Guild Wars 2

There has been a lot of controversy surrounding the mesmer portal, and more recently, thieves using stealth to block capping camps. While there has been a great outcry to limit or remove these abilities from wvw, I am going to argue that they should stay, and more importantly, more of these such abilities should be added.

Before portals started getting used en-masse, wvw largely consisted of running two giant zergs into eachother, and whichever had the greater numbers or more siege would win. While numbers still are the main deciding factor for who wins wvw, smaller groups are able to win against larger forces using superior tactics, many of which revolve around the portal. Portals allow a group to move around at extreme speeds and give superior flanking ability to said group. The advantage of portal bombing/flanking is having the element of surprise and that’s it. Before you start complaining about invisible armies, I remind you that if you can’t see them, they most likely cannot see you. Also, if you are organised, you CAN shut down portal bombs 9 times out of 10 with equal or greater numbers (if you are really organised you can do it while outnumbered, but success is more situational). People who complain about always getting destroyed are usually a part of an unorganised zerg, and in that case, you should be losing to a organised attack every time. The point I’m trying to make here is that portals add a lot to the metagame, and they are balanced because they are counterable.

I have the same argument for the thief’s ability to use stealth to block camps from being capped. It is an awesome tactic that counters unorganised zergs, but can easily be stopped by a little bit of organization. Again, it adds to the metagame.

The only real issues with portals/stealth is the rendering issues in wvw, but we should not get rid of such awesome abilities because of it, as ArenaNet will fix rendering in the future (hopefully).

So the real problem in wvw is mesmers and thieves are a must if you want to do well in wvw. This is completely true. The solution to this; however, is not to get rid of or limit these abilities but to add gamechanging abilities to all the classes so they can all be just as important and have a role in wvw. Right now, mesmers (portal, temporal curtain, feedback, timewarp), thieves (stealth, the spinning move with stupid amounts of AoE DPS), and guardians (sanctuary, wall of reflection, staff line, endless amounts of retaliation and stability) are all super important classes. To a lesser extent you could say necros with their mass condition abilities, elementalists as the walking siege cannons, and perhaps engies with grenades and mortars (is engie mortar as powerful as the ones built in keeps?) are also super important, but not quite on the same scale. This leaves out ranger and warrior, although I am sure they have skills they bring to the table as well. So if these other classes were given important skills, roles would become more prominent and the metagame of wvw would improve.

tl;dr – Portals and stealth stopping capping add a lot to the metagame. Instead of trying to get these abilities removed, we need ArenaNet to add more gamechanging abilities to the other classes to bring them up to par.

Source from:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/72549-mesmer-portals-and-thief-camp-stalling-why-these-tactics-are-important-for-wvw/page__hl__+mesmer#entry2036017

this post is taken from Guru..

Only problem I have is that mesmer ports have no cap. None.

Yet as an ele I have 5 cap on everything and players can simply mitigate all that dmg by simply stacking more than the cap. This cap makes my AoE pretty much utterly worthless. More and more I am seeing enemy zergs stacking to negate all AoE. So my question is….why is it ok that mesmers have infinite number ports when I get stuck with a peasly 5?

As to thief, I personally think it’s kinda OP for them to be able to do 35k dmg in span of three seconds. I dunno man, maybe it’s just me. Oh I can avoid the dmg they do, of course! Wait….I can’t see them b/c of culling and their ability to chain stealth/perma invis. Nvm!

p.s. i run with almost 2.1k toughness and a thief last night stabbed me for 12k. I am sorry, no class should be able to hit that much especially when they aint even drawing on my screen. I can’t avoid what I cannot see™. Even if culling is fixed, thief dmg is absurb. Just sayin.

fixit.7189

Only problem I have is that mesmer ports have no cap. None.

Yet as an ele I have 5 cap on everything and players can simply mitigate all that dmg by simply stacking more than the cap. This cap makes my AoE pretty much utterly worthless. More and more I am seeing enemy zergs stacking to negate all AoE. So my question is….why is it ok that mesmers have infinite number ports when I get stuck with a peasly 5?

The answer is obvious. Portals don’t do damage. Portals don’t kill people. You can’t spam portals and kill people repeatedly. You can’t take 5 mesmers and drop 5 portals and kill 100 people at a gate defense. Portals are a buff, just like other buffs, that affect “all allies.”

Siege is what allows you to do damage to unlimited amounts of people in a stack. That’s their purpose, and that’s why nobody has an aoe damage spell that deals damage to more than 5 in a stack.

So, you’re comparing two completely different mechanics.

If you still don’t get why limited aoe damage on players to 5 at a time is important, then you haven’t played games where aoe wasn’t limited. Siege isn’t mobile, so it’s okay to not have a cap, but if every player was essentially a walking siege, you and everyone else would be BURYING these forums in posts about getting obliterated by organized 5 and 10 man gank squads that stack aoe.

In the infamous DAOC 8 man squad I was a part of, we killed 68 out of 200 people in 10 seconds, simply by running into people who’d literally just taken a keep and ported outside in front of the door and were waiting for direction from the commander. We landed some CC, ran directly into them and layed down the AOE. We still died, but just 8 killed that many before dying. Now multiply that some more.

We regularly killed groups of 40-60 with just our 8 people, with ease.

That’s why you should be glad there’s a damage cap on your AOE. If you want something you feel is “game changing” (even though every class already has it, and is important, despite claims to the otherwise) then you should start brainstorming for it.

I would have no problems with either of these if there were no rendering issues.

Golem bomb mesmer portals can tear down keep walls before you see them and clpak and dagger thieves can hold camps for an infinite amount of time necause the game does not allow you to see them in between skill use like intended.

I would personally disable both until the rendering issues are resolved but would not remove them from the game.

Peetee.9406:

I would have no problems with either of these if there were no rendering issues.

Golem bomb mesmer portals can tear down keep walls before you see them and clpak and dagger thieves can hold camps for an infinite amount of time necause the game does not allow you to see them in between skill use like intended.

I would personally disable both until the rendering issues are resolved but would not remove them from the game.

