Guild Wars 2

Other posts have brought up a key flaw with spvp right now: mesmers are mandatory because the portal is too big of a strategic advantage. No one class should feel really “mandatory” to a comp and I feel like mesmer and guardian are right now. I won’t talk about guardian here but at least as far as mesmer here is an easy proposed solution that would do for now:

Just change the necro ability spectral walk to make the “porting back” portion of it last much longer and have greater range. So the necro could pop it at back point run mid and have the option of popping back within a reasonable window of time. To compensate get rid of the portion of the ability that makes the necro gain life force when attacked and cut the swiftness buff duration you gain from it in half. This unlike the portal would only affect the necro which means it would be an alternative but not a copy of the portal utility. This would be an elegant solution that would just make an underused skill more useful, while giving teams an alternative to the mesmer long range instant mobility while still feeling very different than the mesmer portal.

In the future I do think another class could use a portal like skill for group effect, a “teleportation” device for engi would be pretty cool and make sense, but for now I think this simple change would be a great start and at least give teams an alternative to mesmer for that strategic purpose.