Guild Wars 2

FOR:
– Part of integral game mechanics, you should really sweep your keep before you move on to the next objective.
– It adds another layer of strategy that would normally not be there.

AGAINST:
– Power Orbs should be a goal that requires a proper siege, including taking down the keep lord.
– The fact that you can smash the altar solo is appalling.
– Certain points allow you to skip doors without even having an inside mesmer.
– It relies on a single class to add effectiveness to the army.
– Too many people can use a single portal, creating situations that would normally be impossible.

I’ll add more as people pile up comments. I’d really like a response from aNet, but I’m not really expecting it.

Against: It takes a lot of fun out of fighting; and as I’m less often on the receiving end I must say that this is true on either side of the mesmer portal.

a) it’s not cool to get ganked by a zerg of enemies you don’t even see

b) it’s boring to zergrush enemies. Just hit F and spam AoE is not what I find interesting about WvW.

I understand why it’s done now and we do it all the time on my server too, but I’d really like if they would somehow limit them so that not a whole zerg can get through.

FOR: As Hymnosi said, it brings another layer of strategy that would normally not be there. But this advantage also brings a lot of disadvantages, some of the are really bad ones and I say them below!

AGAINST: It’s becoming the “new healer/tank”, which means it’s so important in WvW that you need Mesmers to make the difference and be succesfull, they are NECESSARY and, as such, they are also a pre-requisite in most attack and counter-attack actions.
I think this is VERY BAD for the game itself and, if I remmeber right, against one of ArenaNet’s philosophies?
There are a lot of things you can’t do without Mesmers and now it’s just a matter of time before all the Guilds who go to WvW in a competitive way start using the Mesmer profession as a must.

a) There isn’t any other profession who can do the same thing. You should have other professions that do the same thing in different ways and, of course, each one would have it’s own restritions that make it a bad choice for some situations.

b) How do we counter it? Why don’t make it a boon when he starts the skill that can be taken away with anti-boons skills? If he is able to complete it, then it was well played or just lucky. He already becomes invisible….

c) An entire Zerg can use it. Why not restrain it to just 5/10 players?

You have many solutions and variations for things like this.
Isn’t this the same thing as having a Healer or a Tank to be necessary roles in other games? Because the reason ArenaNet changed the way professions were made was to counter this same problem in most MMORPG’s.

Why hasn’t the issue of being able to portal entire zergs into the boss rooms of keeps been dealt with?

Legitimate players have to attack two gates to fight for the keep itself, and 3mins later they lose the keep because a mesmer is able to portal 40+ people directly into the boss room and kill the boss under your nose with 0 warning.

I can understand that a mesmer’s portal ability is part of its uniqueness, but why not limit it to party only?

I disagree. Mesmer portal is great, leave it as it. I don’t see any valid arguments here as to why it should change. The rendering issue least of all as not only are Anet working on removing it from existence, but you’ve never needed a portal to create a zerg render attack.

MY only quarrel is it should only be able to teleport like 10 people…50 plus people is a little rediculous

Just remove portal from the game, add another 5 secs to chaos storm, another 5 secs to iBerserker, 5 more secs to I’s attack cds, and 5 secs to blink and decoy. Oh and reduce moa to only lasting 5 seconds.

I mean, as a mesmer I find it disgusting that I can do anything at all.

Ross Biddle.2367:

I disagree. Mesmer portal is great, leave it as it. I don’t see any valid arguments here as to why it should change. The rendering issue least of all as not only are Anet working on removing it from existence, but you’ve never needed a portal to create a zerg render attack.

So, having Mesmer becoming a MUST profession in WvW because of that one skill is not a good reason for you?

You know, its people who kept complaining because someone else used their Class to their advantage which started getting entire builds and classes broken in Guild Wars 1.

I remember when regular skills were split into PvE and PvP versions. I am wondering if ArenaNet will do the very same thing with skill-sets. make WvW versions, because I would not want to lose the PvE element of a skill simply because a bunch of WvW players can’t stand another using certain skills.

Portal is a unique thing that mesmers can do. Just like Elementalists can Meteor Shower a keep and do devastating damage. How about all the stuff that Engineer and Guardian can do that can make them feel like the most overpowered classes in the game?

