Guild Wars 2

Decklan.7540:

I love all the people missing the point here.
I don’t care about winning or losing I care about having fun and trying to introduce new people into world vs world. Portal is the number one detriment to this exercise.

This isn’t about l2p. It’s far easier to coordinate 20 people to click on a button then organize your group to defend against 20 people, 15 of which are culling in, with all these theories and battle plans. In war, he who strikes first usually wins. And by usually I mean 90 percent of the time. It’s why you are seeing so much of it now a days. Why do something different when you have an at will ace in the sleeve.

Someone here said that 9 out of 10 times portal bomb wins. Then goes ahead and says one group will wipe em with a smiley face. Well grats. If you expand those numbers to say 100, you just proved that 90 people will get frustrated wiping to portal bombs while your elite group of 10 stays and wipes em. So now 90 people are just gonna go back to fractal farming and your 10 man group is gonna stay behind.

My point remains. 1 more month of portal bombing and you will start to see the most epic fight at stonemist be a 10v10 portal match with another server hiding a mesmer inside to try and portal inside and wipe up the scraps. We could release youtube videos! If you’re bored you can go hunt the deers. Might as well stick a heart npc in the middle of the keeps. You guys can portal up and down the map all day and farm karma.

if this is how u feel i don’t think u have fought much with top servers. they will make 50 man portal bombs only to be themselves portal bombed by the people they r attacking. for the most part the top tiers do not complain about protal bombs becasue they r watching and expecting them. portal bomb is for the most part an “elite tactic” which can make it very strong in the lower tiers. in top 3 ? not so much. I personally will be upset if they nerf it

Let’s take a look at yesterday —- we were defending bay in the homelands and we had the usual situation: 15 people on the map, about 10 of them on TS. Bay has the problem that it can be trebuchéd outer and inner side from the camp and they had like 5 – 7 trebus in the camp and about 30 – 50 people – it was hard to tell.

I don’t know what defense they had packed inside the camp but the times we tried to take the trebus out we were insta-wiped.

Once they managed to breach the inner wall we had quite a bit of arrow carts, catapults and ballistae set up and we managed to hold them off for a while and even managed to destroy at least one portal.

But – despide Guardians setting up walls, thieves setting traps and rangers setting traps and firing into the opening with like 5 arrow carts one mesmer made it trough the gap and set a portal where we spotted it a bit too late.

Then there were 30+ man inside the keep and like 12 or so defenders who now had to fight those inside the keep and those still outside with the desire to join the party.

With an unrestricted amount of people who can go through a portal the side with the bigger number is always favoured – this may not be as apparent to those Tier-1 guys because you usually have more people active but the old principle: “A few defenders can hold a keep” is nullified by the portal being unrestricted.

This is aided and abetted by the AoE cap.

As a Mesmer myself I’d say that the portal should be limited to 10 uses (random). It would make coordination harder (as to who actually get’s transported – I guess you don’t want 10 rangers in there) – it would still be a challenge for the defenders because they now have to focus on two sides.

People will argue that that does not matter – you’d simply need three mesmers now to get 30 people through … in the lower tiers (where portal bombing IS an issue) you’re hard pressed to get one competent mesmer …

If they’d split skills and allow for a version for PvP, PvE and WvW I’d also say: Add a portal sickness to any portal user that lasts for 30 minutes in which they cannot use another portal – but as long as WvW and PvE are tied together …. don’t. Many of our guild players use touchpads and they’ll never manage some jumping puzzles without the aid of a friendly mesmer.

Ok guys, let’s calm down and analyse the ability.
Portal provides instant teleportation over a large range to an unlimited amount of players.
As I don’t like that “unlimited” being changed, a suitable nerf would be to tone down the “instant” aspect by either giving the portal ability(or at least the “place portal” ability) a horrendous cast time of 2-3 seconds or disabling every player who just went through the portal for some time.
The only problem with portal is that it’s the only ability in the game which allows teams to melt face instantly.

Btw I love the Idea of having a very long and obvious cast animation on casting the second portal.
Like 2 seconds cast time and the Portal slowly fades in for 0.5 seconds, then becomes even brighter than it usually is, slowly returning back to its normal color and then it’s usable.

