Guild Wars 2

It’s so simple! Make Mesmer portals only able to teleport X amount of players (5 to me seems reasonable this way if someone still wants to Mesmer bomb they can coordinate for a highly tactical strike of mesmers to multi-portal bomb).

In combination with fixing the climbable terrain in WvW I believe this will balance out one of WvW’s defining balance issues.

you are wrong, and its a bad idea. EoD.

I understand that portal bombing can be a problem but a 5 man limit would make it useless – especially with a party requirement on top of it. How about 10 people (random) …

Edit: Apart from that – by saying “in the same group” it would actually become a 4 man protal because the mesmer doesn’t use it – he creates it. So the rest of the group that could pass through is a 4 man team when you apply group restrictions.

I am a mesmer so may be biased – but I don’t understand how hard it is to run around your keep/tower and check for mesmers? I do this becasue I know what can happen

The problem is not the keep capping – if that happens it is either lazyness or unattentive players during a breech. The problem is usually portal bombing – and I agree (being a Memser myself) that it is a bit overpowered to be able to transport 60+ players.

10 people would make sense – it would still be good for capping a keep where a Mesmer hid + it will alow you to transport Golems + protection but it will not spawn a massive army with all resulting culling issues.

HtFde.3856:

The problem is not the keep capping – if that happens it is either lazyness or unattentive players during a breech. The problem is usually portal bombing – and I agree (being a Memser myself) that it is a bit overpowered to be able to transport 60+ players.

10 people would make sense – it would still be good for capping a keep where a Mesmer hid + it will alow you to transport Golems + protection but it will not spawn a massive army with all resulting culling issues.

I see where you are coming from, but surely killing the mesmer will negate those issues mentioned? It’s not like it can’t be countered – it really doesn’t take long to do a quick sweep.

Another useless QQ topic about imagined problems. The portal is good as any other stronger utility skill. Try to clever fight not cry against it. I know, I know… cry is much simpler than learn… And remember mesmer finds on all sides.

Gnat.5124:

HtFde.3856:

The problem is not the keep capping – if that happens it is either lazyness or unattentive players during a breech. The problem is usually portal bombing – and I agree (being a Memser myself) that it is a bit overpowered to be able to transport 60+ players.

10 people would make sense – it would still be good for capping a keep where a Mesmer hid + it will alow you to transport Golems + protection but it will not spawn a massive army with all resulting culling issues.

I see where you are coming from, but surely killing the mesmer will negate those issues mentioned? It’s not like it can’t be countered – it really doesn’t take long to do a quick sweep.

The other compounding issue is that people (mesmers) are constantly scaling walls now in order to bypass the front door. Portal bombing is probably the most broken aspect of WvWvW (bar culling) but it would be manageable if to portal bomb you actually had to breach the walls first.

The reason why it would be manageable is for the reason you just mentioned: scouting for a hidden Mesmer solves the problem.

not only having to wait 30% longer to port people that fall off something, you want me to invite people to my party as well

Seren.6850:

not only having to wait 30% longer to port people that fall off something, you want me to invite people to my party as well

I altered the OP, instead I just want a 5 person limit per portal so if u want to portal bomb like a boss you have to coordinate with 5 other mesmers.

If AoE attacks and damage can only hit 5 people it should mean that EVERYTHING can only hit a maximum of 5 people – including Portals, Stealth, boons and everything else

As a mesmer learning to use portals, most people seem to ignore them anyway, a number of times I’ve managed to announce I’m starting a portal and got BEHIND the enemy lines that are basically badge farming is quite remarkable, some leading to my death at the last moment but people in those situations seem happier to farm than look for a tactical victory

Not sure how you fix portals but Mesmers already have a hard enough time farming and tagging people to get rewards because their damage dealing phantasms not only have an animation to cast but they also have an animation that kicks in before the phantasms start doing their thing :P

I’d prolly stop playing Mesmer if they started nerfing support stuff which is very handy in my fave game type (When people use it, that is)

Would having Mesmer portals limited to 5 people really effect your Mesmer that much beyond the portal bomb? You can still portal your party.

