is really no other way around, that is why new players think swamp is hard sometimes, because they can't just rush through it unless they do it right. for cliffside, and i am being honest here, you don't need any significant skills to do it at the 1-15 fractal stage, back then it was really hard at 10+ but Anet fixed something at end boss already (this fix is mainly for 10+), i will stick to 1-9 for now, its so easy in 1-9 that people think they know how to do it... and yeah i guess they do if they can beat it, but thats just 1-9, its impossible to know how to do it properly in 1-9 because you dont NEED to do it properly to beat it. but swamp, you can't. so as a leader i ask myself, do i want to finish this run quick? yes. (skip cliffside + pick swamp) do i want to make sure they have the patience to learn? (swamp first since it actually needs some skill), if people really do have patience, they can be patient enough to do cliffside when its the 3rd fractal. i dont even want to give this much attention to cliffside, fractals like shaman and dredge can be challenging to a lot of ppl too, but i didnt say anything about skipping those, its only because cliffside is just a waste of time. when i was running fractal 21-28 (pugging), every group i did there were someone that didn't know how to do cliffside or shaman, i would be kind of surprised how they got there, and my conclusion is... you don't need to know how to do those to level up apparently. fractals give you the freedom to choose what you want to do and what not to do. i've been doing fractals a lot less now, just seems pointless to me since it just same levels over and over again, if you really know fractals, it doesnt get harder from 10-28, every time i can't progress its always someone in the team messing up and not willing to learn, so until the patch comes out and i can play with people at my skill level, its really just a waste of time

Yeah I only do the fractals to help guildies out now I am personally getting bored with them myself. I know there really isnt that hard past level 10 but it is if people do not do what you and I have stated before. I think the biggest problem in this game is pve content like the dungeons has been too easy so people have the mentality of I can just plow through it without paying attention. Even though fractals are not hard you can agree if people do not listen and just plow through past lvl 10 you get nowhere. I am looking forward to the new system also but I am dreading it alittle also. I can see alot of pug groups with people lying about there experience level and causing more trouble then now. I can see people within a 10 level difference grouping but those that are level 1 grouping with a level 30 in a level 30 fractal is still going to be a nightmare. I hope it works out though. I wish there was a way to show the actual level of a person in fractals so you know for sure. Yeah it will cause some elitism but there are those also who will take on the challenge to help these people. Those people deserve to actually know for sure what is going to be expected.

Based on https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/fractals-of-the-mists-dungeon-improvements/ it would be pointless for a level 1 to lie about their level, just to get in a higher level fractal group. Lying about their fractal level, any level, won't make a lick of difference in their rewards and other gains.