Guild Wars 2

I was thinking of making a Mesmer with the portal ability in the utility bar.

I thought about using it as a damage mitigation skill by making two portals and snipe enemies by each portal and teleport away when the enemy tries to melee me.

I want to play it like this.

Doesn’t really work unfortunately. Well, it works after a fashion, but a limited fashion. After you open the first portal, you have 60s to open the second. When you did that, both portals stay open ~10s (don’t be fooled by the tooltip that says 20s), and it also takes a tiny bit of time for the portal to be usable one opened, or after you used one, for the return trip to be available. When both portals close, the skill then goes on cooldown for 90s.

It’s nice to get a prepared retreat and do a little bit of situational kiting, or to jump down from a keep into the opposition with a return ticket in hand, but it’s nothing like that old video seemed to indicate.

I’ve done that before in Worlds PvP. I was attacked by three players (on my own), and was running all over the place to avoid them, while making clones of curse. So eventually I ran up top of a small hill, and made one portal, then ran a few meters away down the hill, and placed the other. Then teleported back and forth three times, while watching two of them run from one portal to the other, trying to chase me down. The third player was smart enough to wait at the start portal for me, though, but he reacted way to slow and couldn’t deal enough damage to stop me form teleporting. After the third portal switch, I could see that they had given up, so I teleported back to the first portal, and just looked at them standing there for a bit. Then we went our separate way. It was a really great moment, as I totally changed the output of the battle from being the underdog, to confusing my foes enough that they gave up on fighting me. Fun stuff =)

Portal doesn’t lasts long enough for you to just wait around until a foe comes close to you. though. Opposite to what the video shows, it’s much more of a reactive skill. Another example is to place it down while running away from a zerg, then after you’ve ran for a little while, place down the exit and teleport back. Now you’ve lost at least 50% of the zerg chasing you.

I used portal in that fashion all the time in PvE when I was playing a mesmer. It made kiting with a greatsword nearly brainless when combined with blink, staff, and decoy. It’s also fun to watch mobs run back and forth trying to hit you.

I typically use my portal in small scale fights (1v1, 1v2, 2v2, 2v3, etc). I’ll drop the first portal them move away from it a bit and drop the second. Then just pop back and forth between them to avoid being hit.

I also use it to escape when several enemies are chasing me.

The portals cooldown is too long and duration to short to do it in PvE; again as usual they handle our PvP OPness by slamming PvE with a sledgehammer. -_-

In PvP though it works, or can be used as a planned escape route in a daring attack in WvW – if you watch some of Osicat’s videos he uses portal to great effect in WvW skirmishing

Ryuujin.8236:

The portals cooldown is too long and duration to short to do it in PvE; again as usual they handle our PvP OPness by slamming PvE with a sledgehammer. -_-

Indeed. The 60s→90s increase in cooldown did nothing to address the portal bombing (which is a rendering engine problem in the first place rather than a balance issue but…), but it dramatically affected all the casual uses of the skill.

cafard.8953:

Ryuujin.8236:

The portals cooldown is too long and duration to short to do it in PvE; again as usual they handle our PvP OPness by slamming PvE with a sledgehammer. -_-

Indeed. The 60s->90s increase in cooldown did nothing to address the portal bombing (which is a rendering engine problem in the first place rather than a balance issue but…), but it dramatically affected all the casual uses of the skill.

It does change the speed of which you can get people inside a keep in Worlds PvP. 30 seconds can mean the difference between being run over, while you are hitting a keep door, or making it trough the door to the keep lord. I don’t think it was an attempt to try and push players away from using it.

The change to Portal CD was more of an intended nerf for spvp/tpvp.

Kasama.8941:

It does change the speed of which you can get people inside a keep in Worlds PvP. 30 seconds can mean the difference between being run over, while you are hitting a keep door, or making it trough the door to the keep lord. I don’t think it was an attempt to try and push players away from using it.

Not really. The 30 second increased cool down doesn’t slow down the initial portal one bit. Sure, your stragglers will have to wait for an extra 30 seconds if you are the only Mesmer on your team…. but that scenario is not very likely, and those stragglers aren’t going to help as much as the initial attack anyways.

Besides, using portal to move people isn’t the problem, the problem is portal bombing where you abuse culling so that you have an invisible army.

I have used Portal in the past for kiting a bit, and even in a couple dungeon boss fights. Now with the ridiculous cool down I use it a lot less, and I have pretty much taken it off standard utility skills for dungeons because the cool down is just stupid now.

Using a sair bit of portals in my gameplay, see some of the vids on my guide for tipps etc if you like.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/guide-WvWvW-Shatter-cat/page/3#post857910

/osicat