Fix culling first and then come back and see if this needs to be addressed after that. Culling is the ultimate problem in all of this, not the fact that the mesmer portal is going on.

People need to be looking for portals, they aren’t affected by culling. You shouldn’t have to see people to know they are there when the portal is up. Our groups are rarely wiped by portal bombs because we are so proactive in watching for mesmers coming in and portals dropping.

Yes it would. It would make the utility skill worthless. What happens if you aren’t in a 5-player party? What if you are with a couple other people that are not in your party? Would it transport them? If so, what happens if you drop a portal and there are 20 people there? How do you control which people get to use the portal and which do not?

I would only agree to a 5 player limit if there was no cooldown on Portal, meaning that I could drop one again as soon as the first one disappears.

Oh by the way, how are mesmers “constantly scaling the walls”?

Xavi.6591:

Yes it would. It would make the utility skill worthless. What happens if you aren’t in a 5-player party? What if you are with a couple other people that are not in your party? Would it transport them? If so, what happens if you drop a portal and there are 20 people there? How do you control which people get to use the portal and which do not?

I would only agree to a 5 player limit if there was no cooldown on Portal, meaning that I could drop one again as soon as the first one disappears.

Oh by the way, how are mesmers “constantly scaling the walls”?

That would be another factor, you’d have to be able to choose who can go through. The only real way to accomplish that would be the party system which would make portal bombing a highly organized event.

There’s a glitch in the game where any player can jump constantly to scale up certain textures. AR and BP have both been doing this within the last week, often in order to portal bomb (not that I have a problem with portal bombing, I have a problem with abusing glitches to portal bomb).

So report the exploiting glitch.

Xavi.6591:

So report the exploiting glitch.

Easier said then done because of 1) culling, 2) having the time to click and 3) you don’t always see the invisible Mesmer but you always see the mass people flooding in without a breach in the wall or gate.

Its been mentioned by the community, there’s youtube vids and I’m sure Anet is aware of the issue.

I agree. I don’t understand why they limit the effects of healing rain, shadow refuge, etc. to 5 people yet mesmer can still port in their entire zerg.

I feel like this would be relatively easy to code. After 10 ports (whether it’s the same person or not) the portal ends.

Limiting portals to 5 players only would help the culling issue a little.

Teams would be pushed to bring even more mesmers to portal entire zerg. This would lead to even greater demand for mesmers in WvW. Not good.

It also does not address the other issues with portals. Namely content skipping jump puzzles, bypassing walls and chain portalling golems.

A Portal can easily get a group of people from one place to another without a care about the intervening terrain. That is POWERFUL…with only 5 people it is STILL Powerful. The difference is not overwhelmingly so. If you’re going to limit Healing, Shouts, and everything that a Guardian can do to 5 people…why is it so unfair to limit the Mesmers? It certainly isn’t going to make them any weaker. -.-

Korgov.7645:

Limiting portals to 5 players only would help the culling issue a little.

Teams would be pushed to bring even more mesmers to portal entire zerg. This would lead to even greater demand for mesmers in WvW. Not good.

It also does not address the other issues with portals. Namely content skipping jump puzzles, bypassing walls and chain portalling golems.

Not sure what the problem is with a mesmer using his utility to benefit the server, people qq about how OP mesmers are in 1v1 scenario, then they qq about how they can support their entire team with portal, I’ve honestly never wanted to say l2p, but seriously l2p, ever since mesmer patch i’ve just been pissed at anet, and stoped playing mesmer altogether, but still, i know how a mesmer works, and i still have a good chance of beating them with my engineer. My chances of beating a mesmer increased from 50% to about 70% because of the patch, mesmer got that much weaker to me.

StormWolf.7645:

A Portal can easily get a group of people from one place to another without a care about the intervening terrain. That is POWERFUL…with only 5 people it is STILL Powerful. The difference is not overwhelmingly so. If you’re going to limit Healing, Shouts, and everything that a Guardian can do to 5 people…why is it so unfair to limit the Mesmers? It certainly isn’t going to make them any weaker. -.-

It’s certainly not going to make them any weaker because they’re already fairly weak now, in fact i wouldn’t even pick a skilled mesmer to win a fight against a skill guardian/thief/engineer/elementalist/warrior now.

