Guild Wars 2

Ranger bow animations suck. They’re totally basic, nothing interesting about them at all except maybe Shortbow #3. The mainhand axe animations are also relatively lackluster, as are off-hand Dagger and Torch.

However, Ranger sword, greatsword, spear, and harpoon gun all have really nice animations (or at least nice projectile effects, in the later case). Probably some of my favorite animations in the game, actually. The idea of animal “spirit” effects for Ranger is a great concept and looks awesome. Ditto with Warhorn. Whirling Defense is also pretty nice despite not following that theme.

I really would like them to go through and Ranger-ify some of the more lacking animations. Take the animal spirit concept and run with it, go all out. It might be a bit harder to have animal (or even nature) animations on the projectiles, but its certainly possible I think. Harpoon Gun pretty much proves its possible.

Some examples I’ve come up with…

Shortbow #2 – Devourer spirit. The shot itself even looks almost identical to what the Whiptail Devourer’s F2 looks like, so this one is even pretty obvious.

Shortbow #4 – Vine shot. Vines wrap around the target, slowing them down.

Longbow #5 – Leaf Shower. Instead of a bunch of arrows falling down, a shower of leaves would fall (not just slowly fall as leaves normally do, they’d move at the speed of the arrows currently, it’d just be a visual effect on the arrows themselves to look like leaves). Maybe a bit wierd, but would look nice I think. Alternatively, if the leaves thing is too wierd it could be a swarm of birds or insects from the sky.

Longbow #3 – Spitting Cobra spirit. Give the arrow itself an acidic looking projectile so its like the acid is eating away at the target, causing vulnerability.

Axe #3 – Ice Drake spirit. Or Frost Imp spirit, maybe, though its not entirely clear to me if Imps are animals exactly.

awe extender.1908:

I did some testing in the mists. It behaves really strange. I used the Insect swarm from marsh drake. The poison ticked for 84 without trait.
With the trait it still ticked 84. But if I engaged in the fight first and then pressed F2, the poison would tick for 119. Also the pet management window doesn’t show that you have 350 condition dmg all the time when traited. However when in battle it shows 350.
If you start the fight then I guess your pet will benefit from the trait. But if you just stand passive and command the pet to fight with F2 ( while you don’t fight) the +350 cond dmg doesn’t work.
I hope some others would care to make some testing as well.

Well thats silly. Makes little to no sense whatsoever for stats like condition damage to only apply while in combat. It wouldn’t even have an effect out of combat, not like you can apply conditions without entering combat.

Also seems like its unessicarily making the game do more than it needs to. Instead of just having a constant boost to condition damage, the game is having to add the CD when combat starts, then take it away again once combat ends.

One reason I can see for this is that maybe they implemented this sort of thing for Concentration Training, to try and prevent you from using your pet as an out-of-combat buffbot. Back when pets had no out-of-combat swap cooldown, I suppose Concentration Training + buff pets could stack some decent boons. If that were the case, maybe they simply copy-pasted the code for Malicious Training from Compassion Training. I have my doubts about that theory (having a countermeasure like that suggests they realized pets could be used as buffbots out of combat, in which case they would have just given them cooldowns from the start), but its a theory anyway.

The other possibility I can think of is that pets don’t actually have “stats” in the way players do, but there’s simply a hodgepodge system where the game artificially boosts their abilities based on traits to “mimic” actual stats, and said system only works in combat. And if that is the case, its a really sloppy way of handling a pet system in a game where you know you’re going to have a whole profession based around the things.

But regardless of the reason, its silly and hopefully deemed a bug to be fixed in the future. But it is useful to know. When I use Devourers (and to a certain extent Drakes) I almost always initiate combat with F2, and thats apparently a really bad thing to do based on these findings.

I would love this idea.

Except there’s one major, glaring issue that prevents it from ever happening and having an actual effect. PvP.

All pets are automatically given to you in PvP. Not just listed, but usable. Part of keeping the playing field completely level and independent of PvE, keeping it entirely skill-based and not “Who has the best stuff”. So even if Anet were to hide the pets from you in PvE, they’d have to put them into the PvP listing, so everyone would know right away anyway. At most, you could try to avoid going into PvP to try and keep it a secret, but eventually someone is going to mention it in map chat or something anyway.

