Guild Wars 2

Zioba.6182:

And what other things do we get for this event?

A new dress -> In the gemstore
A new gliderskin -> In the gemstore
A new mini -> In the gemstore
A new mini -> rare in the gifts ~4gold right now
A new mini -> that requires 3 of the rare minis ~12 gold right now
A new mini -> that requires 3 of the minis made of 3 rare minis ~36 gold right now
4 old minis back -> one obtainable for the meta, all obtainable via the gemstore
1 old mini back -> obtainable verry rare from the gifts ~58 gold right now
1 old mini back -> obtainable by combining 3 of the verry rare minis ~110 gold right now
A new shoulderskin ->with every drink now worth ~10s just the worth of the 10k drinks is 1k gold. plus 2500 candy cane worth ~ 6s each, ~150 gold in total

For me it just feels like wintersday is only for rich ppl or for ppl with a lot of luck. I already opened about 1k gifts and didn’t get a single skrit or snowman mini…
There is no problem with things you can work towards. I rly liked the mawdry stuff. That was fun, that was not just a mindless grind.

That’s more items than I was expecting actually. And many of them you can buy for some gold? And some of them not that much gold? Thats easier to get than I expected too.

With the exception of the shoulders, the other items do not seem that difficult to get, so I’m not sure what your point is. I do agree that getting items like Mawdrey are more fun, and I agree that more items should be implemented this way. But the point I am trying to make is that the shoulders are not the only item coming with Wintersday and there are other items that are relatively easy to get within the time period provided.

Aomine.5012:

Rin.1046:

Two? What is the second Wintersday item they added that is hard to get? I am only aware of Wintersday Presence.

Nightfury doesn’t ring the bell?

Even though flax seed is easier now, the endless Bat Brew still worth a tons.

Plus 7500 flax seed is still alot of grind-fest.

You need to go back and read my post. I said they are adding one new skin with the seasonal events. Nightfury was not added with Wintersday, it was added with Halloween. I think one hard to get skin per seasonal event it reasonable. But it seems clear to me now that all you want to do is blow this all out of proportion, in the hopes Anet will listen and reduce the cost of the shoulders, so I see no point in continuing to discuss this with you.

You’re complain about grinding for COMESTICS. They’re entirely optional, and no one force you to do so. No one is going to crap on you for not having one. You won’t die without it. You choose to commit to the grind yourself, and even though ANet has been a kitten lately, don’t stab yourself and blame it on them.

Aidenwolf.5964:

The effects on Nightfury and Winter’s Presence are cool but both items reflect the new direction of Anet, GRIND. The Winter’s Presence requires 10,000 drinks which will require players to buy them from the trading post as no one is getting 10,000 of them from drops, no one. Adding something cool is great but I’m skipping this one as I skipped Nightfury as both make me angry that these epic gold sinks made it through whatever passes for quality control at Anet these days.

This used to be the anti-grind MMO, that’s the game I paid for, you know, before you made it Free to Play. Look back at your old promo vids, look yourselves in the mirror and ask yourselves, is this fun?

This reads quite differently now.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/is-it-fun-colin-johanson-on-how-arenanet-measures-success/

Um … even back in good old GW 1 there were two thing:

(1) Get through the main story and get to max gear and max armor without grind
(2) There’s stuff you don’t really NEED but if you WANT it you have to grind for it

Like, Drunkard or Sweettooth title or, sighs, Saviour of Kurzick/Luxon, etc.

GW 2 is along those lines, though with the introduction of ascended weapons they broke with (1). While some people will claim that the difference between Ascended and Exotic is small … in WvW it isn’t really, especially combined with food.

Apart from the “somewhat better” armour and weapon, though, GW 2 can still be played with easily obtainable armour and weapons – though you hit a cap in Fractals and people (!) probably won’t take you along in a raid.

Ok, I understand when people complain about grinding for max stats, or items that are required to have optimal performance, but cosmetics have ALWAYS been grindy in the Guild Wars games, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that in my opinion. It’s no different to obsidian armour in GW1, you did not need it to perform to the max as you could get the stats easily, it was purely a cosmetic choice.

Anet has always had the philosophy of making cosmetics hard/time consuming to get, this is nothing new. As others have said, if you do not want to do the grind don’t do it. You are only missing out on a skin.

Unfortunately, Anet have started making max stats harder/more time consuming to get, which IS a change of direction from their original philosophy. But claiming that grinding for cosmetics is a new direction is completely wrong.

Malediktus.9250:

Would be sad to see it nerfed. The game needs more challenging content. Even raids (with Eternal) are too easy.

Too easy, huh? The content that was supposed to make players use every aspect of the game’s mechanics, that was supposed to be a lot “harder than we’ve seen before” is now easy? I wondered how long this kind of comment would take to surface. I still maintain that challenge in PvE content never lasts. If you want challenge, fight players.

Really? It would be awesome to be able to win it most of the time!

