Guild Wars 2

“DAYUM THE MAN! SAVE THE MESMER!”

brunohstein.9038:

waeren.9743:

brunohstein.9038:

waeren.9743:

brunohstein.9038:

waeren.9743:

brunohstein.9038:

waeren.9743:

brunohstein.9038:

The problem with portals is that the game can’t handle the 2321421 players appearing in one place at the same time. I actually think that capping the portal to the maximum of 10 players would be a good change. Portals would remain useful, teleporting golems or players to critical positions.

So instead of fixing the actual bug you want to change something entirely different. Good job.

I actually think the game won’t ever be able to handle gracefully those 50 players rendering at the same spot at the same time.

If that would be the case then large scale WvW in general is pointless, even when just running around you can have serious culling. So you want to cap zones at 15 people per server since the game can’t handle 50 people in one location?

If you want a portal change then fine but you can’t be serious and give culling as the reason.

Culling is just one reason.

Don’t you think capping it to 10 players would make organized team play even more important? You would need more than one mesmer working in cooperation to teleport a whole zerg.

You would probably have more field battles in which both servers are actually seeing each other.

I don’t see one single good reason to let it as it is.

Culling is not a reason as explained. Either the engine gets fixed or it stays as it is now and there’s culling everywhere. (organizing multiple portals at the same time would still lead to culling)

So your only reason is not valid. Where are your actual points? Or is it just another whine post?

Culling is one big issue, but I don’t see any good improve on that coming. Seriously, I’m just trying to think in the options. I’m not whining here for a mesmer nerf. I just want the WvW to be funnier. I thought everyone here wanted that.

I really don’t know why mesmers are even seeing it as a nerf. Portal is a group skill, it will continue to be that. You will continue to teleport your group. Mesmers will not be weaker. You will only need more mesmers to teleport big groups.

Ok, so you don’t have any reasons except for personal preference and what you think is “fun”. Thanks for finally making that clear.

Personally I’m having fun with the way it is now and so are other people.

Also I don’t play a mesmer.

Having all your team killed by a whole zerg you only see after dead is really funny, indeed.

Capping the portal would improve organized team play, balance the class (the portal would remain useful, but not a must-to-win) and decrease the culling problem.

Give me reasons to let it as it is, please.

Again, the problem you keep bringing up is culling, not the portal. I can run into you with a 50 man zerg and you’d be dead as well before you’d see us. So again, do we fix player numbers?

• You’d need more mesmers to accomplish the same thing
• Portals would become useless because any team that knows how to counter it now would just kill 10 people with no problem
• Siege would become even stronger and it’s already strong enough as is

Quit whining, portal bombing is preventable, people are just crappy at playing their classes.
-Mesmers, pop feedback and null field
-Guardians drop ring of warding and line of warding
-Necros, if you don’t have epidemic on your bar IDK wtf you are doing.

The problem is no one wants to play defensively in this game, everyone runs around with great swords and kitten. One guardian with a 2h hammer can easily prevent an entire zerg portal bomb.

L2P

If you’re with a guild and aware of portals, they just become lootbag delivery holes.

Scribbles.7493:

If you’re with a guild and aware of portals, they just become lootbag delivery holes.

In a big team, yes. In a smaller team where everyone has his or her hands full – not so. You may be able to stop them outside the breach but you cannot handle 15+ who come in “from nowhere” – it’s simply an overload situation. When you switch focus to the portal those in the breach will rush in.

It’s not an l2p issue as some here state so proudly it’s a matter of numbers. Given that a mesmer can stealth for 12 seconds if skilled this way he can go a looong way in every situation where you don’t have 20+ people on defense who lay down a curtain of arrows so that he dies before he manages to reach his destination.

For all those people here who claim that things are easily defendable – do come to a lower tier server and show us how well you perform with the usual 10 players we have at our disposition. Tall talk is easy ….

Limiting the portal (5 is ridiculous but 10 sounds sound to me) you’d still give smaller defense teams a chance (a chance, not an assured win) and keep things interesting.