Its a legit tactic as mentioned. Most probably aren’t doing it to prevent others from getting the achievement, but rather simply to win the game (though as always I’m sure there are some who are just trying to be jerks).

The bigger problem is with the achievement itself, and the fact that a legitimate tactic also happens to mess up the achievement. There should be some sort of method to keep dropping the package from stopping the achievement as well, maybe some sort of timer where if you’re killed within X seconds of dropping the package it still counts (like how you’re vulnerable to snowballs for around 5 seconds after throwing a snowball).

The events are supposed to build up each day, with some events carrying over to the next day, I believe. Gives a nice sense of progression, with each toy adding to the dungeon even after that day is over. I swear I’ve read a post to that effect, how its supposed to build, but I can’t remember where I saw it.

The thing that was a bug, I believe, was certain events repeating more than once during the same instance. For example, when I was doing runs yesterday there were 2 “destroy the Ventari turrets” events every run, and one of them was actually overlapping with the waves of soldiers event, so you had turrets, ventari toys, soldiers, and toy mortars all happening at the same time (not to mention 3 missions to kill Toxx, even though only the last one actually had her go aggressive, the other 2 just kind of stuck there).

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The small, medium, large, giant, and personalized gift boxes all have an equal chance of dropping the endless tonic and the unbreakable bell. In fact, all of the boxes (excluding MTX) drop very similar things at very similar rates. The only reason there are different ones is largely related to crafting, so that lower level players can find and craft level-appropriate stuff from recipes and components.

Wait, wait, wait…

So I’ve been taking 1 giant box from the dungeon end-reward (on repeat runs) hoping to get better chances at rarer drops when I could have been taking 3 small boxes to get 3x the number of chances at the same rare drops?

Boy, do I feel stupid. You could say I’ve at least been getting better chances at crafting materials, but I’m really not sure giant boxes ever drop crafting materials. I almost always get only 1 ugly sweater, or occassionally a weapon skin.

At least I saw this post now and not when the event is over. Got plenty of time to change my reward strategy >.>

Does kind of raise the question of why the dungeon rewards different amounts of the boxes at all, though. If they all have the same stuff (minus higher level crafting materials in better boxes I guess) then why do you get more of the smaller boxes? Do the higher level mats really need to be that much rarer, that at least from a quantity-standpoint you get more rewards if you’re getting low level boxes?

Yah, Companion’s Might is almost completely worthless. Pets don’t attack every second, so half the time it won’t even have an effect at all. You have to get lucky and have your pet attack at close to the exact same time you crit, or else the Might will come and go without your pet even using it once.

I kind of wonder if they “balanced” this specifically with Quickening Zephyr in mind. Because thats pretty much the only time I can see it ever being useful, and even then you’re getting 2, maybe 3 pet attacks with probably up to 2-4 stacks of might (if you’re using Shortbow or Sword with a decent crit rate) by the time QZ is done. Still not that great, and a trait entirely dependent on one single utility to be useful is laughable.

The minor traits in Nature Magic are very good.

The major traits, on the other hand… not so much. About half the major traits in Nature Magic are relatively poor (basically all of them involving spirits because spirits themselves are lackluster, as well as Evasive Purity), and another few are mediocre or situational. Even some of the ones that are good in theory aren’t that great because the bonuses they provide are too small (Two-Handed Training and Strength of Spirit should both be 10%).

Compared to something like Skirmishing where nearly every trait is useful, Nature Magic really falls off.

Even the stat bonuses for Nature Magic aren’t all that great. Boon Duration is OK in general, but Ranger doesn’t really apply that many boons and has a lot of “non-boon” buffs (stuff like Signets which apply damage boosts or other effects to pets, but are seperate effects and not boons, thus not benefiting from duration). Vitatlity is decent enough, but Ranger has good base health, so its less important than say Toughness.

Topic. I’ve got enough gems to potentially buy 2 of the Gem Store weapon skins, but I would like to get 3-4 skins (and maybe some bank storage). So it seems I need some vouchers or whatever they’re called, but I’ve no idea what drops those. I know the actual Gem Store presents do, but that doesn’t really help me, I’d just be trading 2 guaranteed skins with gambling which probably wouldn’t pay off because my luck is crap.