The only thing is, it’s going to make it that much worthless. Portal is a glamour skill, where somebody who walks into it gets that said ability, like the temporal curtain for speed buff, or the Feedback bubble reflect projectile. Feedback doesn’t just reflect 5 people’s ranged attack back, its everyone i believe.

Bones.5762:

Korgov.7645:

Limiting portals to 5 players only would help the culling issue a little.

Teams would be pushed to bring even more mesmers to portal entire zerg. This would lead to even greater demand for mesmers in WvW. Not good.

It also does not address the other issues with portals. Namely content skipping jump puzzles, bypassing walls and chain portalling golems.

Not sure what the problem is with a mesmer using his utility to benefit the server, people qq about how OP mesmers are in 1v1 scenario, then they qq about how they can support their entire team with portal, I’ve honestly never wanted to say l2p, but seriously l2p, ever since mesmer patch i’ve just been pissed at anet, and stoped playing mesmer altogether, but still, i know how a mesmer works, and i still have a good chance of beating them with my engineer. My chances of beating a mesmer increased from 50% to about 70% because of the patch, mesmer got that much weaker to me.

The problem is this: I have never done the jumping puzzle except with friendly mesmer providing me a portal. I would assume same is true for many others, too. ANet might as well remove the jumping puzzles and put the treasure chests next to our waypoint.

I have no complaints about 1v1. Mesmers are probably the most fun and exiting to fight against.

Gnat.5124:

I see where you are coming from, but surely killing the mesmer will negate those issues mentioned? It’s not like it can’t be countered – it really doesn’t take long to do a quick sweep.

Portal bombing can’t be prevented by “sweeps” and it’s the bombing people have issues with. If anyone complains about keeps being “stolen” by Mesmers “teleporting through walls” it is a l2p issue – but portal bombing is an entirely different issue.

Keep portaling as it is, add a debuff when using a portal. Portal Sickness: Stuns the user of the portal until both sides of the engagement are completely rendered, kills any and all thieves that attempt to even look in the general direction of the portal.

HtFde.3856:

If anyone complains about keeps being “stolen” by Mesmers “teleporting through walls” it is a l2p issue – but portal bombing is an entirely different issue.

Are you saying they don’t teleport through walls/gates? We saw a mesmer on three different occasions blink through a gate at bay. We have it frapsed, screenshoted and reported, but don’t act like we need to learn how to play the game because they exploited. We were able to reproduce it as well with full instructions sent to ANet. There are other exploitable walls and gates as well that mesmers can get into, but that doesn’t need to be addressed in this thread.

Korgov.7645:

The problem is this: I have never done the jumping puzzle except with friendly mesmer providing me a portal. I would assume same is true for many others, too. ANet might as well remove the jumping puzzles and put the treasure chests next to our waypoint.

Then what do you propose? That Portals need LoS to each other? Why don’t you just ask Anet to delete the skill altogether?

“Skipping content” is pretty much the reason why the Portal skill exists in the first place.

You wouldn’t complain about classes staking Swiftness on you so that you can go from point A to point B quicker, so why complain about the Mesmer’s Portal getting you from point A to point B quicker? Time is a highly valued resource, and the Portal skill is designed to help allies make better use of their time.

As for any talk of Portal nerfs, it’s either fix culling or restrict Portal to x number of allies, so that at the very least it will take multiple coordinated Mesmers to execute a culling abusing portal bomb. also, scrape that 90 second cool down nerf to portal, that is just stupid outside of sPvP.

BabelFish.7234:

Xavi.6591:

So report the exploiting glitch.

Easier said then done because of 1) culling, 2) having the time to click and 3) you don’t always see the invisible Mesmer but you always see the mass people flooding in without a breach in the wall or gate.

Its been mentioned by the community, there’s youtube vids and I’m sure Anet is aware of the issue.

What culling issue are you talking about when you are complaining about people being able to jump over a wall into a tower?

Thundar.3910:

Keep portaling as it is, add a debuff when using a portal. Portal Sickness: Stuns the user of the portal until both sides of the engagement are completely rendered, kills any and all thieves that attempt to even look in the general direction of the portal.