First of all, the portal doesn’t have very long of a range. It’s like 4000 or so units. I think there’s a huge misconception about the range on it. So while a bunch of coordinated mesmers can portal siege weaponry to your front door, if you’ve got ANYONE at their at all, you’ll see these solo mesmers doing this. They STILL have to drop the portal and run from point A to point B, in unison. If the enemy gets THAT many golems together anyway, and nobody on your team is aware of it, then you wouldn’t have been able to stop them to begin with even if they just marched it up to your front gate.

Second of all, no offense, but people who can’t stop cloak and dagger thieves from holding a point are just bad. There is no other explanation to it. They’re bad players because they don’t have map awareness, and they don’t use the tools provided to them by the game.

Look at this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=j54bkD-3Nr0

These people are AWFUL! This is what the playerbase consists of too! These are the same people who whine on the forums about unfair tactics or class balance issues, but not a single one of these players even pays attention or pan their camera and notices the thief popping in and out of stealth tagging people. I mean, nobody even bothers to communicate either from the likes of it, otherwise people should spin around and target him and kill him. He even kills a guy unstealthed for 6+ seconds and two people RUN PAST HIM at 1:50, and nobody else out of the 50+ people their even turn around and look.

They don’t have map awareness. I’m sorry, no matter how much these and other players touting this video would have you believe, they are just not skillful, and don’t understand basic game mechanics.

Someone posted a list of all the thing that would pull him out of stealth. Any ground targetted AOE will hit him, any traps, or necro marks. You can even use Mesmer clones and phantasms to see where he’s at. They’ll stand there while he’s stealthed, but as soon as he comes back out of it they’ll automatically do their ability and hit him, even if he goes back into stealth again. Mesmers can also use Temporal Curtain pull to dictate about where he’ll be when he comes back out of stealth. Rangers could volley. There’s tons more of things that can be done, the fact is, this guy should not have lasted more than a minute, or been forced to leave. Period.

I have thieves and other classes stealth on me all the time and they DIE in stealth, because you learn a sense of where people will and won’t go, and you learn how to dictate their movements while in stealth. I am aware of the rendering issue, and I still don’t have trouble knocking them out of stealth when they try to pull stunts like this. All the rendering issue does is delay their death just a little bit longer.

This is a player skill issue, this is not a “thieves are overpowered, nerf” issue.

Players need to fix their own skill first, then worry about class balance later, because apparently a lot of people still don’t core game mechanics.

The only reason these ‘tactics’ exist is because of the rendering issue.

And you say you want the rendering issue fixed…which removes these as tactics.

You are wrong. Ports do kill people. It’s nothing to do with dmg but being able to instantly port an infinite amount of players with ONE mesmer is where I have a problem. Add in culling issues that makes the zerg totally invisible….eh. I have participated in these and seen the results. This is a major game changing skill that only mesmers get. Why the favortism I wonder?

And as to AoE killing LOL! We had like 4+ eles raining death from above on 8 or so dudes ressing one their teamies and NONE of them went below 80% life. It was merely annoying. Now people stack their zergs and no amount of AoE can even make a dent in a zerg ball. They sit their laughing as they get tickled.

Ya having infinite cap on AoE would be OP; I will agree 100%. But 5 cap is worthless imo. How about say 8-10 cap? Yes, no, maybe?

fixit.7189:

Yet as an ele I have 5 cap on everything

Nope … many of your support skills aren’t capped.

Eles can burst damage to

fixit.7189:

You are wrong. Ports do kill people. It’s nothing to do with dmg but being able to instantly port an infinite amount of players with ONE mesmer is where I have a problem. Add in culling issues that makes the zerg totally invisible….eh. I have participated in these and seen the results. This is a major game changing skill that only mesmers get. Why the favortism I wonder?

And as to AoE killing LOL! We had like 4+ eles raining death from above on 8 or so dudes ressing one their teamies and NONE of them went below 80% life. It was merely annoying. Now people stack their zergs and no amount of AoE can even make a dent in a zerg ball. They sit their laughing as they get tickled.

Ya having infinite cap on AoE would be OP; I will agree 100%. But 5 cap is worthless imo. How about say 8-10 cap? Yes, no, maybe?

No, portals do zero damage. they don’t kill players. Players and siege kills players. When a mesmer portals people in, that mesmer has to run up to you first, and those players that get ported have the same 5 cap stack on aoe that you do. If you had been paying attention, you would have been able to counter it or react to it. Instead, what we have here is a case of inept, unaware zergs getting outmaneuvered by organized zergs or groups of people. That’s all it is. Just like in the video I linked that seems to be making so many waves.

When a Mesmer drops his exit portal, both ends immediately glow bright purple, denoting that it’s active. Before anyone can use it, there is a 2 second delay. So portals are not instant. You have the ability to have reaction time. Also, of course you’re going to argue against this but it actually takes organization to get people to take the portal. The portal only stays active for 10 seconds. On my realm, I have seen mesmers talk in /say and /team about dropping portals for like 20+ seconds, almost filling the chat up with “Dropping portal, take it soon when active!”, and people STILL don’t pay attention and still don’t take portals. Why? Because those are unorganized zergs. So yes, it is a classic case of organized zerg beating unorganized zerg, and the unorgaized zerg scape goating it when the problem lies with their own skill and awareness instead.

I’d be okay with 10 cap, I agree 5 cap is probably just a tad too limiting. Also, if you had 4 elementalists spamming on top of dead people rezzing and you couldn’t get them past 80%…you have garbage gear, zero power, or aren’t level 80, or any and all combination of the three. I’m nearly full toughness with full exotics at 80 and some elementalists really hurt with their AOE. But most don’t. Just like most thieves can’t do anything to me, or most mesmers are awful, or most guardians are useless. Remember, 99% of players are bad (but think they’re good). I know I sound like an elitist prick, but I’m one of the nicest people ever and you can’t read tone in text. I’m just stating the facts of competition. Most people who haven’t played to win, who haven’t played at a “higher level,” don’t “get it.” It’s like a light switch. Once it’s flipped, that competitive, analytical mind opens up, they’ll understand…but until then, all they can do is complain about unfairness. About imbalances.