The second choice, giving every port a windup time would be nice too. Especially cause it will also tone down mass golem movement for a bit.

The third one is more of a “Hammer” method of just mindlessly destroying any chance a portal bomb would ever have at succeeding. My least favourite one.

And as mentioned earlier in another post, I feel like portal should be an elite. It just feels so wrong that mesmers can hae both Portal and omgwtfTimeWarp at the same time. Have them make a painful choice!

There are a lot of counters to a portal. If the group you are portaling into has a higher level of coordination than you, you get nuked. The convenient thing, it stacks you all up in one place where enemies can just pile on AoE after AoE. If your group isn’t organized coming out of a portal, you will die. Also, portals take 1 second to activate after the exit is placed, giving the enemy plenty of time to cast on top of it or guardian bubble or anything. If you think portals are game breaking, maybe you should learn to counter a tactic before you decide it needs to be nerfed (which it already has been). Time Warp only effects 5 people, golems can only move across a map with a series of mesmers portaling them (requiring coordination or they get left in an open field), portal has a longer cooldown, and heals/buffs only effect 5 players now so AoE will out damage almost any heal. It makes you spec for the situation and actually plan to layer skills and buffs on portal exit and place portals strategically rather than in the middle of an enemy force. Sounds like you need to study up on some WvW tactics or get a more organized guild because groups that are portal bombing successfully are generally in VoIP. Blame coordination, not rendering problems. Portals have been unsuccessful as often as they are successful in Tiers 1 and 2 for the past 6 weeks. I don’t know where you all have been.

Esoteric.5490:

. Portals have been unsuccessful as often as they are successful in Tiers 1 and 2 for the past 6 weeks. I don’t know where you all have been.

Probably in the 7/9 of what is not Tier 1 or 2 and so: The Majority ^^

I believe that all I’m reading is, “I don’t want to learn to how to adapt and overcome the battlefield conditions present, I want the Almight ArenaNet to righteously smite my enemies mobility advantage so that my inferior thinking can carry through another day.”

If you’re part of a keep defense and you see a portal you can’t interact with- you’re the fool for not plainly realizing the new threat to your defensive line.

Mesmers are a powerful class, and particularly in WvW where Portal can have such a massive effect in an “Army v. Army” engagement. The mass mobility offered by Portal is very akin to the arrival of the machine gun, or combustion engines, or aerial warfare in military history.

And just like then, people complained that gunpowder weapons were uncivilized or ignoble- and just like then, those people where outmoded with their antiquated understanding of warfare.

I vote portals stay, and I don’t even play a Mesmer.

Personally we have very little problems with mesmers we run with our own team of mesmers me included, our commander controls where and how we deploy portals and he is a guardian and when we take an objective the mesmer team itself does the sweep as we know the hiding spots and are the best choice for doing so.

Our primary function in WvW is siege and tower infiltration and countering other mesmer without this there would simply be no way to break a stalemate in this game and many people would moan that they can’t get through a zerg v zerg situation.

would you much prefer to spend an evening standing outside a wall trying to get inside getting cut down wave after wave by siege defense it would be fun for the defenders but not for the attackers or have the option of a Trojan Horse to give you a fighting chance?

Diligent players can deal with a portal our mesmers call out our’s if it’s not called out it’s not friendly and so it’s AOE bombed and 9 times out of 10 infiltration fails.

Any time you have been infiltrated by a portal mesmer has more than likely been down to a lack of awareness or spread of panic upon seeing the pink circle a competent commander should be able to keep it together not “oh kitten portal… fall back to the lord room”.

Aervius.2016:

I believe that all I’m reading is, “I don’t want to learn to how to adapt and overcome the battlefield conditions present, I want the Almight ArenaNet to righteously smite my enemies mobility advantage so that my inferior thinking can carry through another day.”

I then suggest you do take reading classes – there’s many posts who also address other issues.