I dont understand your whining about Portal,

If you are 30 and were killed by a zerg of 40 by a portal bomb, the bigger zerg would have killed you anyway. Thats not the fault of the Portal but your unorganized “weak” Team.

It seems, that portalbombs are the “click to win”-Button, but 90% of the portal users are Guilds, Zergs with VoIP and are tactical superior to you and would have killed you anyway without hasitation.

Also leaving the Culling out, what can the Portal do? It does no DMG, ist gives no Boons or Conditions. It just saves time to go from A to B.
So the only benefit you have is to surprise your opponent and on which cost? You’re all standing on one spot with a big sign above you screaming “AOE US”.

It’s not the portal that is OP it is the superior Zerg which is organised and organisation SHOULD be rewarded in WvW.

greetz

Except “AOE US” is like hoping to win the lottery with 5 player random cap.

I think a nice solution is to cap portal to 5 (or 10, or whatever) people, make the portals destructable, but also give portal skills to more classes.

I figure Ele, Eng, and Necro might be good candidates for a Portal skill, lore-wise.

Requiring more portals to transport large groups increases the amount of coordination required, the number of portal casters required, and increases the chance of people messing up if they are not organised enough.

And spreading the portal love across more classes is a good thing, if we like the tactical gameplay that portals offer.

Heh, maybe another fun fix is to make portal travel non-instant. Let’s say it takes 10s to transit through a portal. And if the portal is destroyed during that time, you all die :P

I agree with Rieselle, I could go for spreading the portal love around, though not the portal itself. I would want to keep its unique nature, and Mesmers already have enough clones!(barump bump)
But something just as useful and FUN in a large scale WvW tactical sense would be nice for every class to have, if they don’t already. But if you want the portal, you can’t have it. You gotta a roll a Mesmer :P

<3

OP, do you have any evidence to support your claims that portals are ruining wuvwuv and that, with each passing day, more and more people are leaving? Besides, you know, the ten or so people you spoke to?

I’d rather have a 5 or 10 person limit cap on portals, than an increased cooldown.

Also, if you have people actively feeding info into teamchat, that really helps too; for instance, whenever the enemy has sieged themselves up in Bluevale/Greenvale/Redvale, we usually try stacking just outside the archway then a mesmer will sneak into the camp itself and drop a portal on top of their siege.

But the crucial point here is that there are almost always people on the rooftops and so if you see people stacking, that’s usually a tell-tale sign.

Blythepiper.6874:

I agree with Rieselle, I could go for spreading the portal love around, though not the portal itself. I would want to keep its unique nature, and Mesmers already have enough clones!(barump bump)
But something just as useful and FUN in a large scale WvW tactical sense would be nice for every class to have, if they don’t already. But if you want the portal, you can’t have it. You gotta a roll a Mesmer :P

<3

Heheh, I can roll with this. Ele’s get a “human treb” elite skill – the Ele starts channeling a mighty aura, and his skill bar turns into a Treb aiming skillbar. When he fires, an ally standing adjacent to the Ele is launched in a mighty ball of flame, landing safely at the impact point with a massive explosion that damages enemies.

So we can get Ele-Mes combos where a Mes casts portal entry and then an Ele trebs him into a keep to place the exit :P

Aza.2105:

Kurieg.4158:

Anet should go ahead and actually give counter-stealth skills, i.e. True Seeing/Heightened Senses/Detect Illusion or something like that. Portal attacks, imo, benefit too much from Anet’s awful stealth implementation.

This is something I do not understand about GW2. In GW1 no skill was left unchecked. I’m saying each skill had a skill that could negate it. Knockdown had balance stance type skills, then there were skills that removed stances. If you were fighting a hex heavy group you could make a build that was anti hex. I’m sure everyone gets what I’m saying.

None of that is in GW2, many things are left unchecked and unlike the original game. Everyone patiently waits for the developers to nerf or boost skills. Were as before it was more so up to the individual to intelligently create a counter build.

There should certainly be stealth detection and it should be given to every class in some way, since we can’t choose a secondary class to borrow skills from.