OK i had to log in while at work because i HAD to reply to this.
Cash shop, when it’s not p2w (and in GW2 is not, since is only skins/conveniences) has nothing wrong: you can support your devs and we also have the $ to Gems to Gold conversion that effectively had SHUT DOWN gold sellers in game. You know what’s baed about gold selling? It crashes the economy. In GW2 instead we sorta have a stable and checked economy, a luxury in many other games.

Now onto skins in HoT vs GemStore.
I’ll not count races or genders as multiplier since even outfits are different per race/sex, but still the skin differs and that is even more work/variety.
What armors we got in HoT?

Revenant (1heavy), Bladed (3 weights), Ley Line (3w), Guild “light/black” (3w*2 dunno how to get those) = 13 different sets (not counting race/sex)
Coming soon Legendary armors that will be, as current precursors, (3 tiers+1final)*3 weights = 12 more sets (not couting race/sex)

All of this in a xpac forever labeled as low on content, high on game features (which is true) so if Anet doesn’t bail you can expact even more in next expansions.
Also usually LS (that should be coming soon too) will almost surely bring another set.

I reading this for free. Am I just pirated this thread >_>?

Great post. Easy to read and enjoyable.

Wow

One of the best tips I have seen for this fight that very few seem to know: when fighting the Chak Gerent, stack underneath its belly. The Avalanche can not hit you there (you can stand in the circles no not take damage) and the only thing you really have to worry about is the purple donuts.

SECTION 4
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Alright, that is all well and good. After your first or second fight with the Gerent, his moves should become pretty obvious. But, if you’ve played this event, you’ve probably noticed that it mostly fails another way: some lane is unable to get the Gerent to emerge. Here is where I will tell you how to do that, and ideally how many people you should have doing that. While this section is last, it is the most important section, because if you do not have this part down, you won’t even stand a chance.

Ogre lane

This lane is the easiest. There are eggs scattered about the sides of the lane. They’re fused to the ground, but have gigantic blue glowing tops. To get the Gerent to emerge, you are to destroy as many eggs as possible. The more eggs you destroy, the better time you’ll have. The eggs respawn after awhile, too. So, the strategy for this lane is to spread out among the eggs, then kill the eggs. End of strategy. Key word here: spread out.

Ideally you’d want at least 20 people on this lane. The lane handles scaling fairly well, so extras should be sent to this and Novus lane. Keep the numbers between these two lanes about equal.

The Chak rush is not that much of a problem. When they spawn they’ll march by, so stop destroying eggs to go and kill the Chak Rush, then head back to destroying eggs.

Throughout the lane there will be temp weapons called Ogre Smashers. These are not necessary under any circumstance. If you feel these will help you do more damage, go ahead, but for the most part everyone ignores these.

The hardest part about this lane is that aggressive chak will still spawn during this event, adding a bit of pressure. They shouldn’t be too hard, though. Most will be cleaved with the eggs, and the rest can be killed fairly easily.

Novus Lane

This is the second-easiest lane. For this lane, there will be ley-energy collectors on the sides of the tunnel. Your job is to destroy these collectors, then pick up the bundles of ley energy they drop, and throw those bundles into a gigantic golem situated in the center of the lane. The more charge the golem has, the easier the lane will be. At the end of the event the Golem will arise, Gerent will emerge, and the two will engage in epic Kaiju battle.

Special note, this lane has Chak Bracers. These are flying guys who are immune to damage, buff allies, and have a break bar. They will buff the Chak Gerent, so these guys are CC on sight.

The Golem is temperamental, and will frequently stand there fantasizing about what it would be like to be a real boy. To get the Golem to do its job and actually fight Gerent, you need to get Gerent to rush into the golem. So, when Gerent emerges, if Gerent does not have a break bar, stand in-line with the golem, so that when Gerent charges the golem will accept his role in life, and start pounding the ley-eating crap out of king.

The Chak rush, again, is not much of a problem. When the squadron comes around, stop throwing bundles and attack the chak.

Ideally for this lane, you’d want 20 people. Each spread out to the 3 or 4 collectors at each event. This lane handles scaling pretty well, so extra people should go to here or Ogre. You’ll want about an equal number spread between the two lanes.

SCAR lane

This is the second hardest lane. For this lane, a couple of NPCs will charge a gignatic thumper turret. Your job is defend them as they do this. However, squadron of chak will spawn and start heading for the turret. These Chak are aggressive to everyone, and there’s a lot of them, so spread out around the thumper and kill these Chak as they spawn.

Special note: this lane also has Chak Bracers. CC on sight.

The Chak rush is not a problem. You’re already killing every chak in sight to protect the thumper. Just focus on the squadron as they run by.

Now, for the real reason why this lane is hard: You know that whole “don’t break his bar” thing above? Yeah, forget it. The Thumper Turret will automatically break the bar of Gerent. Because of that scrub turret, you will spend the vast majority (98% easily) of this fight dealing with a mobile, aggressive, purple death donut spamming Gerent. Oh those donuts, they are real. The SCAR lane Gerent is the most severe of DPS races, as the Gerent will not stay in one place for long, and it frequently is not safe to melee the gerent. For this lane, you will need high ranged damage, which is why you’ll frequently see 10 staff tempests here. High damage gear and builds are recommended.