Btw I really wanna see a team “fake portal bomb”.
So you bust in a portal in the middle of their formation, they all go “oh shi-” and spam their rings of warding, feedback bubbles, wells, meteor showers, frost fields and marks on it…
…And then the opponent simply runs in from the flank and all the nice AoE stuff is on cooldown.

HtFde.3856:

Aervius.2016:

I believe that all I’m reading is, “I don’t want to learn to how to adapt and overcome the battlefield conditions present, I want the Almight ArenaNet to righteously smite my enemies mobility advantage so that my inferior thinking can carry through another day.”

I then suggest you do take reading classes – there’s many posts who also address other issues.

lack of skill is the only issue, but you might not notice since you are biased

naphack.9346:

Btw I really wanna see a team “fake portal bomb”.
So you bust in a portal in the middle of their formation, they all go “oh shi-” and spam their rings of warding, feedback bubbles, wells, meteor showers, frost fields and marks on it…
…And then the opponent simply runs in from the flank and all the nice AoE stuff is on cooldown.

That sounds pretty hilarious, would need a suicidal mesmer though.

Personally I like portal bombs, one of the things which forces you to pay attention to your surroundings, if you do, you wipe them out, if you don’t, you die.
You also can’t just go through and stand there anymore, because then you die. And even if you do move, you might still die.

Portal bombs aren’t the “Press to win” button a lot of people seem to think it is, and add a fun aspect to WvW.
(See? I read some posts, and realised some people thought it wasn’t fun)

You folks seem to forget that not all Mesmers like to be handcuffed to a golem for a rather long amount of time. We do a portal, we have to watch for the CD fastened to a Golems side, we also have to lose a skill because of portal that could make us less squishy when jumped upon when we do indeed get to the battle field.

People treat us like taxi services at times “Portal here!”, like it’s our duty to ferry people around in some grand attempt to take a keep. Most people even if you put a portal below their feet and get behind the enemy lines in GV won’t use the portal and the heroic attempt to break stalemate means nothing!

Portals are not breaking WvW, if there was no culling issue people would still complain. The problem with WvW is that there’s no surprises or variety now.

Zergs are killing any tactical game play possible. I spent a lot of gold and time placing Sieges on DB friday night and BUILDING every single one with another Gandaran. The walls hit tier 3 and I thought it was safe to finally sleep. Oh how wrong I was… sieges despawned over time so that money I’d sunk in to prime real estate meant nothing. Portals bombs might mean a repair bill for you due to death but disappearing sieges in correct locations just ain’t gravy!

The only effective counter to portals is AoE but that has been nerfed to a maximum of 5 targets. Either make portal a maximum of 5 players or remove the AoE cap.

There is a reason there are choke points into the center of SM.
There is a reason that Golems move slowly.
There is a reason you can repair broken walls and doors.

The problem with portal is it circumvents much of the design of WvW.

The only effective counter to portals is AoE but that has been nerfed to a maximum of 5 targets. Either make portal a maximum of 5 players or remove the AoE cap.

I agree with limiting the number, it does not even need to be limited to 5, even scaling it to 10 or 15 will still be enough to prevent portal bombs from dominating so much.

reading through the posts, and trying to balance the pros and cons. my solotion to portals is this… that when the END portal is placed, it should sort of glow for a few seconds, to sort of stabilice untill you could use it. indicating a portal is opening, could also have a type of random timed lag transfer you kilck to portal, then a random timed bar hits for each and everyone and your frozen till you phased through the portal. some will pass through in a sec, while some will be delayed several secs

maybe this make them less extreme in their use, either way all can use them so

ShadowSoljer.6524:

HtFde.3856:

Aervius.2016:

I believe that all I’m reading is, “I don’t want to learn to how to adapt and overcome the battlefield conditions present, I want the Almight ArenaNet to righteously smite my enemies mobility advantage so that my inferior thinking can carry through another day.”

I then suggest you do take reading classes – there’s many posts who also address other issues.

lack of skill is the only issue, but you might not notice since you are biased

That is a killer argumentation you use and that means *you*’re wrong, else you would use a proper argumentation.

