Introduction to Fractals of the Mists

Fractals are 5-player instanced content with the aim of progressing from low-tier introductory content, to higher-tier versions of the same encounters. Agony Resistance (an attribute unique to this game mode) is required to progress to higher tiers of Fractals.

In this guide, we introduce Fractal-specific gameplay and progression systems, offer some tips for getting started, and point you to further resources.

Why?

There are a number of reasons why people play Fractals. They are fun to do, they offer a clear progression goal of clearing the highest tier and upgrading your gear with Agony Resistance. Fractals also offer some shiny skins and cosmetic infusions.

The biggest goal for most people is completing Fractal “dailies”, which means doing all Fractals at the highest tier accessible from the Daily Fractal of the Mists achievements category, as well as Challenge Mode Fractals.

This is one of the best gold and gear farming methods in the game; efficiently clearing daily Fractals with Challenge Mode Fractals and Recommended Fractals can reward you (daily) with over 40 in as little as 1 hour.

Rewards

Each Fractal tier awards one daily reward chest. Completing Tier 4 dailies awards you all daily reward chests for this Fractal from each tier.

Daily chests have a chance to drop ascended gear which makes upgrading your character very cheap and easy. Even if you don’t drop your desired stat type, you can simply change it with the stat-swapping Mystic Forge recipe, which is described in more detail in the Gearing up to Ascended guide.

Gearing up to Ascended

This guide will give you a general overview of some unique properties of ascended items like stat-swapping, and of course, cheapest and fastest methods to get end-game ascended equipment.

On top of that, the game incentivizes you to aim for daily Fractal completion, with weekly Fractal achievements that require you to finish a number of unique Fractals from each Tier and reward an additional 2 per achievement for a total of 8 each week. Tier 1 requires 12 unique Fractals, and tier 4 only 6.

Fractals have a number of achievements attached to them which can give you a nice Achievement Point boost (over 450 AP in the whole category).

Each one of the Challenge Mode Fractals has a title for clearing it, and if you are dedicated to this game mode, you can even aim for the “Fractal God/Goddess” title which requires a minimum of 230 days of doing all daily, weekly, and CM Fractals.

Ad Infinitum is the legendary back item and glider skin obtainable in Fractals. It will take some time to get all the currency needed to craft it, but if you keep doing your dailies you will get there faster than you might think.

Currencies

Fractal Relic is currency rewarded for completing a Fractal. These are needed for the legendary back Item but can also be used to buy ascended gear, weekly 10x Mystic Clover, and even increase your power in Fractals through Account Augmentations.

Pristine Fractal Relic drop from the daily reward chests. If you want to earn some extra Relics, you can complete the 3 Challenge Modes to earn 6 more. These are used to buy ascended rings and Account Augmentations.

Fractal-specific Systems

The following systems are unique to Fractals and will be important for understanding how this game mode works, and how to progress.

Difficulty scale

There are 100 levels in Fractals, equally divided into 4 tiers:

1. Initiate (Tier 1)
2. Adept (Tier 2)
3. Expert (Tier 3)
4. Master (Tier 4)

To open a higher-level Fractal map, you need to raise your Fractal level to match that map’s level. You can achieve this by finishing a Fractal that’s either of a higher or at the same level as your current personal fractal level. If you want to do a Fractal of a higher level than your current personal fractal level, you can ask another player with a higher level to open it for you.

Each level requires higher Agony Resistance and has stronger enemies (higher health, more damage), additionally, each Tier adds more mechanics to encounters.

Agony Resistance

Agony is a mechanic that starts at Fractal level 20. It deals damage every second, stacks in intensity, and reduces incoming healing and barrier application by 70% per stack.

You can reduce its effects by infusing gear with Agony Resistance. Infused items must be at least of ascended rarity, which forces you to upgrade your gear in order to clear the highest level Fractals without dying to Agony. Achieving the recommended 150 Agony Resistance is usually done by slotting +9 Agony Infusion into all 18 available slots, which gives you 162 Agony Resistance.

In addition, your ascended back item and rings will have to undergo an infusing process, and your rings additional attuning in order to gain up to 5 extra infusion slots.