It’s player skill issues here.

To clarify, since I can’t edit my post, when I say I’d be okay with a 10 cap I mean for player induced AOE damage.

Guess I am part of the 99%.

Oh dear, what an insult!

Done with talking to you. Nothing you say will convince me that allowing mesmers to port infinite amounts of players is a good thing despite using it myself for devastating results.

mesmers have portals for golems, enemy mesmers can portal into keeps that are in your control(certain ones at least), they can get underground and take out siege, they can phantasm siege almost anywhere, even siege that isn’t visible or in range of them…mesmer is the most useful class by far in WvW, exploits and all. good thief is a close second with their ability to control camps against 3-5 people alone, culling, insta-gibs(steal,cloak and dagger, backstab before rendering?) and all.

if elementalist didn’t have a cap on AoE i’m sure they’d become the most useful. The Ele-bomb(Patent pending), you give yourself 25 might, use churning earth and right as it’s about to cast click teleport on the portal and pop out into the zerg for ridiculous AoE damage and dodge back into the keep/tower to repeat the process.

This picture shows me hitting 5 people…if it wasn’t for the cap i would have hit about 20 people with 5k(non-crits) to 13k damage and a 6k bleed.

You don’t have to be part of the 99% though! The choice is yours.

Also, I’m not trying to insult you. It’s really not meant as an insult. Do you honestly believe that everyone has a good grasp on proper counters to tactics, or the most optimal way to play, or prediction of opponent playstyle? Do you honestly believe that even most players have a grasp of these things? I don’t think you can honestly tell me that with a straight face. Now, does that mean other player’s opinions aren’t valuable? No, everyone’s opinion has some value. But as non PC as it may seem to say, is in fact true that some opinions (or statements, evalutations, whatever) are less valuable than others, based on the amount of understanding said person has on the subject.

And what, you immediately reject all of my arguments, even when you can’t refute them? If that’s how you want to be, that’s perfectly fine. I do hope you have a good day, and again, I apologize if you took anything I said with a negative overtone. Just trying to speak matter of factly (but straightforward, even if slightly sarcastic). I just felt the need to point out what’s wrong with all these issues so many players seem to be having.

AnthonyZdravko.2051:

they can portal into keeps that are not in your control

True, some can exploit. Unless you didn’t clean your keep of leftover enemies after you took it, in which case that’s your own error.

they can get underground and take out siege,

Don’t know what you mean, sounds like an exploit though.

they can phantasm siege almost anywhere, even siege that isn’t visible or in range of them

True, they can summon one phantasm (Illusionary Berserker) on siege that they don’t have LOS on. But they still need to have targeted it at some point. Here’s a tip.. if you set it back on the wall a good bit, and there’s no higher elevation for the person to get on, they can’t target it at all. Trebuchets in particular are good for this (only the very base of the model is targetable…hide it)You’ll never have phantasms getting summoned on it. But they can still summon it on visible players that run forward to the edge of the wall, and then run back to you.

And you are wrong, they have to be within 1200 range. You cannot summon phantasms out of range at all.

Other classes also have ways to deal damage from out of line of sight.

…mesmer is the most useful class by far in WvW, exploits and all. good thief is a close second with their ability to control camps against 3-5 people alone, culling, insta-gibs(steal,cloak and dagger, backstab before rendering?) and all.

Guardians are also extremely powerful, as are engineers.

What is fair?

I was at a supply camp and we had a thief that wouldn’t let us cap it. This went of for a time till I got the thief’s name.

I then passed this onto the people at the supply camp who then put it into team chat who was then encouraged by the commander present to report the thief for hacking/botting w/e and PM the guy as much.

In any event it worked, the thief left and we capped the camp.

Tbh the whole situation was rather amusing. What was fascinating for me was how the tactic used by the thief motivated an entire map to submit a BS report about him.

inb4 we did attempt to bunch up to counter the near permanent stealth, but we were operating with the zerg….

There’s nothing wrong with mesmer portals porting infinite people. The thing is only open like what, 5 seconds? It’s not like people can go in, fight, and get out from the same portal within any meaningful timeframe. It’s a niche ability and it’s really good, but it’s not gamebreaking unless everyone is dumb and doesn’t sweep. EXCEPT:

I can see ANet fixing golems so they can’t take mesmer portals; that’s likely a bug anyway. Likewise it’s understandable for exploits involving mesmer portals to be fixed.

But the core mechanic of mesmer portals are fine, and it’s easily countered. Sweep your keeps and you won’t have any problems with being backcapped. I don’t see what the big deal is.

Also cloak and dagger thieves can be shut down really easily on a point just by AOEing, and by dropping phantasms/engineer turrets.

Kirrund.2654:

fixit.7189

Only problem I have is that mesmer ports have no cap. None.

Yet as an ele I have 5 cap on everything and players can simply mitigate all that dmg by simply stacking more than the cap. This cap makes my AoE pretty much utterly worthless. More and more I am seeing enemy zergs stacking to negate all AoE. So my question is….why is it ok that mesmers have infinite number ports when I get stuck with a peasly 5?

The answer is obvious. Portals don’t do damage. Portals don’t kill people. You can’t spam portals and kill people repeatedly. You can’t take 5 mesmers and drop 5 portals and kill 100 people at a gate defense. Portals are a buff, just like other buffs, that affect “all allies.”

Siege is what allows you to do damage to unlimited amounts of people in a stack. That’s their purpose, and that’s why nobody has an aoe damage spell that deals damage to more than 5 in a stack.

So, you’re comparing two completely different mechanics.

If you still don’t get why limited aoe damage on players to 5 at a time is important, then you haven’t played games where aoe wasn’t limited. Siege isn’t mobile, so it’s okay to not have a cap, but if every player was essentially a walking siege, you and everyone else would be BURYING these forums in posts about getting obliterated by organized 5 and 10 man gank squads that stack aoe.