Unlimited portals allow larger groups to steamroll over a small team of defenders who have a chance to stall a bigger group if there were no portals. All portal countering mechanics require a minimum number of players to bomb the portal. If you have – like in the examle of bay defense I gave, 10 – 15 people inside the keep who also have to counter catapults and trebus set up inside the inner perimeter you can’t bring enough firepower onto the portal to subdue 30+ players.

You have enough to stop them coming through the cate in masses but while arrow carts and ballistae can change target instantly catapults cannot. And if you can subdue the portalled group you get crushed by those coming through the breach now that all weapons fire on the portal.

It’s not a matter of skill but a matter of numbers.

If portals were restricted to, say, 10 people you’d have a more manageable job with less people against an enemy 3 or 4 times more in numbers than you. Apparently you haven’t been in this situation a lot – how about switching to a lower tier server where you usually have one server that has 4x to 5x the WvW population of the other two combined?

I think the cap on AoE targets damaged needs to be removed. The culling issues makes portals a nightmare for some but zergs also use the AoE limitations to their advantage. I think servers would be more tactical if AoE limitations were removed.

HtFde.3856:

ShadowSoljer.6524:

HtFde.3856:

Aervius.2016:

I believe that all I’m reading is, “I don’t want to learn to how to adapt and overcome the battlefield conditions present, I want the Almight ArenaNet to righteously smite my enemies mobility advantage so that my inferior thinking can carry through another day.”

I then suggest you do take reading classes – there’s many posts who also address other issues.

lack of skill is the only issue, but you might not notice since you are biased

That is a killer argumentation you use and that means *you*’re wrong, else you would use a proper argumentation.

Unlimited portals allow larger groups to steamroll over a small team of defenders who have a chance to stall a bigger group if there were no portals. All portal countering mechanics require a minimum number of players to bomb the portal. If you have – like in the examle of bay defense I gave, 10 – 15 people inside the keep who also have to counter catapults and trebus set up inside the inner perimeter you can’t bring enough firepower onto the portal to subdue 30+ players.

You have enough to stop them coming through the cate in masses but while arrow carts and ballistae can change target instantly catapults cannot. And if you can subdue the portalled group you get crushed by those coming through the breach now that all weapons fire on the portal.

It’s not a matter of skill but a matter of numbers.

If portals were restricted to, say, 10 people you’d have a more manageable job with less people against an enemy 3 or 4 times more in numbers than you. Apparently you haven’t been in this situation a lot – how about switching to a lower tier server where you usually have one server that has 4x to 5x the WvW population of the other two combined?

Well placed, spread out siege? Put up CC on the portal? Kill the mesmer before he gets in?

But complaining is always easier then finding a counter.

Esoteric.5490:

There are a lot of counters to a portal. If the group you are portaling into has a higher level of coordination than you, you get nuked.

The convenient thing, it stacks you all up in one place where enemies can just pile on AoE after AoE. If your group isn’t organized coming out of a portal, you will die. Also, portals take 1 second to activate after the exit is placed, giving the enemy plenty of time to cast on top of it or guardian bubble or anything.

If you think portals are game breaking, maybe you should learn to counter a tactic before you decide it needs to be nerfed (which it already has been).

Time Warp only effects 5 people, golems can only move across a map with a series of mesmers portaling them (requiring coordination or they get left in an open field), portal has a longer cooldown, and heals/buffs only effect 5 players now so AoE will out damage almost any heal. It makes you spec for the situation and actually plan to layer skills and buffs on portal exit and place portals strategically rather than in the middle of an enemy force.

Sounds like you need to study up on some WvW tactics or get a more organized guild because groups that are portal bombing successfully are generally in VoIP.

Blame coordination, not rendering problems. Portals have been unsuccessful as often as they are successful in Tiers 1 and 2 for the past 6 weeks. I don’t know where you all have been.

this^^

i really hate seeing everything always dumbed down, to where people dont have to meet a challange. sorry but thats what this is.

Portals should be limited to 5 people per portal.

If you want to portal in 15 people, get 3 mesmers to coordinate. If you can’t get 3 mesmers to coordinate, then your server lacks the skill and organization it needs to portal 15 people.

