Guild Wars 2

Portal Bombs are causing issues with sides which are defending against larger numbers. We are finding that despite having a Lord’s Room full of siege, bottlenecking and good tactics, a simple portal bomb will completely bypass everything and give us no way to battle this larger force.

Since the portal nerf, portals are easy to defend against, even with a smaller force. Arrow cart, aoe dmg, aoe push/pull when you see the exit. It’s not much more complicated than that.

transtemporal.2158:

Since the portal nerf, portals are easy to defend against, even with a smaller force. Arrow cart, aoe dmg, aoe push/pull when you see the exit. It’s not much more complicated than that.

If you place the portal in direct LOS of the enemy you deserve to die.

Most decent mesmers don’t, however.

Gab Superstar.4059:

transtemporal.2158:

Since the portal nerf, portals are easy to defend against, even with a smaller force. Arrow cart, aoe dmg, aoe push/pull when you see the exit. It’s not much more complicated than that.

If you place the portal in direct LOS of the enemy you deserve to die.

Most decent mesmers don’t, however.

Your tiers mesmers must be better than ours then. We’re only tier 1, what would we know.

Go back to lower tiers and learn how to play. Most of zerglings in tier 1-2 are noobs, don;t worry

transtemporal.2158:

Gab Superstar.4059:

transtemporal.2158:

Since the portal nerf, portals are easy to defend against, even with a smaller force. Arrow cart, aoe dmg, aoe push/pull when you see the exit. It’s not much more complicated than that.

If you place the portal in direct LOS of the enemy you deserve to die.

Most decent mesmers don’t, however.

Your tiers mesmers must be better than ours then. We’re only tier 1, what would we know.

Yes I am sure the individual skill of players is what got you to tier 1.

/facepalm

Ah but it can also aid them check out this video (about 3.15 in)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bwVOKXSp5vs

Small force wiping a big zerg

You know what is worse than portal bombing? Invisible portal bombing. That one really hurts

It sounds like what happened which made you post this was a mesmer placed a portal into the center of your lord room. Sadly for you, this is exactly how the skill should be used. However, it has one massive down side. It is the ONLY skill I can think which actually lets you know EXACTLY where the enemy will be coming from. If the siege in your lord room was only arrow carts, that is your problem. But even then, lay down AoE and CC and sure enough you just farmed 20 people. If your issue is that you were against a larger force, and they portaled in, well, they were still the larger force.

Despite what people may think, it is easier to take advantage of the enemy portaling than them to actually lay the portal. Mesmer portals are one of the easiest mechanics to counter in the game in WvW, all you have to do is stop, breath, think, AOE. I have seen more failed portal bombs than successful ones by far.

If you are a small group versus a big group I think the best way to combat the portal is to try and stop the mesmer or force them to put the portal at a less optimum place. In this case I would use arrow carts firing staggered areas of cripple arrows to try and slow them down and burn through their invis. You want to keep up as fast a fire rate as possible for area-denial purposes and to stagger the cart AoEs at a decent distance so the mesmer can’t blink through them all at once. The best places to fire would be at choke points such as archways and the bottom and top of stairways/ramps (e.g. a mesmer can’t see past the top of a ramp to blink past an AoE there from the bottom).

But there are some keeps, such as SM and Bay, where the entrance(s) to the Lord make defending against overwhelming numbers next to impossible.

Anticipation and keeping your eyes open helps a lot I think

I was there for this action and it was in the lord’s room at Hills. We were outnumbered 3/4-1 and we knew we wouldn’t hold the inner walls. So we set up ballistae covering the tunnel, arrow carts round the edge and people in the cap circle. Despite being prepared and CCing the chokepoint and covering the approach with AOE they still got a mesmer through and the enemy were spreading out on the cap circle stairs and it was game over. I main a staff ele and know all about uses of AOE, but by the time they’d rendered it was all over.

Portals have great tactical uses but it’s a shame that they render chokepoints and prepared defences almost worthless and then it’s back to larger numbers == win.

Svarty.8019:

Portal Bombs are causing issues with sides which are defending against larger numbers. We are finding that despite having a Lord’s Room full of siege, bottlenecking and good tactics, a simple portal bomb will completely bypass everything and give us no way to battle this larger force.

You’re upset that the opposing team is using a strategic tactic to give them the upper hand?

Maybe we should just give you invincibility because you’re in the Lord’s room?

Jesus, what next?

Svarty.8019:

Portal Bombs are causing issues with sides which are defending against larger numbers. We are finding that despite having a Lord’s Room full of siege, bottlenecking and good tactics, a simple portal bomb will completely bypass everything and give us no way to battle this larger force.

Not sure if serious.

If you are watching for it there are numerous ways to defend against it.

It’s your fault for not putting down a wall and letting that mesmer in.

