Guild Wars 2

I think I understand why the portal cooldown got a nerf in the most recent class revisions (presumably because it was considered OP for PvP with the shorter CD) but the effect is also to make it a lot more of a pain to use for other situations (the most common one I do is use it as a safety net when doing jumping puzzles since I’m a really bad jumper). Having to wait a full 90 seconds (72 traited) every time I miss a jump is a little long.

I wonder if it might be possible to have it revert back to its old CD when both entry and exit portals are created out of combat (or just the exit) but keep the new CD if done in combat. It’s a small tweak that would make a world of difference for a fail jumper such as myself.

Or just make two different versions of the portal as they have done for other skill of other classes.

The portal cooldown nerf did absolutely nothing to change the situation of portal bombing in WvW – it just ruined portal as a skill for anything but portal bombing in WvW.

I used to love using chaos II (chaos storm on falling damage) + portal when defending keeps from sieges. Drop a portal on the wall, jump into the zerg creating a chaos storm, drop a feedback bubble + another chaos storm, heal a downed teammate, drop another portal and portal back up. Just me, not taking 20 people through with me.

Now, the cooldown on portal being nearly as long as an elite skill makes it worthless to have on my bar – yet people can still portal 20+ people with it just like before.

There was no thought put into this “fix” whatsoever.

Yep that’s why they could leave the skill with a longer cd in pvp and reduce it back in wvw/pve but limit the number of persons that can use the portal.

The 90 second cool down is fine for sPvP.

The 90 second cool down makes absolutely no sense in the rest of the game.

I used to see some people use Portal in small scale WvW fights to help with keeping their distance (I’ve done this too afterwards). I used to use Portal in some boss fights in PvP. It was both cool and fun. Now with the insane cool down it is not very viable, and feels like a waste of a utility slot much of the time… and most of the time outside of PvP.

If they just changed the cool down to 90 seconds in sPvP that would be fine. The main complaints against Portal outside sPvP was abusing culling/rendering by portal bombing…. which a 90 second cool down does not address in the slightest.

If there was any major changes to the PvE/WvW portal, I was expecting some more user friendly UI changes, so we don’t have to keep a mental note on the exact position, duration and range of the Portal skill…. because counting how many Blinks/Mirror/etc I use between placing the entry portal and pulling out my map and measuring distances with my fingers felt really sloppy… at the very least add seconds to the in game clock.

Or just allow only 5 people to cross the portal and then it’s gone. That’d be great in pve, dungeons and so and it would be a huge nerf in wvw

Ludovicus.7980:

Or just allow only 5 people to cross the portal and then it’s gone. That’d be great in pve, dungeons and so and it would be a huge nerf in wvw

It would be a huge nerf to WvW zerg Portals, and would make abusing culling/rendering via Portals almost impossible.

Obviously, it would not really have any effect on small scale WvW actions. Which is a good thing.

Vendris.4201:

The portal cooldown nerf did absolutely nothing to change the situation of portal bombing in WvW – it just ruined portal as a skill for anything but portal bombing in WvW.

This quote is the best assessment of the situation. Although I would amend that non-WvW portal utility has been sharply decreased rather than ruined.

make it teammates only? and lower the cooldown to 45 secs untraited.

Or just make it a limit of 5 players.

Group play and dungeon play unchanged.

WVWVW portal bombing gone or made utterly impractical/suicidal

Guys, a few words about WWW. WWW is not about 1×1, 5×5 or even 10×10. It’s ZERG vs ZERG. Small scale combat makes almost no difference for WWW’s points income.

So, what can mesmer provide for WWW?

Damage? No. Most part of mesmer’s damage comes from illusions – and illusions live about 0.25 sec in WWW. If (considering the last patch) summon illusion ability doesn’t fail at all.

Heal? No. ~2500 points heal every 6 sec for 5 frendlies, which must be cast for 4 sec – almost nothing, compared to guardians.

Utility? Yes, finally. Portal for the most part is the only reason to bring mesmer to WWW.

So, you request to limit portal to 5 people? I hope you understand that this nerf will make portal almost unusable for WWW. And the last thing, that makes mesmers viable for WWW will be gone.

About portal bombing.
First, it is available to everyone, but requires organization. If someone can’t fully use the portal due to organization, but the other side can – it’s not the reason to nerf portal.
Second. Thanks to last patch’s nerf to healing (5 friendlies only) portal bombing is quite unreliable against organized groups. You can easily be killed upon exiting the portal.
Third. Culling/rendering should not be the reason to nerf portal – it should be the reason to fix engine. Or maybe we should nerf keep doors too – a lot of people getting out through the doors simultaneously work like a portal :-)

ariath.3614:

Guys, a few words about WWW. WWW is not about 1×1, 5×5 or even 10×10. It’s ZERG vs ZERG. Small scale combat makes almost no difference for WWW’s points income.

So, what can mesmer provide for WWW?

Damage? No. Most part of mesmer’s damage comes from illusions – and illusions live about 0.25 sec in WWW. If (considering the last patch) summon illusion ability doesn’t fail at all.

Heal? No. ~2500 points heal every 6 sec for 5 frendlies, which must be cast for 4 sec – almost nothing, compared to guardians.

Utility? Yes, finally. Portal for the most part is the only reason to bring mesmer to WWW.

So, you request to limit portal to 5 people? I hope you understand that this nerf will make portal almost unusable for WWW. And the last thing, that makes mesmers viable for WWW will be gone.

About portal bombing.
First, it is available to everyone, but requires organization. If someone can’t fully use the portal due to organization, but the other side can – it’s not the reason to nerf portal.
Second. Thanks to last patch’s nerf to healing (5 friendlies only) portal bombing is quite unreliable against organized groups. You can easily be killed upon exiting the portal.
Third. Culling/rendering should not be the reason to nerf portal – it should be the reason to fix engine. Or maybe we should nerf keep doors too – a lot of people getting out through the doors simultaneously work like a portal :-)

This perspective makes it even more pressing that portal be limited to 5 people.

Mesmer needs to be more valuable to W3 than portal-bot, and removing portal-bot status would pave the way to other important mechanic overhauls, such as the suggestion I made a while ago to do the following:

1 – clone summons fill “dot bar”, but clone deaths to anything BUT shatter don’t empty it.
2 – shatter empties dot bar and kills all active clones, but instead of radiating from the clones, it radiates in 3 pulses from the current target.

This solves the issue of mesmer aoe dropping to nothing due to clone insta-death as the number of targets scales beyond 6 or so.