I could see every class having the option, but kinda thought Arenanet would want to follow their apparent design paradigm of having some kinds of skills only accessible to a sub-group of classes. I was picking the ones I thought most obvious: True Seeing ability feels guardian/cleric/paladin, tracking/perception for Ranger, and illusion detection/negation for mesmers.

Arenanet really dove into some messy class balancing with the way they’ve gone about implementing Mesmers and Thieves. Rampant target-breaking is a pseudo-CC effect that’s particularly brutal imo in the larger WvW fights. It’s pretty much impossible to lock down a thief or Mesmer from getting their burst off and hiding.

Also, just to be more on-topic, I really don’t have a problem with Portal outside of the fact that such a massive effect on WvW is only available from one class. TBH, I think Portal-like ability should be available to Elementalists and Engineers, maybe Necros, too (but when you portal through, you get a random Condition :P )

OMG, i would totally roll a class that had the ability to be launched from a treb, and land safely. That would be AWESOME!

crazy.9083:

It’s not portals that need fixing, it’s culling and door glitches.

Also, don’t spout such nonsense that numbers are dwindling because of portals – people get bored, the hop servers, they play other games, they pve. You have no facts to back up your suppositian.

My main is an ele, just in case you were wondering.

Elementalist here and I too agree with crazy.9082, ANet has to fix culling and door glitches, that would solve a lot more problems afflicting WvW than a nerf to portals.

No charging into that lone player only to find out there’s an invisible army behind him, no Thieves hitting people multiple times before they pop out of stealth, no portal bombs you can’t react to because you can’t see the enemy popping on top of you and the list goes on…

I am fully aware that culling is an engine issue which requires time to be fixed and so far I could bear with it, mostly because on my Elementalist I can run away from almost any group of pursuer, but it’s preventing me to enjoy other professions lacking escape moves thus making the game less varied and fun.

Overall I think ANet did a good job on WvW, I just wish they would take care of it a little more

This right here is why it needs to be change-

“To remove portals or water them down so they can’t function in the way they currently are you are changing how 90% of how WvW currently rolls for the majority of servers.”

No ONE ability should make up 90% of the tactics in W3. I’m pretty sure Anet didn’t design all the other features in W3 just so they can be avoided by portals. There will be an adjustment to it, and those who don’t think so are just deluding themselves.

Well, most aoe abilities have a 5 person cap…

But that’d just destroy portals, I would prefer if ANet fixed culling to be honest.

Frosty and Frosty Law Firm.4981:

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

Mirage.8345:

/signed. The portal skill is actually the root of what most people are complaining about in WvW, they just don’t realize it. More hardcore WvWers are leaving every day, waiting for a game that gets it right.

You mean softcore…

Is your definition of hardcore ‘Poof into the enemy’s fort and slaughter them without a fifteenth of a fight’? Because that’s what I’m getting out of this. Softcore players are casuals who play for fun. Hardcores play for a challenge, and with portals the way they are a challenge is becoming less and less common on the battlefield.

Wouldn’t the hardcore players be challenged by the softcore players portalling around?

Malvader.7502:

This right here is why it needs to be change-

“To remove portals or water them down so they can’t function in the way they currently are you are changing how 90% of how WvW currently rolls for the majority of servers.”

No ONE ability should make up 90% of the tactics in W3. I’m pretty sure Anet didn’t design all the other features in W3 just so they can be avoided by portals. There will be an adjustment to it, and those who don’t think so are just deluding themselves.

can you please link where these stats are? id like to see it please. i havent seen the place that gives the stats “90% of the wvwvw population… use portals”, have you?

lol. where do people pull these figures from… oh wait.

also, i loved the suggestion that all the classes should be able to portal. think there is teeth gnashing now? holly cow, people….

Just another example of QQQQQQQ, just let the casuals whine when they cant walk over everything. Its a L2P issue, if you really cant get 3 ppl to put blocks on the portal and just wait for em.

