Guild Wars 2

“I’m a princess and I can do what I want!”

There is no defeating them. They want your death and they will have it.

Account.9832:

LFk.1408:

I don’t find I struggle with them. […] With 2 dodge rolls and help from a few skills, grabbing the present and running should never become an issue.

So you don’t find that you struggle with them… because you don’t struggle with them, you just run away.

See the title of the thread?

Hahaha. Nice.

Well I meant that I kill them, without trouble, but I don’t assume everyone is the same level or has the same tier of gear. I can see how these dolls would be tough for some players leveling up, using gear they find, and thus the best solution is indeed not to struggle

They are killable as a shout warrior (5 condition removals on < 30s cooldown) in full exotics in a L45 zone. Takes so long that I need to remember to grab the present first.

I think I’ll try a L80 zone for fun

SirMoogie.9263:

“I’m a princess and I can do what I want!”

There is no defeating them. They want your death and they will have it.

Quote for truth.

I don’t know, they go down in 4-5 hits for me. guess its all about the crits

Conncept.7638:

Well, if you’re an Ele

Armor of Earth>Open The Box> Earthquake>Churning Earth>Ring of Earth>Switch to fire>Burning Speed>Ring of Fire>Drake’s Breath

Then just dodge roll twice while the condition damage does it’s magic and they’re pretty much all down to one hit or already dead.

I also like to equip both elementals for this.

Armor of Earth —→ Both elementals --→ Open Box, then pretty much the same as you. The elementals give you more chance to attune to Water if you need to heal because they tend to draw aggro. You can also stand back a bit and nail the princesses with ranged attacks or AoE attacks.

Failing this, grab the gift and run like blazes. The elementals will keep them busy while you exit like a frightened child.

I solo the whole lot with no issues, and from my experience ~ I’d recommend checking out your skills and load up on some of the following if possible:

1) Stability – for opening the presents. Keeps you from getting knocked down.
2) Condition Removals – Having at least 3 ways to remove conditions helps a lot so you can cycle through and have one on the ready for losing confusion.
3) Healing – Self explanatory but have a couple ways to heal if you can
4) Damage mitigation – don’t underestimate the usefulness of things like AoE blinds, chills, decoys(pets) or reflecting damage back to them.

I hope this is helpful!

thehipone.6812:

Necro wells seem made for these little nightmares – well of power to convert confusion to retaliation, well of corruption to strip the boons and smash some cinderellas!

I think I’m gonna try that later today. I figure between that, vamps, DS and Plague they should go down before I do.

That’s right!

killing off just one makes them a little easier.

Try focusing on them individually, and dont attack while the confusion status

is in effect on your character. Skills that remove conditions have proven effective.

You could also use the surrounding monster population as temporary allies as well.

This helped me pick off one or two princesses which was often enough to mitigate the

damage dealt by the rest of the mob.

Another tactic is to take advantage of other mobs of enemies around the boxes. Dont kill that huge group of grawl (whatever) nearby – instead, open the box, and kite the dolls (or whatever) into them. They will fight each other. Then you can come in and mop up the remains.

beyond that – simply clear conditions/remove boons/dont attack when you have too many stacks of confusion/CC when possible.

I could see them being an issue for pure glass cannons, but using basic skills such as the above, Ive been able to solo them on my mesmer, necro and warrior (who is lvl 15) consistently. Crowd controls definitely work the best. a well of darkness on my necro gives me a window where I can pure dps down enough of the princess dolls to make it easier.

No matter the level of the map, I have been able to take down the skrit mobs 100% of the time (asura thief). Usually by using dagger storm and poison and then attacking the lowest HP remaining. But the Dolls and Ventari on the higher level maps are close to impossible for me to take down. I can manage the Ventari mobs mostly by getting out of range of aggro and then coming back to kite out one or two at a time. In many cases though, I can’t get them to come alone; the whole group aggros all the time. I have managed to take down one or two dolls, but in each case it was only because they engaged a local mob and kept their aggro on it.

