I felt this deserved some attention.
Roughly a year ago, I started doing fractals with GAF (my first fractals ever!), a content that at that point I had only heard about, but felt a bit turned off due to mechanics like Agony and not having access to Ascended equipment.
At first, it was tough doing that kind of content, since it was so different from everything the game had thrown at me until that point. However, having trusty gaffers with me (like Ike, Salad and Rowland, always with me for the early scales and that grew with me both in personal level and skills over time) made it pretty easy, and over a period of like 3 months, we played fractals to increase our personal level and get to the mythical high scale fractals.
We had many hardships, Grawl was a pain even on lower levels until we "got it", and let's not speak of the frustration that was Dredge. Still, our group remained dutiful, and we even recruited many others to our cause, such as Jay, Moondrop and even Miktar, who was burned out of fractals at that point. Each new gaffer added something to our team, and by learning to cooperate, many times without saying a single word, we came to be a force to be reckoned, and to this very day the feats we accomplish on our scale 50 runs surprise me. No fractal ever feels dull, nor do I ever feel like I know all there is to know.
Today's run reminded me of how lucky I am to have a group of dedicated people, willing to help each other and do this content, many times not for the reward (or no reward *cough*) at the end, but for the mere sake of having fun and a good challenge with friends.
It also reminded me that, now that Shizune (a friend whom I met on Reddit some weeks ago and proved to be a great Guardian and fractal partner) and Vezix (a mesmer I met recently but with whom I've run enough fractals to see he's got what it takes and I would like to introduce to our other GAFractalers soon) are part of GAF, we can now, in a dream scenario, form TWO scale 50 parties, each highly talented and skillful to the point they can make scale 50 runs seem like child's play. I'll post a quick draft of what I would love to see in the upcoming fractal content that HoT will unleash:
Party 1:
Zeroth - Guardian
Levyne - Ranger
Moondrop - Warrior
Jay - Elementalist
Rowland - Warrior
Party 2:
Shizune - Guardian
Ike - Warrior
Miktar - Engineer
Salad - Necromancer
Vezix - Mesmer
The beauty of these parties is that they are both perfectly balanced. Each member is capable of bringing their own unique skills to the group and add something no one else can. The supports that Miktar and Moondrop provide are pretty different, yet with Vezix and Jay, each team can complement what the other may lack. It's really a dream scenario for me because it depends on way too many schedules matching up, but I can't deny I would love to see these two parties doing HoT together in the future. It's amazing to think GAF can form two parties that put a lot, and I mean a lot, of people to shame.
To think that, one year later, I would be able to make TWO scale 50 teams out of gaffers is beyond my wildest dream, and I can't express how grateful I am for those who enabled this to happen.
Still, I predict this new content will provide many new challenges for the GAFractalers, some dire stuff that will certainly stress us, enrage us until we figure it out. And yet, we will still come on top of it as usual by the end of the day.
Because, you know, we are the best.