Anything else that drops them? Any of the normal packages, the dungeon chest, anything like that?

I know I probably won’t get them even if there is something else that drops them since they’re likely insanely rare, but I figure I can at least try.

So not only can you only craft 2 minis, but if you do craft them then you lose out on potential endless tonics as well? These things are seeming less and less like a gift every day, especially since if you like one the best you probably want the mini AND the tonic.

It’d be fine if they were tradable, you could use your spare frames from ones you didn’t craft because you don’t like them as much and try to trade for a tonic of the one you crafted / like the best. But I guess this entire event is all about account-bound stuff.

And RNG rate of success, really? Do they need a material-sink that badly? Its not like the materials are that common, I’ve opened almost enough presents to get the monthly achievement and haven’t gotten a single bit of glue or stuffing (besides the rewards from the dungeon).

I’ve never fallen through a snowflake before after probably a couple hundred runs of the JP.

But I’m very fast, so it never even gets close to the time when the flakes are going to melt on me. Maybe the hitbox for the flakes disappears before the actual model does (so the model disappears before you visually see the flake melt). I’m pretty sure I have jumped through a present or two that hadn’t visually exploded but might have been about to explode.

The one I’ve seen complained about most is the boost to 25% move speed for Signet of Air. Other professions got it too of course, but most people seem to complain that “Elementalist is already insanely fast and you give them MORE speed?”.

Of course, in reality the buff to SoA is not nearly as useful as those people are thinking it is, considering the fact that it doesn’t stack with Swiftness nor does it stack with any of the other speed traits Elementalist has, coupled with the fact that most Ele’s would hardly spare a utility slot just for some extra speed. But I guess on paper giving a fast class more speed makes people panic regardless of how much actual impact it may have.

I suppose they could be thinking of the wierd bugs now associated with Magnetic Grasp and how it sometimes gives you a minute worth of fury, but that wasn’t in the notes so I doubt most non-ele’s even know about that (and either way its quite obvious its a bug).

Agreed on all counts. Especially #3. I don’t nessicarily think turrets should be “commandable” (Commanding pets is Ranger’s profession mechanic and I don’t think other professions should get it) but for the love of pie the AI firing at dead world objects absolutely NEEDS to be fixed. No other pet / minion in the game gets stuck attacking an object thats not there any more.

Though on issue #2, I have my own suggestion. If you play the Charr Iron Legion storyline, during one of the earlier missions you’re given a few redeployable turrets. You can grab these turrets from a cart (as you would grab a rock from the ground or whatever), walk to a location, and press “1” to place the turret where you’re standing. More importantly though, you can then pick them up again, move them to a different spot, and put them back down.

Engineer turrets should work this way. Instead of interacting with them simply making them disappear and reducing cooldown a bit, let interacting with them put the turret into your hand, so that you can move them around. While in your hand, pressing “2” would stow the turret completely (exactly how it works now, with the cooldown reduction and turret disappearing from the world), while pressing “1” would have you place the turret back on the ground at the spot you’re standing (or with deployable turrets, at a ground-targeted location). Turret health would have to be kept constant between moves in this fasion, so it would still be beneficial to stow the turret completely sometimes to heal it up, but it would let you make minor adjustments to turret position without waiting for the cooldown every single time.

I’d say this would probably be just fine as default turret functionality. But I’d be fine with it even being a trait that enables this function, integrating it with one of the other turret traits. Either Deployable Turrets because the name matches the functionality, or Self-Repairing Turrets because as mentioned that trait is just kind of meh.

Meltdown.5921:

@Electro, are there a lot of guilds like this? This is the first I’ve heard of that. Since any race/order can assist in the missions of the others I didn’t think this was as much of a problem. When the game first launched we did Personal Story runs with people from all race/orders. Is there a game feature we’re missing out on? I’m interested, because no one has never said, “Sorry Meltdown, I’m looking for a good Asuran Krew.”

There’s no game feature related to it, no. The game does its best not to restrict anything on race or organization. Its strictly a roleplaying thing.

I’ve definately seen a number of guilds like this, but then again I’m on Tarnished Coast, the unofficial roleplay server. So I don’t know how many similar guilds there are elsewhere.