Note: Items that were stat-selectable when first obtained, will loose their selected stats and be again stat-selectable after infusion and/or attuning, this provides an opportunity to reuse your old trinkets if you want to change stats on them.

If you find yourself in need of quickly increasing your Agony Resistance (for example when your friends open a higher level Fractal for you), you can get a temporary 10 Agony Resistance (15 with Fractal Attunement Mastery) by using Anguished Tear of Alba.

Mistlock Instabilites

Mistlock Instabilities are game-changing features that range from giving boons to enemies, to preventing stacking or any collision with allies. Tier 2 Fractals have one instability active, Tier 3 has two active and Tier 4 have three active at the same time.

Every day, Instabilities will be randomly assigned to each Fractal. To learn how to deal with instabilities, there is no better way than experiencing them. Each Instability is designed to make the content harder, but handling them properly will reward you with increased damage, boons, or other beneficial effects.

Fractal Attunement

Fractal Attunements are central Tyria masteries requiring a total of 11 mastery points to unlock. They will help your Fractal journey by providing more loot through certain daily Fractal achievements and adding specific vendors to the Mistlock Observatory.

• Follows Advice: unlocks daily recommended Fractals from Tier 2 and 3, unlocks a vendor that is useful for infusing equipment
• Agony Channeler: bonus rewards from boss chests, mist potions now convert a percentage of your Agony Resistance to specific attributes, and helpful vendors will be added, allowing you to buy Agonized Essence which is important to infuse your rings
• Recursive Resourcing: more loot from Fractal encryptions, and mist potion conversion is better
• Mistlock Singularities: even better mist potion conversion, and more importantly this allows you to use the Mistlock Singularity, which instead of causing a downstate, will heal you by 25% of your health once per fight when active. The singularity also resets your skill cooldowns when interacting with it, allowing players to pre-stack (applying damage-enhancing effects and boons) before a boss encounter in high-tier Fractals

Account Augmentations

Account Augmentations are permanent account improvements for Fractals that will make your character significantly stronger in Fractals. There are four different augmentations, with each having four tiers to upgrade through:

• Fractal Empowerment 1: gain an extra Writ of Tyrian Mastery from the final chest of every Fractal for a total of 4x Writ of Tyrian Mastery
• Karmic Retribution 1: gain extra Karma from the final chest of every Fractal
• Agony Impedance 1: each tier grants +5 Agony Resistance for a total of +20 Agony Resistance. This does require a personal Fractal level of 100 to purchase.
• Mist Attunement 1: requires tier 2 of all the former augmentations. It grants Agony Resistance, damage increase, and passive health regeneration. As well as a permanent currency increase per level and extra Fractal encryption for a total of 4 extra ones. Each level will also give a unique title, with the Fractal God/Goddess title as the final reward.

How to start

You can start Fractals immediately at level 80 because they scale really well. Just jump right into the Initiate Tier and you will almost certainly be able to clear the dailies with a party of 3-5 players, even without knowing the ins and outs of each Fractal or having elite specialization unlocked.

Discovering them yourself and coming back to look at guides with new questions is a good approach.

Gear

While you are required to have ascended items to clear high-tier Fractals, this is absolutely not a requirement to get started; in fact, Fractals are a great way to obtain this end-game gear. You preferably want to start with exotic gear to perform well.

Starter exotic gear can be obtained through a variety of sources but the cheapest and most common route is farming Verdant Brink meta event for stat selectable gearboxes, while Runes and Sigils can be bought on the Trading Post, or crafted. After 2-4 (depending on your participation level) Verdant Brink meta events, you should be able to gain an entire set of armor.

Alternatively, you can purchase exotic armor sets with Berserker’s stats for a total of 252000 Karma in Orr, near Cathedral of Silence copied.

If you have a bit of spare gold you can also purchase gear directly from the Trading Post, but that can very quickly dry your wallet, especially since expansion stat types can be very expensive.

Ascended Trinkets are often easier to obtain than their exotic counterparts. These can be farmed using Living World Season 3 and 4 currencies.