Portaling 50 people because your server has 1 competent mesmer is what makes it overpowered.

so youre saying that two other servers cant kill one mesmer? wow. what does that make them then?

I´m not going to say anything about portal itself…

But the people using it, god kitten it.
You´d think portaling has become only mean of transportation for them. 10 people engaging a 3 man party…with a portal. Zerg attacking undefended holding, with a portal.
As far as i know anet hasn´t yet removed ability to walk, some people might need to be reminded.

Star.2037:

so youre saying that two other servers cant kill one mesmer? wow. what does that make them then?

To be fair, Star has a HUGE point here…. Mesmers are squishier than soggy bread. If you can’t kill a Mesmer before he/she gets to their target location then you deserve to be portal bombed. Mr ‘Organisation’ if you can’t coordinate three mesmers to portal in 15 then you don’t have skill needs to remember that a mesmer actually has to get through the enemy line.

Prestige, decoy and veil will give a mesmer 9 seconds of stealth, 12 if traited. 12 seconds of stealth will get any competent mesmer to their target location unless your playing a different game where we have stealth detection now.

Before someone embarrasses themselves, prestige is a weapon skill, so don’t go saying “lol noob that mesmer has three utility slots taken and won’t even have room for portal on their bar!!”

SteepledHat.1345:

Seems like a bunch of non mesmers here. The biggest issue in WvW is culling problems and thieves that exploit it. Portal is just an excuse for people to continue to hate on mes. It’s QQ like this that has crippled our class.

I love that you are commenting on other peoples ‘QQ’ while at the same time tossing in a QQ against thieves, it makes me laugh. Like mesmers do not exploit culling as much as thieves do, people are simply too busy looking for you among the clones to realize you have not appeared yet.

naphack.9346:

Btw I really wanna see a team “fake portal bomb”.
So you bust in a portal in the middle of their formation, they all go “oh shi-” and spam their rings of warding, feedback bubbles, wells, meteor showers, frost fields and marks on it…
…And then the opponent simply runs in from the flank and all the nice AoE stuff is on cooldown.

this happens already

It could be used for a maximum of 10 players.

Valik Shin.9027:

portal is not the root of cullin issue stealth is. i have never had problem with a portal causing it. only time i could say way something even close to that was when 100 people way pointed in SM on top of us when we already had 60 people in there but i would expect 160 people in one spot to cause some issues

I don’t think stealth is the root of culling, it’s a programming function. There are times when I can see, for instance, a ranger’s arrows shooting through the air but no ranger where they start. I’ll stand there for 5 seconds before the ranger starts to materialize. It doesn’t happen all the time like that, but it happens to some small degree a lot.

Stealth just delays the culling longer, while portal bombing slows it down because of the sudden mass numbers and the program struggles to keep up. Portal bombing is ok I guess, I mean it is defensible. The OP has a point in that it detracts from traditional roles of attack and defense, and can be a pain in the butt, but it’s not so overpowered as to make all your defenses futile.

From a defensive mindset it’s not as unsettling as a half dozen alpha’s and one omega knocking on your door. And by knocking I mean using the npc door guard’s head to smash through oak timbers like they were made of fizzle sticks. :P

at first i want to say i love Portal and the tactical aspects it adds to the gameplay.
A portal at the right time can change the whole situation and turn an already lost fight, you can put up a second line (flank) in an instance while you where pushed back and so on. Without Portal it would only be zerg vs. zerg head on the most aoe wins.

But I also recognice that some aspects of Portals are OP.
I dont think Portal bombs on its own are OP, but the possibility to drop the portal directly beneth the siege and destroy them even if you are heavily outnumberd in a suizide mission,
also Ports that allow raids to “bug” through closed walls and Doors. (on the other hand JPs should not been touched, because without the portals no one would even consider them as integrable part of WvW)

If I got to choose how to change the Portal, I would change 3 settings:
1. Portals can’t be used if a closed door/wall is between entrance/exit, cliffs etc. should still be allowed.
2. Portals can’t be laid down in a Range 600 arround Sieges.
3. When the Exit was laid dwon the Portal activates after 1 second for the mesmer (like now) but in addition it will take 4 more to be used by anyone else (so 5 seconds until the Zerg is portet).

