Guild Wars 2

People think mesmer portals are overpowered because they don’t know how to leverage their own class in WvW.

Elementalist: can block trebuchets. That’s ridiculous for turning around a siege, but they never do it. Why? They’re siege-killing machines too.

Guardian: can give swiftness to a zerg of 50. That’s honestly overpowered, and is a large part of why zergs work so well. Four of them can bubble to stand in for a keep door. No one complains about this. Why?

Ranger: can solo towers with unkillable pets (look for the videos of 3000+ toughness and 1000 life gain per second on devourers). That’s powerful to the point of being silly on lower-tier WvW. They can also kill siege on walls that’s well outside the range of most other attackers.

Engineer: can build siege without supply (mortar) and can use it to take out otherwise unkillable trebuchets. You almost never see people set up “engineer sige” though (the couple times I’ve seen this, it worked).

Warrior: defending a tower or keep can 1-shot people, or use a single 1500 range attack to take someone from down to dead. I’ve also seen warriors solo supply camps that were defended by 2-3 players. Most other classes can’t do that.

Thief: in teams they frequently slaughter groups with five times their numbers in the open map.

Necromancer: honestly not sure, anyone with a good grasp of necros want to fill this in?

If you take away portal, or nerf it, you also need to take away or nerf: meteor shower and swirling winds from elementalist, shouts and bubbles from guardians, range boosts and pet buffs from rangers, mortar elite from engineers, and rifle (just the whole weapon) from warriors. For thieves, it would be sufficient to nerf stealth the same way illusions were nerfed: only invisible to current target, requires a target with line of sight, and fails if you’re blinded or the target has aegis.

Dear god, can’t you jsut put this in 1 of the other 5 million posts about portals around atm? >_<

The amount of misinformation the OP used to support his argument makes me not want to respond more than this. Some of the things he said were true bordering opinionated the rest of the things he said were downright false. No other ability in game no mater how OP the OP thinks it is can move zergs across a battle field. This one ability can totally destroy the other team. No other proefessions skill can do the amount of damage potential and tactical prowess this one skill has.

I support your post whole heartily. Very often I’m asking folks to use the most out of their profession and support but sadly I see the masses just wanting to auto/afk on a door in my tier.

first I want to say I’m a mesmer and I have no problem with portal bombing and I’ve never used it. My issue is when a ton of people stack up one one point two issues happen

#They don’t all load due to culling (ANet is working to fix this issue currently)
#We can only damage 5 out of the X players that are on that spot.

• Currently ANet has no fix to the 5 player limit not only on player abilities but siege as well, furthermore they’ve limited the amount of siege you can place in close proximity.
• If this was remedied either with the cap removed on everyone or just siege I think we’d see a drop in ‘turtle defense’ and ‘portal bomb’ strats cause we could just aoe that one spot and get a TON of kills (furthermore a smart guardian could just run to the portal exit and use his ‘no one can leave this circle’ ability to trap them)

In other words people are abusing portals as a way to exploit the game, rather then fix the symptom by nerfing mesmers I’d like to see the real issue dealt with. I’m all for working together and ‘grouping up’ but that doesn’t mean we need to stack on top of each other.

I think we need to replace all the weapons and skills with nerf bats. OP is just another word for I hate being killed that way.

Thurbleton.5841:

I support your post whole heartily. Very often I’m asking folks to use the most out of their profession and support but sadly I see the masses just wanting to auto/afk on a door in my tier.

first I want to say I’m a mesmer and I have no problem with portal bombing and I’ve never used it. My issue is when a ton of people stack up one one point two issues happen

#They don’t all load due to culling (ANet is working to fix this issue currently)
#We can only damage 5 out of the X players that are on that spot.

• Currently ANet has no fix to the 5 player limit not only on player abilities but siege as well, furthermore they’ve limited the amount of siege you can place in close proximity.
• If this was remedied either with the cap removed on everyone or just siege I think we’d see a drop in ‘turtle defense’ and ‘portal bomb’ strats cause we could just aoe that one spot and get a TON of kills (furthermore a smart guardian could just run to the portal exit and use his ‘no one can leave this circle’ ability to trap them)

In other words people are abusing portals as a way to exploit the game, rather then fix the symptom by nerfing mesmers I’d like to see the real issue dealt with. I’m all for working together and ‘grouping up’ but that doesn’t mean we need to stack on top of each other.

