Favorite profession for Strength of Snow?

Hey, me and a few friends have been having an argument on which profession is typically the best or more favored for use in The Strength of Snow quest. Sad enough as it is arguing about a game, I wanted to ask the GW community about which profession they use the most or prefer. Please don't spam, flame, ect....this is just a friendly poll. Please post you favored profession for these Wintersday events and possibly a note on why. Happy holidays all!

Best: Monk
Fastest: Warrior
Worst: Necro

Best Survivability: Monk
Best Damage: Ranger and Paragon (Ranger hits multiple people, Paragon speeds up snowmen's attacks)
Best for Lazy people: Ritualist (summon a Jack Frost and your helping without helping)
Fastest: Warrior
Worse: Necromancer (the special skill is 100% useless on all 5 snowball quests - use it, you die, quest failure).
Meh: Mesmer, Elementalist, and Dervish

Necro is indeed the worst, but war is a close second for that position. Now, before the flames start, listen. You have a 10% speed boost for 10 seconds out of every minute. Lets say that you travel at 1 unit per second, whatever that unit is. That means that, under normal circumstances, you travel 60 units per minute. With the war speed boost, you will instead travel a grand total of 61 units per minute. Since the run to the end can be done normally in at or under three minutes, that means you're saving around maybe 3 seconds on the run there. In addition, the skill is practically useless once you get there, good only for charging mega snowball. There are much better ways to speed through that part of the mission than that obviously. Therefore, the idea that the war is the fastest is absurd, to say the least.

Someone mentioned monk as most survivable, but really, if you know how to use your skills, strafe, and understand how the snowmen work (watching Freezie's moral boost and when they resurrect) survival is never really a problem, unless you get uber lag. The monk skill is therefore pretty useless to a fast run as well, although I think that it fits pretty well for the "most lazy" category that someone else was talking about, as its an easy button for those who can't really handle the run to the end, or who can't dodge. Dervish goes under this category as well, except that its heal is worse, doesn't have the kds, and can't be used on allies. So does sin for that matter, though its heal is better than the derv's and it allows for easy dodging for the strafing-impaired.

The para skill is useless as well, it makes the snowballs fly somewhat faster, which only matters if the grenches start pulling wild strafing moves of their own, at the cost of a 2 second cast time, reducing dps significantly.

The mesmer skill is good utility in theory, but against grenches that die in 4 hits or less, is pretty useless, even with a very skilled user, as most threats could be more easily dealt with by kding and killing the target.

The ele skill provides some aoe, which is nice, and a snare, which is unneccessary. I wouldn't use it, but I wouldn't totally write it off either.

The ranger skill is good, providing more constant aoe spam than the ele. Haven't used it extensively myself, but I consider it one of the best.

The ritualist: god of this quest. IF you use it correctly. You can position it to take the brunt of an upcoming wave of grenches while you mop up the one from the other side. You can use it while the snowmen are down and you're tanking the grenches as a way to increase dps before ice fort drops, and to finish off grenches who focus on you while you strafe. If you're bad though, its worse than useless, as if you do something like place it out of range of grenches, you'll just cancel the one the snowmen put up for no reason. There are more tactics than this, but I don't feel like writing much more lol. Basically, the rit can be used in both an offensive and defensive role simulataneously, increasing survivability and offense at the same time. IMO it's the best, but I wouldn't write off the ranger either, I'm sure there's some master way to work that angle too.

war: faster run, insta megasnowball
ranger: aoe, less dmg than snowball though and no adrenaline
monk: extra healing, can keep freezie alive
nec: useless
mes: extra rupt, blind is useless fyi
ele: aoe dmg
sin: extra healing
rit: ...there is a rit snowman at the end anyways
para: ^^
derv: extra healing

any char has the same "survivablity". sit back by the door and wait.
take monk though and you can keep freezie alive the whole time. also, every kd on a grentch is another snowball they AREN'T throwing. win.

Completely /agree with lordheinous, rit wins hands down. Consistent 8 minutes until the end chest spawns is good enough for me

You assume that people are even going to even try fighting at the end. That is plain dumb.

If people really want to maximize their bearchance, they will NOT fight, but run several AFKing accounts at once, because that way they reach close to 1 open every 2:30 minutes which is > 1 open per 7 minutes of "skillfull" (lol) play.