Oh and don’t reply that Engineer isn’t overpowered. I laughed when I took off my armor in PvE and had no trait Points and just ran circles around the enemy AI and killed two veteran enemies and four regular enemies with just bombs simultaneously. Or how about the Guardian Groups that raid AC in 15 – 20 Minutes?

Ok, so what is my point?

Don’t punish one class because all the other builds have not been found. I know several builds in different classes where I guarantee and even make a $100 bet that if you put 2 – 3 of those builds in a zerg of equal numbers fighting another zerg of equal numbers, that the zerg with those three players under the same build will always win against the zerg without. (This providing there is no Siege to one zerg and its 2 zergs in an open field.) I know this because I’ve already seen it with the Class-Build combination that I play.

Can Mesmers be abused through Exploitation? The answer is yes. Why? Because every single world (be it American and European) has at least reported that at least once. Is it the Mesmer’s fault? Guess what. It isnt! As long as the “System” itself allows for an exploitation to occur, it will happen. Its human nature. Punishing the whole class is not an answer considering there are Mesmers who do not exploit Portal (or even use portal as each class has good builds.)

Fixing the Exploit itself is what should be done!

See, I’m okay with mesmers teleporting a mass amount of people into whatever place they are. I’m NOT okay with a mesmer teleporting 1-5 people in and effectively stealing the orb without capturing the keep.

It defeats the purpose of a keep, why not just have the orb out in the open?

Setsunayaki.4907:

You know, its people who kept complaining because someone else used their Class to their advantage which started getting entire builds and classes broken in Guild Wars 1.

I remember when regular skills were split into PvE and PvP versions. I am wondering if ArenaNet will do the very same thing with skill-sets. make WvW versions, because I would not want to lose the PvE element of a skill simply because a bunch of WvW players can’t stand another using certain skills.

Portal is a unique thing that mesmers can do. Just like Elementalists can Meteor Shower a keep and do devastating damage. How about all the stuff that Engineer and Guardian can do that can make them feel like the most overpowered classes in the game?

Oh and don’t reply that Engineer isn’t overpowered. I laughed when I took off my armor in PvE and had no trait Points and just ran circles around the enemy AI and killed two veteran enemies and four regular enemies with just bombs simultaneously. Or how about the Guardian Groups that raid AC in 15 – 20 Minutes?

Ok, so what is my point?

Don’t punish one class because all the other builds have not been found. I know several builds in different classes where I guarantee and even make a $100 bet that if you put 2 – 3 of those builds in a zerg of equal numbers fighting another zerg of equal numbers, that the zerg with those three players under the same build will always win against the zerg without. (This providing there is no Siege to one zerg and its 2 zergs in an open field.) I know this because I’ve already seen it with the Class-Build combination that I play.

Can Mesmers be abused through Exploitation? The answer is yes. Why? Because every single world (be it American and European) has at least reported that at least once. Is it the Mesmer’s fault? Guess what. It isnt! As long as the “System” itself allows for an exploitation to occur, it will happen. Its human nature. Punishing the whole class is not an answer considering there are Mesmers who do not exploit Portal (or even use portal as each class has good builds.)

Fixing the Exploit itself is what should be done!

Personally, it’s not a problem with the move, I love it for what it is, a very interesting mechanic in normally a dull environment. To me, the orb is intended to be a server wide objective. If anything, orbs should get the same effect as the home server altar, where it requires you to beat the keep lord to take it. This still allows mesmers to do their thing, but requires a much larger coordination, requiring 40-60 people to accomplish.

I don’t really do much WvW. I certainly haven’t – and probably won’t – ever try this with my portals on my mesmer. Only read the topic because I like using the portal in PvE and came in this here forum to do a short complaint on something I ran into in trying to do monthly objectives (which is one of two things that forces me and other PvE purists into WvW, to the mixed emotions of all involved).

By my understanding, people are leaning heavy on portals in some cases. But portals can’t be thrown – a mesmer has to be willing to cast one end, then cast the other. A very simple fix is give a mesmer who has one portal half ready glows. We could make the glow slightly visible even if the mesmer is stealthed.

