Guild Wars 2

Doing simple damage is not fun and becomes a boring routine but that is what this nerf flooding each patch brings. More ways to do nothing but simple damage.

Using fun skills (like portal) is fun. I appeal to Anet to reverse these actions and do CD cuts. it’s too easy to have a nerf mentality rather than reducing cooldowns. Skills like Blink need a CD cut

The problem really is that their Portal-nerf did nothing to stop the actual issue, which it was and still is causing in WvW, forcibly making attacking Zergs invulnerable by porting them into the middle of the enemy team.

And you rarely even tried that more often than every 2-3 minutes, in any case. Zergs don’t clash that often since these port-into fights are always fatal for one side.

What the nerf did is seriously reduce the functionality of Portal in all harmless situations, Jumping Puzzles (remember we don’t have any +runspeed, and here I thought Portal was supposed to be what we have in return for that, a checkpoint for puzzles), general movement ,dodging boss AEs, such stuff.

What should have been done is limit the Portal to 5-10 players, 5 for consistency with other skills maybe, and then reduce the CD to ~30 seconds.

I think what Carighan is saying is pretty much exactly how I feel, I don’t see how the additional few seconds stops enemy zergs from getting into a keep. While the only reason I ever really use portals (jumping puzzles, getting people unstuck) has just become more frustrating as I found out yesterday when I was attempting the new jumping puzzle I probably wasted a good 15 minutes just waiting on cooldowns in case I fell and to help others across.

The CD increase on portal was well.
Pointless.
Its a minor annoyance and nothing more. I can only assume it was to address the WvW portal issues but since you only use portal once in those situations the increase more or less means nothing.

Id say Blink’s cooldown is fine where it is, traited you can use it pretty often.
It would be nice if some of the utilities had auxiliary effects instead of realistically only having one ‘open’ utility slots.

You cant not have a stunbreaker and condition removal and since Arcane Thievery is so unreliable and bugged , Mantras are generally rather impractical, Phantasms are failing in to summon in more situations than not pretty much every Mesmer and their dog carries Null Field and even then, its not exactly working all the time either.
So most bars are pretty much [Null Field][Stunbreaker][X]

Id like some Auxiliary effects on utilities like say decoy transferring your current conditions to the clone it produces. Maybe it would be a bit strong like that, but you get what I mean.

Carighan.6758:

The problem really is that their Portal-nerf did nothing to stop the actual issue it was and still is causing in WvW, forcibly making attacking Zergs invulnerable by porting them into the middle of the enemy team.

And you rarely even tried that more often than every 2-3 minutes, in any case. Zergs don’t clash that often since these port-into fights are always fatal for one side.

What the nerf did is seriously reduce the functionality of Portal in all harmless situations, Jumping Puzzles (remember we don’t have any +runspeed, and here I thought Portal was supposed to be what we have in return for that, a checkpoint for puzzles), general movement ,dodging boss AEs, such stuff.

What should have been done is limit the Portal to 5-10 players, 5 for consistency with other skills maybe, and then reduce the CD to ~30 seconds.

I Agree completely. I’m still baffled by the increased cool down to Portal. All these time the community have raised the issues and concerns about Portal in WvW is the result of a simply lazy solution that did not actually solve the problem at its core. In return, the change brought a negative impact outside of WvW and diminished the usefulness of Portal in PvE. Limit the number of usage for Portal up to 5 or 10 times would mostly eliminate portal bombing associated with the culling issue. Increase the cool down will not address this problem because 2 or more Mesmers chaining the usage of Portal will essentially bypass the cool down limitation. Limit the number of usage is the best solution to address the primary concern without negatively effecting areas outside of WvW.

The CD increase on portal was not due to WvW at all. It is all about sPvP. But unlike other classes mesmer nerfs where across the board in aspects of game. Portal was being used in sPvP to have means to quickly bring 5 man team to 1 spot if a node was threatened by other team. And I also belive that new sPvP map is made with alot of jumping to different lvls.

Moddo.7105:

The CD increase on portal was not due to WvW at all. It is all about sPvP. But unlike other classes mesmer nerfs where across the board in aspects of game. Portal was being used in sPvP to have means to quickly bring 5 man team to 1 spot if a node was threatened by other team. And I also belive that new sPvP map is made with alot of jumping to different lvls.

In sPvP, the method you’ve described is arguably still within the boundary of a legitimate tactic. While it may not look good to you in your book, it is still acceptable in that regard. Comparatively speaking, when players abuse the rendering issue by using the portal to transfer a whole zerg army of 20-30+ players from one spot to the next, that would be a major concern and borderline game breaking. At such large scale of abusive usage, it is not intended for portal to be used this way. All in all, increase the CD does not solve the problem at its core and it is only diminishing the fair usage of Portal in PvE.

Moddo.7105:

The CD increase on portal was not due to WvW at all. It is all about sPvP. But unlike other classes mesmer nerfs where across the board in aspects of game. Portal was being used in sPvP to have means to quickly bring 5 man team to 1 spot if a node was threatened by other team. And I also belive that new sPvP map is made with alot of jumping to different lvls.