The crying is overwhelming here. Portal only works well in organized groups. The mesmer has to get into a keep through an opening. I’ll agree that there should be some stealth detection, but odds are that even if the mesmer was on a suicide run, they could drop the portal anyway. There are a lot of CC abilities that would stop a person, visible or not, in their tracks. ANet nerfed the cooldown time on portal and not the amount of players that can take it for a reason. They wanted them less spammable, but saw no actual problem with how they are. The sooner you jackkittens realize that it is a tactic that is easy to counter the sooner we can have a thread that actually accomplishes something. Portals also enable inferior numbers to get the drop on a larger group and wipe them. My guild running with 25 people has wiped groups of 40-50 with a well-placed portal flank. It isn’t just an ability for the “ZOMG ZERG” to use. The best portals aren’t even placed in the middle of an enemy.

Portals add another layer to tactics. If you don’t have portals, then you can just camp a chokepoint with siege. An open gate or a hole in a wall would be useless because the enemy team could keep you out indefinitely. It adds spice and variety to the game. Everyone is so quick to scream for nerfs instead of realizing what a class has to do or give up to succeed at their trade. Mesmers need to bring mobility, invisibility, and portal. Essentially, they are full support. They don’t have damage dealing skills on their utilities. They also need to build tanky the same way any class that is “op” for healing had to actually spec into healing and toughness and vitality and the same way a backstab glass cannon thief can’t bring any defensive stats if he wants to burst. You have to spec for what you are trying to do. Not every mesmer can just drop portals where they need to be dropped.

Everything is a trade-off and the crying here simply wants to nerf, nerf, then nerf again with no consequences or balancing to any other class. Portals are not the “huge” part of WvW that everyone thinks they are and they are far more tactically themed than they are a brute force mentality. When the culling issues are fixed, which is easily the root of the whole problem, you will have nowhere to place your blame.

If you have an argument with my facts, I would love to hear it. ANet nerfed heals to a cap of 5 because they decided that “turtles” were not working as intended. Portals, essentially, received a nerf from the heal nerf because of how they related to each other. A bad portal is now absurdly susceptible to AoE because you can’t just stand their and heal through it. The cooldown was increased to stop them from being spammed.

The baseline facts here: Portals are now working as ANet intended. They are no longer a thoughtless zerg bubble. If a larger force overwhelms you easily with a portal, you were likely going to die anyway.

/thread

Porky’s reply struck me, and I realized how this whole portal business is such an interesting study of gamer evolution. It really reflects the shifting dynamics (therefore, continued player engagement) and cool self-checking/re-balancing that can occur in WvW.

I mean, first it was, “Portals are exploits!” cause no one knew what the eff was happening, now its “Hardcore players…challenged by the softcore players.”

I gotta agree with Esoteric here yall.

Nearly every effect in the game can be duplicated by multiple classes. Heals, stealth, run speed, might, etc. is spread out among multiple classes. If you were to remove a single class from the game every skill’s effect can be duplicated by other classes for the most part. The effects that can’t be duplicated (very few) would hardly change any tactic or battle.

An army that consists of every class except Engineers wouldn’t be at any major disadvantage as an opposing army that has every class including Engineers. An army that consists of every class except Rangers wouldn’t be at any major disadvantage as an opposing army that has every class including Rangers. An army… (insert all classes besides Portal)… etc…

If, however, an army that has every class except the ability to portal goes against an army that does have the ability to portal then the army without portal is at a huge disadvantage.

If you were to remove/modify this one specific skill from one specific class (portal) then suddenly combat tactics completely change.

Why is it that one specific skill on one specific class has such a huge effect on battle tactics when any other skill or even a whole class could be removed with hardly any affect on battle tactics?

With how hard ArenaNet strives to make no class truly exceptional compared to every other class does everyone really believe they intended one specific skill, only available on one specific class, to have such a huge effect on the game?

True strenght of a portal is to takes fully advantage of players culling.

Esoteric.5490:

My guild running with 25 people has wiped groups of 40-50 with a well-placed portal flank.

This is afine example, Esoteric I am sure you and your guild are all dedicated and skilled players, but can you in all honesty say that the enemy group did see you popping out of that portal the split second you used it?
Do you think that there’s a chance your group wasn’t rendered on your enemies screens thus making that assault a lot easier that it should have been?