This prevents the skill from being ruined by ‘fixes’, means that paying attention is rewarded (catch that rascally mesmer! Yar!), and adds another level of strategy. See a glowly target – kill it. Or, well, else.

Also, again, forgive my PvE nature, but orbs have to be run, even if stolen, correct? Now, I usually look at WvW and as often as not, it seems like one side is trouncing the others. Seems to me we SHOULD let the orbs be easily stolen. Heck, make it possible for other classes to nab them. Add a grappling seige that can fire in and snag players or the orb and drag it out. Make whoever is carrying the orb visible on the map, same as a commander. This gives weak sides a way to try and get back in the game, strong sides something to worry about, and turns a bitter seige into a wild run-about game of capture the orb.

Just seems to me to be better overall, that.

I think that mesmer portal is working as intented but right now ppl are to abusing render delays from it and using exploits to get inside keep without destroying walls and doors.

Firseal.4716:

I don’t really do much WvW. I certainly haven’t – and probably won’t – ever try this with my portals on my mesmer. Only read the topic because I like using the portal in PvE and came in this here forum to do a short complaint on something I ran into in trying to do monthly objectives (which is one of two things that forces me and other PvE purists into WvW, to the mixed emotions of all involved).

By my understanding, people are leaning heavy on portals in some cases. But portals can’t be thrown – a mesmer has to be willing to cast one end, then cast the other. A very simple fix is give a mesmer who has one portal half ready glows. We could make the glow slightly visible even if the mesmer is stealthed.

This prevents the skill from being ruined by ‘fixes’, means that paying attention is rewarded (catch that rascally mesmer! Yar!), and adds another level of strategy. See a glowly target – kill it. Or, well, else.

Also, again, forgive my PvE nature, but orbs have to be run, even if stolen, correct? Now, I usually look at WvW and as often as not, it seems like one side is trouncing the others. Seems to me we SHOULD let the orbs be easily stolen. Heck, make it possible for other classes to nab them. Add a grappling seige that can fire in and snag players or the orb and drag it out. Make whoever is carrying the orb visible on the map, same as a commander. This gives weak sides a way to try and get back in the game, strong sides something to worry about, and turns a bitter seige into a wild run-about game of capture the orb.

Just seems to me to be better overall, that.

The problem is that orbs are often glitchy when in transit, sometimes disappearing from the map entirely, until they reset. Yes I know they could fix this issue as well, which is another topic entirely.

To me, the orb should require nothing short of the whole map coordinating an attack to get to it, or a very crafty group of people using a lot of siege weapons to get to it, or a combination of both.

Theoretically right now, a mesmer and thief combination can stay inside the walls of a keep, invisible for nearly 3-4 minutes straight, well beyond the attention span of normal players. This can get people to at LEAST the second gate, if not inside the throne room. So all these ‘sweep your keep’ issues? fine, you should clear the keep before moving on. Should you be punished by a global objective being taken by a relatively small fraction of the map (25 people is only 1/6th of the players, for instance), I don’t think so.

I am not sure it is fair to be nerfing the mesmer portal while so many bugs exist. Rendering is not the fault of the mesmer, that is a game issue that they are working on and will hopefully be dealt with. A lot of the keep takes by porting in an army is because of an exploit, where they portal past the walls. It is not because they ‘hid out’ inside the keep.

Fix this crap and beef up the orbs in general so you cant just break the altar and mess things up. After that if it is still a problem, then we can look at the portal again.

As long as hackers and exploits exist in GW2, Portal will be abused by them and their team.

Everyone keeps saying that Mesmers were hidden without knowing what happened. I’ve been outsmarted by some clever Mesmers hiding, but lately Mesmers have been abusing exploits into the Borderlands map keeps.

I would have to say this is not that high on the list, when they still have so many issues to deal with.

But, I play a mesmer and would have no problem having portal limited to say 5 players (aoe’s are limited this way) or say make it targetable so it can be killed. I do not think it is working as intended at this moment.

And to all the mesmers and theifs that cheat, thank you for ruining the class for everyone.