Second note, while you don’t want Gerent rushing further into lane, you also don’t want Gerent rushing into the turret, either. I’ve never been unlucky enough to have been in a party where Gerent squeeded out a death donut on the turret, but from what I hear it leads to failure quite quickly.

For this lane, you’ll want 20 of your beefiest ranged DPSers. You won’t want more, as scaling up makes this DPS race even tighter, and random players on random classes can wreck your chances.

Nuhoch lane

This is it. The lane. The lane that makes pugging this event exponentially harder. The lane that requires taking full advantage of the squad system to complete. The whole reason why people write guides.

For this lane, your goal is to climb the sides of the lane, stand on top of the glowing fungi that stick out of the lane, stomp on the nodules, and kill the mushrooms that spawn. This is deceptively easy, as the nodule respawn rate is tight, and is tied to the mushrooms that spawn, so kill those ASAP. Spread out as much as possible to make for the most efficient stomping ever. While the mushrooms themselves do not count as “progress”, they do limit progress, so kill them.

The mushrooms themselves are tough. Vets and elites can spawn if you aren’t spread out. They do high damage, they spam knockbacks constantly (and at that height, it can be fatal), and when they die they self-destruct, capable of killing most classes in a single hit. Be mobile, bring stability, be strong, be aware, be spread out.

Bouncing Mushrooms is a necessary mastery. It makes the time you need to get on those fungi and spread out much shorter.

It is so tough that you’ll want to end the DPS phase early. 30 seconds before the Chak Gerent re-burrows, leave early and get into position to spread out and stomp mushrooms. There is some good news, though. I saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to Geico. But aside from that: The Chak Gerent in this lane is the runt of the litter. He has far less health than the other lanes, so the 30 seconds you use to run early to spread out among the fungi should be no hindrance at all. Nuhoch lane is the lane most likely to get a 2nd event kill.

For this event, you will want three sub-groups in your squad. A north party, dedicated to climbing and stomping nodules on the north side of the lane. A south party, dedicated to climbing and stomping nodules on the south side of the lane. And a Chak Rush party, who is dedicated to stomping the mushrooms in the more central areas, and also dedicated solely to killing the Chak Rush.

Yes, that’s right. You see, the other lanes are lucky, in that their Chak Squadron marches right past the main event. But in Nuhoch lane, they’ll run far below the event, meaning that it takes a lethal amount of time to run down there and stop them. So, you need a party preassigned who’s job is, when the Rush starts, to go down there and kill the Rushers, then run back up to start stomping mushrooms. Everyone else must understand that their job is not to attack the Chak Rush, as if they do we all fail.

Did I mention that you need to spread out? Because whether you spread out or not means success or failure. SPREAD OUT!!! This is the hardest part that pugs can’t seem to grasp. You don’t want to have people chasing nodules and recolating, as travel time eats at the clock. You want to have as many people in as many different places as possible.

For this lane, you will want at least 16-20 of your most competent people, with 3-4 dedicated to killing the Chak Rush. For the Chak Rush group, you’ll want good control and high AoE damage. North and South squad should have an equal amount of people. You do not want many extra people in the lane, as stomping nodules is already really hard.

Now, before it happens, I will say that there is an alternate set up. I am saying this, mostly because people will kitten endlessly if I do not: A certain guild-that-should-not-be-named insists on using 24 for Nuhoch squad, and having people double up to ensure that nodule stompers stay alive. Now, while this does work, it is not necessary, so long as your current stompers are competent enough to not die, and even with extras there’s still a chance they’ll both faceplant under a single shroom’s self destruct. With that said, 24 is the absolute max that should be allowed in this lane, as any more scaling will result in the emerge event literally being impossible.

In summation: north squad, south squad, chak rush squad, bouncing mushrooms, SPREAD OUT!!!, leave gerent 30 seconds before he burrows, stomp nodules, avoid mushroom self destruct, bring stability. It is also really important to stand down-lane of the Gerent, as if he charges in the wrong direction, at eats up more precious seconds.

And that, as they say, is that. The end. Fin. That is my guide to beating the King of the Jungle. If you are satisfied with your product, great! If you are not satisfied with your product, then I have some bad news for you: you are not well. Please get in touch with a local therapist immediately.

Hello all! Are you tired of having the Chak Gerent destroy your cannon? Silly thing, doesn’t he know not to break other people’s toys? Are you also tired of there being sparse information, and “guides” that barely say anything? Never fear, for I am here! And, my dear, with my guide to TD meta event, you too can conquer the king of the jungle. All for the low price of $9.99! Yes, for a mere 10 bucks, you can get a fighting chance to conquer the king! So… don’t read further until you’ve sent me the cash.

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No peeking!

