Guild Wars 2

Before replying to this thread please watch: http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/counter-play

A mechanic properly designed should be fun for both sides. Portals in objectives such as keeps or towers are really fun and neato, but they are only fun for one side. The counter-play is not fun and with proper mesmer parties even a 10 minute sweep can miss the mesmer spending most of their time in stealth. As a direct comparison open field portals have plenty of play and counter-play.

Additionally what If I show myself intentionally as a mesmer, stealth, and then waypoint? Suddenly you have to sweep for 10 minutes with kitten knows how many people to find one single person or you risk the keep or tower being lost. Meanwhile they can be taking another keep/tower. If the BOTH the play and counter-play are not interesting it is an overall bad mechanic.

That’s the primary problem most people have with portals. Essentially it limits you down into a single uninteresting option to respond with. You counter portals in towers/keeps by sweeping.

So, I came to the Mesmer community. Sweeping is not fun for the other side and ties up countless amount of people looking for a few, not a balanced trade-off either. Without more options and preferably options that help makes things interesting it just doesn’t feel like a fun mechanic for the other side.

How do you counter Mesmer’s in Tower/Keeps other than simply sweeping? Keep in mind that people do make Mesmer parties specifically so they can stay stealthed.

Sounds to me like your problem isn’t really with portals but with sweeping. If you don’t like it, don’t do it. I’m not saying this to sound arrogant. I’m asking you to think about what you are doing. You play games for fun, right? If something you’re doing in the game is taking away from your fun, why do you keep doing it?

I say leave the sweeping to those whom don’t mind or organize a zerg that’s more about capturing points than keeping them. Basically do what’s fun, not what you feel is needed.

Also, the things you mentioned about memsers just tells me we are doing what we are designed to do: confuse and disrupt. We are meant to keep you on your toes.

But if you really want to know how to be better at sweeping, then find all the common hiding spots and use AoEs on them. Stealth doesn’t stop enemies from getting hit and humans are creatures of habit. Even when a good spot becomes compromised, there are fools whom will use it again just because they think it’s still a good spot.

Portals make siege more fun because it adds a fear of uncertainty. Simply putting a wall up doesn’t make you completely safe. It’s one of the few mechanics that encourages people to defend, rather than just zerg from node to node. The game needs more ways to make defending interesting, not less.

I think you need to look at the play-counterplay issue in the broader rock/paper/scissors context. In WvW, you’ve got zergs, havoks, and defenders. The zerg easily runs over defenders at one node. Havok groups beat the zerg by putting pressure on multiple nodes at once. Defenders beat havok groups by providing accurate scouting reports.

To me, portals fall into the havok category. They provide a means for a small group to break up the zerg. Your point that the counter strategy to havok, defending, is unrewarding is mostly true. Defenders get the short end of the stick with regards to in-game rewards and have a boring job to begin with. Not to mention that their counterplay, zerging, seems to be the dominant strategy. Of course playing scissors isn’t fun in a population where everybody plays rock, but thats no reason to nerf paper.

I think there are various ways to look at this:
1 – is mesmer stealth / portaling into keeps consistent with the flavor of the world – I’d argue, yes. In a world full of magic, there have to be alternative ways around stone walls right?
2 – is mesmer stealth / portaling overpowered in such a way that it is the only viable tactic – not at all, it’s a fragile and gimicky tactic that has a viable counter-strategy. Also other tactics are more viable for taking a tower, including a golem rush.
3 – is mesmer stealth / portaling strategy trivial in it’s execution, thereby making it so common and annoying that it ruins the game for others? – no, it takes a lot of effort on the part of the mesmer and coordination with a team to do it right.
4 – are the consequences of this so extreme that they excessively punish the other team for not being cautious? No, if they take the keep, you can always take it back. The whole reason the mesmer was hiding there was because they were outmanned, and overpowered to begin with. if they try to rush the keep immediately after you take it, they won’t be able to defend long…if they wait patiently for hours, keeping stealthed and avoiding getting disconnected for being afk, then either they have a bot, which gets them banned, or they have invested a lot of time into a tiny victory and they deserve the tiny victory.