And how would the game engine know that something has ‘rendered’ on the client (your PC). The whole rendering issue is because this game is CPU bound and doesn’t take advantage of your GPU (video card).

In reality, the skill is fine as is. The majority of players don’t even know where their dodge button is, so really don’t have the knowledge to make more complex decisions like game balance. It didn’t even need an extra 30 second cooldown.

Given that change, however, it will probably be iteratively nerfed into uselessness. And then the bad players will focus on something else to blame for their lack of proficiency with the tools given them.

That’s how these things work.

Kirrund.2654:

In reality, the skill is fine as is. The majority of players don’t even know where their dodge button is, so really don’t have the knowledge to make more complex decisions like game balance. It didn’t even need an extra 30 second cooldown.

Given that change, however, it will probably be iteratively nerfed into uselessness. And then the bad players will focus on something else to blame for their lack of proficiency with the tools given them.

That’s how these things work.

That’s a fairly evasive answer. “people suck therefore this topic is invalid”.
What’s being discussed is portals being used in conjunction with backdooring, which isn’t even possible bar abusing glitchy terrain.

People’s proficiency and knowing where their evade button is has no bearing on this nor do bad players complaining unless you’re essentially calling the people concerned with this “bad players” which is one heck of a baseless assumption to make.

BabelFish.7234:

Kirrund.2654:

In reality, the skill is fine as is. The majority of players don’t even know where their dodge button is, so really don’t have the knowledge to make more complex decisions like game balance. It didn’t even need an extra 30 second cooldown.

Given that change, however, it will probably be iteratively nerfed into uselessness. And then the bad players will focus on something else to blame for their lack of proficiency with the tools given them.

That’s how these things work.

That’s a fairly evasive answer. “people suck therefore this topic is invalid”.
What’s being discussed is portals being used in conjunction with backdooring, which isn’t even possible bar abusing glitchy terrain.

People’s proficiency and knowing where their evade button is has no bearing on this nor do bad players complaining unless you’re essentially calling the people concerned with this “bad players” which is one heck of a baseless assumption to make.

Fix the culling and the terrain then before you mess with the skill.

BabelFish.7234:

What’s being discussed is portals being used in conjunction with backdooring

I thought the discussion was about abusing culling.

Burl.9567:

BabelFish.7234:

Kirrund.2654:

In reality, the skill is fine as is. The majority of players don’t even know where their dodge button is, so really don’t have the knowledge to make more complex decisions like game balance. It didn’t even need an extra 30 second cooldown.

Given that change, however, it will probably be iteratively nerfed into uselessness. And then the bad players will focus on something else to blame for their lack of proficiency with the tools given them.

That’s how these things work.

That’s a fairly evasive answer. “people suck therefore this topic is invalid”.
What’s being discussed is portals being used in conjunction with backdooring, which isn’t even possible bar abusing glitchy terrain.

People’s proficiency and knowing where their evade button is has no bearing on this nor do bad players complaining unless you’re essentially calling the people concerned with this “bad players” which is one heck of a baseless assumption to make.

Fix the culling and the terrain then before you mess with the skill.

Fair enough, with terrain and culling fixed then we should look at the portal and see if its truly balanced (which it probably will be since at that point a Mesmer will actually have to get inside and remain hidden after the failed siege in order to portal bomb-which in turn is probably a l2p issue).

BabelFish.7234:

Burl.9567:

BabelFish.7234:

Kirrund.2654:

In reality, the skill is fine as is. The majority of players don’t even know where their dodge button is, so really don’t have the knowledge to make more complex decisions like game balance. It didn’t even need an extra 30 second cooldown.

Given that change, however, it will probably be iteratively nerfed into uselessness. And then the bad players will focus on something else to blame for their lack of proficiency with the tools given them.

That’s how these things work.

That’s a fairly evasive answer. “people suck therefore this topic is invalid”.
What’s being discussed is portals being used in conjunction with backdooring, which isn’t even possible bar abusing glitchy terrain.

People’s proficiency and knowing where their evade button is has no bearing on this nor do bad players complaining unless you’re essentially calling the people concerned with this “bad players” which is one heck of a baseless assumption to make.