Turtling has been “fixed” with the heal cap, siege never had the target limit skills have and anyone who stays on top of a portal after going through is an idiot. A dead one.

Necro :
We can.. ehrm… *blowing wind…
…. We can mass blind!.. oh no wait we can’t..
W….We can Mass chill…oh no wait.. scrap that one too..
We have death shroud! totally useless though it doesn’t even heal.
we can take conditions off our allies.. and cast them on foe’s.. too bad they mostly are expired by the time you do..
We have wells that do a minimum amout of damage over time and with luck we can kill the pet that runs over it!
we can speedbuff 1 person!

I.o.w. In WvW necro is average.. only good in tactical fights if you are geared right and have combo’s to create.

Totally agree with OP. And as soon as the “where is everyone” issue is resolved i will be ok to portal bomb i guess.

greyblue.4962:

People think mesmer portals are overpowered because they

Are. The whole class is, but that’s another topic.

greyblue.4962:

Elementalist: can block trebuchets. That’s ridiculous for turning around a siege, but they never do it. Why? They’re siege-killing machines too.

Because they’re having far too much fun 1v10’ing people as a d/d ele being the rambo of the pvp world.

greyblue.4962:

Guardian: can give swiftness to a zerg of 50. That’s honestly overpowered, and is a large part of why zergs work so well. Four of them can bubble to stand in for a keep door. No one complains about this. Why?

Your argument just called for 4 people in comparison to 1 mesmer. Argument fail.

greyblue.4962:

Ranger: can solo towers with unkillable pets (look for the videos of 3000+ toughness and 1000 life gain per second on devourers). That’s powerful to the point of being silly on lower-tier WvW. They can also kill siege on walls that’s well outside the range of most other attackers.

Operative word being ‘lower-tier’. Rangers have issues needing fixed in pvp, especially at a competitive level. You’re just being silly now.

greyblue.4962:

Engineer: can build siege without supply (mortar) and can use it to take out otherwise unkillable trebuchets. You almost never see people set up “engineer sige” though (the couple times I’ve seen this, it worked).

Actually I see quite a few engi’s playing self-siege master. Perhaps yours just don’t know anything beyond grenade spam?

greyblue.4962:

Warrior: defending a tower or keep can 1-shot people, or use a single 1500 range attack to take someone from down to dead. I’ve also seen warriors solo supply camps that were defended by 2-3 players. Most other classes can’t do that.

Riiiight. Perhaps if every npc is already dead and those 2-3 players afk in a clump for a full 25 stack berserker HB attack. Otherwise the drugs you did in college messed you up man.

greyblue.4962:

Thief: in teams they frequently slaughter groups with five times their numbers in the open map.

Yeah, because with culling they’re OP beyond words. Everyone knows this. When there is no culling issue they’re pretty balanced as evidenced by the ability to actually SEE them and retaliate in S/TPvP. Until culling is fixed thief shall remain the most OP ez-mode crap in wuvwuv

greyblue.4962:

Necromancer: honestly not sure, anyone with a good grasp of necros want to fill this in?

1-man anti-siege force juggernaut of doom. 1 good well, condi or powermancer with a staff in his 2ndary weapon slot can annihilate an attacking force pretty fast. Still far from OP and still many many bugs within the class.

greyblue.4962:

If you take away portal, or nerf it,

It would be fine. Really portal should have a player limit of 5, just like any other AOE effect the other classes drop. First 5 people in and the portal closes.
OR remove the aoe cap altogether so that group using portal to try and abuse culling (amongst other things) gets wiped out by that group of 3 people dropping aoe on their heads.

haha a mesmer defending it self.

Fook.3914:

haha a mesmer defending it self.

To be fair it’s probably one of the clones doing the defending.

Because they were not smart enough to get away from the big glowing pink circle, or were to lazy to sweep the keep/tpwer.

Actually a lot of informations given on the first post are wrong, play a class and than talk about it.