Not to imply every guild on TC is a roleplay guild or anything, or even that all roleplay guilds are based on races / groups. But there are some, and removing multi-guilding would, from my perspective, effectly kill them. Unless they made guilds per-character, as mentioned.

I’ve got a pretty long list of pets that are already enemies in-game that I’d like to see as pets.

Griffons
Worms, especially a Plains Worm since it would make a good ranged pet
Wind Rider / Reef Rider
Grubs
Alpine Stalker
Skales and Shelks
Hermit Crab
Armadillo
Raptors
Scorpion Fish (especially the glowing Deep Sea variety)
Thundershrimp
Whatever Risen Fish are prior to being turned (obviously an actual Risen Fish would be wierd, but they look cool so I imagine whatever they’re based on would also look cool)

Moose aren’t really on my list of wants personally, but I certainly wouldn’t complain about them being added. That goes for pretty much any animal in the game really, even if I don’t nessicarily want them I’d be happy just to see more get added.

There’s actually quite a bit of race-specific dialogue in the game already, from talking to random NPCs around the world. If you actually pay attention to the responses.

Just as a random example, in Gendarran Fields there’s a winery with a Charr working there. When I talked to her with my Charr character, the responses I could give were more along the lines of “You abandoned your warband to work here!?” and had her explaining that her warband agreed to meet there in the case of an incident and she’s just following orders by staying there. With other races, the character’s responses are more along the lines of “Its odd to see a Charr at a winery” and her responses were more about not letting stereotypes determine your expectations, with no mention of a warband or anything.

Or in wandering around Ebonhawke, the NPCs are obviously a bit more hostile to Charr characters than other races. Even the seperatists you have to talk down have different speeches to Charr characters, and your own responses are different as well.

The reward chests reset every day, there’s no reason to “hold off until level 80 for better rewards”.

They seem pretty good as-is now, considering that fact. Make the rewards as good as you suggest and people will start farming them daily.

Add an option in the menu to disable the popup, rather than just removing it completely. I’m sure some people appreciate it and don’t even realize you can look at the map to see whether you’re in overflow or not.

I know nothing about running a guild and little about being in one (considering I’ve yet to join a guild yet). However, most of the suggestions are sound and seem like vast improvements, so I’d support them.

I would like to dispute one point thats been made a few times in the thread though, and thats the whole notion of ditching the multi-guild system.

Despite the fact that I’m not in any guilds yet, I know that when I do eventually starting joining them, I want to primarily join RP guilds. The ones that seem most interesting to me at this point would be ones based around racial groups (Charr warbands, Asura krewes, ect) or guilds based around other organizations like the Durmand Priory / Vigil / Order of Whispers.

Considering the fact that I have 2 Charr, 2 Sylvari, 1 Asura ATM, and characters in all 3 of the story organizations, that means I need the multiguild system in place if I ever want to join any of those RP guilds, because there isn’t one I could join that would fit all my characters in it.

That same problem would also probably end the existance of any of those types of guilds in general, since I imagine there aren’t many people who play only 1 race, only 1 group, or whatever.

Now, if guilds were per-character and not account-wide, then that’d be a different story. But as it is, guilds shared across your entire account, ditching the multi-guild system would reduce options too much.

The fact that Agony Resist has been added to the pet screen makes it rather obvious the devs intend to add Agony Resist to pets at some point. Absolutely no reason to add a field for the stat if its never going to increase, waste of development time.

If I had to guess, I’d say the devs aren’t too concerned with pet agony resist just yet, because even players don’t have that much resistance to it yet. Once they start adding Ascended quality armors and players really start having more AR, thats when they’ll start looking at giving it to pets as well.

It could even be that pet AR is going to be based on armor infusions (maybe there will be certain infusions which give AR to both the player and pets). I assume its not just Ranger pets that are going to need AR, other minions / summons / turrets are going to need it to in order to avoid becomming obsolete. So having it on armor infusions would work well to distribute it to everything, as opposed to just throwing it on a Ranger trait and leaving everything else without.

Not sure why this is in the Wintersday forum, but…

Maybe its to eliminate possible issues with people previewing armor, not realizing its not their class, then being disappointed when they find out they can’t wear it.

