Guild Wars 2

LOL thats hilarious reading, get a friendly mesmer to out portal them then? its an exploit going through a mesmer portal!!!!! lol!!!!

Russell.7681:

LOL thats hilarious reading, get a friendly mesmer to out portal them then? its an exploit going through a mesmer portal!!!!! lol!!!!

If you can fight someone that cant find back due to the limitations of server/client communication and rendering. Then in my eyes they could just as well fly, speed, teleport, haste, underground hack like the rest. Same thing in my book.

Also portals, ride the lightning and an underwater thief skill can bypass gates. maybe there are more. But hey, just part of the gaming experience.

It’s an exploit when a mesmer glitches past the walls and creates a portal for everyone to go through. It’s an exploit that’s been bugging a lot of people lately.

if some one glitches past a wall then fair enough but what of the sneaky asura mesmers who can hide inside the keep after its been taken, and portal people up without ‘glitching’ past… as for the enemies not showing on screen yes we all hate that atm it sucks

we dont glitch pass walls and portal ppl through WE HIDE and come out when called

learn the class and the game before crying about something is it really that hard after you push ppl out of your base to make sure its clear? Leave scouts?

honestly as a mesmer im tired of all the QQ abotu portals when your really upset about Anets game render problem not us

Midway.2319:

Please put a cap on how many people can use this ability. I just saw 40+ enemy players from Dragonbrand use it to portal past the walls into a keep in one of the borderlands. Sorry but tactics or not, this is way too over powered and needs to be looked at.

I agree, the unlimited uses of a mesmer portals in WvW seems kind of too powerful to me, too. If Anet would just, say, let portals expire after 7 uses, there would be almost no impact on sPvP and PvE. And a portal strategy in WvW would still be viable, although it would be a little bit more difficult since you now have to coordinate 5+ mesmers for one mass portal move.

Midway.2319:

Now we know how Dragonbrand works, they’re not very good players and use exploits to win any wvw matches. Kinda sad small minds can’t use real tactics and cower down to exploits like this.

Sorry, no offense intended, but this is the kind of bullkitten I read far to often in this forums. Everybody is complaining that server A hacked keep B, servers C and D are cooperating against E, and all players from server F are overweight and have ugly ears. And no, this is not funny smacktalk, this is just whining.

Can we all please accept that every server has its fair share of black sheeps who are not acting very sportsmanlike unless ANet fixes all bugs and exploits, and can we please stop pointing fingers? Can we, please?

~MRA

I can tell you he did not glitch past the wall. you guys just need to sweep what you take for people hiding….. Second Blackgate and fort aspenwood are building seige equipment in invul zones out of reach from almost everything. Before you complain about people exploiting, make sure your team is not doing it.

GhostRage, the rendering issue only happens when there is a large force loading in, and the keep in question was theres for a good 10 minutes and they never even looked for the mesmer. he did not exploit a bug, the other team was just dumb.

The crying about mesmers are hilarious. Sorry you died in pvp

It seems to me that the complaining is especially about the passwall exploit COMBINED with the unlimited portalees. I’d be in favour of a reasonable limit on it that extends the time limit on its use, but limits its uses.

So people are asking for a nerf on an ability because it can be used in conjunction with an exploit?

Why not, you know, ask for the exploit to be fixed instead? Or does that make too much sense?

I guess I’m just saying the existence of the exploit at all gives QQ’ers the fuel to complain about both illegitimate and legitimate uses of portal as if they were the same thing; i.e. “There is an exploit for a skill, therefore all players of x profession are exploiters and the only solution is to nerf the skill into the ground!!!”

So yeah, you’re right. The solution is to fix the exploit.

I’d rather like to keep a mesmer able to portal enemies into a keep in the future, and not having that labeled as an exploit. But only in chunks of small strike teams, and not whole armies (or, say, 200 golems) at once. Hence, I’d prefer to limit the usability of the portal skill.

~MRA

I’ve been on the same side as mesmers glitching into towers/keeps (i’m a mesmer, i know the class). It’s funny to watch them defend it right after twitching and flying up to the top of the wall…. I mean they could at least make it believable and lay down the first portal on the wall before people get there, but they don’t even try to be discrete about it.

The rendering bug makes me think they should just take portal out completely. I like the ability, but honestly you’re going to have wvw degenerate into portal exploits and watch people walk away.

They also need better ways to knock people out of stealth. We took a supply camp this evening only to have a single thief sneak around for about 5 minutes while 40 people tried to locate him. It’s just one of those things that we’ll keep on bugging Anet to fix and dealing with in the meantime.