I do not mean to say that you’d have been wiped by the enemy force, but I am sure that you would have experienced a lot of troubles if you guild were correctly and promptly reported by the server to enemies’ clients.

I do not know whether Esoteric’s group did benefit from culling or not, but I am sure I died too many times in WvW because of it: zergs popping out of nowhere, Thieves unloading their pistol on me while invisible and popping 2/3 seconds later etc…

Portals are not the problem, again culling is.

Kalizaar.4729:

(insert all classes besides Portal)

Nailed it.
Probably without even realizing it.
But that one sentence nailed it so much.

Is something wrong with having a class that is also a tool in WvW? And if so, then why? Hypothetically that is, as Kal is using a hypothetical in his post. In reality, there is no imaginary army that doesn’t have a Mesmer.

just to post a real “fact”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/WvsW-is-unplayable-because-of-mesmer-portal-abuse/first#post285938

Portal is intendet to do exactly what it does now, besides Porting through closed walls and other obvious Buguses.

greetz

Nerf Portals they can do something i can’t, Nerf Arrow Carts i died to one, Nerf Catapults behind the door it knocked me down, Nerf Thieves i got jumped last night by 2, Nerf Trebuchets they got more range then me, Nerf Tower and Keep walls people get to stand on them and hit me, Nerf Warriors they hurt my feelings yesterday, Nerf Voice Chat it gives an unfair advantage to people with verbal communication skills, Nerf in game chat because people who type faster then me have an advantage, Nerf Guilds because i’m not in a guild and cooperation gives then an advantage, Nerf Cliffs in WvW because i ran off one, Nerf knock downs because the ground is dirty, Nerf game developers because they make changes,

Nerf whiners because they never shut up!!

Must be nice to complain about a singular skill ruining wvwvw. Here in the lower tiers we just do not have the numbers for portal bombs to be required. It is all about 24/7 coverage (which we dont have) and zergs still.

I hope portal stays as is, there is more to the game than wvw, which skill changes do affect.

In my opinion portals just make the game less fun. We use them all the time and unfortunately it has become so good that it is involved in almost every single strategy. We could try other strats however they just won’t be as effective without a portal. It’s easier to have one mesmer to run in stealth behind the enemies then it is to get a large group to circle around and move behind the enemies while the other force is still attacking from the front. I think a cap would fix this because then it would require a lot more organization and skill to pull off. You would have to make sure you have the exact amount of people that can go through the portal on each individual portal or else people will get left behind not to mention that you will have to have each mesmer make it through enemy lines.

It seems like most people agree that the current situation, where we have both culling and portals, is not working as intended and not really acceptable long-term. Obviously, the best solution would be to fix the acknowledged problem of culling, and only THEN have the discussion about the mechanics of portal once we are able to see them truly functioning as intended.

However, we don’t know for certain if culling can truly be fixed in the large scale of the WvW environment. Or, suppose it can be fixed, but it requires so much time and effort to do it that the fix won’t be completed within a year, or maybe even two or three years, due to a choice to spend that time and effort on other parts of the game instead. Should the portal ability be left in its current state, resulting in broken overall gameplay (even though that’s not strictly portal’s fault), for as long as it takes to fix culling, potentially forever?

The way I see it, we can have unrestricted portaling, or we can have culling, but we can’t have both. Until culling can be addressed, putting some kind of quantity/speed limit on portals’ transporting of players is a less than ideal, but still necessary workaround to combat the bug of invisible armies. Once culling is fixed, restore portal to its original unrestricted state if that better serves the balance of the game.

Yeah and when we deaktivate Portal becouse of culling we should deaktivate the following things too, becouse they exploit the culling system:

All stealth abilitys!
Running into Zergs → there can only be 5 players at the same time in an area of 100 Range.
All major PVE-Events becouse they draw to much players at one point.
All Dragons becouse (see above).
Spawnpoints should be random spread through the whole map becouse there can be too much player at the same spot.

