Guild Wars 2

To be clear, I am not referring to the engine issues about huge zergs becoming invisible. I am specifically talking about Mesmer’s coordinating their effort to bypass walls with the use of mesmer portal.

Just because there are idiots that look at a mesmer portal inside a keep and walk away doesn’t mean that you eliminate this viable strategy!

The portal ability is already BORDERLINE USELESS except for the fact that it has unlimited z access and can move big groups.

What is the point to portal if you can only move 5 members 5 feet in front of you?

The only reason I rolled mesmer was because of the Portal ability and it’s creative uses. If you are kittening the hell out of it, what’s the point?

OH? AN ENEMY PUT DOWN A MESMER PORTAL INSIDE THE KEEP? HMMM MAYBE WE SHOULD PUT UP A DEFENSE!!!!!

This is in response to Anet:
“Hey all we have some plans to fix some of this. It is currently being looked at so expect a fix in the next few weeks. Basically we like that Portal has this power, but it shouldn’t be able to bypass walls, etc. As for the problems with players not appearing this is a more difficult engine problem to solve. While we would like to solve it there are definitely counters to this strategy, because anyone doing it has just clumped up their entire team for AoE nuking. Ultimately if they outnumber you by a lot there are much more effective ways for them to kill you.”

DBxWanderer.7825:

This is in response to Anet:
“Hey all we have some plans to fix some of this. It is currently being looked at so expect a fix in the next few weeks. Basically we like that Portal has this power, but it shouldn’t be able to bypass walls, etc. As for the problems with players not appearing this is a more difficult engine problem to solve. While we would like to solve it there are definitely counters to this strategy, because anyone doing it has just clumped up their entire team for AoE nuking. Ultimately if they outnumber you by a lot there are much more effective ways for them to kill you.”

This message in this quote from Anet is not clear enough. There are rumors of glitches where portal can put a mesmer through a wall he/she did not have access to. This would be very different than simply having a mesmer hiding in a keep and dropping a wall trojan horse style.

I feel the second option should be a legitimate strategy. This is why anytime we take over a tower/keep, I make sure to do a quick sweep to make sure no mesmers are hiding in the shadows. I have found quite a few mesmers hiding on rooftops, rooms, and behind rocks this way.

Your only bypassing walls if the original mesmer was able to get beyond the wall in the first place!

You can’t have a mesmer log off in WvW and ccome back to a taken keep and just open up portal and bring in huge zergs. Somehow, that mesmer got over the wall in the first place, and had to get BACK over again to drop the exit portal.

When the portal is up, it lasts only 20s. This is a long time, but not nearly long enough in many cases. It can move armies over long distances, but the mesmers arent the fastest roamers out there. We have veil…and maybe chaos storm will give us a speed boost, but we have no inherent speed bonuses like thieves or rangers. So, our distances don’t span that far.

The portal also has a range limit.
I’ve tried to place a portal and port to a waypoint then open the portal again and it wouldn’t allow me to. (Cause that would to hell amazing if it did XD.)

Mostly I just use it once we lose a tower and I just do my best to hide still inside the building until everyone is gone. Then make a portal jump off the side of the tower and open the portal for my team to break through with no problem.

I’m going to toss my two cents in on this. I love the mesmer portal skill, and I love how it has Z plane access. Being able to use it to move people up, down, and around is one of my favorite parts of being a mesmer. I don’t consider hiding in a base, and then using it to get people into the base a illegitimate strategy, we ALWAYS sweep our bases for hidden mesmers after a capture. If people are using it to glitch into bases, that’s one thing, but just hiding and porting people in is another. I can’t imagine how you’d get rid of that without changing the vertical plane access of the skill, and if that gets nerfed/removed, it would ruin this skill for me for every other usage, and It’d probably never show up on my skill bar again.

If they ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO CHANGE IT, I hope they only change it for PvP.

+1 for not changing the portal. this is a wonderful utility skill in pve as well that brings much fun to the class. please do not punish the pve players for pvp QQ.

teviko.6049:

Your only bypassing walls if the original mesmer was able to get beyond the wall in the first place!

You can’t have a mesmer log off in WvW and ccome back to a taken keep and just open up portal and bring in huge zergs. Somehow, that mesmer got over the wall in the first place, and had to get BACK over again to drop the exit portal.

Can you even do this?

Also the trebuchet transport does wreck the metagame.
Also, they’ll need to address the ‘stealth army’ issue as well.

They’ll probably do something like:
– players cannot use portals while equipped with special items (i.e. repair kits and the like)
– portals vanish if the mesmer is killed
– portals cannot be placed inside enemy keeps

“Don’t nerf this!” = “I think this is strong enough to nerf.”

It seems ArenaNet doesn’t have a problem with portals being used strategically, but apparently there are ways to exploit a bug in the implementation that they do want to fix.

I’m not seeing cause for a lot of fanfare here.

If the issue is that portals can allow a mesmer to clip through keep walls or something, that should definitely be fixed.

If the “issue” is that portals allow a mesmer to move his allies across a wall, gap, or other obstacle in the terrain…

The only reason you would use a portal is to allow the mesmer alone to bypass an obstacle and lay a path for his allies. If that’s no longer possible, then there’s no reasonable use for the portal. Blink would work just as well and is less cumbersome to set up and use.

wait..hold up

if the portal cant bypass walls it will be rendered nearly useless in all content. exit portal is used almost always out of line of sight of the entry.

Dixa.6017:

wait..hold up

if the portal cant bypass walls it will be rendered nearly useless in all content. exit portal is used almost always out of line of sight of the entry.

What it seems they’re saying is that Mesmer teleport skills seem to be breaking the terrain (Portal, Phase Retreat, rarely but still possible with Illusionary Leap) and allowing people to go through walls entirely (or in the case of Portal, being completely invisible).

It’s not bypassing keep walls that’s the problem, it’s that the world wasn’t designed with this sort of motion in mind and that’s why Staff Mesmers are constantly falling through the world and being unable to do anything about it.

What good is the portal if it can’t go over walls? A group escape spell? Mass invisibility does it already. Nerfs like this are bad for the game.