I was there when we did this. All we did was have a Mesmer hide in a corner when we lost the tower, and ten minutes later we came back, killed a group of about 25 players, and our Mesmer jumped down and gave us the portal.

Not really an exploit. All you had to do was look around the tower instead of running off as soon as you took it.

Claiming that we glitched through walls is simply BS. It’s a pretty simple tactic: Mesmer hides, then gives portal.

Midway.2319:

Please put a cap on how many people can use this ability. I just saw 40+ enemy players from Dragonbrand use it to portal past the walls into a keep in one of the borderlands. Sorry but tactics or not, this is way too over powered and needs to be looked at. Now we know how Dragonbrand works, they’re not very good players and use exploits to win any wvw matches. Kinda sad small minds can’t use real tactics and cower down to exploits like this.

I have to say this one more time like everyone that thought of this LEGIT tactic as stated by ANET.

Mad you didnt think of it first?

I think the portal is a very nice skill. It requires quite a bit of coordination, but the result can be epic.

Last night we were fighting (about 40 vs 40) on the bridge to the south of the Eastern Keep on Borderlands. We owned the bridge at that time, but we were going up and down all the time. Mesmer put down a portal at the far end of the bridge. Inevitably we got pushed back to our side of the bridge. Mesmer put down entrance of portal on our side. Our guild portalled through, while the other guild hold their ground. We completely blew up two of their guilds.
Later on when we got through the inner gate for the second time (defending guild build up sieges in Lord Room), another guild managed to get a mesmer portal in and we got 40-50 people in there and blew them up. There was no other way to get in there. Mesmer portals are needed to counter such choke points.

We also use multiple Mesmers to maintain our Golem(s) healthy, since they’re very slow. When we grab a tower or keep we know to look for hiding Mesmers.

This ability is powerful, but since both sides can do it I have no problems with it and think it should stay as it is.

“can’t use real tactics”.

What in the blazes do you think coordianting 40 people to jump into a keep after hiding a mesmer inside the walls is? Tactics! Sheesh XD

Long as the clipping issue gets fixed, I’m okay with any creative use of portals. That’s what they’re there for.

Alarox.4590:

I was there when we did this. All we did was have a Mesmer hide in a corner when we lost the tower, and ten minutes later we came back, killed a group of about 25 players, and our Mesmer jumped down and gave us the portal.

Not really an exploit. All you had to do was look around the tower instead of running off as soon as you took it.

Claiming that we glitched through walls is simply BS. It’s a pretty simple tactic: Mesmer hides, then gives portal.

I was there when this happened. It was the best move I saw all weekend. They didn’t find the mesmer in the corner, we waited a bit, portal’d in, retook the keep and continued the siege on the garrison.

The invisible characters does go both ways. When we got to the commander in the garrison, when all 3 teams were in there.. I could only see a handful of people. The amount of invisible people was amazing. I could see the damage rolling off of them, the red and blue finish them/revive icons floating everywhere.. It was amazing.

I agree that portals are great and add to the WvW experience. I agree that keeps need to be swept for Mesmers. That’s all fair game, I suppose. But we have witnessed on many occasions, all day today and tonight, one guild in particular from Sanctum that shall remain nameless on this thread, using the blink skill to enter towers bypassing walls/gates.

They claim to be hidden (of course they do), but that is simply not the case. It is the same team that are going from tower to tower. So how could that Mesmer be hidden in every tower at the same time. In other words, we control three towers, let’s say A, B, and C. That same Mesmer team of just four people, hit all three towers consecutively. So they could not possibly just be hiding.

That is also why a limit on portal doesn’t matter, because a team of four can take a tower being watched by just two people, quite easily, especially with that element of surprise, as in “where the heck did they come from?!” with no walls down. And those people watching that tower performing upgrades for a good hour. So hiding that long? I seriously doubt it.

But again, we watched a pattern and intentionally put folks in controlled towers to observe this and the team. Taking Towers A, B and C in a row by the same four ppl, is not hiding. Bypassing walls is clearly an exploit and ppl should stop making the bogus claim “we were just hiding”. Not gonna fly all the time anymore. Especially since people know to sweep newly taken stuff.

Midway.2319:

Please put a cap on how many people can use this ability. I just saw 40+ enemy players from Dragonbrand use it to portal past the walls into a keep in one of the borderlands. Sorry but tactics or not, this is way too over powered and needs to be looked at. Now we know how Dragonbrand works, they’re not very good players and use exploits to win any wvw matches. Kinda sad small minds can’t use real tactics and cower down to exploits like this.