It’s the same old story of a major gameplay change not being followed up correctly.

AoE was capped, but portal wasn’t. Since the AoE cap isn’t going away, then portal needs to match.

I’d be ok with a 1:10 ratio (double the AoE cap) limit on portals. So would anyone who’s not trying to abuse the system. If you want to port in 50 people, you get 5 mesmers inside. If you can’t do that, then you should l2p.

Anet put in supplies, engines and the like for a reason. If you’re crying at the prospect of actually having to interdict the supplies instead of magically bypassing 75% of the game mechanics via the power of one spell alone, then perhaps you could try my little pony MMORPG.

Manticore Five.9867:

It’s the same old story of a major gameplay change not being followed up correctly.

AoE was capped, but portal wasn’t. Since the AoE cap isn’t going away, then portal needs to match.

I’d be ok with a 1:10 ratio (double the AoE cap) limit on portals. So would anyone who’s not trying to abuse the system. If you want to port in 50 people, you get 5 mesmers inside. If you can’t do that, then you should l2p.

Anet put in supplies, engines and the like for a reason. If you’re crying at the prospect of actually having to interdict the supplies instead of magically bypassing 75% of the game mechanics via the power of one spell alone, then perhaps you could try my little pony MMORPG.

If the portal has a cap ALL skills need a cap. Guardian Line of Warding can only block 5 people before it goes away. Projectile reflection skills only reflect 5 projectiles before going away. Combo fields can only give 5 combos before going away. Etc, etc.

Would you support that? I sure as hell wouldn’t. These skills (portal included) don’t have a cap because they’re not (directly) damaging/healing/buffing skills. Name ONE skill that is not dealing direct damage, healing, or provides boon/conditions/CC on cast that have a 5 player limit.

Oh look another portal thread with people that don’t know how to counter portals so they cry to get it nerfed. Whats new?

The reason most Elementalists dont use swirling winds should be fairly obvious.

This a video game that is played for fun and enjoyment, there’s nothing even remotely fun about planting your backside next to a treb for hours and spamming swirly whirlies.

because they are brainless people and r kitten .. if portals strong what about endless stealth thiefs ? 10k one shot thiefs ? immortal simple necro ability ? or wow hunter copy rangers with 1000k dmg in 2sec ?? and endless run (tank lol lol lol)engineers ?

You seem to have a fantastic lack of understanding about WvW. Why is Portal overpowered? Because you can use it to bypass the entire element of Siege. You need to do Mesmer sweeps of keeps and towers because if you dont the enemy will instantly retake it.
Most other professions have some gimmick or strength, but can you name one that allows an entire army to bypass a long siege fight and cap a Keep in litterally 1min? So feared and devestating that it is the ONLY profession that is actively hunted and must be purged from a tower/keep.

Also, what are you on about. Engineer can place free-siege? Mortat isnt siege, it doesnt damage walls or does increased damage to gates. And is inferior to the standerdly available Grenadekit. If this thing can hit enemy siege, then any aoe can hit enemy siege because they build it to close to the wall.

ShadowSoljer.6524:

Oh look another portal thread with people that don’t know how to counter portals so they cry to get it nerfed. Whats new?

Gonna go out on a limb here and say you didn’t even bother reading the op, saw it was a thread about portals, and assumed it was a nerf portals thread and instantly hit the qq about anti portal qq button.

Engineer mortar is a 1200 range piece of garbage that takes about as much damage as a mesmer illusion. It deals no siege damage beyond basic attack strength to gates (nothing to walls), and is 300 range less than traited grenades. Its best use is its number 5 which is a large spread AoE that causes knockback but has a considerably lengthy cooldown (30 seconds), and this is admittedly a really cool thing to use when it’s available. However its damage is mediocre, so an engineer is almost always better off using grenades even if not traited for them simply due to their faster speed (mortar is slow) and the free mobility (mortar is stationary). However dropping a mortar for something like a Guardian or Mesmer to use is not necessarily a bad idea in certain situations.

There is technically a trait that is supposed to buff Engineer elite skills and increase the mortar’s range to 1500 (Elite Supplies), but the trait currently doesn’t do this. This is a known/reported bug that hasn’t been addressed yet.

