Guild Wars 2

So I haven’t seen this performed very often as I spend time in WvW. I also checked these forums and the subreddit for posts referring to these two skills used in conjunction, and found nothing. However, if this has already been posted, excuse me.

I play WvW mostly. I like to play classes which can bring a lot to the table. I find Mesmer to be one of these. Not only with their unique abilities to Portal Bomb the enemy, or allow the entire Zerg to go stealth for 4 seconds with a Veil, but with their ability to hide “in” a tower for 5 minutes after it has been captured to allow the Zerg to stop-on-by and recapture it.

Most Mesmers sit in a tower for 5 minutes. This is dangerous and ineffective. Sweepers are looking for Mesmers, especially their red tags above their name. Their portals? Not so much. He’s how to stay “in” a tower after it has been recaptured.

Traits. Firstly, it’s important to the have the trait that recharges Manipulation skills and also the trait that allow Glamours to last 2 seconds longer, as well as PU, which doubles the length of the stealth.

Utilities. Portal, Blink (your choice), Mimic. Elite. Mass Invisibility.

Method Summarized. The whole trick is never staying inside the tower without stealth, just leaving a portal there is plenty enough. To do this, Mimic is used to recharge Portal in 1 second. When going through portals back into the tower, stealth will be used to ensure that you’re not seen placing the new Portal and also to allow you to re-escape to a safe place outside the tower.

Method Nitty-Gritty Here’s the facts: Entry Portals last for 60 seconds before the Exit Portal is required. Mimic work on the Exit Portal, not the Entry Portal. Portal’s recharge is 72 seconds. Mimic’s recharge is 72 seconds. This leads to the question: How do I keep a constant portal when the portal placement time expires before Mimic’s recharge? This is done by getting the absolute most out of your timings. Here’s how:

Mimic is used 49 seconds after the Portal Entry is laid down. Mimic last for 10 seconds, which means you have until 59 seconds of the Portal’s 60 seconds to use it and get the advantage of a 1 second recharge time due to Mimic. Why use Mimic at 49 seconds after the Portal Entry was used? Simple. To start it’s recharge time. We’ve just saved 9 seconds of Mimic’s recharge, bringing it down to 63 seconds.

Ok, next step. The Portal itself lasts for 10 seconds. So we’re going to wait 9 seconds before entering it. We want to spend as much possible time in the safe area outside the tower as to avoid dying and to allow Mimic to recharge as much as possible. After 9 seconds have past, we’re going to enter the Portal. At this point, Mimic has recharged 9 more seconds, putting it at 54 seconds. This isn’t quite good enough. Consider that we’re using Mimic 11 seconds before our Portal is used, meaning we need at least a 48 seconds recharge time on it. So now we need to survive within the enemy tower for ~5 seconds. Well, this is simple. Remember how we waited 9 seconds before entering the Portal? This time here can be used to prepare yourself for a (possibly hot) entry. I prefer to do 3 things before going into a tower:
1) Drop a Focus 4 (temporal curtain) to give yourself swiftness.
2) Use Torch 4 (The prestige) to give yourself 6 seconds to stealth.
3) Find some sort of neutral animal to cast 3 clones/phantasms on so that you can get 4 seconds of distortion right before you enter the portal. This neutralizes all CC effects, marks, traps, etc. that are laid on the portal.

Once you enter the tower, stare at your Mimic’s recharge time. If you see it at 47 seconds or less, go ahead and drop your new portal and leave the tower. Run away. Don’t get caught. However, remember that in 49-seconds-time you need to be casting your Mimic again, not using any utilities in those next 9 seconds, then using your Portal Exit. Just rinse-and-repeat from here.

I should add that this isn’t normally necessary after a sweep has been done. If no one found a Mesmer on inner Keeps, it isn’t uncommon that they move into outer to check that. If they never saw your Portal, you can just Portal back in and stay on inner. Here is a clip of me doing just that on Bay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGc1JZRbz3I

Sometimes the portal is spotted and the enemy will camp it constantly, here is an example of that and how to counter it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLESZHdJhTg

- Serial Experiments

(I also posted this to the subreddit for more exposure)

Sneaky and clever, I like it. It can, of course, be countered by a sufficiently persistent enemy (if they send a group outside to continue the pursuit), but it becomes much much harder to do.

One thing worth mentioning. You can hear a portal (assuming you have decent headphones) from a decent distance (think its about 600) so you should try to place it somewhere inconspicuous where people are not likely to actually go near to check, merely check from afar.

Otherwise that sounds really good. It might be good if they implement what I’ve heard in the WvW beta.

That’s an awesome trick, thanks for sharing.

I’ve actually tried something similar to this a few times, and it’s worked every time (except for once). That being said, you’ve put much more thought on how to get 100% “uptime,” and it looks awesome!

The one time it didn’t work, a particularly persistent sweeper found the portal, called a few friend over, and they just spammed attacks on it until it dissipated (or until I stealthed, tried to bluff through, and got downed.)