The tactic is fine. The problem is the rendering glitch, which Dragonbrand refuses to acknowledge. If not for the rendering glitch, JQ would use it too. But we don’t believe in capitalizing on exploits. That’s why we didn’t use the exploit to take out the unreachable trebs on the cliffs of DB and CD borderlands.

I agree with putting a limit on the number of players ablE to use a portal. Exploits or no, I don’t think 40 people should all be able to teleport EN masse to a location with no way to stop it.

As it stands all you really need is for everyone to be in team speaking and paste king…it that much coordination. If it was limited to say 6 players or something, it could still be significant AND it would require far more impressive coordination for larger armies because you would need to time multiple mesmers.

I mean seriously though…when you look at buffs and debuffs In this game they all have a max player limit. The portal is kind of an odd man out in that you can portal everything and everyone with absolutely no limits. That should change, imo

I was there when this happened. It was the best move I saw all weekend. They didn’t find the mesmer in the corner, we waited a bit, portal’d in, retook the keep and continued the siege on the garrison.

Good play!

Yesterday, JQ “lost” a tower to HOD, and waited about 4 minutes for the HOD forces to bail and hit the supply camp. Then we portal’d back into it (had 2 Mesmers hidden) with 30 and smashed the lord through the indignant buff. Had to fend off about 40 defenders, but they came in disorganized. That was so much GG. Then HOD set up a cata and treb against the tower … which we blew up. Bwahahaha!

Edit:

Sidenote, if you limit portals to X uses where X = a low number, expect trolls and spies to rapidly port through it to expire the portals before anyone gets through. Lulz.

There are multiple exploits to teleport/jump through the walls of keeps. If a Mesmer can do it, their whole team can go through. Some teams utilize this.

Its obvious the people whining in this thread have NEVER tried to use this TACTIC. Without the no-clip exploit, this is an extremely hard move to pull off. Good to see Dragonbrand using it, after having it done to them sooooo many times last week by MYSELF! Yay for portals!

If the kittenfest takes over and Arenanet starts nerfing abilities that do not need it, taking the Blizzard way of fixing things nerf into oblivion, then re-buff I will be out of here in a second. You kittenes who don’t check your towers after capping need to smarten up, stop complaining, and learn to play the game better. Tower defence starts with properly clearing them after you cap.

Lesson learned, sweep your towers. Stop your childish complaints.

This is definitely a problem – not because mesmers can hide in keeps, that’s fine. The problem is that they can glitch into a keep with what seems like relative ease. I unwittingly participated in two tower captures using this glitch on Fort Aspenwood yesterday. A mesmer tells everyone, “hey, I have a portal into X tower, come use it” so of course we all do. Only once we capture the tower and move on to the next one, where the same mesmer once again creates a portal to get everyone inside, do I see first hand what’s happening: he creates an entry portal outside at the base of a wall, and then seems to fly upward to be suddenly standing on top of that same wall, where he creates the exit. Everyone runs through and caps the tower in seconds.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the portal ability as designed, and it can be a very strategic tool when working as intended. What is wrong is that it either is the source of a very serious glitch, or allows such easy and effective exploitation of a glitch from another source that it’s doing serious damage to the integrity of WvW gameplay. Glitching past walls needs to be fixed, period. If it is impossible to fix due to the nature of the game engine, then the portal ability needs to be modified to prevent its exploitation. One person glitching past a wall should not immediately equal 40 people going past that same wall (many of whom may not have realized that it was an exploit rather than a legitimate use of portal).

I love how people are so quick to defend the mesmer portal but won’t acknowledge the obvious rendering glitch, which is the biggest advantage that tactic offers. Once Anet fixes that glitch, the tactic will be far less useful.

The main problem is that many towers and keeps of Borderlands are not bulletproof. The exploits need to be fixed, and then no one has anything to complain about.

I didn’t say earlier that some of us were able to recreate the glitch with relative ease to learn how others were doing it. It is definitely an oversight that I hear, from what others have read on another thread. will be fixed by Anet in coming weeks.

Abilities do not need to be nerfed or anything like that. The rendering glitch just needs to be fixed and apparently that is something we can expect.

But folks need to stop saying they are hiding. Yes, I’m sure that has happened on a few occasions, no doubt and kudos if you managed to pull it off. Actually hiding is fair play in my book. But stop claiming you are hiding if you are not, and using this exploit. That is just bad form.

blink.4239:

I love how people are so quick to defend the mesmer portal but won’t acknowledge the obvious rendering glitch, which is the biggest advantage that tactic offers. Once Anet fixes that glitch, the tactic will be far less useful.