Jeah ceaktivate this all becouse of culling this is the best way to react to this bug …..

btw. there are statements from Devs, that the majority of the WvW-Dev-Team is working on this problem and made some resent progress fixxing this.

some comments are truly hilarious.

greetz

Talking about nerfing singular skills as an example, let’s look at:

Guardian reflection and retaliation as an example of a common tactic employed against siege prior to the portal craze, result: Nerfed!

Elementalist Meteor Shower reducing anything standing in it to ashes during beta, bunker EA builds result: Nerfed!

Invisible and Invulnerable Capping, result: Nerfed!

Stability as an effect not a boon: Nerfed!

There are many more I’ve missed by you get my point that skills affecting the game in a broad sense have been “fixed” for the greater good. Portals need some form of adjustment until culling can be addressed or further changes are made to stealth mechanics to make the placement more difficult.

Before SoS got to tier 1 they had to go through tier 2. There, their armies didnt move from location to location without a portal. If there was to be an attack: portal. Take a supply camp: portal. If they needed some milk from the store: portal. The ability to pop in, “turtle’d”, and unleash all their CD’s, kill all the siege, destroy all the players, without even rendering so people knew what was going on around them, was just to good not to use. Yes it was organised, yes it was deliberate. SoS was playing to win, and in that regard they were doing what they ought to in order to achieve that: portal portal portal.

I posted this once before in a similar thread. I think it deserves posting again in this one because the tone here is far more constructive. Portals, I think, do not need removing from the game. But there needs to be some limitations in place. We’ve brainstormed ideas before: plenty of bad ones, but some gooduns too, so I won’t bother with that. Anyway here’s the linchpin I think people should think about to answer this issue:-

From Sirlin (sirlin.net) in the chapter “What should be banned?”

“It’s Too Good!”
Only in the most extreme, rare cases should something be banned because it is “too good.” This will be the most common type of ban requested by players, and almost all of their requests will be foolish. Banning a tactic simply because it is “the best” isn’t even warranted. That only reduces the game to all the “second best” tactics, which isn’t necessarily any better of a game than the original game. In fact, it’s often worse!

The only reasonable case to ban something because it is “too good” is when that tactic completely dominates the entire game, to the exclusion of other tactics. It is possible, though very rare, that removing an element of the game that is not only “the best” but also “ten times better than anything else in the game” results in a better game. I emphasize that is extremely rare. The most common case is that the player requesting the ban doesn’t fully grasp that the game is, in fact, not all about that one tactic. He should win several tournaments using mainly this tactic to prove his point. Another, far rarer possibility is that he’s right. The game really is shallow and centered on one thing (whether that one thing is a bug or by design is irrelevant). In that case, the best course of action is usually to abandon the game and play one of the hundreds of other readily available good games in the world.

Only in the ultra-rare case that the player is right and the game is worth saving and the game without the ultra-tactic is a ten times better game—only then is the notion even worth fighting for. And even in this case, it may take time for the game to mature enough for a great percentage of the best players and tournament organizers to realize that tactic should, indeed, be banned.

My perspective:

- Using a portal to appear in the best location to attack your enemy requires the skill of 1 or 2 people out of 10, 30, or 50.
- Actually getting to that location requires the skill of almost all of the same 10, 30, 50.
1. So, yes it requires skill, but far less skill than doing it traditionally.

Some professions are able to make everyone faster (33%). One profession is able to make people move instantaneously from point A to point B. This happens in such a way that Mesmers are EASILY and by FAR the highest utility profession in WvW.
2. So the success of a server depends on the number and the skill of its Mesmers specifically not the players generally.

I feel that Mesmer traded their ability to do area effect damage for the ability to do area effect support. It doesn’t seem to have been a good idea, but I don’t know if there is an easy way to fix it.

brunohstein.9038:

The problem with portals is that the game can’t handle the 2321421 players appearing in one place at the same time. I actually think that capping the portal to the maximum of 10 players would be a good change. Portals would remain useful, teleporting golems or players to critical positions.