Exotic gear will have slightly lower stats than their ascended counterparts, but this difference won’t affect your performance very much. While you’re learning, you don’t need to focus on optimizing your gear. Instead, be creative! For example, if you are running a power build you can use cheap Superior Sigil of Accuracy to make sure you have a 100% critical hit chance (a.k.a. crit-cap).

Don’t worry if this sounds overwhelming, you don’t need to stress about the specifics of crit-capping, or maximizing condition duration, at this point getting “good enough” gear and becoming familiar with the encounters is much more important. Remember that at low-tier fractals, everyone is learning, not only you.

Start slowly learning your class, then focus on learning mechanics, finally you can work on upgrading your gear and climbing the Fractal tiers.

Builds

Fractal builds require high adaptability because of the many different Fractal-specific mechanics as well as the different Fractal Instabilities. This means that you will quite often find yourself switching out one or two skills to provide extra utility to your party, for example Stability or offering projectile mitigation, or more crowd control.

All classes are playable in Fractals, but some builds and roles are easier to pick up than others or offer more flexibility. Check the list below for some builds commonly considered to be easier for new players, or simply browse through our builds to find something that suits your gameplay and class. Most Raid and Strike builds will be the same as your Fractal builds!

Heal Quickness Firebrand

Support

Select difficulty

Mace & Shield
Staff

Heal Alacrity Mechanist

• Recommended

Support

Select difficulty

Mace & Shield

Condition Alacrity Renegade

• Recommended

Offensive Support

Select difficulty

Mace & Axe
Shortbow

Condition Scourge

• Recommended

Damage

Select difficulty

Scepter & Torch
Pistol

Condition Daredevil

• Recommended

Damage

Select difficulty

Dagger
Dagger offhand

Power Willbender

Damage

Select difficulty

Sword & Focus
Greatsword

Power Spellbreaker

• Recommended

Damage

Select difficulty

Dagger & Axe
Hammer

Power Soulbeast

• Low intensity

Damage

Select difficulty

Hammer
Axe & Axe

Power Virtuoso

Damage

Select difficulty

Dagger & Sword
Greatsword

Mindset

Fractals are usually part of the daily routine for most players who enjoy instanced content. Especially at high-tier Fractals, players want to clear dailies fast and move on with their other goals. This leads to the expectation of knowing mechanics and common strategies to clear each Fractal efficiently.

Not unlike other game modes, playing at higher Tiers will lead to a more “competitive” approach, and if you won’t meet the requirements set in LFG (Looking for Group), you might encounter a certain level of “unwelcoming”.

You shouldn’t be discouraged by it, just takes a few steps back, and read a guide again, maybe there is something that you missed, or simply ask other players for help and advice! You will quickly know how to adjust your own skill level to expectations in LFG and how to choose a group that will match your own expectations.

Improving

To do high-tier Fractals efficiently you will need to improve your understanding of game mechanics and improve your gameplay little by little. Even though you can learn by experience very easily, you can also read through our Fractal Guides and get to know each map even better than some of those experienced players!

Remember that most mechanics in Fractals are avoidable and the ‘top’ groups don’t even run with a healer, in order to clear Fractals even faster. A large part of improving will be to play the game consciously, trying to mitigate damage through positioning and general awareness of enemy attacks. Always analyze what is happening and what has happened, why did you go downstate and how could you prevent that next time?

As a new player to Fractals, it might be daunting to ask experienced players for help in low-tier Fractals, but by just asking you will almost certainly find someone to show you the ropes.

Having said that, you should always play for whatever goal you set yourself – be it the joy of playing the game, or the fun of improving.

Note: You might find other instanced content guides useful, especially when it comes to improving your gameplay, as those game modes have a lot in common.

Guide to 10-Player Content

What are Raids and Strikes? How do I get started? How do I prepare - do I even need to prepare? If you have any questions about Raids and Strikes this guide will aim to answer all of them!

Goals and progress

If you want to get the most from Fractals, be that rewards-wise or simply experiencing high-level gameplay, you will want to set yourself some goals in order to improve. Your own skill level will always be the highest factor when it comes to your performance, but specifically in Fractals, there are some external sources that will make you stronger, or gameplay easier or faster.