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Alright, at this point, I’m assuming you’ve sent me the money. So, now I will begin the guide:

Section 1: Begging for money plz I am poor
Section 2: Where and When
Section 3: General information
a)What you will need
b)General event information
c)The Chak Gerent, and how not to be eaten by giant bugs
Section 4: Lane specific information
a)Ogre
b)Rata Novus
c)SCAR
d)Nuhoch

SECTION 2
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The King of the Jungle is the name of the primary meta event for the Tangled Depths. It takes place over the entire map, but the center of this event is the Ley-Line Confluence Waypoint. The event is on a roughly two hour timer, that begins half of an hour after server reset time, and an hour from Dragon Stand Reset time.

At that time, after the event has inevitably failed (because you have not read my guide yet), the entire map will go into reset mode. Then, each lane’s specific events will reset. What you will want to do is… these events! There is plenty of time to do them, and they all unlock useful and important goodies for each of these respective lanes.

The Rata Novus and SCAR Camp waypoints will be looked at the start. You’ll have to go to Ley-Line confluence waypoint, then stroll on over to these places to do their events. Each event is fairly simple, and you need very little explanation beyond what it says on the right hand of the screen. These events are also good for practice, as they’ll have you do things that you will need to do during King of the Jungle.

Once the main chain of events is complete, there are a series of additional non-necessary events that will loop continuously until the main event begins. You can check at a glance how far along all the events are by scrolling over your map, and seeing what “tier” you are on. A tier 4 map has all of the events completed.

The events are frequently done in an hour, so a super-organized map will start gathering an hour before the event begins. A not as organized map will start organizing half an hour before the event begins. An unorganized map flails and screams and they get eaten by giant bugs.

There is a special note here about a special event: The Chak Crown. This is a boss who will spawn south of Ley-Line Confluence. He’s a pain to fight, but most importantly he will contest the waypoint, making organization difficult. I’m going to go over this event specifically. The Crown will spawn a gigantic pool of acid around himself, and throw balls that a high damaging AoE lightning field around himself. To get to the crown, you need to kill the 3 veteran chak that spawn inside the acid. Once down, the acid will vanish, and the crown will begin to stomp in place, sounding out shockwaves alongside of his regular attack. A zerg of chak will spawn around him as well. You can DPS him in this phase, but it is important that you break his breakbar when it appears, otherwise he’ll fill the whole area with acid and wipe the zerg again.

SECTION 3
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WHAT YOU WILL NEED:

#1: $9.99 to give to me to buy this guide.
#2: Have purchased Heart of Thorns
#3: Ley-Line Confluence Waypoint
#4: Bouncing Mushroom and Gliding Masteries
#5: Full Exotic Tiered Gear.
#6: Organization. You can’t just run into this event swinging your sword wildly, hoping that if you try hard enough you’ll get it. What you’ll “get” is eaten by bugs.
#7: Damage oriented food and utility consumable. it doesn’t have to be top tier, but the difference between food and no food is immense.

WHAT I SUGGEST YOU REALLY SHOULD HAVE:

#8: Nuhoch Lore Tier 3. Not much point if you can’t buy stuff with the map currency.
#9: Damage Oriented Gear. This event is a DPS race, after all.
#10: All waypoints on the map
#11: At least 4 commanders, one for each lane.

GENERAL INFORMATION:

At about 20 minutes after the hour, a countdown will start. 25 minutes after the hour, 4 NPCs will run to the end of each lane. At 30 minutes, it is showtime. The technical “goal” of this event is to charge the cannon with ley-line energy to blast your way into Dragonstand.

The real goal of this event is to defeat the Chak Gerent. At the end of each lane the Chak Gerent will spawn. But… he doesn’t care about you. He cares about the cannon, because the Chak Gerent eats ley-line energy, so the cannon is a big ole’ metal Piñata. So the little party stealer will stay buried.

Your goal, first and foremost, is to get the Chak Gerent to emerge. Each lane has a specific mechanic that needs to be accomplished to do this. The better each lane does the mechanic, the weaker the Gerent will be when he emerges.

Each lane gets three locations where they must get the Chak Gerent to emerge. Three times that they must complete their lane specific mechanic. The Chak Gerent maintains constant HP, so the damage you do to him on the first emerge will be there on the second, and so on. This is important: if any one lane fails to get the gerent to emerge at any point in time, the whole event fails. This is what makes King of the Jungle so hard. There’s no room for error for the king.

After about 3 minutes of being emerged, the Chak Gerent will re-burrow himself, because he thinks you are beneath the king, and wants to insult you with how low he thinks you are. He will then fart, making the air in the previous area toxic, dealing a constant AoE damage to anyone standing there. Gerent will move further down the lane, and then you repeat the emerge-DPS cycle all over again.

The thing is, the king isn’t the only guy who wants that delicious gooey goodness that the cannons are collecting. On regular intervals, a squadron of regular chak will spawn up-lane, and start marching toward the cannon with surprising speed. These chak will have a big orange X on their head. These chak will not attack you, but they run surprisingly fast. These guys must be killed, because they will try and destroy the cannon. Each lane has a different tactic for taking them out, which I will go over later.