Vol.5241:

It’s your fault for not putting down a wall and letting that mesmer in.

The invisible mesmer who can dodge over the wall? Wait a minute…

transtemporal.2158:

Gab Superstar.4059:

transtemporal.2158:

Since the portal nerf, portals are easy to defend against, even with a smaller force. Arrow cart, aoe dmg, aoe push/pull when you see the exit. It’s not much more complicated than that.

If you place the portal in direct LOS of the enemy you deserve to die.

Most decent mesmers don’t, however.

Your tiers mesmers must be better than ours then. We’re only tier 1, what would we know.

Apparently not much.

Portal bombs are a really fun aspect of the game. I like them a lot.

One thing I would change though is the logic that AOE only hits 5 characters. What I do not like is an entire group stacking on one point. If they want to stack a point, that is fine, but have everyone get hit by AOE damage.

The OP’s point is valid. There is no means of defense that can stop a portal bomb, period. And to that end, the mechanics placed in game to give smaller forces a chance to hold off larger forces (IE siege), is trumped without any recourse.

Anyone that has an excuse or supposed means of stopping a portal bomb from occurring, is only lying to themselves, plays with inexperienced players, or has no practical WvW experience.

Case in point, on my mesmer alt… my bomb setup is: Focus offhand, Torch offhand, Mirror, Mantra of Concentration, Blink, Portal, and Mass Invis. There is no defense in the game that can stop me. Add thief stealth to the mix and I can get to any point I want, fully stealthed.

Swiftness, 2 dodges, blink, projectile reflect, 3 stun breaks, stability, and stealth. I dodge, reflect, and blink through your AOE fields without so much as getting hit most times, and walk through your knockdowns and guardian walls like they aren’t there. All while being stealthed. And when I do drop my portal, expect to have it placed under your siege, behind objects, or half way clipping into the wall. When my allies come through, expect another mesmer or two to drop down their exits, completely overriding the quantity nerf, and expect 5-6 of your nearby players to be downed before culling finally renders most anyone coming through. Like clockwork, your defense is dropped in the matter of seconds, and your keep is ours.

The idea of portals is neat, and gives groups some interesting options when in open field fighting. The implementation of portals to completely negate lord room siege/defenders turns what ‘would have been’ great fights, into an exercise in facerolling. It cheapens the experience for both the defenders and attackers. Right now, the only defense to holding anything, is the walls/gates. If your opponent breaks into inner Bay/Hills, you’re done.

And as an FYI, all tier 1 servers (including mine), do the exact same thing every time Bay/Hills/Garry has defenders. All of the “Oh just do <this> to stop a portal bomb” that you see up above… just screams inexperience.

^ this I’ve seen mesmer stealth through chokes point too many times. Don’t see a counter to it.

Portal portal portal!

I agree with Quillixx. However, I don’t know how else to express that portals can be countered other than the fact that they can and organized forces will almost always defeat a force that is less organized.

I fully believe that culling is the root problem. If you see that get fixed, you see an immediate diminishing in the effectiveness of portals. Recently, the portal itself now culls, which is ludicrous. Most organized forces don’t even have a chance any more because they can’t even see the portal go down any more, let alone the mesmer.

A simple solution to the mitigation of portal caps by a mesmer going through the portal to drop their exit is simply requiring portal entrances and exits from separate players to be 5-10 yards apart so they actually have to move out of the portal instead of just porting through and activating theirs. This would work similar to the siege placement rule that prevents too many siege pieces from being in one place.

Is there a cap to how many people can go through a portal??

pita spoon.5708:

Is there a cap to how many people can go through a portal??

About a month ago, portals were changed so that only 20 players may use the portal. This includes going through the portal on either end.

Most higher servers immediately circumvented this change by sending more mesmers with portal entrances dropped through the first portal. These additional mesmers would go through the portal and proceed to activate their portals so essentially 40-80 players could still portal, completely avoiding the “nerf” which could be better characterized as a balance change.

ok.. so they nerfed aoe so that we can only hit 5 people with an attack but i can get portal bombed by 20 people.. i think if aoe damage is limited to up to 5 players then portals should be the same..

Portals being limited to 5 people would make them worthless, though. AoE does damage or heals which is hugely effective in large engagements. The portal does no damage, it is entirely reliant on teammates who come through it. Without players to go through the portal, it’s a gimmicky escape/movement skill. Portals are still entirely reliant on organized groups.

I think the AoE cap should be raised or gotten rid of entirely. If you want to break the meta of zergs, and give smaller forces the actually ability to use tactics, you take away AoE caps and you make the maps larger. This forces players to split up into smaller battlegroups or they lose objectives because they can’t cover a whole map, even with a waypoint. If there was no AoE cap for damage, heals, or boons, you’d see an entirely different style of play, one where people can’t just mob everywhere because they’d get blown up. You could take the limit off portals because if a server wants to put 40-50 people all in one place, they could be my guest.