So in total, I don’t see a reason to nerf this, at least not with a hard nerf. I can imagine more stealth reveals, or maybe even an aoe one time damage burst throughout a keep that could be activated via upgrade, while the keep was not contested, or somesuch…but I really don’t think this should be a priority.

Instead of the kitten supply traps they should’ve put in an anti-portal trap. Make it cost +/-50 supply, a zerg can use it after they take a tower and no portals can be placed within AOE for 1 minute.

If a Mesmer stayed alive for over a minute after a trap’s been placed then he deserves to port a zerg in there.

^well there already are the new stealth reveal traps…that’s sort of going for this, no?

Dont understand the portal hate at all since its obvious what the problem is – continous stealth.

Anet havent done anything to stop it since the release of the game and it isnt going to happen either.

So its just to sweep and look happy.

So when I was running as a pug, I did this all the time, hide in a keep that was about to be taken over, hope to not get swept while contacting a commander and getting them there fast enough that I wasn’t discovered. I successfully flipped back TWO keeps and a few towers.

The thing is… these aren’t upgraded at all so really, a decent guild can rip through a paper gate and take it anyhow in a couple minutes as their guild moves on to the next target and worse now that I’m running with a guild, me hiding means I wasn’t there helping the defense in the first place so we might have never lost it and all it’s upgrades.

So in conclusion, I think this playstyle gives a lot of fun to pugs. Teamed with a thief you can probably hide out indefinitely. But it’s unrealistic for the real teams where every additional person can possibly counter 2+ people in a pug zerg. I mean today we have a couple half dead golems and no good targets left so we sent them back to waypoint and two pug thieves decided for some silly fun, kept them permanently stealthed into an opposing zerg and played ping pong with whirling. This kinda of ‘deviousness’ gets pugs interested in teamwork and guilds while not really subtracting from the gameplay.

Edit: But thank you for the video btw, that was very interesting.

I see alot of fear or portal hate and nerfs. However I do not see any information or suggestions. I did not say it should be nerfed, just that the current counter-play was extremely limited (a single option apparently) and sucks for the side that has to sweep.

So, I’ll try again:

How do you counter Mesmer’s in Tower/Keeps other than simply sweeping? Keep in mind that people do make Mesmer parties specifically so they can stay stealthed.

Without sweeping? Leave a couple of scouts there (enough to monitor the whole keep at all times). That’s pretty much the only option I can think of.

Of course you should have 1-2 scouts in a keep anyway.

Ralathar.7236:

I see alot of fear or portal hate and nerfs. However I do not see any information or suggestions. I did not say it should be nerfed, just that the current counter-play was extremely limited (a single option apparently) and sucks for the side that has to sweep.

So, I’ll try again:

How do you counter Mesmer’s in Tower/Keeps other than simply sweeping? Keep in mind that people do make Mesmer parties specifically so they can stay stealthed.

Read the entire thread over again.

What are you talking about the counter play isn’t fun? Have you ever seen the QQ cries from the mesmer team when they just portaled into a very sexy layer of marks, wells, and traps only to essentially be auto downed and give your team a nice juicy 25pts and putting them off the map for 14s?

It’s hilarious!! And it’s also the main reason i don’t take portal, it’s so stupid easy to counter by 2 of the most used specs in tPvP that i don’t even want it…

ExZee.8109:

Read the entire thread over again.

I did, Crossplay made a post on how to potentially sweep more effectively, though it would take a bit more time. SurburbanLion did an overview on where portaling fits in as a tactic. Bobross did a look at perspectives on how people view portals. Dracatis did a comparison of the rewards/loss of losing the players hiding for portaling.