I can’t say I like sPvP any less as a result of this, but only because I can’t believe how much they let it’s balance impact the rest of the game.

I’d take some actually fun to use abilities before that eSports balance, please. 90s CD on such an ability is horrendous.

I mean, Portal was – and still is – a huge problem in WvW, and they make a nonsensical non-nerf as a result of such a thing. Ugh.

Why don’t they just limit the amount of people able to port? The longer CD doesn’t fix WvW, which means more complainers = more nerfs. Now I can’t be as awesome of a helper to people that suck at jumping puzzles

Mere Image.8376:

Why don’t they just limit the amount of people able to port? The longer CD doesn’t fix WvW, which means more complainers = more nerfs. Now I can’t be as awesome of a helper to people that suck at jumping puzzles

Yes exactly.
This change was so obvious (given their stance on 5-targets-per-AE/multi-spell), everyone was completely expecting it. :s

it might also be bad to cut the cd for to spvp or wvw..but this type of change really is disappointing in pve and that’s where it bites having fun abilities on higher cds (as i only pve atm) or wvw where there is nothing ele to do but run around slowly. to break the repetition and make it more fun i believe cd reductions should be made. the 15 minute of waiting around comment above is the kind of point i’m trying to make.

I can for example understand Illusion of Life having a high CD, fair enough.
But Portal is only real fun if you can actually use it as a “standin” for the lacking movement speed bonus. Yes I’m slower, but I portal people around. Fair enough.

Carighan.6758:

Moddo.7105:

The CD increase on portal was not due to WvW at all. It is all about sPvP. But unlike other classes mesmer nerfs where across the board in aspects of game. Portal was being used in sPvP to have means to quickly bring 5 man team to 1 spot if a node was threatened by other team. And I also belive that new sPvP map is made with alot of jumping to different lvls.

I can’t say I like sPvP any less as a result of this, but only because I can’t believe how much they let it’s balance impact the rest of the game.

I don’t see where this is coming from when they have already split many many skills for spvp. For instance the damage confusion deals in spvp has no effect on other game modes (170 in spvp, 330 in pve and wvw).

Well yes, then that just needs to be done more. 30s CD target-#-limited Portal in PvE/WvW, unlimited 90s CD Portal in sPvP.

Although if we split that easily, I’d argue we’d be better off if sPvP simply were a completely separate game in the first place. Easier to keep the codebase clean, then.
(I mean, you launch a different .exe and all that. Separate software the devs can code for, even if it shares guild/friend lists with GW2.)

I don’t like having WvW use PvE balance. All those nerfs to thief they did? Don’t apply to WvW. They still hit like a freight train. 4.5k dancing dagger crits, cloak and dagger at full power etc…

I don’t think PvE balance should ever be on the table in a game like GW2, really.
It should be WvW and sPvP balance, PvE will sort-of fall in, really. The only thing you’d rarely need to worry about is when a profession is completely built around alpha-striking, because obviously that doesn’t work in PvE.

Agreed on this:

This will do nothing about portal bombing. What would, though, would be to make portal bound to the same rules as the healing patch notes from last update: 5 targets maximum before the portal dissipates. Then lower the cooldown.

higher use in dungeons, small scale content, USELESS in W3

Carighan.6758:

I don’t think PvE balance should ever be on the table in a game like GW2, really.
It should be WvW and sPvP balance, PvE will sort-of fall in, really. The only thing you’d rarely need to worry about is when a profession is completely built around alpha-striking, because obviously that doesn’t work in PvE.

Of course as a mesmer I should be happy they let me use 330 dmg confusion in WvW instead of spvp 170 dmg one…. but to me, the viability of confusion builds in WvW compared to spvp just proves to me, that the value in spvp is too low.

to be perfectly honest i would want a cut across the board on the fun cds. but keep it higher for spvp if they want. really though, that is the point of a mesmer and they should buff other classes if they think it’s imbalanced.

ManCaptain.3154:

Of course as a mesmer I should be happy they let me use 330 dmg confusion in WvW instead of spvp 170 dmg one…. but to me, the viability of confusion builds in WvW compared to spvp just proves to me, that the value in spvp is too low.

True, although I think Confusion as a whole needs to go back to the drawing board. The whole short+spikey doesn’t work for it, even in PvP. It’s too unreliable to base much around it. Good for mass-credit-tagging in WvW, but too unreliable to do anything alone in PvP or WvW.

I’d really like if we as Mesmers get a bit more unique by having our “damaging” class condition Confusion actually not be damaging (instead, our Malice is deducted from the targets Power/Malice for purposes of how much damage their attack deals, and Confusion keeps renewing it’s duration until the target stops attacking for a few seconds!).

I would love to see confusion reworked into something else than Yet Another Damage Condition. However in the meantime, they should give it same damage in spvp as it is currently in WvW and I’d slap a second or 2 extra duration on every confusion skill.
Remember when we thought that Cry of Frustration confusion lasting 3 sec instead of listed 4 was a bug, then they came out and said “LOL we fixed the description so that is says 3 sec”? I found that quite demoralizing, as it showed they had no intention of making confusion viable.