Fix the culling and the terrain then before you mess with the skill.

Fair enough, with terrain and culling fixed then we should look at the portal and see if its truly balanced (which it probably will be since at that point a Mesmer will actually have to get inside and remain hidden after the failed siege in order to portal bomb-which in turn is probably a l2p issue).

It’s a great skill that tactically speaking brings a lot to the game and I would hate to have it nerfed to oblivion before they actually fix the issues associated with it. Once those issues get fixed, the nerfs they placed on it will essentially make the skill worthless.

Burl.9567:

BabelFish.7234:

Burl.9567:

BabelFish.7234:

Kirrund.2654:

In reality, the skill is fine as is. The majority of players don’t even know where their dodge button is, so really don’t have the knowledge to make more complex decisions like game balance. It didn’t even need an extra 30 second cooldown.

Given that change, however, it will probably be iteratively nerfed into uselessness. And then the bad players will focus on something else to blame for their lack of proficiency with the tools given them.

That’s how these things work.

That’s a fairly evasive answer. “people suck therefore this topic is invalid”.
What’s being discussed is portals being used in conjunction with backdooring, which isn’t even possible bar abusing glitchy terrain.

People’s proficiency and knowing where their evade button is has no bearing on this nor do bad players complaining unless you’re essentially calling the people concerned with this “bad players” which is one heck of a baseless assumption to make.

Fix the culling and the terrain then before you mess with the skill.

Fair enough, with terrain and culling fixed then we should look at the portal and see if its truly balanced (which it probably will be since at that point a Mesmer will actually have to get inside and remain hidden after the failed siege in order to portal bomb-which in turn is probably a l2p issue).

It’s a great skill that tactically speaking brings a lot to the game and I would hate to have it nerfed to oblivion before they actually fix the issues associated with it. Once those issues get fixed, the nerfs they placed on it will essentially make the skill worthless.

The +30 second CD was a little much imo. I don’t see a Mesmer portal bombing more then once every 90 seconds let alone 60 seconds so I do think that once the terrain is fixed they should revert that change. I don’t think they’ll fix the culling until an expansion as its a major issue with the programing used for the engine and that is gonna take some decent coinage to fix (which in turn will need to be justified by profit).

I think ANet will take the easy way out and make the portal useless rather than fix the bugs related to terrain and bypassing walls.

I’ll say it again. The nerf to Portal was intended for spvp/tpvp and not wvw. Although it does affect portals in wvw when the Mesmer uses them as a solo utility, it doesn’t change portal bombing in any way nor should it.

Surbrus.6942:

Korgov.7645:

The problem is this: I have never done the jumping puzzle except with friendly mesmer providing me a portal. I would assume same is true for many others, too. ANet might as well remove the jumping puzzles and put the treasure chests next to our waypoint.

Then what do you propose? That Portals need LoS to each other? Why don’t you just ask Anet to delete the skill altogether?

“Skipping content” is pretty much the reason why the Portal skill exists in the first place.

You wouldn’t complain about classes staking Swiftness on you so that you can go from point A to point B quicker, so why complain about the Mesmer’s Portal getting you from point A to point B quicker? Time is a highly valued resource, and the Portal skill is designed to help allies make better use of their time.

As for any talk of Portal nerfs, it’s either fix culling or restrict Portal to x number of allies, so that at the very least it will take multiple coordinated Mesmers to execute a culling abusing portal bomb. also, scrape that 90 second cool down nerf to portal, that is just stupid outside of sPvP.

The main use case for portals is content skipping. Thats why mesmers are in such high demand in WvW. I feel this is not right.

My proposal is 3 part:

• Limit the amount of players passing through a portal in an area. When a player enters a portal all friendly players in the area get 1 second portal-sickness which prevents using portals.
• Require that portal end points have a walkable path between them. No more content skipping.
• Make golems unable to use portals (or unaffected by any boons for that matter).

Korgov.7645:

The main use case for portals is content skipping. Thats why mesmers are in such high demand in WvW. I feel this is not right.