Quillixx.7034:

And as an FYI, all tier 1 servers (including mine), do the exact same thing every time Bay/Hills/Garry has defenders. All of the “Oh just do <this> to stop a portal bomb” that you see up above… just screams inexperience.

I agree completely with what you say, though do not understand your need to be rude to reinforce your point. Your assumption seems to be that all tiers operate the same as tier 1 servers, which is not necessarily the case. The OP is from a tier 8 server; I play on a tier 4 server. I have been in bombs that have failed and helped to break enemy bombs. Inexperienced maybe, but that is the way it goes and the reason one can suggest ways of combating portals in the current climate. The alternative is to take your leggings off and say: ‘Welcome good chap, you have broken through my outer defences so the keep lord is yours for the taking. Please show me to the exit’.

i dont want to take portals away from being used offensively . im just saying that if aoe is limited then basically everything should be limited. if 20 people portal in and im able to hit a aoe spell before they kill me then all of them should be hit. who knows that could be the difference between defending and losing. could slow them up a bit.

i do like your idea about portal ranges between mesmers like seige placement
what if they had something like portal sickness where you cant cast a skill or utility for 3 seconds. would at least give defenders a chance until they fix the rendering/culling issues

also, is there any real way to defend against it other than firing seige and running aoe everywhere blindly hoping to get a few hits. like fighting 20 thieves…lol

Esoteric.5490:

A simple solution to the mitigation of portal caps by a mesmer going through the portal to drop their exit is simply requiring portal entrances and exits from separate players to be 5-10 yards apart so they actually have to move out of the portal instead of just porting through and activating theirs. This would work similar to the siege placement rule that prevents too many siege pieces from being in one place.

One less educated player entering the portal would clog it up for everyone else. Say the kind of player that allows him to get immobilized or that gets downed on top of the portal exit.

The best suggestion for fixing portals is to allow only the mesmer herself use it. And while not driving a golem. Fixes issues:

• Boredom of hide and seek in keeps
• Golem armies moving across the map within seconds
• Jumping puzzles trivialized
• Dumbed down group fight tactics

I play on T2 as a Mesmer who uses portals (or strategic troop placement skill as I like to call it).
We use them for lots of different things
- Speed supply runs for sieging
- Moving golems around ( we took Bay, Hills and garrison last night in under
30mins using the same 4 golems and a small group of guildes)
- Open field battles
- Misdirection ( fake portals)
We also have been on the receiving end of portal bombs and have learnt how to counter them.
It is not a stroll in the park dropping a portal in the middle of a well-defended lord’s room and I often die doing so.
Remember only 20 players can use it maybe, keeping a few play out of battle to look for them and learning how to counter will help you a lot.
I hope they don’t nerf them again.

well i hope i can figure it out. thnx for the post chats.

ANet has shown to add skills with every expansion they create while also creating new classes. Without being too radical, I’d suggest ANet add more things like portals into the game. Give the attackers and defenders more options, rather than taking them away by making it portal even less people or only the mesmer themselves. Make things more dynamic and fights can be new every time or at least give attackers and defenders a larger toolbox. People talk about boring WvW and how everything is the same; if we don’t have more skills and mechanics at our disposal to mix things up, how do you ever expect that to change?

pita spoon.5708:

ok.. so they nerfed aoe so that we can only hit 5 people with an attack but i can get portal bombed by 20 people.. i think if aoe damage is limited to up to 5 players then portals should be the same..

Just a little thought to help you out

AC have a cap of 50 player cap

AC skill 2 Cripples
AC skill 3 Bleeds

So think about your seige set up in a lords room

ghostchipz.2341:

pita spoon.5708:

ok.. so they nerfed aoe so that we can only hit 5 people with an attack but i can get portal bombed by 20 people.. i think if aoe damage is limited to up to 5 players then portals should be the same..

Just a little thought to help you out

AC have a cap of 50 player cap

AC skill 2 Cripples
AC skill 3 Bleeds

So think about your seige set up in a lords room

i was only talking about skill aoe and not seige.. but out of curiosity why did they cap aoe to 5 people?

pita spoon.5708:

ghostchipz.2341:

pita spoon.5708:

ok.. so they nerfed aoe so that we can only hit 5 people with an attack but i can get portal bombed by 20 people.. i think if aoe damage is limited to up to 5 players then portals should be the same..

Just a little thought to help you out

AC have a cap of 50 player cap

AC skill 2 Cripples
AC skill 3 Bleeds

So think about your seige set up in a lords room

i was only talking about skill aoe and not seige.. but out of curiosity why did they cap aoe to 5 people?

