Guild Wars 2

Ok, i am sure the devs will use the phrase “Moving forward” at some point in the testing of the mobs that attack from the random presents but one in particular needs looking into, at their convenience of course. These “Toys” use an aoe that is on a very fast recharge and is fairly deadly. I made the mistake of hitting a level 54 present with my level 64 guardian, after dodging the circles of death for a while i finally ran out of steam and the 6 level 54 Toy Ventari threw down 6 of the death circles and i died in an eyeblink, not slow, not painfully, but fast as santa can wink and laugh his butt off. Just a warning, grab the crap loot and just run.

Just a tad overdone, though i am sure they tested fine.

“All things have a right… to die!”

Ah, I love those adorable little death-machines.

tbh the only thing that really caused me any issue with the Ventari was their seemingly passive Retaliation, only because they tend to come in packs. my whirling wraths were bringing me down to 600HP

Prothescar.7842:

tbh the only thing that really caused me any issue with the Ventari was their seemingly passive Retaliation, only because they tend to come in packs. my whirling wraths were bringing me down to 600HP

Its not passive. Its a boon they apply to themselves with a special ability. However, they apply it fairly often, the boon itself lasts a very long time (never actually timed it, but I estimate 15 seconds or so) and the attack which applies it has a fairly short cooldown, so they can usually put it back up shortly after it goes down.

I am also having an extreme amount of trouble fighting a whole pack of them with my mesmer.

happy day for me when the present reveals skritt to fight and not these damn powerful toys. -_-

didn’t have much trouble with them in human 1-15, but most had skritt not toys

I normally single target ranged them one at a time till I see like 5 left and then start aoe attacks. Almost died once but if you do it this way you can get up quicker if you get downed cause they’re is at least one at low health.

This game was meant for strategy and feinting and getting back up is a hard one to master. :/

Meh – I grab any presents and just run. Saves me frustration and time with the retaliation death machines.

I finally decided to ‘cheat’ and went to a lowbie area to massacre them to both get payback as well as finish my monthly. They don’t have retaliation or the AoE spam below level 10

These are not present boxes. They are Death Boxes.
They don’t make you happy, they only make you cry.
What’s the point to place these boxes and hardly anyone wants to open it?
Another failure.

They are significantly harder than the skritt, which makes me think they’re probably “overtuned”. Still doable for any class, but tougher than pretty much any non-veteran of the same level, namely because:

• You get 6 enemies, all with ranged attacks, firing very frequently, and casting AoE. If you dodge the projectiles you get caught by the AoE, and vice-versa. Shields and projectile projectile reflection shields typically last for less than 1/5th of the time it takes to kill them.

• They spread out after spawning, so you can’t AoE all at the same time. This means that, even after you burn all your AoEs, you’ll either have half of them still alive, or all still alive at half HP.

• They cast retaliation on themselves, so even if you manage to avoid their projectiles and AoE, you still take damage just from damaging them (and there are 6 of them, so that 6 potential sources of retaliation).

Some of them drop extra presents, though, so it’s worth taking the time to kill them. Using a pet to keep them “busy” works pretty well. If you don’t have pets or minions, try getting them to attack a nearby animal (deer, moa, whatever). The animal will then run towards them and take most of the hits.

The toy ventari I ran into today were in Fields of Ruin. They were taking my engineer down in about 4-5 seconds, and I’m 80 in all 80 rare gear. Some players waited until I opened the box, then ran in to grab the present while I got slaughtered. Just goes to show what a nice community we have in GW2, and how thoughtful Anet is for putting such overpowered garbage into a regular holiday event.

I have to wonder what the devs are thinking… seriously. Even when in a group (which I absolutely HATE, I prefer running around the map solo), I get completely ganked by those Toy Ventari. Solo… just ugh. What is supposed to be fun about big bags of hitpoints you just can’t kill? How about keeping it PLAYFUL, and having mobs you can actually kill without dying (as in armor repairs… again) most of the time? And I’m running around in rares or better, don’t even want to THINK how the experience is going to be for a new player in blues or greens.

Funniest thing Ive seen so far, 40+ zerg yelling for blood and revenge.. present pops up to the left all stop to kill toys and get presents before the revenge zerg gets going again.

So best way to stop a zerg hope a present pops up… tho dont put any siege down in open areas coz those toys do more dmg to it than any group ive seen.

Actually still trying to work out why they are in WvW….

I tried killing some of the level 80 ventaris in the open world, and had a very low success rate solo. Their retaliation buff is applied for 30 seconds at a time, which is much too long. My dodges are used up in the first few seconds, and then you begin being constantly peppered by the red circles you cannot get out of.

I inititally thought I was supposed to kite them while their retaliation ran out, but they reapplied it within 2-3 seconds, for another 30 seconds. Perhaps I could have interuppted one, but not all five >< If single targeting is the way to go, I’m not sure how you are supposed to survive the constant ranged attacks and aoe fields from the others while you do so.

Defensive skills, ranged domes etc only last so long. Not nealy enough to offer you enough to survive through so many ventari’s.

I saw a dev posted in another threat about their difficulty, asking if we’d consider taking friends to help. I’d love to do that. Unfortuately no one was online in my guild, and I got no replies in map chat. Getting additional people is not always an option.

The only solution I found was, as mentioned above, to fight vastly underleveled ones.

I laughed a lot yesterday. Saw many max lvl full exotic players to die to this toys…hahahaha
As Necro I really dont have a problem killing 5-6-7 of this?!?!