Oh yeah. 5 golems waiting for a portal, then here come 8 other clueless players ruining the portal for the golem, leaving 2 golems behind. That alone should be a good reason not to put a cap on it. Because face it, how often do you see people randomly entering a portal after it was placed. They have no idea where it leads to, they just want to go through it.

Also you’re seeing this wrong. As stated many times before in this thread, the fact that portals can’t handle “2321421” players isn’t caused by the portals, but by culling (invisible players).

brunohstein.9038:

I actually think the game won’t ever be able to handle gracefully those 50 players rendering at the same spot at the same time.

Even if you can’t see them, you can still counter a portal attack, but that’s not the issue here. The issue is that you’re claiming that portals are the issue (XD). Let’s say (hypothetical) culling somehow get’s a good fix, enemies show up instantly, even those 50 after a portal. Would you still say portals need a fix?

I am against the existence of Portal in WvW simply because it makes the Mesmer a more desired profession over any other. I thought we could play how we wanted? It’s simply pathetic to hear the mandatory “sweep for Mesmers” EVERY SINGLE CAPTURE.

Auesis.7301:

I am against the existence of Portal in WvW simply because it makes the Mesmer a more desired profession over any other. I thought we could play how we wanted? It’s simply pathetic to hear the mandatory “sweep for Mesmers” EVERY SINGLE CAPTURE.

Why? I think you want to feel safe after a cap, but it doesn’t have to be that way. It makes the game more interesting.

If every class didn’t have it’s special thing, it would be boring

Well I personally am of mixed feelings on this subject mainly because my style of play in WvW.
Till Anet unlimits the AoE, there is very little counter against the crowding around siege other than constant suicide runs, or portal bombs.
One could say use counter siege but 9 times out of 10 that’s destroyed before it’s even had chance to be built.
Till I saw how effective the portal bomb was at first hand I to was of the opinion that it should be like the AoE limited to 5 but not anymore.
WvW needs something like this to keep players on their toes as I’m sure quite a few will also agree that it also needs full AoE as well.
My message to Anet is yes tweak classes as and where needed to stop a class becoming the OP king/queen of WvW but WvW needs and is crying out for limitless action.
So keep the mes portal as is but bring in limitless AoE to both counter the portal as well as the bunching to negate the AoE’s effectiveness

Am i the only one here who always see portal exit? Not people popping on top of it, but pink circle of portal itself? From my experience it is always visible and not affected by culling, unlike people porting through it.
So, if it is same for everyone else, then is it so hard to react to anyone’s scream “PORTAL” and throw control and AOE to welcome friendly red guys? Guys, who are not attacking you from flank invisible, but standing nicely in one spot?
Please tell me if i’m misunderstanding something.

And to OP: there is idea to nerf something else – arrow carts and ballistas! They too can give advantage to organised groups, and will efficiently decrease 3w population by 53,57% (yeah, it’s not menacing as portalbombing, but still) in next month!

Auesis.7301:

I am against the existence of Portal in WvW simply because it makes the Mesmer a more desired profession over any other. I thought we could play how we wanted? It’s simply pathetic to hear the mandatory “sweep for Mesmers” EVERY SINGLE CAPTURE.

What about the people who like playing mesmers? And want to portal? Or the people who like to use portals and want to continue using them? You don’t want them to “play how they want”?

I will not play a mesmer in WvW because I don’t want to be a “portal slave”, which is basically what you turned the class into during WvW. Run here, run there, drop a portal here, drop one there, hide here, hide there…

Yah, that’s a lot of fun being told what to do, where to go, and being wanted solely for my portal.

Portal should be a PvE skill only.

It’s also quite annoying in Khylo. Doesn’t seem intended that one skill, that has no equivalent on any other class is so massively overpowered when used correctly.

remove portal cause it is ruining the game for real

Nothing wrong with portal.
1) Don’t let mesmers hide in keeps/towers check everywhere or you deserve to get invaded.
2) Portal bombs are easy to avoid, see that rather large obvious pink circle that doesn’t belong … AoE it.
3) Again that large pink circle on the ground … get out of it don’t stand there or you deserve to get bombed.