In the infamous DAOC 8 man squad I was a part of, we killed 68 out of 200 people in 10 seconds, simply by running into people who’d literally just taken a keep and ported outside in front of the door and were waiting for direction from the commander. We landed some CC, ran directly into them and layed down the AOE. We still died, but just 8 killed that many before dying. Now multiply that some more.

We regularly killed groups of 40-60 with just our 8 people, with ease.

That’s why you should be glad there’s a damage cap on your AOE. If you want something you feel is “game changing” (even though every class already has it, and is important, despite claims to the otherwise) then you should start brainstorming for it.

So when then did other MMOs not cap AoE at all? or even do anything for years and years?

Kirrund.2654:

Second of all, no offense, but people who can’t stop cloak and dagger thieves from holding a point are just bad. There is no other explanation to it. They’re bad players because they don’t have map awareness, and they don’t use the tools provided to them by the game.

Look at this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=j54bkD-3Nr0

These people are AWFUL! This is what the playerbase consists of too! These are the same people who whine on the forums about unfair tactics or class balance issues, but not a single one of these players even pays attention or pan their camera and notices the thief popping in and out of stealth tagging people. I mean, nobody even bothers to communicate either from the likes of it, otherwise people should spin around and target him and kill him. He even kills a guy unstealthed for 6+ seconds and two people RUN PAST HIM at 1:50, and nobody else out of the 50+ people their even turn around and look.

They don’t have map awareness. I’m sorry, no matter how much these and other players touting this video would have you believe, they are just not skillful, and don’t understand basic game mechanics.

Someone posted a list of all the thing that would pull him out of stealth. Any ground targetted AOE will hit him, any traps, or necro marks. You can even use Mesmer clones and phantasms to see where he’s at. They’ll stand there while he’s stealthed, but as soon as he comes back out of it they’ll automatically do their ability and hit him, even if he goes back into stealth again. Mesmers can also use Temporal Curtain pull to dictate about where he’ll be when he comes back out of stealth. Rangers could volley. There’s tons more of things that can be done, the fact is, this guy should not have lasted more than a minute, or been forced to leave. Period.

I have thieves and other classes stealth on me all the time and they DIE in stealth, because you learn a sense of where people will and won’t go, and you learn how to dictate their movements while in stealth. I am aware of the rendering issue, and I still don’t have trouble knocking them out of stealth when they try to pull stunts like this. All the rendering issue does is delay their death just a little bit longer.

This is a player skill issue, this is not a “thieves are overpowered, nerf” issue.

Players need to fix their own skill first, then worry about class balance later, because apparently a lot of people still don’t core game mechanics.

No offense Kirrund but you don’t sound like you have played much WvW, and certainly not as a thief.
I do almost nothing but WvW, first as an elem then once I saw how broken they were I rolled a thief and that is all I play now.

Your link is broken but you say ‘He even kills a guy unstealthed for 6+ seconds and two people RUN PAST HIM at 1:50.’

Once a thief unstealths he still stays invisible (unrendered) for a LONG time, much more that 6 seconds. What you saw was an unstealthed but still invisible thief kill someone.

AoEing an invisible thief, yeah good luck with that, like it is hard for him to evade roll out of the red circle that tells him exactly what you are doing.

I’ve been on both sides of the camp cap block where 20 people are running around tabbing trying to target the thief. You get lucky, you happen to be facing the right direction when he is targetable (but still invisible) you get a chance to hit him once before he stealths again. And 2 of his stealthing moves are also heals. Plus he can trait to regen health while in stealth.
Yeah, of course eventually someone will time a stun right or something like that and the thief dies but the ability for one person to counter 20 is just ridiculous.
And it takes no skill, believe me, I stink and I can do it.

Link Fixed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j54bkD-3Nr0

Epicsmooth.7825, I don’t 100% understand your question.

But WvW of this game is basically a mishmash of two other games, Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online (Both made by Mythic). DAoC had no cap on AOE at all. For a long time they had zero diminishing returns on crowd control affects, and aoe mez (mezermize, means person can’t control their character, immediately breaks upon being damage) had unlimited targets. You could run up to a group of 100 as a Bard or Sorc, and cast an aoe Mez, and they would all be standing there for 1 minute long duration. Aoe stuns were 8 seconds long and had unlimited targets, and could be chained. Months later, they started added diminishing returns (by roughly half) on CC effects so if you got hit with the same CC 3 times in a row, you were immune for quite a while. So 60 seconds, then 30 seconds, then 15, then immune for a minute+. They also started added things like determination that greatly reduced the length of CC durations. Even so, a game like this highly revolved around player skill and positioning and if you were not good you were just numbers to be wiped up. This was also a game where you could take maybe 3 hits at most before dying. Critical and precise use of limited amounts of cds were necessary (just like dodging is in this game)

Later, Mythic developed Warhammer and had the similiar problems again with unlimited AOE mowing down large groups of players (50-100+) with small amounts of players (10ish or so). Namely, Bright Wizards. A few weeks later, they implemented damage fall off and a soft cap on targets, where if you went over the cap of 10-15 (I forget, haven’t played it in forever) then your damage was greatly reduced on all remaining targets.

Both games had all the Relics (Orbs…even gave the exact same bonuses!) and castle sieging and castle and guild upgrades and banner displaying and all that that Guild Wars 2 has. It’s literally DAoC with a facelift, and some minor alterations, and smaller maps.

So, these games that preceded GW2 by many years learned that damage capping AOE is a good idea, because otherwise 100s of players will get killed by a coordinated small 10 man squad, and then they’ll complain they’re not having fun. Despite the fact that, you know, if they were coordinated 100 players they wouldn’t die..but then that’s not the definition of Zerg now is it.

As for Occam.9841, WvW is all I do every night with a coordinated small group who repeatedly takes forces triple our own size. Also, my brother is a thief, probably one of the best, because I know he has played at a high level in almost every other game he’s played in. I know exactly what a thief does.