A better use of engineer talent is actually taking a trait that makes turrets positional (spawn with green circle targetting instead of being dropped on location), which allows an engineer to place a rocket or whatever turret on top of a wall/cliff where it can shoot an otherwise inaccessible siege device. This can be great, but very few engineers take this trait unless it’s specifically to do just this, so you don’t see it very often (also turrets aren’t very durable and their targetting is completely uncontrollable).

And just as an aside, the reason elementalists protecting from trebs is so rare is because it takes a coordinated group of about three to five in order to achieve full coverage due to swirling wind’s cooldown (6 second duration, 30 second cooldown). That’s not the easiest thing to coordinate, especially since they may be otherwise preoccupied depending on the location. For defending a treb in an inaccessible location from another treb, then yes it’s certainly a very powerful ability (which has ilicited complaints on this very board), but defending a regular siege target like a wall from a treb requires them to be near the impact point (swirling winds has a radius of only 400), which means if the ele is standing atop a wall then the treb just has to adjust to the lower part of the wall instead. And if the elementalist is at the lower part of the wall they are likely also having to deal with any attackers milling about waiting for the wall to fall.

greyblue.4962:

If you take away portal, or nerf it, you also need to take away or nerf: meteor shower and swirling winds from elementalist, shouts and bubbles from guardians, range boosts and pet buffs from rangers, mortar elite from engineers, and rifle (just the whole weapon) from warriors. For thieves, it would be sufficient to nerf stealth the same way illusions were nerfed: only invisible to current target, requires a target with line of sight, and fails if you’re blinded or the target has aegis.

I don’t know if you have played since Beta. However Meteor Shower, and all Elementalist damage was nerf’d before GW2 went live. In addition they did not add any hp base, defensive base to make up for the damage nerfing which they did.

So Arena net has been there done that.

As for your complaint about swirling winds from an Ele. It has a short duration, along with a 20+ second cool down. It also can not move 50+ people almost instantly or remove the only negative to a mobile siege which was supposed to have a negative to it. Also to add Ele’s and all other classes have their skills capped with the exception of mesmer portals. Cap the portals too IMHO.

I’d take a portal bomb over a warrior picking off one person every minute any day.

fellyn.5083:

ShadowSoljer.6524:

Oh look another portal thread with people that don’t know how to counter portals so they cry to get it nerfed. Whats new?

Gonna go out on a limb here and say you didn’t even bother reading the op, saw it was a thread about portals, and assumed it was a nerf portals thread and instantly hit the qq about anti portal qq button.

no, i read the replies. If you read my post again, I don’t mention the thread itself complaining about portals but the people within :P

Lol no. Portal is game breaking, simple as that. The ability to bypass walls/gates is not right. Portal bombing 20+ people into 1 spot when there is the issue of culling and aoe limit to 5 is not right. Everything listed there is not OP in the slightest bit, except for the Warriors Killshot which is ridiculous. =)

Yes portal bombing can be countered, yes portaling into keeps can be countered.

Portaling is broken, and your cherry picking of singular abilities of other professions without considering the larger picture doesn’t change that.

Fittleluck.4307:

I always ask people to do a Warrior sweep after capping keeps/castles. Wouldn’t want them 1v1ing people to death. >_>

yes, clearly those warriors are devastating inside a keep!

Speaking as a mesmer, no other class brings one ability that you need to have in order to be competitive or play WvW in any meaningful way at the moment.

No one says “When is Supply Drop up?” or “Warrior X, is your fear me up?”, because no other class has one utility that is used as absurdly as portals at the moment.

If they input other utilities that match portals, they would be fine (like engineers being able to repair siege). As it is, groups without mesmers (if there are any, as every serious group even plays alt mesmers than maybe something they’d rather play) suffer a lot than those who don’t.

Limiting portal to 5 makes the best sense, at least that would require a bit more coordination and encourage people to act within their groups in a squad rather than follow and stack on the blue icon.

Laundry.5120:

Speaking as a mesmer, no other class brings one ability that you need to have in order to be competitive or play WvW in any meaningful way at the moment.

No one says “When is Supply Drop up?” or “Warrior X, is your fear me up?”, because no other class has one utility that is used as absurdly as portals at the moment.