I really don’t get why people kitten so much about portal its not like its singlehandedly winning the battles everywhere, and if it is … well I guess you deserve to lose.

If used correctly it can be powerful but you need to coordinate to use it effectively, it doesn’t just happen all on its own.

Dredlockrasta.8269:

Quit whining, portal bombing is preventable, people are just crappy at playing their classes.

The problem is no one wants to play defensively in this game, everyone runs around with great swords and kitten. One guardian with a 2h hammer can easily prevent an entire zerg portal bomb.

L2P

As a guardian that actually does this, I do want to point out that it’s not as simple as you make it sound because RoW has such a significant delay / cast animation. You have to have very good reaction time, teleport and maybe even stability popped to pull it off.

As for portal being balanced…I’m not really convinced that it is. What other utility skill on a similar CD do other professions have that is just as useful in WvW? Hell, Portal as a utility skill is more useful than any Guardian elite skills.

I also don’t think that a single skill should control how an entire game mode is played. At the very least, it needs a more direct counter (like a ranged, targeted RoW with a radius barely larger than portal’s).

Fudge.9527:

Dredlockrasta.8269:

Quit whining, portal bombing is preventable, people are just crappy at playing their classes.

The problem is no one wants to play defensively in this game, everyone runs around with great swords and kitten. One guardian with a 2h hammer can easily prevent an entire zerg portal bomb.

L2P

As a guardian that actually does this, I do want to point out that it’s not as simple as you make it sound because RoW has such a significant delay / cast animation. You have to have very good reaction time, teleport and maybe even stability popped to pull it off.

As for portal being balanced…I’m not really convinced that it is. What other utility skill on a similar CD do other professions have that is just as useful in WvW? Hell, Portal as a utility skill is more useful than any Guardian elite skills.

I also don’t think that a single skill should control how an entire game mode is played. At the very least, it needs a more direct counter (like a ranged, targeted RoW with a radius barely larger than portal’s).

I’m basically of the same mind as you.

I love the idea of the portal ability. However, in a game that prides itself on letting everyone play multiple ways to do the same thing how is it that one ability is so important, so game changing, nearly required, and yet no other class has anything even close to the same utility, and no class has a skill to counter it like everything else in the game?

A character can turn invisible for a short time but easily be killed instantly once they’re visible. A character can turn invincible for a short time but easily be killed once vulnerable. A character can aoe fear a bunch of people for a few seconds and then be killed instantly once it’s over. And then a character can instantly transport an invisible army and easily be killed after but…. uh… There’s a freaking invisible army there now to take revenge!

Where the heck is the rock/paper/scissors there that the rest of the game is based on? That’s now rock/paper/scissors/Ancient Dragon. Now if it was Giant Meteor/Ancient Tome of Mass Death/Greatsword of Complete Annihilation/Ancient Dragon it wouldn’t be so bad.

I agree that portal is too powerful, but rather than remove it why not make it so the level of coordination required scales with the size of the force in need of transport? These changes would tone down portal in zergs while remaining useful in small groups:

-The portal vanishes once 5 players have gone through it.
-The portal vanishes immediately if the mesmer dies.
-Placing the portal entrance puts a debuff on the mesmer that prevents stealth. Placing the portal exit removes this debuff.

Portals are ok as it is imo. It has its strength to move many players to a location (fire power), but its flaw is that they’ll pour out of a single point. Sort of like muta stacking in sc. It is strong, but portal’s color makes it stand out like a sore thumb, making it implode with aoe cc+dmg. I think what could change to make portal easier to counter for our beloved zergs are:
1. Make portal colored by team (maybe just red for all enemy and green for ally, just for wvw)
2. Perhaps after portal is opened, there’s ~3 sec delay before it ‘opens completely’.

I see a lot of ‘use portals x5’ a lot… srsly? Might as well say in a tool-tip ‘for spvp+dungeons only’ or name it ‘spectral marathon’. The nerfs you people think of just want to make portal completely useless, rather than making it counter-able.

PS. I think portal flanking, instead of ‘bombing’ of your location is a lot harder to counter and quite efficient.. but requires actual coordination from 2 sides.