I also know that thief stealth hangs longer than the duration due to render issues, but it doesn’t go as long as you say, sorry. We have thieves try to stealth and slip away from our group all the time, and they always die. There are many things to do to a thief while he is in stealth, it isn’t invincibility.

There are also things that auto target a thief, ignoring rendering issues, such as engineer turrets and mesmer clones/phantasms. These things will always reveal the thief’s location, and always deal damage to him.

I disagree with you, people are just not very clever or skilled at understanding how to stop this tactic. It has nothing to do with luck.

The portal was clearly not designed with the intent to allow dozens of players to stack on top of single character’s model to completely break and circumvent player based AoE.

There is no organized group out there that can really justify portal usage in this particular parameter without admitting that it is completely broken.

Portal is an extremely strong ability limited solely to mesmers, making them a mandatory part of any organized group, which outshine most other professions in their usefulness in competitive game play.

I know OP would be a Mesmer or a Thief before I even clicked on the thread.

Karast.1927:

The portal was clearly not designed with the intent to allow dozens of players to stack on top of single character’s model to completely break and circumvent player based AoE.

There is no organized group out there that can really justify portal usage in this particular parameter without admitting that it is completely broken.

Portal is an extremely strong ability limited solely to mesmers, making them a mandatory part of any organized group, which outshine most other professions in their usefulness in competitive game play.

I’m not so sure to be honest. For the most part, mesmers only annoy the hell outta me, but I (more or less) ignore them on the battlefield. They are insignificant in my eyes (as a Ranger). I look for easier targets, or might aoe their clones if no better target exists. Though they might be confusing, ultimately I don’t find them threatening.

Good for them for having a rather large useful skill (minus the possible exploits of course, such as aoe damage or possibly the porting of golems). I don’t feel disadvantaged at all. Pretty sure there are mesmers on my server too.

I would like to see the skill tweaked a little bit, but I wouldn’t consider it “completely broken”.

Karast.1927:

The portal was clearly not designed with the intent to allow dozens of players to stack on top of single character’s model to completely break and circumvent player based AoE.

There is no organized group out there that can really justify portal usage in this particular parameter without admitting that it is completely broken.

Portal is an extremely strong ability limited solely to mesmers, making them a mandatory part of any organized group, which outshine most other professions in their usefulness in competitive game play.

Yeah, clearly the developers never intended clumps of players might all stand together, and be able unable to be hit more than 5 at a time by player AOE…. Clearly the developers never envisioned this.. Man, where would this happen at? Oh I don’t know… on KEEP DOORS? lol. Or on objectives? Players wouldn’t clump together on those would they?

Who would have thought there’d be a need to cap aoe damage at 5! If only there was a mechanic to get around this, to deal damage to more than 5 targets at a time… like siege.

It was intentional. It has zero to do with portal. You’re linking the two as if they’re dependent on one another, but they aren’t. They have zero relation.

As for mandatory classes to organized groups, thieves are also “mandatory” for shadow refuge which provides massive amounts of relief from greater numbers, and to chase runners, and to burst important targets or provide good AOE damage. Guardians are invaluable for their damage as well as superior support, and battlefield control…..and so on. I mean come on. Every class has important skill sets.

op sounds like a noob trying to justify exploiting.

i have no problem with portals at all. mesmers have almost no speed available to them. this makes getting from spawn to the zerg or anywhere at anytime a hassle and very dangerous. they have only one ability on a 30s cooldown with 10s of swiftness. they are the slowest of all of the classes in this game.

portals have a limited range – about 2000. if the culling issue was fixed people would complain less. it’s a great tactical tool

the thief solo keeping a camp from the zerg is an exploit to be sure. these thieves are using the poor culling code to their advantage and with how much stealth a thief has this is intolerable. if the culling code can’t be fixed, than that restealth cooldown buff will have to be applied whether the thief attacks from stealth or not until it can be. as someone with both an 80 mesmer and 80 thief this would not hinder thief pve in the slightest.

WL has pounce and Anet gave the Mesmer Zerg pounce even through walls.
I want Zerg rift on my Mesmer for the next patch.

Portal has to be removed and replaced by something else, and this with or without rendering/lag being fixed or not.

so what you guys suggest here is to be fair that all aoe buff/Aoe dmg shld be capped at 5 players maximum ?

Whats the problem is that 2 professions get a very, very powerfull tactic. Mesmers taking the cake.

A single Mesmer can bypass all defenses and the entire act of sieging anything. You run around keeps and whatnot to root this profession out specifically. Not Engineers, or Elementalists or anything. No, Mesmers. Because they, and they alone, have the power to let an entire army bypass the walls of keeps, towers and castles.
And especially in the latter its hard to purge the entire SM of Mesmers because that place is huge with a ton of areas to hide. On top of the Mesmer already being one of the most illusive professions.
Not to mention the on-demand culling bug to make your whole zerg invisible.

Thieves can indefinatly keep points contested, even against overwhelming odds. Delaying caps more then anyone for help to arrive in a way no one else can.

All of this adds insult to injury when Thieves are also 2shotting people while being completely invisible. And Mesmers are also very strong both walking AND downed.
Its like the two strongest, and most frustrating professions in this game, are then also singled out and giving exclusive powers for special and very powerfull strategies.

Its just completely unbalanced. But no, the Charr Landmine racial, THAT is upsetting WvW and has been removed… What are the devs thinking?

Still sounds like somebody don’t want to do the ‘mesmer sweep’ and wants one of the last few tactical abilities of the game removed. An ability which on top of everything else does no damage and requires the mesmer to be alive and hidden with people hunting him.

Sure – the people exploiting the wall should be banned, and the graphical issues should be fixed. But removing or changing the portal further because you don’t want to make sure nobody is alive in SM after taking it ….. sorry, but that just sounds lazy.

When a Mesmer portals we have to run up to that location very vulnerable and exposed even with stealth, and in many cases we don’t survive the efforts. You guys make it sound like we risked nothing or didn’t put together a majorly coordinated effort to use multiple Mesmer portals. The only time things are “easy” are when the enemy is complacent with scouts or situational awareness.