Or maybe the devs got tired of all the people asking for cross-class armor transmutation citing “You can already preview other types of armor on your character”. Though I really doubt thats the reason.

Its an odd change either way, though. Weapons aren’t limited in such a way, that much I know for sure. Maybe its unintentional, maybe the devs were tweaking some preview mechanics and messed something up.

dcypher.2590:

I’ll try to make this short. I like the area, it’s new, it’s fun. The puzzle, if that’s what you want to call it, feels like just a sprint. You aren’t actually solving anything, you are just let loose with about 5 other people on the same platform bumrushing the course. So while that may be some people’s thing, it’s definitely not mine.

I like being able to have time to look at something and solve it, which you don’t get the chance to do here. That’s a disappointment to me, but I’ll just hope your team can find ways other than racing to make a puzzle captivating.

From a scale of 1-10 I’d rank it about a 6. The scenery is awesome, the puzzle,or lack-there-of, is just not.

Its a misnomer. They should have called them something else besides “Jumping Puzzle” (or had different names for ones that were puzzles and ones that were more twitch based). Its obvious even in the core game, not just events, that some of them are meant to be actual puzzles while others are supposed to be reflex / timing / skill based (and some mix the two). Naming them all puzzles is… puzzling.

Reflex based jumping challenges work much better for holiday events, because figuring out an actual puzzle when you’re almost guaranteed to be in a large group is no fun. Just one person looking at a guide ruins it, and special events are always going to be full of people.

I don’t think its a concious decision to move the placement. I think its more just a consequence of the Winter greatsword having a smaller hilt than most. If they moved the other GS in your picture (or indeed many others) up further than the hilt would sit far above the characters’ head, which I assume they don’t want.

A target drop on a passive, roll-based ability? That would be insane, especially with the Vigor that Mesmer has access to. Its like a free mini-stealth every few seconds without any utility slot needed, no specific weapon or combo, just one single trait (and not even a Grandmaster trait).

A free clone is already great as it is. Any build aside from a Phantasm build will benefit from a free clone, whether it be in the form of an extra distraction, a meat shield to block a projectile, or shatter-fodder (especially keeping in mind that shattering is not build-specific, any Mesmer can shatter for 4 different effects, though obviously shatter builds benefit more). Its probably the best “on roll” ability in the game, at least IMO. Great adaptability, useful at any range.

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.

Scorpion.3691:

Brutal Arts.6307:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Rococo.8347:

‘I wouldn’t call it a dungeon, but rather a collection of events inside of a 5-player instance.’

Isnt that what a Dungeon essentially is? lol

No, our dungeons are full of super tough monsters and potentially very challenging content. The Infininarium plays more like normal open world events.

I think you mean dozens of trash mobs with arbitrary HP increases.

The Tixx event wasn’t bad though, took a nice short 7 minutes but the rewards for a second clear aren’t worth it. Hopefully it resets everyday after the event moves to LA so we can make all the mini’s.

Actually the rewards for a 2nd clear or more can be worth it…2nd run through playing my Guardian I got a nice exotic from the chest that sells for over 6gp on TP….. just because you don’t get any more cogs or whatever the 2nd time doesn’t mean you can’t get something nice from the chest at end

The chest also drops weapon skins for the weapons you get from the “bad item trade” vendors. I got a Slingshot skin from it on my 3rd run. No idea how rare the skins are or whether you can also get “tickets” for the Gem Store skins, or if its only the toy skins that are in there.

And the actual “reward” you can choose at the end from the “Choose your Reward” prompt includes a choice for a Giant Present, which supposedly can include the mini’s (not the toy minis, but the golem / quaggan / airship / snowman) from what I’ve read. I’m hoping it also includes possible Gem Store skins, though I’ve heard nothing about that (I’m really hoping for some way to get the weapon skins from the Gem Store besides just buying them, if you can’t tell :P).

My guess would be that at some point the devs were going to buff the duration to 10 seconds, and made the changes to the skill itself and the tooltip. Then later on (during the testing process for the patch, before it went live) they decided to revert the duration back to 8 seconds, deeming the change too powerful or whatever. However they forgot to fix the tooltip back to its old duration, and whoever wrote the patch notes either looked only at the tooltip change when writing the notes, or wrote them earlier (before it was changed back).