While these are interesting and good perspectives they are not saying any additional counters. So it is still sweep or lose as Saturn suggested. Scouts are a good safety net that should always be in place as he also suggested and they can stop an outer portal from resulting in a keep take with a quicker defender response, but an inner portal will still be an instant loss without a defending zerg.

As a mesmer myself, I have not stayed in a keep to portal. But I do know that a mesmers stealth options do not last long, so they had better have a thief. I go into corners and use the temporal curtain pull, and chaotic field. And I stay there for at least a minute and then move on. I have found mesmer and thief parties a few times that way.

Also, I do not do this alone. I usually have a thief friend with me to stealth me so they don’t see me coming.

shyrith.3462:

As a mesmer myself, I have not stayed in a keep to portal. But I do know that a mesmers stealth options do not last long, so they had better have a thief. I go into corners and use the temporal curtain pull, and chaotic field. And I stay there for at least a minute and then move on. I have found mesmer and thief parties a few times that way.

Also, I do not do this alone. I usually have a thief friend with me to stealth me so they don’t see me coming.

Good advice on how to sweep effectively.

erm stealth traps……

Ralathar.7236:

I did, Crossplay made a post on how to potentially sweep more effectively, though it would take a bit more time. SurburbanLion did an overview on where portaling fits in as a tactic. Bobross did a look at perspectives on how people view portals. Dracatis did a comparison of the rewards/loss of losing the players hiding for portaling.

While these are interesting and good perspectives they are not saying any additional counters. So it is still sweep or lose as Saturn suggested. Scouts are a good safety net that should always be in place as he also suggested and they can stop an outer portal from resulting in a keep take with a quicker defender response, but an inner portal will still be an instant loss without a defending zerg.

good summary so far…
So you’re really asking for a debate regarding this counterplay suggestion. I guess it comes down to does Stealth (or sneakiness in general) allow for interesting counterplay in this game?

and the issue that you point out is that sweeping is the main (or only?) counter-tactic.

So maybe we should list viable counter-tactics and talk about how fun they are to play.

Sweeping – done it a few times, kind of boring, but also kind of nice to survey the keep that I just helped take.

Scouting – boring for the scouts if there is nothing out there to deal with, very fun if you get involved in little skirmishes. Fun for the commander, assembling bits of info from various scouts. It potentially does two things for you: lets you know where enemy zerg is / where it’s headed, and may spot the actual portaling mesmer before they come in.

Trapping – if you know the portal is coming, you can pull off some of the tricks suggested by others, such as aoes on the portal.

Mobility – if your zerg is quick enough, you can rush back to the keep in time to defend.

Offensive Might – if you’re not quick enough, you can enjoy taking back a keep. Also keeping pressure on the opposing side by taking other towers / keeps makes them have to worry about defense. They then have to choose how to devote their zerg, to countering your offense or taking back the things that you have not defended well.

The real problem we come to is that the game does reward sneakiness, and the strongest counter to sneakiness is caution. Caution can be boring in game-play when it is unwarranted (wasting time looking for something that is not there), but it can be very fun, when it pays off. The sweeper that finds the hiding mesmer can enjoy informing the commander and getting in the first few hits, or they can enjoy watching them from afar and setting a trap for the enemy zerg.

The cost of caution, however is not just potential boredom, it is also mobility. So it is not just a no-brainer decision for a commander whether to sweep, it is also an issue of, is sweeping worth it to lose time and mobility, or is it better to press an offensive advantage and continue to attack. Likewise the enemy has to choose between taking back a paper keep that they already lost, or stopping the invaders from continuing to attack other sites.

This just occurred to me, on this topic…

I recently ninja’d Bay with a single golem and about 6 guildmates. The Bay was completely undefended, and it was fun to take it and drain supply.

After the massive zerg came by and took it back, we were accused of hacking, which I found funny…but speaks to your point about – is this game mechanic fun for the opposing team.