On the other hand, I have had a lot of fun leading the toys into conflicts with local mobs. On the Maelstrom map, I pulled a group of 6 dolls into a battle with a Svanir event mob and they tore those Svanir up!! Even the Svanir vet couldn’t get one of the dolls down to half HP. I’ve also set them against villagers, lion guards, and townspeople. (Side note: for those people complaining about the use of Dolls in the wake of the recent tragedy—Anet has made sure NPC children are never touched by aggressors, similar to how Fallout does it. Kudos Anet)

Now I pretty much always pop the present, dagger storm for stability, move to the center and grab the present when I stop spinning and then evade, run, evade, stealth, shed aggro, and then check if any of them are down enough to take out with a quick shadowstep kill.

I can’t prove it, but I suspect that each of the holiday toy events and each batch of holiday toy NPCs are vulnerable to at least one of the PC classes and, conversely, really hard if you’re not that class.

Note that all 3 of these are what work for me and my playstyle. My thief and guardian are level 80 and my ranger is 45. I tear through these boxes solo, no matter what’s inside. For these, I find that condition removal doesn’t help me as much as healing as the princess dolls just reapply Confusion so quickly. All of my solutions use slow firing/heavy hitting attacks so as to take the least damage while dealing as much as possible.

Hope this helps:

Thief (Shortbow)
1. Drop Caltrops, Set Needle Trap.
2. Open box.
3. When you get up, Choking Gas & Cluster Bombs.

If that’s not enough, use Thieves Guild before opening the box. Dodge often. Dodge wisely. Use stealth and inactivity to just let them bleed for a while when possible.

Guardian (Hammer)
1. Ring of Warding, Purging Flames.
2. Open Box.
3. When you get up, Use The Chain™ & Mighty Blow.

If that’s not enough, “Save Yourself!” & I generally keep “Retreat!” on my bar just in case.

Ranger (Greatsword)
1. Spike Trap, Flame Trap, Frost Trap.
2. Open box.
3. When you get up, Swoop in (Armor), Healing Spring, and use the chain, hitting as many at once as you can. Use Maul to change the timing of your chain so that You are engaged in your Power Stab when the enemy is attacking.

If that’s not enough, Rampage as One helps. Occasionally I go down as a ranger but I can usually get back up before being defeated.

These boxes are absolutely murdering the starter areas and are a griefer’s wildest dream.

They should probably tone down the focus-firing, confusion-stacking ranged mobs a bit — at least in lower-level zones where brand new GW2 players see a present and think something nice is waiting inside.

CarelessKrow.8032:

So I open a box in WvW and these things have Protection, Fury, Regeneration, and 18 stacks of might.

And they apply confusion and hit like trucks.

Yeah, and I checked, today: the ones on board Tixx’s airship don’t have those buffs, which is why they’re so much easier to kill. Are the open-world ones bugged?

They are definitely stronger than other mobs in the same level range. I think the difficulty scaling may be sporked for the Toy Ventari, Princess Dolls and Toy Soldiers.

My exposure to them has been in the starter zones with a new alt, and in those zones these things are just way out of proportion.

As others have mentioned, however, the Skritt are fine. Though they don’t grant XP on death, they drop good loot and are of suitable difficulty for players at their level.

So I’m thinking we may be seeing either some bugs or maladjustment in play here.

Nalora.7964:

Don’t touch it! Its evil!

LOL. I have to agree with that xD

I didn’t have trouble with any but the Princess Dolls. The others are doable, sometimes challenging, but doable. I love the charr soldiers.

Those new spawn are pretty difficult to solo. They have way more HP than normal mobs. I think they are “veteran” quality altho their portrait doesn’t display it.

Tower Guard.5263:

SirMoogie.9263:

“I’m a princess and I can do what I want!”

There is no defeating them. They want your death and they will have it.

Quote for truth.

And why you never marry one!

I’ve been running around with a level 23-25 Eng lately, and I’ve had some success with “turret hell,” dropping a Thumper on the box, and a rocket and gun nearby. Using this build, Skritt are easy, the new Soldiers are also fairly easy, Ventari’s are fairly doable, Princesses are still kitten near impossible. I’ve beaten them from time to time, mostly by focusing on one, letting the turrets take the brunt, and downing CONSTANTLY but managing to rally because at least one was near death, but I still wipe more often than I beat them. It’s just not worth it. Snatch and grab, it’s the only sane strategy if you open a box and it’s full of pretty princesses.

So the confusion is point blank aoe, but they will not run into melee to apply it.