Now this patch simply fixed the tooltip so that it matches what the skill currently does.

Just because it doesn’t happen at the exact same time doesn’t mean its not going to happen.

Elementalists got weapon stats applied to their Conjures. Engineers didn’t get stats on their kits, but some people assumed it was going to happen in the future and indeed now its been actively said that kits are going to get stats down the line.

Same thing may apply here. Bows have gotten fixed, but there still remain other projectiles too slow to connect reliably (Guardian Scepter, Necro Staff, ect). Those will hopefully get addressed in the future.

If anything, I view the change to bows as a positive thing (not just because I play a Ranger either). The change means the devs are aware of the problem with projectiles and inability to hit moving targets at range. The fact that they’re aware of the major issue hopefully means they’ll address all of the offenders in time, even if they aren’t fixed instantly and all at once.

I definately agree that Scepter needs help, but if your first post was implying that bow shots shouldn’t have been buffed, then you’re very mistaken. Bow shots were almost as inaccurate as Scepter is at longer ranges vs moving targets (and without the advantage of things like instant AoE or immobilize either).

The fact that they buffed bows is actually a good thing, if you ask me. It shows that the devs know some projectiles are in need of help hitting at range, which means they’re probably going to realize Scepter needs to be fixed too.

Its certainly odd. Not only are the Engineer Harpoon Gun skills the only underwater skills that requires a trait to be a finisher, I believe they’re the only skills in the game period to be that way. I certainly can’t think of any others.

Makes no darn sense either. How are missiles and net shots and the like not physical unless you improve the gun?

Has anyone actually tested this to confirm they only projectile finish with the trait? I almost feel like maybe the patch notes are wrong. They way they’re worded, “small projectile finisher” (WTF does that even mean, small finisher?) is wierd. I have no idea how they’d mess up so bad, but…

Caffynated.5713:

Fire, air and earth work as advertised.

Water has a graphical effect similar to earth, but doesn’t heal. I haven’t had a chance to test condition removal yet.

*edit- it doesn’t seem to be doing anything in water. It doesn’t even trigger my signet of restoration heal the way the other three attunements do.

*edit 2- after some more experience with it, water will go off when your health is bellow full, but it seems to trigger before fall damage is applied and will only heal the amount you were already injured and not the new falling damage.

That makes sense. They probably don’t want you using water to heal off damage from the fall itself. Would essentially make the water version “better” than all other fall traits, because it would reduce damage by more than 50% (through the fact that it would heal off part of the damage taken).

I love the Charr run animation. Its awesome. I already tend to sheath my weapon when not in use in all games that its an option, but especially when I’m playing my Charr the run animation guarantees that I always sheath. It just doesn’t feel right running otherwise. Heck, I’ll actually sheath my weapon when running to other enemies during combat even (like if I kill something melee then need to run to another enemy attacking at range, I’ll sheath to run to them).

It bugs me that NPCs never run on all fours though. Wierd when I’m running with a group of NPCs and they’re all on 2 legs while I’m running on all fours.

To each their own and all. I would riot if they removed the Charr running animation. I already hate that the new Wintersday jumping puzzle shoves a package into your hand, thereby forcing Charr out of their running animation.

tiboi.3108:

very nice analyst on your part, imo whether pre-patched or post-patched, it’s still crap. Plus, I think there’s probably a speed cap in combat, because if you calculate 25% signet + 30% Agility Training + 33% swiftness boon buff, then our pets would have 88% speed increased right? But I don’t think it’s the case then, since my panther could barely hit the stupid thief strafing with their auto-attack…

Swiftness doesn’t stack with passive speed increases on players, nor do passive increases stack. Swiftness takes precedence over passive boosts, and if you have multiple passive boosts you only get the single highest boost.

I assume pets would be the same. Don’t try stacking speed boosts, just pick one and go with it.

Interesting resaults. As if people needed even more reason to use Canine pets the most :p.

I’m really suprised the ranged pets kill so slowly, though.

The Wintersday page says more items will be added to the Gem Store as the event goes on, but that probably means the toy minis. I doubt there will be more skins.

