Guild Wars 2

Thanks to having some time off work, I had the chance to get into WvW earlier than I normally do, and ended up on my mesmer hiding in NSP’s Bay when DB papered it (no surprise there during SEA/OCX prime). Two DB swept and found me in inner, and I managed to stay alive long enough (largely because it was only 2) to port a couple of other NSPers in for the recap. However, just about the time that I ported folks in, I received a PM from one of the DB players that they had reported me for “portal hacking,” based on how often I was using portals to escape them. After a conversation with them, we ended up parting ways on good enough terms, but with them still convinced that I was at least taking advantage of a glitch or bug.

The point of this post, then, is to show mesmers who might not be familiar with the trick how to do it. In no way do I see this as a glitch or exploit, as it is taking advantage of the effects and cooldowns of existing skills (it is exactly the same premise as a double portal for golems, just extended over a longer time). I have never had complaints about this before, and I’ve seen plenty of mesmers use it.

What I WAS doing was stringing portals essentially indefinitely through the use of Mimic and the Master of Manipulation trait. Basically, I would drop my portal, jump out of inner (into the water), use Mimic shortly before the portal’s 60 seconds were up to reduce portal’s recharge to 1s, stealth/take the port, run to the other side of inner (north/south), and repeat. Thanks to Master of Manipulation, Mimic’s cooldown is only 72 seconds. Combined with the 10s duration of Mimic (during which the cooldown is going), the 60s duration of your portal entry, and the 10s duration of your portal exit, Mimic can essentially always be ready for dropping your portal exist assuming you allow your portal entry to sit for awhile.

Below is a link to a short video showing how this works in Bay (including the specific places I was dropping portals). The video is sped up to 2x to make the duration more manageable.

Video (if you prefer to copy-paste https://youtu.be/gX-t41qiiY0)