While Gerent is buried, he can attack you still. Gerent will kind of wander aimlessly in the event area, as it is hard to see while underground. If he passes under you or you stand on top if him, as indicated by the “event champ” symbol that indicates where he is, he will cause a tremor attack to sprout up and hit you. This attack isn’t lethal, but it hits very hard, and can kill in 2 or 3 hits. So, while doing the events, avoid the tunneling Gerent.

If you see someone downed, only rez them if it is safe. If you are defeated, if you are on the first two emerge events, the fastest way to get back to your lane is to use the nearest lane-specific waypoint, and take a Nuhoch Wallow back to the lane. If you are on the third emerge event, the fastest way to get back is to run from Ley-Line Confluence waypoint. If you are defeated, do not lie around. You have to run back, because your carcass is going to keep the event scaled up.

If each lane managed to kill the Gerent and protect the cannon, the event will be completed when the timer counts down. The cannons will charge, blow open a wall, and inside there will be several crystal caches, a strongbox, and a Nuhoch vendor. There will also be a black pedestal with a golden statue on top that will spawn next to Ley-Line Confluence waypoint. You can loot this statue’s south side for goodies. The map will be classified as tier 5, you will get a legendary reward chest full of all sorts of l00t, and you get to brag that you have dethroned the King. So much so that eventually, the $9.99 you paid for this guide will make itself back in rewards.

But until then, stay in your lane if your Gerent is dead. Unfortunate and sudden scaling will lead to death, so be patient, have faith in your teammates, and recommend your teammates this guide for the low price of $9.99

THE CHAK GERENT HIMSELF, OR HOW NOT TO BE EATEN BY GIANT BUGS

If you want to beat the Chak Gerent, you’ve got to know the Chak Gerent. Thankfully, as a boss he is fairly simple. I will go over each of his attacks, and what to do when facing each of these attacks.

#1: The Headlong rush. In this attack, the chak will chitter, rear back, and then make a mad dash at a hereto unknown player. This dash is very far reaching, and it can hit multiple times in stride. This attack knocks back, and is very capable of downing you whomever you are. There are two things to note about this attack: To avoid it, dodge sideways or through it. Or block it. Secondly, never stand up-lane of the chak gerent when he does not have a break bar. That is, never stand in a position such that, if Gerent were to charge you, he would head away from Ley-Line Confluence. This is important, as increased run time between events will make them much more difficult.

#2: The swipe. This attack actually isn’t too bad. He will take a fairly well telegraphed swipe, which will hit in a wide arc directly in front of him, knocking people back. This attack only hits for about 6k on light armor (no toughness), so if you are healthy you can take a few swipes. To avoid it, block, dodge, run through, dodge back, run away, or just take the punch and heal.

#3: Acid Spit. Yes, that annoying thing that all chak can do, the Gerent can do as well. He will spot a generic sized pool of acid on the floor, which does high damage so do not stand inside of it.

#4: Purple Death Donuts. Or.. more of an indigo color really. The Gerent will, without tell, drop a big glowing purple ring on the ground. This ring does massive damage, ticking for 7k per second. This ring will also slowly expand, getting to become quite huge. This purple donut will persist for what seems like forever, and it is responsible for a large number of deaths. Gerent can drop multiples of these, but usually it is one per bar breaking.

#5: Sidestep. The Chak Gerent knows how to dodge, and he will use it. He will spin around an axis, completely displacing his body from where it was previously. This technique does no damage, however it is important to note, as he will very frequently walk out of AoEs.

#6: The Avalanche. AKA the Break Bar attack. For this attack, chak Gerent will get a break bar, then he will twerk so hard that it causes the roof to fall down. The Gerent will rhythmically slam his tail on the ground, causing rocks to fall everywhere. These rocks are indicated by bright orange circles, and have a decent enough delay to step out of. The act of his butt slamming the ground also causes damage if you stand where it hits. This attack will persist easily for a full minute if not broken. So… don’t stand in the AoEs.

Now, as for the strategy for defeating Gerent, it is simple. Do not break his bar. When Gerent is dropping it like it is hot, he is stationary, and will not drop any purple death donuts. The rocks are fairly easy to avoid with minimal practice, so during this break bar attack he is extremely easy to DPS. Breaking the bar will only earn about 2 seconds of respite before Gerent starts attacking again, so there is no benefit to doing so. To avoid breaking his bar, avoid using attacks that cause any of the following:

Chill
Cripple
Immobilize
Slow
Blind
Taunt
Fear
Weakness
Daze
Stun
Blowout
Knockdown
Knockback
Pull

This will affect classes differently. Some classes will have an easy time. Some classes will have a hard time, as they will inflict conditions passively. It isn’t super-duper important to avoid all of these conditions, but you shouldn’t use hard CC ever, and keep soft CC to a minimum. I.E. don’t spam skills all willy nilly.

When Gerent is stomping, feel free to melee and range DPS him as hard as you can. He is quite large, so multi-hitting area attacks will do a lot of damage. But when Gerent is not stomping, he will be quite a bit tougher. You can still melee him, however be warned that Gerent loves to stand in his own purple donuts, making meleeing impossible. Have a good ranged DPS weapon on you at all times. There is no particular kind of DPS preferred, so direct and condi are fine.

