Guild Wars 2

I have been playing paid tPvP almost every day since it came out and, in my opinion, more than ever the portal issue needs to be finally addressed.

The following is most true for Legacy of the Foefire, but applies to any map. Most common tPvP strategies rely on getting the two closest points, being spawn point and middle point. Once a team achieves that, all they need to do is split their bunkers and have mesmer portal running at the time of need. What are your options as enemy team to get back into the game?
1) Rush with a large group to a smaller sized point
2) Split attacking both middle and far point
3) Send 1 bunker smaller sized point, rest middle
Usually the outcome is the same. Portal lets the enemy team react accordingly. No matter how you split up, they can have enough players to defend a point.
1) With the help of portal they react with 4 players to your attacking 4 players. With bunkers on their side it’s extremely hard to win over a point when it’s capped in favor of your enemy. Eventually, you might win the point over, but until that you might have already lost too many points. Also players can respawn quick enough to come and defend the point again.
2) This is probably the most efficient tactic, although with the help of portal it’s easy to get a good advantage. Let’s say you send 2 / 3 being far / middle point. Enemy reacts with 3 / 2 composition. They have enough time to win their point and come help middle (that will be usually bunkered by guardian and, for example, staff elementalist), since especially in Foefire it is very difficult to neutralize enormous graveyard.
3) Same graveyard issue. It is too big to neutralize it quick enough. Players can respawn when they’re dead and come back to help fast enough.

In conclusion, if your team is behind it is close to impossible to come back into a game. The enemy teams needs to cap middle point first and use mesmer portal efficiently. You cannot outrun a portal. You might outsmart, but you might need a portal of your own.

At the moment mesmer portal denies a lot of strategies and is mostly a key to victory once you’re ahead.

Other issues are already well known like trebuchet repairs or mesmers being one of the most popular point defenders due to their ability to roam, even though their assigned as point defenders.

In my humble opinion, portal shouldn’t be allowed in PvP, but as much as only mesmer could use it would be good enough, I guess. Cheers.

Me and my friends were actually talking about this earlier. Portal is without a doubt the strongest utility skill, and possibly rivals most elite skills.

The thing with portal is… Can you name a skill that effects PvP more?

Not even tPvP, it’s the most influential skill in WvW to, allowing siege golems to quickly move from place to place.

You could give it a 1200 max range, and it still would be very useful in PvP. Maybe make the range unaffected by height so it can still be used in jumping puzzles just the same.

+1 for nerf, portal is way too strong

need to limit a range, number of ppl using it or maybe duration or cooldown… or some combination

I’ve used Portals before but i simply felt too dirty. I mean seriously. Seriously Arena net. Just no.

a counter to portal any and all necro wells and marks, its hilarious to drop all my marks on the portal and watch them take massive damage and conditions as soon as they pop through. drop my wells as soon as i see the first one pop through and they all almost always take full duration of the wells pulses. same would work with thief and ranger traps i am sure.:)

Nerf portal and enjoy your new meta with one full bunker guardian standing on the first capture point, enjoy only ele and thieves being viable as dps, because they’ve superior mobility.

The portal makes so that you can teleport back and defend your point with slow classes like necro, engi, ranger. Without portals, classes with lesser mobility would suffer from a huge disvantage, and you would have a more bunkerish meta.

Is portal OP? Yes, the best skill in the game imo.
Do you need to nerf it? No, every team can play with a mesmer (like a guardian mid).

The portal is not a spell that instantly oneshot someone, and it’s a spell that every team can use, it has a short cd, wich makes it NOT random, meaning that both team will have it up at the same time, it’s not like timewarp or plagueform, that have a longer cd, and the team who has it in cd will most likely end up losing the fight.

Think about it, the portal is needed, or the meta would shift toward a more slow and boring gameplay.

@Ace of Spades:
Saying its balanced because every team can use one is really bad logic. Forcing teams to use certain classes/build shows imbalance and takes away diversity.

You know what would fix most of these problems? No conquest mode. Just kill each other.

While I admit Portal is OP (at the least, it should have some CD if you don’t put down an exit portal), here are some current counters to Portal:

1. There is an animation delay between when he goes through portal and when he fights. Punish him during that time with AOE’s, condi damage, knock-offs, etc.

2. Send a knockback bunker to his point. Mesmers don’t run stability (mantras… lol) and often like to kite/stealth in between shatters. Hence, you can push him off point, pressure him to kite off the point, and then neutralize the node.

3. When mesmer is cheating towards mid point, pressure him. He doesn’t want to engage because he wants to keep high health in case he portals back. If he runs away, good for you. If he fight, wait till he takes some hits and burns his heal, then person at his guarded point steps on the point to show him swords on his map. Mesmer will now portal at 75% health with CD on heal, and your teammate has a major advantage in the 1v1 fight.

Portals really marginalize roamers imo.

It also allows for forcing team fights and from what I’ve seen in this game, AOE is > skill