It’s a little like watching the catas chip down the walls as you Batista/Mortar them, then being surprised they actually took the wall down. A Mesmer ran up to and most likely through a giant AoE choke point alone in a possible suicide run to move their armies, and no one stopped a single squishy Mesmer who doesn’t have enough stealth to make it that far invis the whole way. You counter siege, you counter, “counter siege”, counter AoE, counter infiltration after every turn over, everyone “Mesmer sweeps”, you counter portals by don’t let them get it down (kill the Mesmer), don’t let them breech.

I feel like I’m playing football every event as I bob and weave to get past all your Mesmer blockers… you saw me coming (or had the ability to), and some knew to counter it (more and more everyday), and I got through, and my friends will be here shortly for all that effort.

When there’s a render/culling issue it is mutually hindering both sides. No one has that advantage. Both sides have AoE restrictions. I’m not referring to exploits or bugs issues, only legit Anet intended uses of Mesmer portal.

Webley.1295:

Eles can burst damage to

not really.

1) D/D can burst
2) S/D can burst once every 45secs, or whenever your enemies are dumb enough to stand still
3) staff can’t burst at all

Arani.9057:

When a Mesmer portals we have to run up to that location very vulnerable and exposed even with stealth, and in many cases we don’t survive the efforts. You guys make it sound like we risked nothing or didn’t put together a majorly coordinated effort to use multiple Mesmer portals. The only time things are “easy” are when the enemy is complacent with scouts or situational awareness.

It’s a little like watching the catas chip down the walls as you Batista/Mortar them, then being surprised they actually took the wall down. A Mesmer ran up to and most likely through a giant AoE choke point alone in a possible suicide run to move their armies, and no one stopped a single squishy Mesmer who doesn’t have enough stealth to make it that far invis the whole way. You counter siege, you counter, “counter siege”, counter AoE, counter infiltration after every turn over, everyone “Mesmer sweeps”, you counter portals by don’t let them get it down (kill the Mesmer), don’t let them breech.

I feel like I’m playing football every event as I bob and weave to get past all your Mesmer blockers… you saw me coming (or had the ability to), and some knew to counter it (more and more everyday), and I got through, and my friends will be here shortly for all that effort.

When there’s a render/culling issue it is mutually hindering both sides. No one has that advantage. Both sides have AoE restrictions. I’m not referring to exploits or bugs issues, only legit Anet intended uses of Mesmer portal.

Yep, this post is exactly the answer.

I play mid/mid-low tier servers and the amount of opponents that just chill or drop only an autoattack on me when my tiny asura hauls kitten out to their trebs is kind of bewildering. Especially so when they complain about portalbombing and stacking on the forums afterward instead of slaughtering me next time.

stalling the points with stealth does not work. tried it today. must be fixed.

mjharrison.3209:

Webley.1295:

Eles can burst damage to

not really.

1) D/D can burst
2) S/D can burst once every 45secs, or whenever your enemies are dumb enough to stand still
3) staff can’t burst at all

thieves only burst every 45 secs to. also signet was nerfed to acceptable levels now

there is no more 18k back stabs

Camp stalling isn’t a problem. Mesmer porting is however. Mesmer porting means that several gold worth of upgrades that a guild puts into a tower or keep suddenly become entirely useless. Basically Mesmer portals make upgrading buildings entirely useless which then eliminates an entire part of intended game tactics – those of using siege equipment and siege warfare. I personally wouldn’t mind if there was a siege weapon or upgrade you could purchase that allowed you to bore through a wall very quickly, or that allowed you to (almost) instantaneously bore a tunnel underground, though it would have to be very expensive. What Mesmer porting provides is a completely free way to break into a castle.

TJV.6239:

Camp stalling isn’t a problem. Mesmer porting is however. Mesmer porting means that several gold worth of upgrades that a guild puts into a tower or keep suddenly become entirely useless. Basically Mesmer portals make upgrading buildings entirely useless which then eliminates an entire part of intended game tactics – those of using siege equipment and siege warfare. I personally wouldn’t mind if there was a siege weapon or upgrade you could purchase that allowed you to bore through a wall very quickly, or that allowed you to (almost) instantaneously bore a tunnel underground, though it would have to be very expensive. What Mesmer porting provides is a completely free way to break into a castle.

I’m not sure you understand portal mechanics… for a Mesmer to get in you had to have hole in the wall or door at some point. This is not a discussion on exploits only legit portaling.

The problem right now with Mesmer Portal is its the WvW Zerg equivalent of a one-shot instagib from a BS Thief on a Glass Cannon in sPvP. There is little/nothing that can be done to counter it, and its basically no fun. Unlike a Glass Cannon in sPvP, you can’t respec a Zerg or fix rendering issues.

It will get a nerf of some sort.

Honestly a lot of this (and a lot of topics on this board) reads like people want the zerg to be an almighty, unconquerable force. Thieves and mesmers are just about the only anti-zerg the game has, and it desperately needs them. If you nerf portals and stealth WvW will become utterly pointless as it will just amount to “who has more players in their mass”.

I’ve killed lots and lots of perma-stealth thieves. All you have to do is get a good, long-lasting condition on them when they appear. And I’ve seen many many mesmers accused of exploits when all they’ve done is hit someone with a clone or hid underneath the bridge at the briar tower.

greyblue.4962:

I’ve killed lots and lots of perma-stealth thieves. All you have to do is get a good, long-lasting condition on them when they appear.

You know thieves can remove conditions just by being in stealth right?

Anyways I think the thieves and mesmers are fine, the biggest issue that comes from both of these is the rendering, if everyone was visible when they should be mesmers would have an even harder time setting up portal bombs and thieves could be shut down even easier than currently.

These abilities actually add depth to the WvW.

I’m probably a bit wierd but i enjoyed WAR’s lack of cap on aoe(no i didnt play a bright wizard) it made people you know… GET OUT of the aoe instead of the current overly logical way of stacking INTO it to avoid damage. The stealth classes in that game were also great fun, being able to go in the back door of enemy keeps added another layer of tactics to the siege attack/defense. mesmers provide a similiar role in Gw2. Having classes with things exclusive to them is what makes games interesting.