A good benchmark is to see if you have at least 1/3rd of his health bar down by the end of the first fight. If so, you’re good to go. If not, then you’ve got to squeeze some extra DPS fast.

A minor note: the camera will adjust the FoV during the first event, but many times during the second and third events, the FoV will not adjust. So, either be ready to fight the Gerent with a zoomed up camera, or have your FoV slider adjusted to max before the fight begins.

As others have said, Factions wasn’t really an expansion.
It was also my least favourite of the GW1 series. I really did not like the confines of Kaineng City (I have a similar problem with HoT).
I took lots of toons through Kaineng and I can still remember the relief I felt when I finally got out to that rolling countryside. Nightfall, on the other hand, really floated my boat. Maybe Anet are like MS Windows where they follow a pattern of “good release, bad release” so we should all look forward to the next instalment.

Regardless of all that, it’s pointless making these comparisons with other expansions. HoT is what it is. Like it or lump it, no amount of complaining is going to magically double the number of maps.

azizul.8469:

err.. Faction is a stand alone campaign, not an expansion.. you can play it on its own, no need Prophecies….

It was BOTH a standalone game and an expansion. Ha another thing they did right over HoT no one would say its a stand alone game, even if it could not enough content.

Personally I think HoT overall is pretty decent. I like parts of it a lot. It also has some serious flaws. A lot of people have made countless forum threads about these so I won’t go into to much details. Instead I want to look at what makes a good expansion to a mmo and I personally believe one of the best examples is actually the first gw1 expansion Factions. I realize some may find it comparing apples to oranges since gw2 is a different beast than gw1, but as both are the first expansions to their respective games it also seems logical to compare them.

1) The number of zones: Currently HoT has 4 zones, 12 max if you count the multiple tiers. (though canopy and underground aren’t nearly as big as the main) Factions has 4 distinct regions, all with a ton of zones/maps. Included here is a link to just one of the regions Kaineng Center just to give a small glimpse of the major difference.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Kaineng_City

I’m not even going to bother adding up all of the maps/zones/outposts/missons/challenge missions/pvp zones etc for each of the 4 regions, but as you can clearly see from just one of them the huge difference in the size of the expansion.

2) Story. Personally I loved the story in factions. Shiro is an iconic legend that still has influences today, everything from Kormir becoming a human god and the revenant invoking his powers. While the story was not received as well as say Prophecies (the core game) Nothing really compares to prophecies story, the searing alone had huge emotional responses for a lot of people that still linger to this day as many gw2 players side with the separatists and still don’t like charr. But we aren’t comparing the factions story to prophecies we are comparing it to HoT. I actually think the story of HoT is one of HoT’s stronger points, except that it could have been a lot bigger (again the size of the expansion) Failon at one point says “you know little of the nightmare court, we seek freedom and mordremoth is worse than the pale tree.” A lot could have been done with that. Including a temporary alliance with them to bring him down, later betrayed of course by them. Just an idea, but fleshing out the story more would have helped. Maybe see Braham actually become a dragon hunter instead of just alluding to it. Maybe have the choices of say mission 1 of helping the sylvarri or not go past mission 1, but instead unlock different missions for a bit much like gw2 core’s “my greatest fear” mission line. In one of the last missions in factions each class gets buffed by a dragon and not like a “might buff” but each owns unique skills that were very awesome and fun to play. Similar to HoT’s mission with the egg where you get a few new cool skills to run away with. Well what if we got a mission like that but we got to fight and enjoy it, different cool OP skills for each class. Like in gw2 core game where we retake that island, one of which got to channel balthazaar and got awesome op skills and made it a very cool and unique mission. Something like that for each class would have been very well received. Or what if we got to see more from the sylvarri’s traitors point of view. Currently we just see them as traitors. But technically since mordremoth made them the ones fighting for the pact are the real traitors to him. In the same way as the humans worship their gods or the asuran believe in the eternal alchemy, or the norn their spirits. Someone like a tragic hero fighting for mordremoth with good intentions and ideals would have been very interesting. Like the random dwarf that fought for the god Tash in the last narnia book. Again just throwing out ideas I’m just saying the story had so much potential if it was just fleshed out more. Instead of what many people are calling it as a “living story” that we would have got anyways.

3) PvP: With factions we saw a huge upgrade to the pvp system. We saw new match types for casuals and average players with very different type of map objectives. We had 2 faction specific maps that had completely different gameplay mechanics as well as alliance battles that were extremely popular for years even for pve players that normally didn’t care for pvp.

4) Classes: Factions introduced 2 new classes, the assassin and the ritualist. The assassin being the forerunner to the modern day thief and the ritualist according to the books being a forunner to the modern day guardian (along with the warrior and monk) Don’t get me wrong the revenant is pretty cool. And adding in elite specializations helps. But in reality its still not even close. GW Nightfall also had 2 new professions the dervish and the Paragon, both highly requested in gw2. Elite specializations may “change” the way professions play and give them more options but so did the hundreds of new skills in factions, if anything that had much more of a major change. Speaking of skills.