I hear it talked about all the time. But I’ve never seen it work, let alone do it myself. It seems like it would require an impossible about of timing and coordination.

If mesmers are really walking through keep walls and magically summoning a zerg of golums, there should either be some really good counters or it shouldn’t be allowed.

I’d happily trade the skill for a glamour that was actually useful.

Honestly I’d like to see this portal banned from WvW entirely, or at least have it self-use only. This is someone that has used portals about 10 times to skip the EB puzzle and about twice to launch a surprise ambush in Stonemist. Its simply unfair. Whenever my team takes a keep, I always have to shout “Sweep for Mesmers!”

I don’t sweep for guardians. They can’t single-handidly draw an entire enemy force in. Why should I have to sweep for Mesmers?

I think the mesmer portals should stay the same. i mean it’s not to hard to make a mesmer class and portal bomb urself. and if u start complaining about mesmer being able to hide in ur keep and not be seen thn i think u guys r just being stupid and blind. maybe u should check ur keeps a little bettr next time. GO MAGUUMA!!!

As a Mesmer primary, I would gladly accept the trade of a reliable, spammable AoE for a limit on the number of people who can go through a portal in a given amount of time.

I think they should stay the same and that they should fix the cliffs that you can clip into. If you aren’t sweeping your keeps regardless, you’re doing it wrong.

arcana.2694:

Why hasn’t the issue of being able to portal entire zergs into the boss rooms of keeps been dealt with?

Legitimate players have to attack two gates to fight for the keep itself, and 3mins later they lose the keep because a mesmer is able to portal 40+ people directly into the boss room and kill the boss under your nose with 0 warning.

I can understand that a mesmer’s portal ability is part of its uniqueness, but why not limit it to party only?

If a mesmer portalled a zerg into your boss room, there’s 2 possibilities:

1. He hacked to get in there, in which case it’s not the class, it’s the hacks.

2. He stayed in there since the last time you guys captured it, in which case you’re stupid for not checking for mesmers.

I don’t know of any way of skipping the inner gate, but if there were, then you don’t need a mesmer to portal them in, the whole zerg could just walk in.

If Anet can program it for Line of Sight use only I’d be happy with that.

i don’t play a mesmer, but i’ve been on the using and receiving end of portals a few times. my opinion of the matter is that the limit should be reduced to 5 people, and the should have some of their other abilities boosted to compensate.

invisible zergs? that’s a rendering issue, not a mesmer one. solution: fix rendering.

exploiting the terrain? that’s an exploiting issue, not a mesmer one. solution: punish the exploiter.

mesmer hiding in the keep you just took and no one found for them? that’s a carelessness issue, not a mesmer one. solution: search carefully

if limited to 5 people at a time, they could still get an entire zerg in through them. however, it would take a significant amount of time, since the ability has a cooldown and they would need to be ported in batches, and that’s time the zerg isn’t available elsewhere. the placement itself would become an issue as well. you couldn’t just lay that thing down anywhere. the first group through would need to be hidden somewhere. or else the defenders and NPC’s are going to be all over them. also, if 5 members of your zerg get all click happy, they end up inside the place without the mesmer to run back and filter everyone else in. plan failed, time to head back to the drawing board.

It should be limited to 10max because there is no reason why a single Mesmer should have a skill that can affect an unlimited amount of ppl. The entire game is built around 5man parties so saying tht it is working as intended is just a bunch of bull.

You can say just spam AOE on the zerg as they are porting but too bad my AOE can only hit 5 enemies(half of which will prolly be pets) at a time so unless they are gonna switch it so i can hit an unlimited amount of enemies tht is a bunch of bull.

I say the portal should stay there is no reason to remove a skill from the game. But it needs to be reworked. Mesmer portals are a great tactic but if you want to port in a 50 man army then get 5 Mesmers and some organization and your reward of bypassing entire walls and gates will actually be justified.

Yeah, you’ve convinced me, 5 man limit makes sense in line with the rest of “theme” of the game, unless they want to buff AOE and other skills to unlimited if they want to go a buff route instead of a nerf route

There are plenty of counters to portals, (ie if awake drop a crate on it, drop aoe snares etc, focus aoes)and as people have said if you don’t sweep for mesmers after taking a keep/tower then it’s your own fault.