If they input other utilities that match portals, they would be fine (like engineers being able to repair siege). As it is, groups without mesmers (if there are any, as every serious group even plays alt mesmers than maybe something they’d rather play) suffer a lot than those who don’t.

Limiting portal to 5 makes the best sense, at least that would require a bit more coordination and encourage people to act within their groups in a squad rather than follow and stack on the blue icon.

So me and 4 of my friends stand next to you waiting for you to place your portal for yourself and your guild. We sit there spamming our f key in the hopes you are dumb enough to place it where we are =). When you finally do place it, we are the only 5 to go through and you are stuck there unable to go through your own portal. Enjoy being trolled endlessly by server hoppers and other griefers.

Writing this made me think of something else, portal is two way, limiting it to 5 would mean that it would need to be made 1 way. Which would essentially bring the skill to uselessness and would never be used in any situation ever.

I agree with most of the OP’s post.
Also I’m not being biased because I’m a mesmer as it doesn’t affect my personal play as a mesmer like all the bugs the class has received recently, but there is nothing wrong with portal. God forbid people have to sweep keeps and towers or learn how to combat a portal bomb or do the slightest bit of work/effort more.. How about we get rid of all legit tactics, remove all camps, siege weapons, towers and keeps and make it a 100v100 deathmatch on each map!

Josh P.1296:

How about we get rid of all legit tactics, remove all camps, siege weapons, towers and keeps and make it a 100v100 deathmatch on each map!

If that were an available mode I swear to you now I would play it for at least an entire day!

…No guarantees past that.

Most people are at least one of the following: stupid, lazy, complacent, egocentric, or incapable of accurately assigning an accurate portion of the blame for their failures to themselves. This is why some people think portals are overpowered. I apologize in advance to anyone who thinks I called them stupid.

I don’t really know if the OPs examples of other classes are particularly fair, but what I do know is that Mesmer portals make WvW so much more interesting. Getting a Mesmer to sneak into a Keep during a siege for some portal goodness is an exciting tactical move. It changes the dynamics of the game, as you have a class that can essentially by-pass siege defences. It also makes it more exciting for the defenders too as they have to be extra vigilant and aware of those sparkly little swines.

If people are really struggling with portal bombing, then perhaps the amount of people allowed to go through could be capped at 5-8, but with the CD reverted back to 60 seconds.

Fittleluck.4307:

ShadowSoljer.6524:

So me and 4 of my friends stand next to you waiting for you to place your portal for yourself and your guild. We sit there spamming our f key in the hopes you are dumb enough to place it where we are =). When you finally do place it, we are the only 5 to go through and you are stuck there unable to go through your own portal. Enjoy being trolled endlessly by server hoppers and other griefers.

You’re basically saying zergs would stop using portals to bypass siege mechanics? I fail to see the problem. This video demonstrates how the skill was intended to be used; as a kiting utility.

You certainly did not read anything that I just wrote.

Fittleluck.4307:

ShadowSoljer.6524:

Fittleluck.4307:

ShadowSoljer.6524:

So me and 4 of my friends stand next to you waiting for you to place your portal for yourself and your guild. We sit there spamming our f key in the hopes you are dumb enough to place it where we are =). When you finally do place it, we are the only 5 to go through and you are stuck there unable to go through your own portal. Enjoy being trolled endlessly by server hoppers and other griefers.

You’re basically saying zergs would stop using portals to bypass siege mechanics? I fail to see the problem. This video demonstrates how the skill was intended to be used; as a kiting utility.

You certainly did not read anything that I just wrote.

Yes I did. The only time a portal limit is susceptible to griefing the way you suggested is when you’re bypassing WvW mechanics, and in doing so you deserve it imho.

Are we playing the same game? Clearly not since you don’t understand what portal does.

Fittleluck.4307:

ShadowSoljer.6524:

Fittleluck.4307:

ShadowSoljer.6524:

Fittleluck.4307:

ShadowSoljer.6524:

So me and 4 of my friends stand next to you waiting for you to place your portal for yourself and your guild. We sit there spamming our f key in the hopes you are dumb enough to place it where we are =). When you finally do place it, we are the only 5 to go through and you are stuck there unable to go through your own portal. Enjoy being trolled endlessly by server hoppers and other griefers.