There are more Wintersday skins than there were Halloween skins already, as well.

I also prefer the Halloween style weapons to the Wintersday ones, but different styles appeal to different people of course. I’m sure there are others who hated the Halloween skins and love the Winter ones.

The only thing that makes Toy Ventari’s overly difficult is the Retalition. It lasts for an eternity and slaughters you far faster than their actual attacks do unless you’re using only slow, powerful attacks. And god help you if you throw down a multi-hit AoE on a couple of them.

I think they should reduce the Retaliation time to maybe 5 seconds or something (closer to the time their other buffs last). I haven’t actually timed it as it is now, but it seems like its over 15 seconds in duration at this point, and 15 seconds of “don’t attack or you’ll get destroyed” is a bit much, especially since it seems they can reapply it relatively quickly after it finally does go away.

Don’t equate critisicm towards one or two aspects of the event to “We hate Anet and GW2”.

You can love a game and still dislike certain aspects of it.

I’ve definately seen posts thanking Anet for their work, but more can never heart. Thanks Anet, you’re doing a great job overall.

NightShadow.1429:

So only giant wintersday gifts drop them? Not the other sizes? If so that means only people lvl 60+ have a chance in game of getting them…. Also it’s still rng no matter how you look at it.

Not true. You get a choice of rewards for beating the dungeon on runs beyond the 1st, and one of those choices is 1 Giant Present Box.

I’ve gotten this on level 40 characters, so I imagine its choosable by any character.

Its still entirely RNG, absolutely, but… there’s no level requirement.

arjeidi.2690:

Everyone who thinks this was too easy and you feel “bought down” to the level of others undeservedly, go do something with your life. Stop trying to exclude others in an online community just so you feel accomplished. Its a game, not a measure of you as a person. It didn’t feel like a huge accomplishment? Get a promotion at work.

Jesus christ some people are so self-absorbed.

You could stand to be a bit less condescending yourself while trying to lecture people about being self-absorbed.

Some people simply like a challenge. Its not fun because other people can’t do it, its just fun because its challenging. Something to work towards, something that takes some practice to do. The accomplishment is beating something difficult. It has nothing to do with other people not being able to do it and feeling “superior”, its just fun to for some to struggle through something and come out on top.

Mind you, I’m sure there are SOME people who like to beat something just to rub it in other peoples faces. But implying that everyone who mentions it being easy and wishes it was harder only wants it harder to screw other people is a bit too much.

Parvati.5780:

I really wish that it didn’t remove traited health, I went from 25k Hp to 17k HP. So when I first got to the final box I had 600 hp left and died inches from completing it. But I did manage to complete it 10 tries later.

That being said, it is a god send that the pack gets split up into 3? possible jump routes. It would have been HORRID if everyone followed one path!

I’m pretty sure the health tick is percentage-based (you lose a certain percent of your total health every second), so it wouldn’t matter if they let you keep your traited health or not, you’d still die exactly as fast.

I like the Wintersday jumping puzzle quite a bit. Its easier than Clock Tower certainly, but its still fun and challenging enough.

The only real complaint I have would be the wind. Its really hard to tell when its blowing and when its not. Half the time I run through anyway even though I can see the wind blowing and I get by without getting knocked, and other times I see no wind, run, and get blown off the platform. Probably can’t be changed at this point, but in the future I’d suggest using a more visible obstacle like a laser or something if you’re going to do a “time your running past this obstacle” sort of thing.

Well, the reward for the puzzle is also kind of meh. Clock Tower gave an Exotic item, all you get here are a few packages, some vendor trading stuff, some karma and a crafting material. And repeat runs only get you 3 packages, where repeat runs of the Clock Tower got you 5-10 ToT bags. I guess the decreased reward is probably intentional so that people who can’t do it don’t really miss out on anything, which I suppose I’m fine with.

Yah, I’m bummed they’re account-bound and lottery-based. I want the lightbulb golem and have 1200 gems saved up that I’d gladly spend some of if I could get it guaranteed (or I’d gladly just buy it with gold from the TP eventually), but I’m not willing to risk wasting those gems and not get anything worthwhile.

