Guild Wars 2

Hi guys,
My first post on the forum
I have been playing a mesmer for a month though I spent most the time PvE. I’m giving WvW a go and I’ve been reading on how mesmers fair in this PvP environment.
Apparently, there is a lot of hate towards mesmers due to our key ability Portal combined with stacking (or turtling).
So I have a couple of questions and suggestions regarding to this balancing issue:
- Can enemies move through my portals? I think they should be able to do it to make it fair and square.
- I think Mass Invisibility and Portal should be switched positions (utility and elite) with some minor tweaks given Mass Invisibility is underwhelmed by the usefulness of Portal.
- Do any other profession have mass transport skills? I think they should have so that the team is not reliant on mesmers (again balance around all the professions in the game).
Please share your opinions on this.
Cheers

.No, and that’s kind of interesting, but would make portal moot for all but hiding in keeps
.I disagree, mass invisibility is better in some respects, AOE stealth is just plain great
.No other professions has the ability to move 20 people at once.
Portal is useful for stacked defense/opening offense.
Simply put, unless you’re in a co-ordinated group or have enough time to spam ‘’STAND ON THIS’’ It’s not really worth bringing it to a fight over more fight/defense orientated abilities, it was kind of looked upon negatively for being able to move whole groups into empty keeps if one mesmer was good at hiding, most groups sweep towers/keeps to try and find them before they leave now.

yeah portalbombs need a lot of coordination and also great timing.i have seen tons of those fail. and no i don’t think it is a balance issue at all.
every class can play important parts in wvw. mesmers can pull people off walls, but eles for example and also necros and rangers are better to destroy siege and enemies on walls.mesmers do not have a lot of aoe since the destruction of confusion, thieves are great at ganking dolyaks or hide in keeps to rez a mesmer.warriors are great at the frontline….every class has something to bring to the table and it would be boring if all classes had all the same abilities.

Actually, i would love if they restrict portal to the mesmer (or maybe his group) only and reduce it’s cd by ~30-50% in exchange. And i’m mainly playing mesmer ^^ It’s a great utility for solo roaming, trolling people and safe stomping. Sadly, most of the time it really hurts to “waste” such a high cd.

/edit: The comment above comes from a solo/smallscale roaming perspective. Mesmers are currently rather underwhelming in Zergfights but i’m not interested in zergs anyway ^^

//edit: Another idea: After the portal has been activated and ended, reduce it’s cd by 1% per charge left (max 20% cd reduction).

Portal fine the way it is.

keenlam kitten

- Can enemies move through my portals? I think they should be able to do it to make it fair and square.

No, this won`t be fair and square.
If so, i will just move to the enemy server and rotate this with some guildies (due to WvW joining queue when changing server). We will just enter our keeps and give our guildies/(old)server members portals inside all the way to a lord.

keenlam kitten

Do any other profession have mass transport skills? I think they should have so that the team is not reliant on mesmers (again balance around all the professions in the game).
Please share your opinions on this.
Cheers

You can only move I think 18-20 people threw a portal now, and it auto stops, this was to stop mass zergs being teleported into a lord room,

Each class should have an ability that others cannot, the Mesmer can move groups of people via portal, that’s a unique thing they can do,

Ele’s when in downed state can use MF to teleport themselves threw a portal to a keep etc and then res themselves, to my knowledge no one else can do this,

Thief’s, can run up behind you invis, hit you and nearly 1 hit kill you to downed state, they can start a fight, get stacks of conditions on them, go invis run off heal up, and come back to kill you, because you cannot go invis,

Ive ran a Mesmer in WvW with my guild, and ive found that the portal skill really doesn’t appear on my bar that often, as there are better skills that have more use for a team, the ability to port into a keep is usually stopped now because people have gotten real good and searching the entire place for mesmers etc.

You obviously have no idea how hard it is to get people to actually use a portal.

You should try opening a portal in a lord room leading outside of the tower the moment before you are capping it. You won’t believe how many people use it and end up getting no exp/karma/wxp xD

(The mesmer IS a trolling class after all ^^)

Disagree on everything.

And good luck turteling, love it when they do that. Less chasing around.

Thanks everyone for your replies. Looks like things have changed quite a lot (and for the better) from what I’ve read. I’m new to WvW so there is a lot to learn.
@Wolfstrike: I like your strategy, really mesmerizing way of thinking.

I portal should be more widely available. Especially for thieves for hiding and sneaking teams into keeps. And for guardians for teleporting into enemy zergs and actually surviving it.

Since portals are mandatory for golems, they should be base skill of those siege weapons. It is just too ankward to line up mesmer milestones on your path from spawn to enemy gate.

It would also be good to have all jump puzzles include environmental portals for those with jumping impediment like me. Let the people who actually enjoy the jumping challenge themselves and let others simply portal to the chest.

Old school portal bomb works well in tier 2. People don’t really keep eyes open.