My proposal is 3 part:

• Limit the amount of players passing through a portal in an area. When a player enters a portal all friendly players in the area get 1 second portal-sickness which prevents using portals.
• Require that portal end points have a walkable path between them. No more content skipping.
• Make golems unable to use portals (or unaffected by any boons for that matter).

Golems not being able to use portals, yeah sure thats a decent change. It doesn’t make portal useless, it just addresses one particular use of the skill. Not saying that preventing golem transportation is needed or not though, but just that this change would only effect a single use of the portal.

As for limiting the numbers of people who can go through the portal, why not simply put a cap on how many people can use the portal, rather than having people go through single file? I don’t really see what this sort of proposed change is even supposed to do, besides being annoying and creating opportunities for griefing.

Forcing portals to only work when there is a “walkable path” between the two kills almost all uses of this skill. It would be better to just delete the skill altogether, and replace it with a different utility rather than make this change to it.

If you’re going to take a Mesmer’s ability to bypass terrain with a portal, then you should also take away an Engineer’s ability to bypass via rifle jump. We can get rid of ride the lightning too while we’re at it, being able to outrun everyone is just unfair. Know what else is unfair? Necromancers having more then one pet, how do you think the Rangers feel about that?

Surbrus.6942:

As for limiting the numbers of people who can go through the portal, why not simply put a cap on how many people can use the portal, rather than having people go through single file? I don’t really see what this sort of proposed change is even supposed to do, besides being annoying and creating opportunities for griefing.

It is to limit the amount of players that vanish and appear in an area within time frame. This is what is causing the rendering issue.

Limiting amount of players per portal would just be defeated by having enough mesmers to portal the entire zerg. This would also lead to mesmers being in more demand than ever.

Korgov.7645:

It is to limit the amount of players that vanish and appear in an area within time frame. This is what is causing the rendering issue.

Limiting amount of players per portal would just be defeated by having enough mesmers to portal the entire zerg. This would also lead to mesmers being in more demand than ever.

Let’s say that 10 people are able to pass through the portal in the 10 second duration which the portal is open (the tool tip is incorrect, the duration is closer to 10 seconds than 20). Entering a portal gives the portal sickness debuff to nearby allies. This just means that the entry portals have to be spaced out more (which they probably are going to be spaced out for convenience anyways. Portal entryways that are too close to each other will slow down the transfer, requiring more Mesmers to make more portals to account for the incorrectly placed portals, as well as more Mesmer are required to best take advantage of the underhanded culling issue.

Fifty people are still able to portal bomb through five portals. Just more Mesmers are required to account for Mesmers incorrectly placing the portals.

There will be many more stragglers with this sort of change, as portal sickness will mess up calculations for how many people are going through the portal (delay could result in the portal not working at max capacity, as wasted time means less trips through the portal). More Mesmers will be required to make sure there are fewer stragglers.

Thus, this solution creates even more of a demand for Mesmers than a simple cap per portal.

Surbrus.6942:

Korgov.7645:

It is to limit the amount of players that vanish and appear in an area within time frame. This is what is causing the rendering issue.

Limiting amount of players per portal would just be defeated by having enough mesmers to portal the entire zerg. This would also lead to mesmers being in more demand than ever.

Let’s say that 10 people are able to pass through the portal in the 10 second duration which the portal is open (the tool tip is incorrect, the duration is closer to 10 seconds than 20). Entering a portal gives the portal sickness debuff to nearby allies. This just means that the entry portals have to be spaced out more (which they probably are going to be spaced out for convenience anyways. Portal entryways that are too close to each other will slow down the transfer, requiring more Mesmers to make more portals to account for the incorrectly placed portals, as well as more Mesmer are required to best take advantage of the underhanded culling issue.

Fifty people are still able to portal bomb through five portals. Just more Mesmers are required to account for Mesmers incorrectly placing the portals.

Thus, this solution creates even more of a demand for Mesmers than a simple cap per portal.

The solution must then be tied to exit portals in an area.

• Player appearing through a portal disables all friendly exit portals in the area for 1 second.

Korgov.7645:

• Player appearing through a portal disables all friendly exit portals in the area for 1 second.

Still has the same issue, however then it just requires the exit portals to be spaced out. I sounds more annoying than anything else, no one wants to play a traffic jam simulator. And again, this would just require even more Mesmers to account for all the incorrectly placed portals.

