Guild Wars 2

We ran into this a few times tonight fighting Blackgate, it seems to be a favored tactic of a few guilds. No idea how to counter it outside of siege weaponry (if that even works). Not sure if the KB from engi mine kit would knock back enough people to thin them out.

Essentially a mesmer ports a large group of players into a single spot, stacking them for heals, buffs. damage etc, basically a god mode tactic. In the screenshot attached the group portaled around the supply camp stacked and wiped anyone close, even with 20 of us there was nothing we could do. AoE doesn’t work, supply drop (engi) does nothing to them, and if you get close your pretty much instantly dead.

They also used this tactic while we sieged the inner portion of the garrison, porting a huge stacked group into the middle of ours and pretty much wiping us.

If anything I think this falls under the “creative use of game mechanics” category.

So how do you counter it? Does mesmer portal need to be balanced, maybe limited to x number of characters that can pass through it? Limit boons to party only?

I believe this is referred to as Turtling or Stacking.

Portal bombing is when a large group materialise behind you having been portaled by a friendly (and ideally invisible) mesmer.

Turtling takes advantage of (maybe exploits the fact) that AoE only hurts 5 people and with well timed Guardian/Mes/Health springs combined with easy revives, a stack of 10+ becomes hard to kill.

Really the only counter is a larger turtle, truly massive and co-ordinated Zerg or siege equip (eg balista) which ignores the 5 man aoe cap.

As more people see the turtle the more it will be used (like drugs in cycling, tis the only way to compete).

Tricky one to solve mechanically too….as you can see the benefits of an AoE cap (eg imagine unlimited Necro Plague post boon to debuff conversion etc etc).

Eventually zergs will be 3 foot wide turtles moving slowly across the map in near invincible mode.

Blob v Blob v Blob

Yes, turtleing then is what we ran into, I have my WvW jargon mixed up. I see now after posting there are few other threads on it. In this instance it was a stationary group. Certainly have to hand it to them for being able to achieve that level of coordination, regardless there needs to be a better way to counter it outside of building an arrow cart.

I think that ballistas are the best way to counter this. You only need 30-40 supply for a ballista so it won’t be too difficult to speed build one as a 5 man team while you’re 30 man zerg is already engaging them. They either have to split to deal with your ballista where you will be actively engaged in the fight you were looking for anyways or they will all die/ retreat. Has anyone tried this yet?

I’d also note that I think its a pretty scummy tactic to stack like that. I understand people’s motivation to win but where is the dignity?

Seems this is the only thing Blackgate is able to do to get an advantage!

Fear me doesnt work? or even mesmers anti ranged shield?

Well Blackgate needs superior tactics like this because they need to 1vs2 the server aliance (now looks like it 1v1v1 again… the other 2 servers started to fight for the 3rd).

This “portal bomb” is very hard to acomplish u need to train a lot, also very easy to break and it won’t work vs skilled players.

Err… everyone uses this.. even Jade Quarry.

https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/19017/gw008.jpg

Blacktide have added another sizable guild for the EU time slot. This will help shore up that period although we need more people there too.

I believe we added another Russian guild, that may need to be confirmed

We are still looking for a US crew to face the forces of the other top server?

SoS was good with these the only problem I see with them are the fact that you get wiped before the opponents even render. The culling is the problem on these imo.

The main issue with portal bombing that I see is the graphic issues with rendering.
If people weren’t invisible for a prolonged time after exiting the portal, it would be much easier to respond to.
Another issue is when mesmers bug keep walls to do it of course.

When that’s not fixed, it’s difficult to say what – if any – steps would otherwise be needed.
Lots of people in line of sight of our siege is a nice thing IMO, but not when they’re invisible due to rendering issues.