I don’t skip them at all. They count towards “Buster of the Busted” for the monthly.

Ventari Toys above level 20 are just death and frustration. It makes me a bit uneasy as to what toy of death will be introduced today.

As a thief i just die kill 1 of them downed …die kill another one downed and so on…

And just finished my monthly this way

Hey, at least you got toys. I’m only getting skritt.

would love to get only skritt, they drop gifts as well. Have once with luck solo’d the toys (another mob took their aggro), have been trashed with another player helping me. The skritt have at times made me close to zero at the end of a long fight but as someone else said you get them all to half hitpoints and you are dead. When they heal up as you are attacking in a downed state is not fun either.
Wonder what the toys are going to be today?

Yep I must agree on these guys being quite the bit overboard. I don’t care about my monthly as I have never gotten it, so the award for it means nothing to me. My armor however does and as such I can’t be bothered to open these little boxes ’o death with the nice deceptive wrapping anymore. Besides I found many open world races such as centaurs drop the gifts so why bother. At least the Halloween doors were fun these… not so much.

I can take them out with my Mesmer thanks to condition damage and clones. But this makes me seriously not want to play my Guardian at all until the event is over.

And when I do fight off a whole pack of them, whether with my Guardian dying twice or my Mesmer, I’ve fought entire packs of Toy Ventari and gotten a couple of socks. Yay, I guess?

I remember my first ventaris…it took me 3 tries with my elementalist to manage to kill them.

people cant beat the little toys??? lolz at you all they are one of the only relatively challenging yet soloable things in pve in this game. suck it up and deal, I am glad they put in something a little tough.

pro tips: use abilities to remove their boons

stop crying and learn to play everyone, oh no heaven forbid anet adds something challenging to the game!

If you’re having trouble try pulling a nearby mob or npc into the fight. A little distraction goes a long way.

I’ve had no problems with my thief opening up the presents with the toys. A THIEF.

The level 80 ones are…painful.

ah, once again the noobs ask for dumbed down content.

As a warrior I was fighting the lvl 50+ ones in Bloodtide Coasts. I can solo them. Sure they are a pain, but with enough running in circles and dodging you can get em all w/out getting downed. And if they do down you then you usually still got time to kill one for a Rally. The Skritt ones are really easy, barely ever even reach half HP. Took about 4 hours and 79 Giant Gifts later all in BC. Only had 3 downs the whole time. Have fun and Good Gaming!

They’re definitely much harder than the skritt, but just think you only need to kill 100 of them to finish off the monthly.

Xavori.3768:

I finally decided to ‘cheat’ and went to a lowbie area to massacre them to both get payback as well as finish my monthly. They don’t have retaliation or the AoE spam below level 10

They do, I’ve been opening boxes in level 3-9 areas on my engineer as I level it, and it’s been getting creamed by them.

Well, I have not died to them YET. But they are challenging.

Today I explored Harathi Hinterlands and the toy Ventari were much tougher than the Modniir, Harathi and Tamini combined. Ventari must have been some Centaur. :P

I did get salughtered in Diessa Plateau when for some odd reason the skritt in the box were lvel 69 while I was lowered to 26.

Johnson.4867:

GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!! did anyone have THIS GENIUS IDEA?

IDEA: MAYBE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO GROUP UP…YOU KNOW, ITS AN MMO…. DONT SOLO THINGS.

That is a little hard to most of the time since I have soloed 2 of my characters to lvl.80 99% of the time. Wait around for a group to show up so you can do these. I been in 3 group gathering and 2 of them where dungeons which all of the players left me alone because they had to do something more important than clear a dungeon. I was left to die by these 2 groups.

These guys are powerful enough to clear supply camps in World vs World. Might need a rethink on them ArenaNet.

Well I was being chased 2v1 in wpvp and I ran by, popped the gift and hit stealth once I got up from the knockdown and they attacked the two players..

Pretty much ditto, they are just as hard to duo as solo (the princess toys are the devil too). Skritt no problem they are hard but not a guarantee of death. All of the toys so far have required at least 3 people to live through and that’s with at least one dying during the onslaught.

Am i the only one who finds the toys no issue at all?, i can solo them on my guardian and elemental quite easily.

As hard as the ventari are, it was fun figuring out how best to take them down and get their prezzies. In Timberline Falls I lured some grawl to run into their path and it was great fun watching them go at each other while I stayed on the outer edges picking off what I could. Yes, they were hard, yes, I died sometimes but in the end I would go back and finish them off. Surprising amount of fun to watch as well as they ran around insanely – and they make the funniest sproing sounds when they die. I enjoyed the challenge of them.

Interesting. I was just complaining about the tixx dungeon is too hard for me to solo. The ventari are tough little kittens it’s true. My tactic as thief has been to set up poisons with my spinning daggers as soon as i’m off the ground. I whirl into the center, circling the present. As the attack concludes, I grab the present and run straight towards the nearest wildlife/bad guys. The ventari use their ranged aoe attacks so often it almost always draws them in. Then I stealth to break aggro, turn back around and snipe/backstab the weakest ventari to get their numbers down. With two or three its mostly a matter of wearing them down. I haven’t run into them yet at the higher levels, but up to 50-60, it works reasonably well. Though it is time consuming. More than once the next present has dropped before I finish them. Still the fights are nice and tough, but still doable if you’re mobile.