What would you rather have? Immense graphics lag and frame rate drop from 40 people porting in then dieing? Or suddenly being aware of the invisible mob on top of you and dieing from it?

90 % of the time when I’ve portal dropped, I can’t see the bad guys. Quite a few of the times I run off AoE’ing nothing. I’d prefer invisible fights versus incredible graphics lag.

Yeah, the pathing / glitching across walls really needs to be fixed.

Also, the Mesmer portals are very obvious when they activate — just AOE the kitten out of it.

Perdan.1045:

blink.4239:

I love how people are so quick to defend the mesmer portal but won’t acknowledge the obvious rendering glitch, which is the biggest advantage that tactic offers. Once Anet fixes that glitch, the tactic will be far less useful.

What would you rather have? Immense graphics lag and frame rate drop from 40 people porting in then dieing? Or suddenly being aware of the invisible mob on top of you and dieing from it?

90 % of the time when I’ve portal dropped, I can’t see the bad guys. Quite a few of the times I run off AoE’ing nothing. I’d prefer invisible fights versus incredible graphics lag.

False dichotomy

I guess if you want to break a cool ability and have only 4 people go through a portal, you’d never get a portal drop onto a group of 20 enemies.. it’d be bad for the portalers.

using the assumption that the spell won’t change, i think it’d be impossible to lower the graphic load far enough to allow 40 people to drop onto another group of players, rendering everyone for everyone and not lag people to death.

Players on the screen aren’t that much of a strain on the graphic load. It’s their abilities that cause lag.

so after a portaling, all abilities go on CD for 5 seconds to let characters load?

Perdan.1045:

so after a portaling, all abilities go on CD for 5 seconds to let characters load?

Alternatively – all characters load right away and are able to use their spells/abilities right away. If this game can’t handle zerg fighting, it’s worthless.

It’s not a graphics load issue.

The engine loads them slowly by design.

I’m running at >60 FPS (capped) with no dips and I still get loading delay in the usual situations.

blink.4239:

I love how people are so quick to defend the mesmer portal but won’t acknowledge the obvious rendering glitch, which is the biggest advantage that tactic offers. Once Anet fixes that glitch, the tactic will be far less useful.

Even with the render glitch you can counter this tactic. See that bright pink/purple circle on the ground? START AOE’ing it!. You’ll be suprised that you can damage those invisible enemies and wipe them pretty fast.

Make do with what you have till they fix things. In the mean time complaining in just about every thread wont do a kitten thing about it.

Glitch needs fixing, portals are fine. The whole point is to take an army through, its a neat unique part of the game.

Your fault for not finding the mesmer. First thing we do after we repel a siege is look for mesmers. 50% of the time we find one hiding out somewhere. If you can’t manage to find one and kill him before he manages to get out, you deserve to lose the keep.

You’re actually not supposed to be able to port people past walls, regardless of how the Mesmer got behind the wall to start with. It’s unintended and probably considered an exploit. The intention is that you down the wall and walk through it properly.

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

I can’t properly quote that post but here’s what Jon Peters said:

Hey all we have some plans to fix some of this. It is currently being looked at so expect a fix in the next few weeks. Basically we like that Portal has this power, but it shouldn’t be able to bypass walls, etc.

As for the problems with players not appearing this is a more difficult engine problem to solve. While we would like to solve it there are definitely counters to this strategy, because anyone doing it has just clumped up their entire team for AoE nuking. Ultimately if they outnumber you by a lot there are much more effective ways for them to kill you.

Jon

His wording isn’t 100% clear. He may be referring to what seems to be one way to glitch past the walls, involving some sort of portal spam to bypass the geometry (using a second portal later on to actually transfer people inside the keep).

If that gets nerfed though, then portal is pretty much gone as a tool. Very rare anyone would want to use it if you can’t actually use it, right?

EasymodeX.4062:

His wording isn’t 100% clear. He may be referring to what seems to be one way to glitch past the walls, involving some sort of portal spam to bypass the geometry (using a second portal later on to actually transfer people inside the keep).

If that gets nerfed though, then portal is pretty much gone as a tool. Very rare anyone would want to use it if you can’t actually use it, right?

I think what he’s saying is you shouldn’t be able to use the portal to port people past existing walls. So if the Mesmer legitly was just hiding in a corner and tried to port his team past a wall, that is unintended. Which honestly makes sense to me – one class being able to bypass all the mechanics surrounding taking a wall/door down sounds massively broken to me.