Nice video. Glad I got in on this one, was fun. Still needed more Charr, but at least I was 1 more. I was almost hoping the patch wouldn’t come so we could keep on dancing, heh. Almost.

Recipe.4769:

Hey GW2 lovers,

Bit new here to the skin stuff, let it be armor or weapon skins, but when I ‘put on’ such a skin do I keep my current weapon and armor stats? Or do those skins have stats of their own?

And can I put them off again with no ‘harm’ done?

Many thanks for the reply and catch you in winter wonderland,

Recipe

PS: the skins look awesome, great job done by the GW2 team :-)

Skins don’t have stats. Whatever weapon you apply them to will keep its stats and sigil, the only thing that changes is appearence.

You can’t “take off” the skin to apply it to another weapon later or anything, but you can use Transmutation Stones (or Fine Transmutation Stones if level 80 item) to pass the appearence onto another weapon.

I thought the wood weapons in the shop were really goofy for the most part (wood is OK for bows and staffs, but wood swords really?), but after seeing the screenshot and the particle effects they’re much cooler. Still don’t like the wood for melee weapons, but the effects are so nice. So thanks for posting the screenshot Spyder.

Eh, the skins for this event are all rather silly looking. A toy mace / wood mace would be goofy. TBH, I’d rather have them wait until they can make a cool looking mace.

I watched pretty close as my download finished just now, and it was at 590mb or so.

Surprised is better, but threaten is pretty great too.

It was especially fun during the Diessa Plateau heart quest with the cows. Solve your problems by roaring at cows, yes!

Aw man, I was there at the Tarnished Coast dance party but I must have left before you shot the video. I would have liked to add one more to the Asura line.

Nice video though. Hells yes Trans Siberian Orchestra, saw them in concert last year and it was awesome.

There are 2 event staff skins (Scythe and The Crossing). Thats only beaten by Shields, which have 3 event skins, and tied by Swords. I don’t see how staffs can be considered neglected when items like Maces, Hammers, and Warhorns don’t have ANY event skins at all and most don’t have more than 1.

But I’m personally hoping for at least one skin for every type of item for Wintersday.

I’m cheap, so I definately won’t be buying anything. I barely managed to force myself to buy an extra character slot :p

But I’m hoping the chests are going to be seperate items ala the Consortium Chest, and not just low-chance drops from the normal BLC. That way you’re guaranteed to get some holiday items, even if you don’t nessicarily get exactly what you want.

poe lyfe.5879:

i dont like this idea. better alternatives are available like dervishes paragons and ritualists. and even if they were. this is just a bad idea imo. i dont think im alone when i say id probably stop playing guildwars shortly after this class was announced. were it to be announced.

You would really stop playing the game over one class you could easily never play as?

Dahkeus.8243:

3) I wish. I’m not a big fan of having a giant spider/devourer follow me around, but they are very effective pets, especially in dungeons. I’d love to see other options for ranged pets, but I can’t think of another creature that would make sense as a ranged pet.

Plains / Frost Worms and caterpillars / grubs would both make nice ranged pets considering they’re both ranged or semi-ranged already as enemies, but if you don’t like giant spiders and scorpions then those probably wouldn’t be much better (and Frost Worm would overlap with the Norn racial).

Perhaps Imps? I dunno, I think they’re somewhat sentient which would mean they probably wouldn’t be added as pets, but maybe.

Wind Riders seem like a good choice. Only the Veterans are ranged as far as enemies go, but that’d be OK since most enemy Devourers are melee yet the pets are ranged. I could totally get behind a pet Wind Rider (or Reef Rider even, they look cooler and it would give Sunsouth Cove a second pet) as a pet, they’re pretty nice and would also be good since they’re more fantasy-related and not just a normal animal, which some people have mentioned wanting more of.

They could always add a ranged Drake. There are already a couple Drakes with ranged F2’s (River and Marsh) so one that was strictly ranged wouldn’t be too strange. Or maybe just add a small ranged dragon.

As far as completely new creatures that aren’t even in the game yet, a spitting snake would definately be reasonable. Maybe a porcipine-type creature that shoots quills. And as far as the fantasy side goes, sky’s the limit really. It should be really easy to make up a fantasy creature that shoots energy projectiles or whatever.