I really find it baffling how many people think Mesmer portal is “exploiting.”

Uhhh…if using a portal to move your team around quickly, launch surprise attacks, and sneak your team inside a keep that you hid in is “exploiting,” then WTF do you think the portal skill was created for in the first place?

I really feel like it’s painfully obvious that all the stuff listed above are intended uses for portal…the only one that is iffy is teleporting people inside a keep, but I still think this is okay because well…the enemy team could have easily searched for and killed any mesmers hiding in the keep before they left in a LOLOL Zerg train.

So yeah, I’m just baffled by all the portal whining.

Mesmer Portal is OP in wvw simply because no other classes have remotely similar ability to move massive amount of troops. To stop it being OP, other classes need such “overwhelmingly” useful skills in organized groups.

Thief’s invisibility issue is just a poor mechanic. Invisible character should not contribute to point capping, and if the attacker:defender ratio is high enough, the capture should proceed regardless of whether there are defender players in the ring.

And don’t forget, both of these “features” are being exploited currently due to the rendering issue. But that’s another story, really, because the core design and mechanic of these two things are just flawed.

Mesmer Portal is OP in wvw simply because no other classes have remotely similar ability to move massive amount of troops. To stop it being OP, other classes need such “overwhelmingly” useful skills in organized groups.

Guardians have lolWall and lolBubble that can completely block chokepoints, nevermind Aegis that can enable a large force to walk through ballistas. Warrs have 1-shot Kill Shots and AOE Fear, invulnerability cooldown to soak enemy fire. Elite Banner insta-rezzes on downed players.

Eles have infinite AOE pew pew pew pew.

Only classes that don’t have any really potent/stackable effect are Rangers, Necros, and Engis. 1 spirit Ranger is good enough. Not aware of any highly effective things that Necros or Engis can pull off.

Kirrund is right, not having people render, yet still be able to attack for a good amount of damage, and as I said remain unrendered…. is bad play by all the baddies out there…. In no way shape or form can be be people abusing a glitch, then coming here trolling, thinking it is skill …

Deer.1890:

Kirrund is right, not having people render, yet still be able to attack for a good amount of damage, and as I said remain unrendered…. is bad play by all the baddies out there…. In no way shape or form can be be people abusing a glitch, then coming here trolling, thinking it is skill …

both sides have the same rendering problem … it’s not like people who port in can see either… It is not unbalanced if there is no advantage to one side or the other with rendering. You don’t get a “rendering buff” just because you used a portal.

Today alone I sprinted twice through the hole we made in the wall that was down for half a second as they repped it, ran my ninja mesmering but past Batista and bad guys who were doing everything they could to get me, knowing I WOULD die no question but the job is to get my armies in and past the choke-point not take advantage of rendering. I couldn’t even see all the guys who were shooting me. They sure rendered me, it was only me… The guys I got in couldn’t see the enemy any better than I could and were taking a blind portal to wherever I dropped them. This is NOT “Free”. Not only do I have to survive long enough I have to drop the portal in a place that is not a death trap for the entire army.

I died 3 times trying to get the crew into garrison, not because I didn’t Get portal off , but because the enemy saw where I dropped the first portal and dropped a storm of boddies and AoE on the first portal forcing zerg to scatter or wipe. We never saw them because they hadn’t rendered.* It is a 2 way street.*

This is what spec ops Mesmers do, it is nearly everything about us. We get in, then get everyone else in, and it’s dangerous and the zerg needs to trust you are not going to get them killed by putting them somewhere dumb… Half of then freak out that there’s a portal near them if they don’t know its friendly and move away from it… most of this concern is about not understanding the mechanics and tactics and blaming it on something else.

Portal is too much of a “bring the class” skill to fit with GW2’s model. It might be fine in a bring the class game but this isn’t supposed to be that kind of game.

I’m glad you’re assuming that the only way to play WvW is to ram zerg into zerg and see who has bigger testicles, when even now that’s clearly not the case. I’m all for unique mechanics, mesmers can do LEGAL tactics that use portals that can be devastating to an enemy. For instance:

This situation actually happened, and a mesmer could had actually done this and probably have won the siege for them. Invaders managed to take our upper left tower and placed a TON of siege into it to prevent it from being taken back easily. They then placed 2 trebs in the tower to attack garrison’s left wall.

We managed to hold out with the wall actually collapsed because we fortified the inner door.

If a mesmer were working together with a group, as they usually do in situations where they can be of advantage, they could have stealth ran in (10-20 seconds of stealth is plenty of time) got up on the inner wall, dropped a portal, and their zerg could have completely skipped our wall of siege equipment.

I’m not against unique mechanics. I’m against mechanics breaking other obvious mechanics. Keeps require tactical measures to take, period. Having an insider mesmer stick around long enough to portal in 25-50 players breaks that mechanic.

we can do 12s of stealth without being specd into it. I think it adds 3s of stealth if you are specd. I’m not specd for that so I can’t testify. It’s not continuous as we use decoy for 3s of it which leaves a "decoy that basically screams “mesmer was here”, begin AoE.

IMO it seems like a lot of time but it’s rarely a solid block of invis time as we can’t sprint without casting and dropping invis and we have to run through AoE Arrow cart snares/cripple.

EasymodeX.4062:

Mesmer Portal is OP in wvw simply because no other classes have remotely similar ability to move massive amount of troops. To stop it being OP, other classes need such “overwhelmingly” useful skills in organized groups.

Guardians have lolWall and lolBubble that can completely block chokepoints, nevermind Aegis that can enable a large force to walk through ballistas. Warrs have 1-shot Kill Shots and AOE Fear, invulnerability cooldown to soak enemy fire. Elite Banner insta-rezzes on downed players.

Eles have infinite AOE pew pew pew pew.

Only classes that don’t have any really potent/stackable effect are Rangers, Necros, and Engis. 1 spirit Ranger is good enough. Not aware of any highly effective things that Necros or Engis can pull off.