You’re basically saying zergs would stop using portals to bypass siege mechanics? I fail to see the problem. This video demonstrates how the skill was intended to be used; as a kiting utility.

You certainly did not read anything that I just wrote.

Yes I did. The only time a portal limit is susceptible to griefing the way you suggested is when you’re bypassing WvW mechanics, and in doing so you deserve it imho.

Are we playing the same game? Clearly not since you don’t understand what portal does.

Yes, lets assume and attack each other’s knowledge of the game rather than contribute to the argument. >_>

I just don’t understand where you think what I said only applies to bypassing WvW mechanics. It would apply to EVERY use of portal

“Why people think portals are overpowered”

-Because they are.

Mikitten058:

Also to add Ele’s and all other classes have their skills capped with the exception of mesmer portals. Cap the portals too IMHO.

To reiterate what I said in an above post: Line/Circle of Warding, Wall of Reflection, Feedback, Magnetic Aura and all other similar skills nor combo fields have no cap as well. You know why? Because a cap makes no sense. Portal is in the same boat. Skills that have target caps fall into one of the following categories: Damage/heal on cast, giving a boon/condition on cast, or CC. Portal does not fall into those categories just like the skills I mentioned above. They do not need a player cap.

greyblue.4962:

People think mesmer portals are overpowered because they don’t know how to leverage their own class in WvW.

Elementalist: can block trebuchets. That’s ridiculous for turning around a siege, but they never do it. Why? They’re siege-killing machines too.

Guardian: can give swiftness to a zerg of 50. That’s honestly overpowered, and is a large part of why zergs work so well. Four of them can bubble to stand in for a keep door. No one complains about this. Why?

Ranger: can solo towers with unkillable pets (look for the videos of 3000+ toughness and 1000 life gain per second on devourers). That’s powerful to the point of being silly on lower-tier WvW. They can also kill siege on walls that’s well outside the range of most other attackers.

Engineer: can build siege without supply (mortar) and can use it to take out otherwise unkillable trebuchets. You almost never see people set up “engineer sige” though (the couple times I’ve seen this, it worked).

Warrior: defending a tower or keep can 1-shot people, or use a single 1500 range attack to take someone from down to dead. I’ve also seen warriors solo supply camps that were defended by 2-3 players. Most other classes can’t do that.

Thief: in teams they frequently slaughter groups with five times their numbers in the open map.

Necromancer: honestly not sure, anyone with a good grasp of necros want to fill this in?

If you take away portal, or nerf it, you also need to take away or nerf: meteor shower and swirling winds from elementalist, shouts and bubbles from guardians, range boosts and pet buffs from rangers, mortar elite from engineers, and rifle (just the whole weapon) from warriors. For thieves, it would be sufficient to nerf stealth the same way illusions were nerfed: only invisible to current target, requires a target with line of sight, and fails if you’re blinded or the target has aegis.

eng part. That mortar sucks. Good day.

I think the real problem with portal bombing is that it’s too easy.

I have never seen a mesmer fail to create the portal. Regardless of how much fire is going on, they invis up, run through, drop the portal, we all portal in and wreck all the siege, GG.

I suppose this game’s complete lack of anti-stealth is to blame. There’s nothing you can drop at the wall opening or doorway to unstealth people trying to run through, so the mesmer always makes it. Guardians don’t know to drop their barriers because they don’t have any way to know someone is coming through.

Slamz.5376:

I think the real problem with portal bombing is that it’s too easy.

I have never seen a mesmer fail to create the portal. Regardless of how much fire is going on, they invis up, run through, drop the portal, we all portal in and wreck all the siege, GG.

I suppose this game’s complete lack of anti-stealth is to blame. There’s nothing you can drop at the wall opening or doorway to unstealth people trying to run through, so the mesmer always makes it. Guardians don’t know to drop their barriers because they don’t have any way to know someone is coming through.

its also easy to make it a kill box. They come in everyones ready to kitten face. But the ppl who cant do that come to the forums to complain about it.