I think this changes would nerf Portal to a tactical method that still can be used to Flank etc. but wont be as gamebreaking as it is now.

Mif.3471:

There is a reason there are choke points into the center of SM.
There is a reason that Golems move slowly.
There is a reason you can repair broken walls and doors.

The problem with portal is it circumvents much of the design of WvW.

I’d like to see all these people responding with “L2P” address the above points as they relate to portals please.

Portal is a bad skill. It is constantly used to justify other nerfs to Mesmer. Anet should just bite the bullet and restrict it to 5 people per portal and then balance the class accordingly.

Anet should go ahead and actually give counter-stealth skills, i.e. True Seeing/Heightened Senses/Detect Illusion or something like that. Portal attacks, imo, benefit too much from Anet’s awful stealth implementation.

Kurieg.4158:

Anet should go ahead and actually give counter-stealth skills, i.e. True Seeing/Heightened Senses/Detect Illusion or something like that. Portal attacks, imo, benefit too much from Anet’s awful stealth implementation.

I can agree with this. It seems sort of silly that there are no skills that can reveal an enemy in stealth. I also think when you hit someone with an attack (note: not AoE), but a physical projectile/melee hit, you should see damage numbers. They might be stealthed, but it doesn’t make them during into thin air and can’t be hit. If I hit an invisible person with a sword, it would still feel like hitting a person even if I couldn’t see them. That would be a fair implementation rather than swinging blindly even if you know you’re hitting them (e.g. when a thief is down and stealthed).

Limiting a portal to a certain number of players taking it would absolutely destroy any viability of the skill. Bottom line is that greater numbers will, most likely, defeat inferior numbers. Whether they portal bomb you or not, which I’ve previously gone over as being extremely counterable, you will lose to a greater force most of the time. The biggest issue with Portal is culling. ANet is trying to fix this issue and it is not a result of portals, it just tends to show the engine’s deficiencies more often. Stop trying to swing the nerf bat and actually adapt to a tactic for once.

Fair battles, or massive sieges being won/lost by portals is one thing, but to those saying portals are fine, consider another situation: you are trying to retake the entrance tower on some enemy borderlands, where your server controls nothing, you’re out-manned, and said tower is fortified like hell. So, when after an hour of fruitless skirmishes, you somehow finally get enough people to build a treb or two at greenvale to bombard the tower, and defend the narrow entrance to the supply camp. Guess what happens after 5 minutes? BAM, portal bomb by some mesmer who somehow got through. And no, you can in no way defend against it – you are spread out defending the camp, outnumbered and dead in 10 seconds.

Mirage.8345:

Mif.3471:

There is a reason there are choke points into the center of SM.
There is a reason that Golems move slowly.
There is a reason you can repair broken walls and doors.

The problem with portal is it circumvents much of the design of WvW.

I’d like to see all these people responding with “L2P” address the above points as they relate to portals please.

1) So we should all charge into the chokehold and get slaughtered hours on end until we eventually get tired/or break through. The portal is just one tactical way of getting past without the endless charge at ballistas.

2) So you can’t kill the golem on the move. Kill it when it’s at the gate when it has no reason to move. Not really ‘OP’ because it can move faster than intended. Although it wouldn’t bother me at all if Golems couldn’t port.

3) To hold enemies out obviously, but if a server went through the effort of breaking in, hiding a mesmer and then porting people in after you left, it is YOUR fault for allowing it. See the Mesmer, call it out, it’s dead. End of your worries to porting in. With out allowing people to port in then when an attack is still ongoing but the outer gate is repaired then the attackers just have another way of keeping a flow of supply/reinforcements in. With removing the ability to port onto/over the wall your basically saying that all sieges should end when the outer gate is repaired, even if the attackers has an large amount of forces inside still.