Sounds like an extremely, over-elaborate way to address culling… and the culling issue wouldn’t even be solved, it would just require a group of experienced Mesmers to bypass for a culling inducing portal bomb.

In my opinion, this would be worse for the skill than simply adding 30 seconds to the cool down. Outside of sPvP the 90 second cool down did nothing but to make Portal more annoying to use, and made it pretty much worthless in some scenarios as the utility slot it occupies is worth more than the 90 second cool down portal (dungeons, bosses, etc).

Forcing people to go single file, outside of portal bombing, only makes the skill more and more annoying to use. If the objective is to make a skill so annoying to use, and not fun, then it should be deleted and simply replaced.

I am not joking around, I honestly believe that the portal skill should be deleted and abandoned rather than see some of these proposed changes. Even though I love the skill, and it used to have a permanent spot on my utility bar (before the 90 second cool down), the skill would be much better removed from the game than trying to make it more annoying to use. Too bad, because it used to be a really fun skill to use.

Xavi.6591:

Yes it would. It would make the utility skill worthless. What happens if you aren’t in a 5-player party? What if you are with a couple other people that are not in your party? Would it transport them? If so, what happens if you drop a portal and there are 20 people there? How do you control which people get to use the portal and which do not?

I would only agree to a 5 player limit if there was no cooldown on Portal, meaning that I could drop one again as soon as the first one disappears.

Oh by the way, how are mesmers “constantly scaling the walls”?

Portal should have a limit, just like EVERY other aoe ability in game. How will you control who gets to use it? You don’t, just like EVERY other aoe ability. Hell, I can shadow refuge on my thief, and NOT go into stealth if I place it badly and it hits 5 other players. I play a Mesmer in WvW, and agree with putting a cap on this ability (and bring the cd down to like 45 or 60 sec).

Best way is to fix portal is to have it only have a max of 5 charges and refresh 5 charges every 5 seconds. This means that a max of 5 people could come through every 5 seconds which would not overwhelm/exploit the limitations of AE and server culling.

The best solution is to think of new things to add, instead of taking away depth that’s already in the game. Removing interesting mechanics to homogenize gameplay is not a good design decision.

Also, portal is not limited to 5 targets because it doesnt do damage. People still dont understand that damage aoes were limited to five targets so two people couldnt gtaoe down 100. It’s really easy to comprehend imo.

I disagree with the shadow refuge change but I can sort of see why. 15 second invisibility on unlimited players might be more annoying and potentially abusive than transferring unlimited players from point a to point b. Just a guess on why they may have done it. I still think it shouldnt have been changed and would consider it a unique aspect of play.

If they insist on capping targets on non damaging abilities, it should be 15. 15 is a good number, not too large, not too small. 5 is way too little for any ally based buff, period. It requires an over abundance of a particular class to get that effect on enough people, and destroys the unique class interactivity from all these different ways to layer class skills or combo.

Kirrund.2654:

The best solution is to think of new things to add, instead of taking away depth that’s already in the game. Removing interesting mechanics to homogenize gameplay is not a good design decision.

Also, portal is not limited to 5 targets because it doesnt do damage. People still dont understand that damage aoes were limited to five targets so two people couldnt gtaoe down 100. It’s really easy to comprehend imo.

I disagree with the shadow refuge change but I can sort of see why. 15 second invisibility on unlimited players might be more annoying and potentially abusive than transferring unlimited players from point a to point b. Just a guess on why they may have done it. I still think it shouldnt have been changed and would consider it a unique aspect of play.

If they insist on capping targets on non damaging abilities, it should be 15. 15 is a good number, not too large, not too small. 5 is way too little for any ally based buff, period. It requires an over abundance of a particular class to get that effect on enough people, and destroys the unique class interactivity from all these different ways to layer class skills or combo.

I completely agree with the cap on Shadow Refuge (just wish I was always one of the 5 targets…). I also agree with adding stuff to portal if they were to cap it to 5 people (like other aoe abilities). 15 might still be a little powerful, but if it affected all non-damage aoe I could see it working out.