I think it adds an extra level to the game that no other ‘rvr’ type game has ever had, and makes it far more interesting as a result. Think this is basically a case of be smarter.

A player limit though would be fairer, but all that would do is make mesmers even more essntial than they are currently.

It seems extremely unbalanced just how much better the Mesmer is in just about every situation compared to all other classes.

Their support abilities are unrivaled and add completely new mechanics to WvW. Now if all classes had such tool, if Thieves could stealth an entire Zerg for 20 seconds, if Elementalists could Rally an entire Zerg etc. then these abilities might be fair game.

But they can’t and as such, Mesmer abilities fall out of the usual balance spectrum.

The portal should really be limited to 5 people, as should the Quickness field. Most other abilities have the same cap…why are Mesmers the exception?

I mean they are already the best 1v1 class….why must they also be the best WvW class?

So your enemy is organized enough to use Mesmer portals to their advantage… therefore nerf them? Sounds to me like a lot of QQ because your team is not using Mesmer portals correctly. A good portal bomb takes a well organized group and a good Mesmer to place the portal in the right spot. Just because some of you are incapable of having this happen in your favor doesn’t mean it should be nerfed to the ground. Maybe try looking for the Mesmer that is running into your zerg all by himself and stun lock him dead before he can place his portal? Try finding solutions to the issue instead of coming onto the fourms and crying about 1 class’es mechanic that owned you and now your mad. Maybe recruit a good Mesmer, log into Mumble with a group of good players, and own bad people.

I think there is one good solution to this issue. Have mesmer portals show up on the map.

Once Arenanet fixes the culling issue, I don’t really see any problems with portals in general. I do, however, see big problems with anyone (mesmer or not) being able to get into a keep without attacking the doors or walls.

If someone gains access to a keep or tower without taking down a wall or door (with the exception of a ninja mesmer portal from the inside out) or if a portal travels through a wall or door, then that should be considered a terrain exploit. Whether the access is gained through a “jumping puzzle” style walljump or a corner-portal doesn’t really matter, it simply shouldn’t exist in the game. I’m not saying people need to be banned, but I am saying Arenanet needs to fix what’s broken. Walls/doors are there to stop players until they are broken. They need to do their job.

While we’re on the topic, mesmer portals in the jumping puzzles reduce Obsidian Sanctum to a free blueprints farm. This is just dumb.

Jaxon.5392:

Yeah, you’ve convinced me, 5 man limit makes sense in line with the rest of “theme” of the game, unless they want to buff AOE and other skills to unlimited if they want to go a buff route instead of a nerf route

The rest of the glamor tree doesn’t have a limit on how many people they affect.

There are plenty of other skills that can affect more then 5 people at a time.

It’s just that a skill can’t affect more then 5 people at the EXACT same time.

An elementalists nuke can hit well over 25 people, just not more then 5 people per tick.

Same sort of thing for Portal. It’s not that a skill can only be used on 5 people, but 5 people per instant.

Even if you limited it to 5 people per second like other skills you would still be able to portal in 50 people.

Can we just clarify something? Dee Jay has basically said that mesmers can stealth an entire zerg for 20 seconds? What ability is that? If you mean Mass Invisibility, that’s 10 seconds. Mesmers can chain stealth for 14 secs if they use all their stealth abilities. Fact is if you hang around long enough, they will get caught. And they don’t have the mobility of thieves so they’ll probably die too lol!

Mesmer portal isn’t OP, if you’re referring to its use to recapture keeps. I agree with everyone else who said that you deserve it if you didn’t sweep for mesmers. In our matchups with servers in higher tiers, I’ve been caught almost every time I’ve tried to hide. And when we capture the Bay or the Hills keep, I go over there myself to check and sweep twice.