NoizeMaker.8367:

blink.4239:

I love how people are so quick to defend the mesmer portal but won’t acknowledge the obvious rendering glitch, which is the biggest advantage that tactic offers. Once Anet fixes that glitch, the tactic will be far less useful.

Even with the render glitch you can counter this tactic. See that bright pink/purple circle on the ground? START AOE’ing it!. You’ll be suprised that you can damage those invisible enemies and wipe them pretty fast.

Even with snares, you won’t be able to keep those invisible people in the purple circle long enough to do any real aoe damage.

NoizeMaker.8367:

Make do with what you have till they fix things. In the mean time complaining in just about every thread wont do a kitten thing about it.

I’d rather make people feel bad for exploiting a flawed game mechanic and watch as they attempt to justify themselves. The best is when they reveal their insecurity by reporting your posts.

So if the Mesmer legitly was just hiding in a corner and tried to port his team past a wall, that is unintended. Which honestly makes sense to me – one class being able to bypass all the mechanics surrounding taking a wall/door down sounds massively broken to me.

1. Removing that capability would essentially remove Portal from being used … almost ever. Theoretically you could still use it to “second chance” jump puzzles, depending on what they do to nerf it. Also help skip siege golems and the orb carrier around I suppose. Still, pretty limited and would make keep warfare much less interesting.

2. Tbh, it’s pretty easy to just sweep a keep for Mesmers. I thought it was basically standard operating procedure by this point, but people fail so hard at basic things, I guess I’m not surprised.

What he’s saying is that portals shouldn’t be able to glitch past walls when the mesmer hasn’t had access in yet.

And yes, a mesmer hiding inside a taken keep was something that has been planned and forseen by Arenanet since day 1.

I have never, ever seen a mesmer glitch into a keep/tower, that is not to say it does not happen, weird things happen sometimes when I use blink, like getting stuck into walls etc… If there is a legitimate bug/glitch then obviously it should be fixed.

However, aNet should NOT put a cap on portal, I bet nine times out of ten it is people not sweeping for mesmers. I hide in keeps/towers all the time if I can, no one sweeps for mesmers, they blast in and out then rage on forums when something gets re-capped because they were too lazy to spend 20 seconds scanning for players.

Why would you need a portal if you can already glitch into a tower?

No idea how to quote in this fine forum.

I will say one thing though, these arguments are somewhat absurd. Having to sweep an entire keep for one profession/class is beyond ludicrous, the fact that it is one and only one profession should really make it apparent that there is something fundamentally wrong here. Do you have to scout the entire keep for a lone guardian? How bout a warrior? A thief or even five thieves? Some eles might be hiding in the back corner, better go check. Sweeping your keep to make sure small armies of people are not hiding, say for instance, on top of Garrison’s jumping puzzle or somewhere in the massive expanse of the inner sanctum of SM, is one thing, and failing to do so is a sign of poor foresight, but scanning an entire keep like SM or any version of the Bay’s for a single character? No. That’s beyond game breaking, especially when said class can stealth. Oh ya let me get out my stealth breaking… oh, right. And what if there’s a bunch of them? Heck, if this tactic is valid, every keep, upon being taken, should be filled with mesmers from every team just waiting each other out. What sort of pointless gameplay is this? There’s no longer even a siege at that point, just a cycle of who’s mesmer was the last to be found before an army of 50 showed up to wipe you.

Which bring us to the second point. Stop the mesmer before he drops the invisible army on top of you. How? When? One, he’s invisible. Two, damage doesn’t break his stealth. Three, in a big fight, if he comes running in out from the distance (beyond render range), he’s not going to render for anyone. So who’s going to stop him? My keen sense of clairvoyance that danger is approaching? I’m not spiderman, nor are most people.

The tactic (for moving on the battlefield, taking keeps with it is tomfoolery) I am fine with, abusing the fact that the tactic succeeds because your entire zerg of 30+ people is invisible for upwards of 30 seconds, is nonsense. It leads to degenerate play, people get angry because they died to literally nothing from all around them, and it’s simply down right discouraging.

There is no learn to play or plan here, its pure abuse of rendering to drop massive armies wherever you see fit in the middle of a big fight that no one would ever have a chance to react to because the game will simply not render them. Want to use that portal to sneak in five people to crush the altar in Hills? Good, that’s a sneaky trick and good luck living through the barrage of AoE at the tiny entrance. Loading in 30 people behind a line of siege that no one will see because it won’t render till everyone’s dead? No, that’s not tactics. That’s not being clever. That’s being degenerate.