Something about farming lootbags, I think. Meanwhile, back on topic…

Quillixx.7034:

The OP’s point is valid. There is no means of defense that can stop a portal bomb, period. And to that end, the mechanics placed in game to give smaller forces a chance to hold off larger forces (IE siege), is trumped without any recourse.

Anyone that has an excuse or supposed means of stopping a portal bomb from occurring, is only lying to themselves, plays with inexperienced players, or has no practical WvW experience.

Case in point, on my mesmer alt… my bomb setup is: Focus offhand, Torch offhand, Mirror, Mantra of Concentration, Blink, Portal, and Mass Invis. There is no defense in the game that can stop me. Add thief stealth to the mix and I can get to any point I want, fully stealthed.

Swiftness, 2 dodges, blink, projectile reflect, 3 stun breaks, stability, and stealth. I dodge, reflect, and blink through your AOE fields without so much as getting hit most times, and walk through your knockdowns and guardian walls like they aren’t there. All while being stealthed. And when I do drop my portal, expect to have it placed under your siege, behind objects, or half way clipping into the wall. When my allies come through, expect another mesmer or two to drop down their exits, completely overriding the quantity nerf, and expect 5-6 of your nearby players to be downed before culling finally renders most anyone coming through. Like clockwork, your defense is dropped in the matter of seconds, and your keep is ours.

The idea of portals is neat, and gives groups some interesting options when in open field fighting. The implementation of portals to completely negate lord room siege/defenders turns what ‘would have been’ great fights, into an exercise in facerolling. It cheapens the experience for both the defenders and attackers. Right now, the only defense to holding anything, is the walls/gates. If your opponent breaks into inner Bay/Hills, you’re done.

And as an FYI, all tier 1 servers (including mine), do the exact same thing every time Bay/Hills/Garry has defenders. All of the “Oh just do <this> to stop a portal bomb” that you see up above… just screams inexperience.

You could not be more wrong. Everyone should be looking for a potal on the ground/ a mesmer running in, it does not matter if they get the portal down, when you see one there are some very specific things you can do to stop them and hint hint…not allow them to leave that spot… while you aoe and collect bags. I would say your inexperience shows up very clearly here as you do not know how to stop them. We stop about probably 70% of the portal bombs we see. When you face them numerous times a session you learn new startegies to combat new techniques.

The only portal bombs that are difficult to defend are when they put down 2 or 3 in different spots and you do not have enough of a certain profession in your group to stop them.

Esoteric.5490:

Portals being limited to 5 people would make them worthless, though. AoE does damage or heals which is hugely effective in large engagements. The portal does no damage, it is entirely reliant on teammates who come through it. Without players to go through the portal, it’s a gimmicky escape/movement skill. Portals are still entirely reliant on organized groups.

I think the AoE cap should be raised or gotten rid of entirely. If you want to break the meta of zergs, and give smaller forces the actually ability to use tactics, you take away AoE caps and you make the maps larger. This forces players to split up into smaller battlegroups or they lose objectives because they can’t cover a whole map, even with a waypoint. If there was no AoE cap for damage, heals, or boons, you’d see an entirely different style of play, one where people can’t just mob everywhere because they’d get blown up. You could take the limit off portals because if a server wants to put 40-50 people all in one place, they could be my guest.

I agree 100%. I think taking the cap of AoE’s would make things way more interesting and fun in general. I also think it would add a much larger and useful distinction between classes, and even build choices within classes.

I don’t think the problem is portals or mesmers. The problem is that anyone (mesmer) will run down a hall where I have set all the wells, in a fashion that they have to trigger at least one to get by, and next thing you know there is a portal down, but none of the wells have triggered.

The culling is soo bad, that they have walked through traps and wells without setting them off, because the game hasn’t bothered to have it all take place at the same time.

MattMesa.8401:

Esoteric.5490:

Portals being limited to 5 people would make them worthless, though. AoE does damage or heals which is hugely effective in large engagements. The portal does no damage, it is entirely reliant on teammates who come through it. Without players to go through the portal, it’s a gimmicky escape/movement skill. Portals are still entirely reliant on organized groups.

I think the AoE cap should be raised or gotten rid of entirely. If you want to break the meta of zergs, and give smaller forces the actually ability to use tactics, you take away AoE caps and you make the maps larger. This forces players to split up into smaller battlegroups or they lose objectives because they can’t cover a whole map, even with a waypoint. If there was no AoE cap for damage, heals, or boons, you’d see an entirely different style of play, one where people can’t just mob everywhere because they’d get blown up. You could take the limit off portals because if a server wants to put 40-50 people all in one place, they could be my guest.

I agree 100%. I think taking the cap of AoE’s would make things way more interesting and fun in general. I also think it would add a much larger and useful distinction between classes, and even build choices within classes.

Totally agree. The AoE cap is pointless.