As already mentioned, your first goals should be getting a set of ascended gear and infusing it to get at least 150 Agony Resistance in order to be able to play Tier 4 Fractals and Challenge Mode Fractals.

Another very important part of higher-tier Fractals will be always using Mist Offensive Potion, Mist Defensive Potion, and Mist Mobility Potion. While these will constantly drop from reward chests when you are playing Fractals, you can buy Infinite versions of each when you gain enough Fractal Relics.

Obtaining infinite potions is a great first long-term goal, as these significantly improve your performance, and having Infinite potions in your inventory offers additional Quality of Life improvement; potions automatically apply buffs when you interact with Mistlock Singularity, for example.

You can buy the set of 3 Infinite potions for a total of 18000 Fractal Relic and 18 Integrated Fractal Matrix, and for an additional 500 Fractal Relic you can convert all of those into one Infinite Mist Omnipotion, which can be kept at all times in your shared inventory slot for passive potions application.

Party Composition and “meta”

Expert/Master Tier Fractals will slowly become more difficult although still being clearable without good party composition. In most cases, that difficulty will be caused by bad boon uptimes, not having Stability when you need it, or not breaking the defiance bar fast enough. You will need to get used to the following core principles to make your daily clear smooth and fast.

Boons are the single most important factor in party composition. They enable you and your party members to deal more damage, and to take less damage, while also making some mechanics irrelevant, or easier to overcome. A group without proper boons will have a much harder time clearing any content.

Four key boons that are critical to endgame PvE damage:

• Might: Increases outgoing damage. This caps at 25 stacks. Adding 750 power and condition damage!
• Quickness: Shortens cast times by 50%.
• Fury: Increases critical chance by 20%. Power builds are designed to “crit cap” (to have a 100% critical hit chance).
• Alacrity: Increases skill recharge rate by 25%.

A party is designed to maintain these boons on all players at all times. This is why you’ll often see high-level parties look for specific roles – they’re looking for a player to cover one or more of these boons.

The above-mentioned damage-enhancing boons do not negate the importance of other ones. Especially defensive boons which help out tremendously with damage mitigation. Protection, and Resolution are tools that will help you survive a lot more, and a good source of Regeneration from healers will ease recovery when the party takes damage.

Some other boons which shouldn’t be forgotten about are: Stability, Aegis, Vigor and Swiftness.

Stability makes any sort of hard crowd control from enemies and environment have no effect on you. Aegis blocks one enemy attack. Vigor allows you to Dodge more often in chaotic fights. Movement speed through Swiftness or Superspeed also shouldn’t be overlooked as they make it easier to position correctly and run out of danger zones

Crowd Control (CC) is another aspect you should look at in your party composition, but it will usually be more of a personal responsibility connected to a specific role/profession.

Having hard CC (eg. Knockback, Launch, Daze, Pull, etc) allows you to easily break the defiance bar of a boss. This will stop most bosses from attacking for a couple of seconds and causes them to gain Exposed debuff which will increase damage dealt to that enemy by 10%, and condition damage by 20%. Soft CC (like Blinded and Immobilize) are also nice additions to bring while fighting larger groups of enemies.

So make sure to pack some extra utilities that apply Stability, Aegis, Condition Cleanse, or CC to make your Fractals smoother.

Advanced role compression

To maximize damage, players will often “compress” roles. For example, healers will usually provide most boons, allowing for some fully focused DPS players, and fewer offensive support classes.

The boon DPS that are brought are typically builds which maintain moderate DPS at the same time as providing their assigned boon.

Find a group

Fractals are the entry to end-game PvE content, thus just opening the in-game LFG tool, going to Fractals of the Mists, and advertising your own group as “Daily T1 Fractals first time” is a great way to start out and get your first clears.

Finding the perfect composition isn’t necessary until reaching Expert/Master Tiers, so don’t worry about that!

Our Fractal Guides offer a great overview of general strategies and mechanics. If you encounter something that kills you but you aren’t sure what it was, guides will be a great place to find this out, and how to counteract it in the future!

Good luck on your journey through the mists!