Still, i find myself wondering if this is ANet’s way of trying to tell us something about the power of boons…

Well boons are exceptional. As is AoE damage. Both of which are keys to how I kill them quickly depending on whether Im playing my Warrior, Guardian, Ranger or Necromancer.

I can understand someone having problems if they get the level 69 bug, but if players are having problems outside that bug they really know very little about their characters and the mechanics of the game.

Or simply thought they would never require boon strippers for PVE open world mobs.

I know i will be considering packing focus and well of corruption if i ever decide to pop some more oversized presents from here on with my necro.

But honestly, i never felt that the boons made this much difference on any of my toons.

Kill them with fire!

As an elementalist, you can either pop a projectile reflect and just grab the present and leave them for someone else to deal with. Or you drop the greatsword on their heads, pop the reflect and proceed to burn the little monsters down.

But remember… always… always use fire.

I actually love the dolls, they provide a good challenge. Evil princesses managed to kill me twice though I killed lots of them. My approach is to AOE condition them (necro here.) If they start throwing confusions I stop attacking, wait for it to stack a bit. in 1-15 they generally stack 4 but in high level zones they can stack even 12, then transfer the confusion to them before pounding them some more.

Trick is dealing with the confusion, if you attack them with 12 stacks you die very VERY fast!

Dodging isn’t an option against confusion for some classes. My ele for example proccs two or eventually 3 times of confusion, and with sometimes 12 stacks of them, one dodge can be instant down.

Well, at least we elementalists have a ton of ways to remove conditions from ourselves.

They sure hurt alot, as a warrior, I just switched to my bow and sniped them one by one from range. Combustive shot is good against them as well.

The little princess dolls rock, Have watched them dismember a champion.

Synmortius.3157:

The little princess dolls rock, Have watched them dismember a champion.

And you don’t see that a mob that can rip an open world champion to pieces might just be a little tiny bit overtuned?

Then again, I still want to be able to use to toy minis in combat. They obviously can handle it (I wouldn’t ever give one to a kid though).

no problems at all with toy soldiers, but dolls are so extremely oped that it is somehow twistedly fun

maddoctor.2738:

Problem is i was trying the hit em hard while their clustered approach last night and now appart from the knock down the toys were spawning invun, the first second while they scatter and get thier buff up i couldnt touch them.

I want a princess army.

My first thought was, Nuke them from orbit its the only way to be sure, then i discovered they have a weakness. Roll a ranger get the Dreamer all princesses are vunerable to rainbow unicorns.

Some good suggestions for taking out those little terrors.

Tixx’s toyshop lulls you into false sense of security with them, they seem much less powerful in the dungeon, perhaps because you are fighting them in a group. Then you try to fight them solo in the open world they show you just how bad it can hurt to upset a little princess.

Black Frog.9274:

N(Side note: for those people complaining about the use of Dolls in the wake of the recent tragedy—Anet has made sure NPC children are never touched by aggressors, similar to how Fallout does it. Kudos Anet)

I probably would not have known that, I agree well done ArenaNet.

Your an engineer. You are supposed to die.

The princesses do seem to be the toughest xmas event mob as yet imo..

What i found that was killing me faster was that during confusion constantly hitting GS 1 with my warrior. what i found was using GS 2 would count as 1 hit of confusion dmg to me however i would do more dmg to them, same as dual axe 5, GS 3.

Its the confusion that kills u quick, having a lvl 75 mesmer as well, when using confusion u can watch ppl go down fast if they dont pay attention to how many stacks of confusion they have on them.

If all else fails run around until confusion duration ends and go back in, think that confusion from princess has like a 100- 200 range cast so dont stay to close, stick and move… looks like the stun that those moa’s do also if ur looking to evade it.

What do you think of the toy Golems?

Toy Golems > Princess dolls, imo.

I’m a Ranger, and manage to always kill the mean girls.

After the present explodes, and I can move again, I dodge roll to the presents, and pick them up. I then do a Entangle, and Dodge roll out. Then using short bow, I keep in a wide circle so that the princesses never bunch up, and focus on one at a time till it falls, then move to the next one. As long as they don’t bunch up, they don’t all hit you with confusion, and it is very survivable.

If you see more than 2 incoming shots at once, dodge at the last minute. The use of a ranged pet like the spider helps alot also.