4) Skills: According to the wiki gw factions had 570 new skills total.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_Factions#4_distinct_regions
(scroll down to see it)

Now with gw2 each new class has what? 3-5 maybe. Along with elite specialization changes. That’s nothing compared to the sheer amount of skills in factions. Granted again different game different combat mechanics, but adding a few wells for say the mesmer and a shield is still very small in comparision. This doesn’t even factor in the fact of having dual classes and the countless combinations that brings since again different battle mechanics. Still worth mentioning though.

5) New weapon and armor skins. I haven’t bothered adding up the total new armor or weapon skins for factions, but just remembering the green items alone I know its a lot. Adding in both the normal and the 15k versions of armor too even more. That’s sure a lot more than say the couple we got in HoT (leyline, mistward, bladed) its not even close. But hey we keep getting new gemstore items at least lol. (sarcasm)
————————————————————————

I’m not saying factions was perfect, it maybe unfair to compare them b/c to me except the idea of dynamic combat and graphics I find gw1 superior in almost all ways. The later expansions even improved it further with heroes, and eotn had over 20 new dungeons/paths I believe. (compared to HoT’s zero…it has raids but so did factions) Just using examples of the past to hopefully shed some light on how to make a great expansion. Obviously anet can do it they’ve done it several times before. Really hoping in future expansions we get a lot more content. I think if anet goes back to their roots, really digs deep as far as creating content, having a very strong focus on story, and also goes back to their manifesto that was mostly abandoned in almost all ways but still strongly supported by their players we could have some more amazing expansions in the future.

I’ll agree with some of your above – using snowflakes and whatnot to purchase things, great idea.

But this below part? Really?
I think I missed something – did ANet promise you a game based around Wintersday if you bought the expansion? Was there some special deal that says the Wintersday festivities weren’t just yearly events that ANet in no way has to offer?

I think you may be investing a little too much into this video game.

Swagger.1459:

Seriously. Players pour millions of dollars into the game… We just plunkered down $50-$100 bucks on the xpac, buy hundreds of dollars worth of gems, spend tons of cash through the year… And we are given this for wintersday?

This is lack of leadership care for the loyal players… Honestly, this entire event looks like an attempt to save an extra 10k in coding while you’re tossing 200k for esports…

Vayne.8563:

It’s a shame that people think this gem store is so bad. Cause you know, it’s really not.

I won’t say its bad. GW1 had a gemstore too that I liked buying from for a few skins/outfits. It’s just that each gw1 expansion had a ton of new skins/items in game and gw2 expansion has barely any besides gemstore items.

Firelysm.4967:

DanteZero.9736:

It could be much, much worse than what is going on right now. At least there’s an option to pay for gems with gold, some mmo devs don’t even allow that option.

I dont want to pay it with GEMS or GOLD, they deserve neither, i want to earn it in game.

But then how would they make any money so you can play for free?

Remember…other previous Wintersday Collection Achievements were permanent. This one may be, as well. No need to rush.

Risingashes.8694:

A game should not be designed around people with medical conditions.

Having empathy for people with niche requirements is a good thing to do, but there’s a gigantic chasm between accommodation and breaking the game for other people to serve a slither of the population.

Yeah, but removing the JP requirement from a shoulder item is hardly going to be “game breaking.”

it’s mostly the same as last year, but not exactly:

• the wintersday gifts have new drops
• the events are a little smoother (or at least so it seemed to me)
• the vendor offerings are different
• there’s a shiny shoulder skin

Still, not sure why the OP is expecting every event to offer completely new components every year. As others have said, one of the appealing qualities is that it is and will be the same from year to year — that’s what makes it a festival rather than a one-time event.

PopeUrban.2578:

Several guild hall decorations to spruce up the place for wintersday. people can argue this is content that some can’t use, but honestly, it’s far better than the many many years of nothing guilds got previously.

It looks like holiday decorations are an official thing from here on.

Yes, I’m a big fan of this. I doubt we will get our scribing up in time so soon after HoT, but overall this is something I’m glad to see in game and gives us an extra aim

Cycling seasonal events are repeated content for a reason. They give a nice little change for the seasonal event that gives the developers a way to take a little time off work without completely leaving players in a content desert.

I look forward to the “same holiday content” every year.

It’s not a living story update. It’s a festival. of course you’re completing the same content for different rewards each year. That’s the point. You do a thing each year to get that year’s shinies, and arenanet gets to be a little lax on the work to put out the update.

If they were pushing completely new content every year in stead of just a little bit of new content, festivals would take so much time to produce they’d get in the way of real content updates.

Agrotera.1254:

Thank you Anet for ruining Wintersday for me by just recycling the same thing we had last year.

I wasn’t playing this game last year, in fact I was still doing the Guild Wars 1 Wintersday. So, the Guild Wars 2 Wintersday is completely new to me. Thanks Anet!