So is it fun for one server that plays by having a massive zerg roam around and annihilate everything, to have to deal with smaller groups causing havoc (whether through portaling or ninja-rushes)? I’d say it’s probably less fun than just winning, but it does force them to make important and interesting decisions about splitting forces. Or they can continue to steamroll everything in their path, while losing everything behind them. Maybe that, as their strategy – all offense and no defense, is fun for them.

So I guess what I’m getting at here is that Portaling can be seen as a form of counterplay, in that it counters the dominant strategy of having one massive zerg fight another massive zerg…it makes that strategy pay off less then strategies that involve coordination between smaller groups. Ultimately, I think that the massive zerg vs zerg fights are the most boring part of the game, because as a non-commander, my impact on the fight can be relatively minimal.

When you consider portalling keeps in a vacuum, I can see how it would seem like a poor game decision from that counterplay perspective. But when you see it as just another way for a smaller, clever and nimble force to prevail against a bigger and slower force; it actually makes the game more interesting.

Hiding isn’t only about quick recaps. It’s about juking and getting people to freak out in map chat: “Mesmer on the loose!” I’ve pulled decent numbers from a zerg to keep them busy chasing. If one of me can distract 5 – 10 of them, I’ve done my job.

Hiding isn’t about evading sweeps. It’s about observing zerg behavior. Objectives near enemy spawn points get more foot traffic. Objectives on enemy BLs will be defended more fervently. Steamrolling zergs cap fast and move on, and I’ve found that hiding from them is the easiest.

Hiding isn’t always fun for the Mesmer either. There have been times where I’ve sat in a tower or keep for over half an hour waiting for my team to distract the enemy zerg. At that point, I often become a map chat scribe for whoever is commanding in the VoIP channel. The feeling of cleverness is brief, then the tedium sets in.

Finally, if a Mesmer is just standing in a corner trying to hide, s/he’s doing it completely wrong.

Ralathar.7236:

How do you counter Mesmer’s in Tower/Keeps other than simply sweeping? Keep in mind that people do make Mesmer parties specifically so they can stay stealthed.

This is a tricky answer. I’ve spent a lot of time measuring where my portals will reach, knowing which falls I can take with or without 50% fall damage, tracking LoS when charging from gate to Lord. There are common hiding spots, and your Mesmer friends should be able to show you them. Just remember when you are sweeping, you aren’t looking for only Mesmers. There are all kinds of tricks to be played, and they all come with visual cues.

Aside: When hiding, I never run with a thief. Extra players require careful coordination, and that coordination can often be unreliable.

One other thing that portalling serves as a counterplay to…turtling defense. Excessive use of arrowcarts and chokepoints when assaulting a keep are very problematic. I just had the situation where a group of us whiped while going for citadel after breaching both gates. One mesmer got through, and managed to stay alive a little while. If he had succeeded in portaling us in, it would have been a fun (for both sides) and appropriate counter to an otherwise very boring tactic of building arrow-carts and waiting for people to run into the necessary chokepoints.

1. Scouts- you need scouts on the walls to get early warning of attacks before they show up as crossed swords 30s later. That same group can pat about for mesmers. I do not think you can dispense with scouts from a WvW standpoint. Since you need to have scouts anyway, the notion that you are tying down a force sweeping for mesmers is beside the point. Just redirect the scouts to that after a capture.

2. Dead mesmers accomplish the same thing. All it takes is one perma stealth thief out there and he can res up that mesmer and its off to the races. Your argument about counters to port/stealth is not just about mesmers, but also thieves and stealth in general.

3. Reveal traps are there, as well as any AoE to counter stealth. Because people elect not to use a counter does not justify the need for new counters. It is obvious the game itself is enriched by a degree of uncertainty in numbers of enemy forces, as it forces players to tactically adjust on the fly to a changing battlefield. The battlefield would be static and boring with fewer options if stealth were gone.