Regarding the limiting of numbers, I can’t actually say. As a mesmer, I’m a little bit biased so I’ll stay outta that area… :P

remove the mesmer portals ,end of story

alot of these arguments against portals have very little to do with the portals themselves.

and more to do with engine/client limitations
orb seats
overlooked/intended weaknesses aka map design issues
handicaps in the combat system that snowball in favour of larger numbers instead of as intended and handicapping in favour of newbs baddies and incompetents(no matter what anyone says, being a casual does not imply any of those)

unwillingness by players to adapt to changing paradigms, new games, be creative wtih strats and tactics and counter strats and tactics, which is endemic in the wvw forum and many fan chat places when it comes to wvw.

maybe there should be another class with a portal like ability, but for the same reasons that thief isn’t the only class with stealth. then again no class has anythign quite like the range of guardian’s active pvp tanking abilities, or thief’s solo stealth abilties to shut down a zerg from capping a point, or necros abilties to stack AOEs with various effects, and so on. the crux of the mesmer class is to sow confusion chaos and panic amongst the enemy. it can be very strong, but it can be easily mitigated- but i’m not going to tell you guys how to do that.

It should only work as much as what you can possibly able to get to, otherwise they should change abilities like blink/shadowstep for thief to get into those places as well.

It really is simple. If this stays, then I want engineers to have a similar siege-changing utility skill, for example – ladders you can deploy so people can climb walls I bet thieves will also want a skill to sneak into keeps, and so will other classes.

another recurrent theme in the portal qq posts is a gross misunderstanding about how mesmer portals work.

Ok, it seems as though people have several problems with portal here. I don’t think any of them should result in changes to the skill itself.

1) Orbs. Sure, they can get taken with a mesmer portal and a couple of players, but in my opinion the issue here is not the portal, it’s the altar. Why can the altar be destroyed while the lord is alive? Make that impossible, and the issue is gone.

2) Exploiting past keep walls and using portal. Similar issue. People shouldn’t be exploiting walls/other areas, and the bugs should be fixed. Portal makes the bug more problematic than it otherwise would be, but it doesn’t affect the fact that the bug needs resolving. Fix the places you can get in, and the issue is gone.

3) Mesmers being “required” due to portal – this isn’t true any more than other classes being required. Sure, Portals are a unique ability that allows a group to use different tactics, but so are things like Line of Warding on the guardian. Blocking off a choke point with that skill can be really powerful, and benefit a group massively. Should we make line of warding only block 5 people to bring it in line with other stuff? No, it’d make the ability totally pointless.

4) Player limits. I don’t see the problem here – I think people would mostly be complaining because of portal bombing, probably – having 20 people appear in the middle of them. I think this would partly be resolved by fixing the culling issues, but also I wouldn’t be against making mesmers glow when they have one half of a portal down, if people think it would help. I don’t think they should glow while stealthed, though.

However, I absolutely don’t think portal should be restricted to 5, 10 or any amount of players. I run with an organised group of between 3 and 10 players most nights. “Awesome,” I hear you say, "You could all go through a portal for 10 people, right? Well, mostly, yeah. But often, no. When you restrict portal to 10 players, all my guildies can go through unless a couple of non-grouped people jump through first. Then my group is split up, and we have a big problem. Using portals where there’s anyone other than just us would become too dangerous, and since being entirely alone in WvW is pretty rare, I’d just not run the ability. “No problem” you say. “Make portals party only”. Now I can’t portal some random player I see running from a zerg to safety, even if they’re the only one that’ll use the portal. I can’t get anyone who got shut out of a keep after the gate got repaired inside, because they’re outside the group. More to the point, name me one ability in GW2 that’s party only. There isn’t a single one (unless I’m forgetting something), and that’s because party abilities don’t suit the type of combat that you see in WvW.

Tl;DR: Portal is fine, the problem is bugs and design issues that are highlighted by people using portal.

Why do people whine so much about easily counterable tactic? I tried to mes portal into keep several times in one day last week. Twice succesful. After attempt #3 i never succeeded again because they learned to sweep. End of story.
Bunch of ops against issues don’t concern portal at all even. Soloing orbs? If i’m a warrior and I hide in a keep I can still leave with the orb, i just can’t bring my friends in.

So a class thrown together by Anet to use tricks and gimmicks should now not be able to use tricks and gimmicks. I like it.

I agree that: lot of exploits need to be removed; Mesmers should keep their portals; rendering/culling issues are one of the main reasons for many WvW problems.