Engineer grenade spam is extremely powerful. If the engineer is specced for nothing but damage (glass cannon) grenade spam (or thief clusterbomb spam) will wipe out people clumped faster than just about anything. It’s ridiculous when used properly. My brother’s thief clusterbomb crits for 6000. Engineer grenade spam hits for about 3k to 4k combined. And with the trait, their grenades apply vulnerability, and continuously stacks, so you can get it stacked up pretty high pretty fast. That damage adds up fast, provided the enemies are in an aoe situation.

Also, Engineers can have 4 blowout (the knockback that knocks you down for 3 seconds) attacks on their bar at a time, the most of any class in the entire game. If they want to, they can completely shut down a single player for 12+ seconds, ensuring their death (provided no stability)

Rangers have volley (which is something.)

And necros have marks, which when utilized properly can be pretty nice.

Deer.1890

Kirrund is right, not having people render, yet still be able to attack for a good amount of damage, and as I said remain unrendered…. is bad play by all the baddies out there…. In no way shape or form can be be people abusing a glitch, then coming here trolling, thinking it is skill …

Don’t know what to tell you. If I don’t have any problems beating it, and the people I play with don’t have any problems with it (it gets used against us plenty of times, but we shut it down)… then… player skill is what needs addressing here. The tools are there. They are available. But some people don’t want to see that, they don’t want to accept the counters; no, that’s too “difficult.” They’d rather just have shallow, zerg-induced snoozefests.

Hymnosi.5928

I’m not against unique mechanics. I’m against mechanics breaking other obvious mechanics. Keeps require tactical measures to take, period. Having an insider mesmer stick around long enough to portal in 25-50 players breaks that mechanic.

What’s the difference in the example you provided, where a wall goes down briefly and a mesmer gets in, versus a mesmer defending a keep that gets taken, and then sticking around long enough after it gets taken? Both results end in the wall being skipped…why is that a problem? What if 30 thieves stacked on top of each other and rotated shadow refuge in an awkward corner of some keep somewhere, until the enemy left, then went and killed the keep lord? Is that anymore legitimate in your eyes? 1 or 30, what’s the difference? The counter is don’t leave enemies in your keep. This is not rocket science. The very same thing applied to games like DAOC and Warhammer for keep sieges; don’t leave enemies in your keep. Entire groups would frequently hide out and retake the keep by killing the lord after the mindless zerg rushed out the gates. It’s nothing new.

Kirrund.2654:

EasymodeX.4062:

Mesmer Portal is OP in wvw simply because no other classes have remotely similar ability to move massive amount of troops. To stop it being OP, other classes need such “overwhelmingly” useful skills in organized groups.

Guardians have lolWall and lolBubble that can completely block chokepoints, nevermind Aegis that can enable a large force to walk through ballistas. Warrs have 1-shot Kill Shots and AOE Fear, invulnerability cooldown to soak enemy fire. Elite Banner insta-rezzes on downed players.

Eles have infinite AOE pew pew pew pew.

Only classes that don’t have any really potent/stackable effect are Rangers, Necros, and Engis. 1 spirit Ranger is good enough. Not aware of any highly effective things that Necros or Engis can pull off.

Engineer grenade spam is extremely powerful. If the engineer is specced for nothing but damage (glass cannon) grenade spam (or thief clusterbomb spam) will wipe out people clumped faster than just about anything. It’s ridiculous when used properly. My brother’s thief clusterbomb crits for 6000. Engineer grenade spam hits for about 3k to 4k combined. And with the trait, their grenades apply vulnerability, and continuously stacks, so you can get it stacked up pretty high pretty fast. That damage adds up fast, provided the enemies are in an aoe situation.

Also, Engineers can have 4 blowout (the knockback that knocks you down for 3 seconds) attacks on their bar at a time, the most of any class in the entire game. If they want to, they can completely shut down a single player for 12+ seconds, ensuring their death (provided no stability)

Rangers have volley (which is something.)

And necros have marks, which when utilized properly can be pretty nice.

Deer.1890

Kirrund is right, not having people render, yet still be able to attack for a good amount of damage, and as I said remain unrendered…. is bad play by all the baddies out there…. In no way shape or form can be be people abusing a glitch, then coming here trolling, thinking it is skill …

Don’t know what to tell you. If I don’t have any problems beating it, and the people I play with don’t have any problems with it (it gets used against us plenty of times, but we shut it down)… then… player skill is what needs addressing here. The tools are there. They are available. But some people don’t want to see that, they don’t want to accept the counters; no, that’s too “difficult.” They’d rather just have shallow, zerg-induced snoozefests.

Hymnosi.5928

I’m not against unique mechanics. I’m against mechanics breaking other obvious mechanics. Keeps require tactical measures to take, period. Having an insider mesmer stick around long enough to portal in 25-50 players breaks that mechanic.

What’s the difference in the example you provided, where a wall goes down briefly and a mesmer gets in, versus a mesmer defending a keep that gets taken, and then sticking around long enough after it gets taken? Both results end in the wall being skipped…why is that a problem? What if 30 thieves stacked on top of each other and rotated shadow refuge in an awkward corner of some keep somewhere, until the enemy left, then went and killed the keep lord? Is that anymore legitimate in your eyes? 1 or 30, what’s the difference? The counter is don’t leave enemies in your keep. This is not rocket science. The very same thing applied to games like DAOC and Warhammer for keep sieges; don’t leave enemies in your keep. Entire groups would frequently hide out and retake the keep by killing the lord after the mindless zerg rushed out the gates. It’s nothing new.

I will kill a Mesmer in a heartbeat if they try to breach my assigned walls… I know what to look for and exactly how to counter it… I’ve not seen a Mesmer get a portal in a keep i’ve been assigned to, except that one keep we had for 2 days straight and we still cant figure out how the “got in” and destroyed 2 trebs and a cata… but it’s ok we caught em later with screen shots… haven’t seen em post on the forums since.

Mesmers are not the problem if your being breached.. it’s the army that dropped your wall or door that’s the problem… we just expedite the situation.