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Is it it strange though that Guild Wars 1 had the exact same holiday decorations and the exact same holiday quests every year, and people just did them and didn’t complain.

And still happily do. Same as in at least 4 mmos who hold christmas festivals. To be honest, I am amazed many expected any sort of change after an expac. Festivals by nature tend to be recycled. New content for new players, familiar favs for vets. Fairly standard stuff.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Is it it strange though that Guild Wars 1 had the exact same holiday decorations and the exact same holiday quests every year, and people just did them and didn’t complain.

Yep, people now just want to complain/rant about how bad things are.

Is it it strange though that Guild Wars 1 had the exact same holiday decorations and the exact same holiday quests every year, and people just did them and didn’t complain.

“toxic” is a buzzword like “slap in the face” and “veteran players” that people just use because they think it makes them sound smart.

As for your experiences in bloodtide and queensdale, I’d imagine you didn’t encounter any problems with others because you weren’t disrupting their farm, and didn’t hang around their farms in local all that long. There were, however, lots and lots of screenshot backed posts in both incidents, and those player complaints (in addition to possible botting or economic concerns) were likely the catalyst that clued anet in that there was something they might want to look at.

The fact is Arenanet doesn’t pay a lot of attention to what goes on in its game and the fact that something goes unchanged for a long time persists is no indicator it is intended behavior. I assure you the only reason key farms were left as they were for so long is that nobody decided to look in to the metrics and saw exactly how much money they were losing on key sales, not because Anet wanted people to have more keys. When they wanted people to have more things, they started handing them out.

Anet is never subtle in its balancing. They do it with a sledgehammer that sends shockwaves of forum posts radiating from the point of impact with the force of a thousand kittens. I can’t percieve a world in which anet does anything with secret ulterior motives that the player base doesn’t immediately recognize because, quite frankly, they’re not that good at tweaking by small margins as a studio.

DeWolfe.2174:

PopeUrban.2578:

wall of more daft

Jana.6831:

Is people using bots to farm these bags a problem? Yes it is and I saw it – one guy with 8 bots.

I’m pretty certain you only saw what you wanted to see Jana. Just like Pope only see’s the “intended” design to be what he wants it to be. Anyone deviating from that is obviously doing it wrong and it must be removed, right? That is exactly what is toxic in game. Players telling other players what to do and how to do it. That’s probably what most troll’s in game tell themselves to justify their actions too.

And just as you attach… unsubstantiated claims using completely subjective reasoning, despite what we were told directly by the people who designed the item, and adjusted it right?

Because, when measuring basic logic and arenanet’s own statements against someone who is simply openly antagonistic to the product and development team in general, with a long post history of blaming literally every economic change on the gem store somewhere, it makes infinitely more sense to say “Yeah DeWolfe, you must be right, you’re qualified to make these decisions, and are completely objective!”

Rather than actually attempt to refute my claim you simply dismiss it with one statement because there is no evidence to support your position.

You’re just mad that arenanet did… whatever… that you didn’t like and choose to blame it in microtransactions with no evidence whatsoever to back that up.

In fact, your entire position supposes that they nerfed balm to sell boosters. Even if we completely discount arenanet’s statements, we can see through action that they have demonstrated a clear pattern of giving away larger and larger amounts of boosters as time has gone on since release, and nerfing mob farms that do not conform to their intended design but leaving be farms that actually conform to that design

Like such greats as:

• Shelter-Penitent (nerfed because anet didn’t want people farming one event over and over)

• Queensdale Champ train (nerfed because of conflict between new players and champ train farmers)

• Boss train alt farming (Nerfed because anet felt alts overly advantaged players using them for boss chests)

• Dungeons (Nerfed because Fractals were designed for gold farming, dungeons were designed for token farming, and there were no further plans to support dungeons)

• Maize balm (nerfed because of social impact and unintended play patterns)

• L10 Story key Farming (nerfed because of unintended play patterns and unintended gain rate of free keys. This one actually IS about gem store sales)

• VB Spiders (nerfed because of impact on zone meta and social impact)

yet they left

• Silverwastes Chest farms (left because chest hunting teams is the intended design, and events must be completed to gain access to shovels

• Northern Champ Farm (Left because it mirrors normal play patterns and is simply more efficient event cycling)

• CoF xp farm (left because it has no potential negative economic or social impact on others)

Their pattern aligns well with what they’ve said.

Now, if all you’ve got is the word “daft” then more power to you, but the fact is there’s no logical or factual basis for your claims, and they are built on nothing but a desire to appear smarter than other people and sling mud at arenanet.

Anet deserves to be held accountable for the stupid crap it does, and it does a lot of stupid crap, but your level of delusional paranoid conspiracy theories would be comical were they not so blatantly mean spirited.

zenleto.6179:

Maybe this is a hint of Jormag’s weakness. Alcohol poisoning.

Picturing Norn: One for me, two for Jormag, one for me, five for Jormag, one for me, three for Jormag…

lol thank you for the mental image of playing belcher’s bluff with Jormag