But still, some of these posts makes me think of a quote: “the value of coincidence equals the degree of its improbability.”
Think clearly. If something is related to many bad situations in WvW, the probability of it beeing the cause is higher than any other reason.

In the opinion of some players, the fact that Mesmer Portals are the only thing related to many things to occur in WvW is just a mere coincidence and there’s no reason to change it even a little.
It’s like saying there is a mass of killings with the same weapon, but the cause in some of them is because there was no police around, in the other X killings was because some of the victims were stupid and they fell for the killer’s traps, and the other killings because no one noticed it happening.

Take a borderland garrison by having a thief stealth combo a mesmer and run up to the vista to port your army on top of it. Build arrow carts and the like to negate the final line of defense entirely.

Sanctum of Rall just did this to us in Crystal Desert. Not that they needed to since they’re smart enough to keep supply from getting to it for hours and hours before they took it, but they really know how to demoralize a server with those portals. I had heard in chat they use them for everything so I thought they were just a dumb server that’s good at zerging but no, they are leveraging this to make choke points a non issue and this week we’ve seen mesmer exploits ensure that Rall has all three orbs (mesmers are the class that hack past walls right? Wreck an orb altar without taking the keep so that you can’t keep the orb there until you lose and retake it, yeah?)

I wouldn’t mind this if you had to get ten mesmers into a place in order to get fifty people in but just sneaking a single person in to place zergs in ludicrous places is too much. You can’t do well with keeps if you don’t really push this skill to the limit and I can’t believe that this is intended game play.

But then again I can only barely fathom how you could code a game so messily that you can’t make these portals vanish after five uses or only affect party members. It should be simple to make it so that using another mesmer’s portal wipes out any you have on the ground so that you don’t just delay the zerg until you have portalled in a bunch of mesmers. A game engine ought to be able to do things like this, even if you didn’t have any intention for players to target allies with skills.

Hekatombaion.4320:

Take a borderland garrison by having a thief stealth combo a mesmer and run up to the vista to port your army on top of it. Build arrow carts and the like to negate the final line of defense entirely.

<snip>

But then again I can only barely fathom how you could code a game so messily that you can’t make these portals vanish after five uses or only affect party members. It should be simple to make it so that using another mesmer’s portal wipes out any you have on the ground so that you don’t just delay the zerg until you have portalled in a bunch of mesmers. A game engine ought to be able to do things like this, even if you didn’t have any intention for players to target allies with skills.

Mesmers using exploits is an issue and needs to be dealt with just like other classes using exploits. Getting rid of portal because of exploiting is just silly.

Mesmers taking the orb is an issue, but you don’t have to be a mesmer to do that. A well hidden player on any class could pull it off – clear objectives out after you’ve taken them. We also need the orb to be impossible to take while the keep lord is alive, but that’s a separate issue.

I’ve covered all this stuff before, but I’ll quote myself for the “limit portal to x people” thing:

“However, I absolutely don’t think portal should be restricted to 5, 10 or any amount of players. I run with an organised group of between 3 and 10 players most nights. “Awesome,” I hear you say, “You could all go through a portal for 10 people, right? Well, mostly, yeah. But often, no. When you restrict portal to 10 players, all my guildies can go through unless a couple of non-grouped people jump through first. Then my group is split up, and we have a big problem. Using portals where there’s anyone other than just us would become too dangerous, and since being entirely alone in WvW is pretty rare, I’d just not run the ability. “No problem” you say. “Make portals party only”. Now I can’t portal some random player I see running from a zerg to safety, even if they’re the only one that’ll use the portal. I can’t get anyone who got shut out of a keep after the gate got repaired inside, because they’re outside the group. More to the point, name me one ability in GW2 that’s party only. There isn’t a single one (unless I’m forgetting something), and that’s because party abilities don’t suit the type of combat that you see in WvW.”

The problem with Mesmer portals are the same ones Thief’s get with Stealth atm

It’s a rendering issue

Mesmer portals are unique as someone posted earlier.

One side places Siege just out of range mesmer portal to it and destroy it, if rendering worked correctly you’d see all those people materialize not 3-10 seconds after they start shooting you