Warriors are the only ones that actually save time when running. Nobrainer, really.

/runs to end and watches battle, chuckes in a snowball now and then to speed things up.

wait, i had a profession based snowball skill i could have used, dang it. I'll try and remember to use it next time.....

I've been using my ele, who's my titlehunter / main type character. Not for any strategic reason or anything, but because I can use up the candy and tonics as I go, and I still have 500 pumpkin cookies to munch through

cupcakes ftw

Using my Sin as she needs more exp towards survivor Yes it's cheating, but so what...every little helps.

I don't fight all of the last bit, I fight for the first wave then stand back. Then I fight again when there's just a few left standing. Takes on average about 8 mins.

I guess just do it with whatever you like playing with. I tried every prof out just for the hell, and quickly discovered Necro = stupid in there :/

The rest of the wintersday quests I did on my main, my Monk. Don't plan on doing them over again though, at least with this quest you can kinda do other stuff out of game at the same time.

My Ranger is my main and title hunter, so it is only logical I would use her for this dungeon. The snowball barrage is helpful when the Grentch are clumped up, pity it doesn't give you adrenaline.

Warrior he has Chaos Glvoes and a cool Black fow.
But hes also very fast.

my thoughts exactly. rig up those alt accounts and farm like madmen...
everytime the bear drops, it gets slightly cheaper, even if it isn't you that gets it.

You assume that people have multiple accounts, which is by far the minority of the guildwars player base, even if they are fairly visible here on guru. I am not willing to fork out a lot of extra money just for the slightly better farming possibilities offered by using multiple accounts, and I don't have anyone's accounts that I'm about to "inherit" either. It's clear that my post is directed towards the vast majority of the playerbase, not at the self-appointed "elite" who have 2849378 accounts.

Yup, pop one at the start of the run. I average just over 5 minutes per.

As I run by the second group of snowmen fighting I hit "Let's get 'em!", charging my Mega Snowball. If the pop up is an Icy Grenth, I can interrupt his Icicles and continue running. If it isn't an icy, I probably get hit once while running past, but this makes sure my adrenaline stays up, when I get past the brigde, I hit Let's Get 'em! again, and same story; icy KD & run, otherwise just run.
By the time I get by the 5 snowmen & 4 grentches, I make sure I have 3 in earshot, hit LGE! and if pop up is an icy KD & run.
Of course with Stonefist Mega s.b. is more efficient than on other professions.

With the above tactic it can take you there in well under 2:30 (good spawn), and otherwise still well under 3 minutes (2-3 Icy's)

If it's the best? Can't say, but it works for me.

Monk is by far my favorite, running and fighting takes me 7 minutes consistently. Except I run with a second account. I run my secondary to Freezie and afk, then run my primary and fight. It takes about 9 - 11 minutes and I get 35-45 CCs and 2 chest opens.

in general for the solo snowball quests I prefer rits, particularly for the UW ones Jack Frost is a handy bugger to have around

still a bit confused as to why they let you have the necro skill in the solo quests. No real use for a suicide button if you can't res/still win.

You assume everyone has degraded to some chair-glued jabba the hut that plays silly games with multiple accounts just to get fake treasure. It's actually quite sad.

Rit is indeed more fun if you actually fight and know how to use it. War kinda sucks at fighting big mobs and will have to kite like crazy.

Monk, easier than the other classes.

You're not fighting correctly. My war is always in the middle of the group, and the snowmen take all the aggro. When they die I toss up the ice fort and tank them out. By the time ice fort ends I have 3-4 snowmen back up helping me out and I just fight through. Then I snowcone and back off until the next mob.

Consistent 6 minutes until chest pops.

yea 6 minutes is pretty standard with full concentration
10 minutes if you're using 2 accounts so that comes to 5min a run.

I like my rit best for this quest when I'm lazy... in and out over and over. But my ranger can mop up as well... it's just slightly more challenging for her.

Has anyone ever used Holiday Blues intentionally?

What a kick in the teeth for Necro's that skill is, how did they come up with it, did they put skills for classes on a dartboard and just start chucking? The loser got HB's? It is a completely useless skill. I've clicked on a couple of times (by mistake) during quests and failed, if this skill could be forever removed from my snowball bar I won't complain A-Net