After the long build up as we all waited patiently for Tixx to arrive in Lion’s Arch, the wait is over. Starting today you have 2 weeks until the end of the event in order hone our skills, and save those Dolyaks. Below is a breakdown of how the game works, and what you can do to help your team.
Getting Started
To get to Toypocalypse you’ll need to travel to Lion’s Arch, at the north end of the Grand Plaza. Tixx is there (don’t forget to stop by and get your gift) and just to the right is a Seraph Soldier who is asking for recruits to stop the toy rampage going on inside the Infiniarium. Once inside you’ll have a few moments for the rest of your randomly formed party to team up and get into the map before the game starts.
Once the game being you'll find 5 Dolyaks in the middle of the Infiniarium that you are tasked with defending against ever growing waves of enemies. Each wave seems to have 2 stages. Once where enemies spawn in various mixtures of the Toy's we've seen in days past, and the Toxx comes out of hiding and starts smashing before you "put her back to sleep" as Tixx would say. In order to succeed you will need to complete 10 waves of enemies (Complete the event with all 5 Doylaks for what is sure to be a prestigious achievement).
Choose your Weapon
There are three weapons players can carry. Toy Pop Gun, Toysmasher, and Toy Repair Pistol.
Toy Pop Gun - This is easily the biggest damage dealer out of all three options. The main attack is a slow firing, sniper shot, much like the burst ability on a Warrior’s rifle. At lower levels this can one shot most toys. The 2nd attack is a line attack that does damage to multple targets. If you use Snow walls to group enemies together this can be devastating. And the 3rd attack is a rifle butt. This is useful becuase it’s the only way you have to break the scenery and get scraps (more on that below).
Toysmasher - This weapon is the melee option of the group. If ever there was a prototypical “tank” in Guild Wars 2 this is it. You do pittance for damage, but your 3 attack is a nice aoe knockback and your 2 ability is a knockdown. The real upside of this weapon is how good it is as destroying scenery. Try and pick this one up early so you can get your defenses setup before the toys start coming.
Toy Repair Pistol - The repair gun is a weird mix of effects. The best effect seems to be the mind control “Reprogram” effect that temporarily causes an enemy toy to attack it’s allys. Despite its name I wasn’t able to get it to repair the turrets I built, much to my chagrin.
Build a Defense
Around the Infiniarium there are all the wooden structures and buildings we’ve come to love from the Tixx dungeon event. Smashing these is vital to your success against the toy uprising. A smashed object will randomly drop one of two objects. Snow or Scraps
Snow - Snow lets you build two different objects. A Wall or a Snowman. The Wall is great because it seems enemies will agro the wall over your precious Dolyaks, buying you extra time to smash them. They do go down quickly though if overwhelmed. The Snowman is a medium fire Single target turret with decent range. They do decent damage, but I think the wall is probably more valuable to your overall goal here.
Scraps - Like Snow, scraps let you build one of two objects. A Ballista or a Catapult. Ballista are like Snowmen, but seem to fire a little faster, at the cost of their range. They don’t do much damage, but they are great at mowing down lots of enemies. Catapults, in my opinion, are bread and butter defense however. In conjunction with Snow Walls, the AoE attack they dish out can really mess up some toys.
Upgrading and Repairing Defenses
In addition to building new defenses, any defense you build can be upgraded twice by taking the same object used to build it and bringing it to the defense. For example. If you want to upgrade a Catapult, you must bring another Scrap to it. If you want to upgrade a Snowman, bring more snow. Based on my first few play throughs, it seems upgrading is more cost effective than building new, but do be warned they don’t seem much harder to kill (with the exception of the wall, which gains HP as you level it).
Upgrading has one other huge benefit and that is that it restores the defense object to full health. If you see an object about to die, instead of building a 2nd turret next to it, upgrade the one on low health and you’ll get much more Return on that investment.
Your Dolyaks don't heal up after each wave, but every couple of waves Hay spawns around the middle of the map that players can take to the Dolyaks to heal them. This is very important not to miss as your Dolyaks will take damage.
Strategy
You will want to make sure everyone grabs the Toysmasher at the start of the match so you can all focus on building defenses early. Once you get an initial setup, have a few players switch to Toy Pop Gun for damage. I would say you want one player dedicated to Toysmasher and always on upgrade duty. Between waves everyone should chip in upgrading defenses.
Speaking of those, concentrate them around the center ring of the map. Do not clump all of your defenses however. Toxx comes onto the map and has huge AoE attacks that will ruin you if you do that. Instead, space out Snow Walls around the perimeter and use upgraded Catapults, Ballista, And Snowmen to fend off the charging hordes. Try and keep Toxx kited away from your base, since he will agro on players.
If you are having trouble finding time to setup between waves, spend some extra time kiting the last enemy of any wave. This gives players time to run around and collect supplies to ready for the next wave. I haven't tested enough to know for sure, but it looks like the next wave wont spawn until all the previous enemies are killed. So by leaving one straggler you can buy extra time for setup. This can be hard to pull off however.
I only got a couple games in, but I wanted to get this out there early for you guys. I’ll update this as I play more games and refine my strategy. Good luck!
SOURCE: http://guildwars2hub.com/guides/basics/toypocalypse-guide