Both massive zergs and arrow carts actually have a fair number of counters but they require that people use them. Arrow Carts are a bit strong atm BUT if people would AOE properly and clear siege before moving in they would be much less of an issue. The biggest impact Arrow Carts have is preventing a ram rush if built properly, forcing a slower cata take. IF however you have enough to kill the defenders in a normal fight you should have enough to deal with said arrow carts once the wall goes down. It’ll be even easier once a balance patch lessens Arrow Cart Range a bit more.

Mega zergs are easily baited into death traps and defended against with proper coordination provided you have a reasonably competitive force. IE 30 against 50 for example. Mega zergs also suffer greatly in mobility and while they tend to steamroll things in their path until predicted and slaughtered, it’s merely temporary victories and they lose badly overall. You can also hit an enemy borderland to siphon away some of the Mega Zerg, diving them into more manageable pieces.

Protracted siege is the counter to turtle defense. A good turtle defense provides a tough shell to crack, but it eventually cracks. Another counter to turtle defense is mobility. They can only turtle one place at a time effectively and if you hit 3-5 places in succession, spending 10-20 minutes at each clearing siege and damaging walls, you’ll find their supplies will dry up rather quickly. It’s a long term victory and not your easymode tower/keep stomp with ram rush lawlz, but it’s quite effective. If they are not fast enough to transfer defense you just take objectives they are not properly defending.

So we have established 4 things firmly:

1. Sweeping is the only reliable counter to portaling in towers/keeps, period. Scouts help, but only give you a chance of responding in time depending on how well the enemy tapped WP’s and gathered intel on your main force’s location.

2. Sweeping is unfun for most people, being a hiding mesmer can be extremely unfun as well. Someone mentioned hiding for as long as 30 minutes. I’ve had guildies hide for as long as 4 hours.

3. Even if you kill a mesmer a perma-stealth thief can rez them. The devs themselves said you will not kill a good perma-stealth thief, to just move on. Therefore unless the thief is bad you have to camp the dead body.

4. Even if all hiders in the keep are killed they can still easily win the tactical exchange by tying up more people than it is worth.

Ralathar.7236:

So we have established 4 things firmly:

1. Sweeping is the only reliable counter to portaling in towers/keeps, period. Scouts help, but only give you a chance of responding in time depending on how well the enemy tapped WP’s and gathered intel on your main force’s location.

2. Sweeping is unfun for most people, being a hiding mesmer can be extremely unfun as well. Someone mentioned hiding for as long as 30 minutes. I’ve had guildies hide for as long as 4 hours.

3. Even if you kill a mesmer a perma-stealth thief can rez them. The devs themselves said you will not kill a good perma-stealth thief, to just move on. Therefore unless the thief is bad you have to camp the dead body.

4. Even if all hiders in the keep are killed they can still easily win the tactical exchange by tying up more people than it is worth.

I’ve thought of one counter but it has the potential of being just as boring. After a quick sweep, have a small, perma-stealth party stay behind while having everyone else make a show of leaving the keep. With luck, it’ll give any stragglers a false sense of security and you can use that brief moment to mow them down. The worst case scenarios are either both parties stay in stealth or there are no stragglers left and the defenders just wasted their time.

Crossplay.2067:

I’ve thought of one counter but it has the potential of being just as boring. After a quick sweep, have a small, perma-stealth party stay behind while having everyone else make a show of leaving the keep. With luck, it’ll give any stragglers a false sense of security and you can use that brief moment to mow them down. The worst case scenarios are either both parties stay in stealth or there are no stragglers left and the defenders just wasted their time.

Not a bad thought, but the stealth party would have to stick around for at least 5 minutes. There is RI on all objectives, and once initial sweeps are dodged, the Mesmer typically won’t move from that spot unless found out or until his party is ready for the portal. It’s rare for parties to be ready in under 5 minutes.

Also, the party wouldn’t even have to be stealthed. You can’t see much around you in most hiding spots in Keeps. Towers have some scouting spots though.

The two things that get me found out the most: other Mesmers performing sweeps, and high foot traffic after dodging sweeps. (Someone comes through to pick up supply or build defensive siege kind of thing.)