Esoteric.5490:

Limiting a portal to a certain number of players taking it would absolutely destroy any viability of the skill. Bottom line is that greater numbers will, most likely, defeat inferior numbers. Whether they portal bomb you or not, which I’ve previously gone over as being extremely counterable, you will lose to a greater force most of the time. The biggest issue with Portal is culling. ANet is trying to fix this issue and it is not a result of portals, it just tends to show the engine’s deficiencies more often. Stop trying to swing the nerf bat and actually adapt to a tactic for once.

This is where I disagree.
While it is true, larger numbers will most likely defeat smaller numbers, often times, that’s not the point at all.
If smaller numbers fight larger numbers, they do it for a reason.
Usually that reason is trying to stall for time.
Either they know, they will die and just try to outlive the next timer to gain points for the team or they wait for reinforcements but point is, they are all turtled up with siege, knockbacks, walls, traps and whatnot and try to stall the enemy at a choke point for as long as possible.

The portal bomb however destroys every attempt of stalling for time. It turns any long, drawn out battle into a five seconds fireworks show.
five seconds fireworks. Then the battle is decided.
No matter whether people are still alive or not, these 5 seconds decide the outcome of the battle.
So we got a tactic which gives the opponents 1 seconds to spot it, relay the message, react and prepare, while deciding the outcome of the battle in 5 seconds flat. There definitely needs to be some kind of tweak at the portal bomb which results in slightly longer preparation time for the defender.
Give the portal a 2.5 second cast time with a clearly visible animation which shows up no matter whether the mezz is stealthed or not.
Heck, let it be instant if must be… and increase the activation time to 2.5 seconds. almost the same.

Kurieg.4158:

Anet should go ahead and actually give counter-stealth skills, i.e. True Seeing/Heightened Senses/Detect Illusion or something like that. Portal attacks, imo, benefit too much from Anet’s awful stealth implementation.

This is something I do not understand about GW2. In GW1 no skill was left unchecked. I’m saying each skill had a skill that could negate it. Knockdown had balance stance type skills, then there were skills that removed stances. If you were fighting a hex heavy group you could make a build that was anti hex. I’m sure everyone gets what I’m saying.

None of that is in GW2, many things are left unchecked and unlike the original game. Everyone patiently waits for the developers to nerf or boost skills. Were as before it was more so up to the individual to intelligently create a counter build.

There should certainly be stealth detection and it should be given to every class in some way, since we can’t choose a secondary class to borrow skills from.

its just another dimension for game play, the more options an tools available seems great for the whole of the community ,

My proposed changes:

1) thieves get a new ’Detect stealthed player" ability. long cooldown, works like some of the temp powers tat just leaves a trail or somesuch, tempory map marker. helps with portal bombs and stealthed players. (gives thieves something “thievy” to do)

2) Portals are limited to twice the players going through as the AoE limit. Can be traited to increase, but increased capacity increases casting time. (trating for both AoE limit and Portal capacity)

3) Portals have easily differentiated exit and entrance colors. (you can at a glance tell if it’s an incoming portal or outgoing portal)

4) Mesmers can “traceback” other teams portals, an elite skill that lets a Mesmer switch a portal direction. Effectivly closes the portal for the bomber and lets the opossing team use the portal in he other direction for half the original portals capacity. (I’m less convinced on how to make this work in a balanced way, but welcome comments)

I play a level 80 Mesmer.

I deal with the portal skill in just one way: I don’t use it in WvW. Why? I just don’t find it fun. I don’t want to be reduced to a taxi service, and I don’t get any thrill out of exploiting server-side culling. The most fun and exciting battles that I’ve been a part of have not involved any portal usage by any side. I suppose, in a nutshell, I’m not so desperate to win that I’d make the game unfun for myself to do it.

Why don’t you just aoe the exit point. It defeats portals 3/4 times. I don’t see what’s so hard about this this.

ajm.2931:

My proposed changes:

1) thieves get a new ’Detect stealthed player" ability. long cooldown, works like some of the temp powers tat just leaves a trail or somesuch, tempory map marker. helps with portal bombs and stealthed players. (gives thieves something “thievy” to do)

2) Portals are limited to twice the players going through as the AoE limit. Can be traited to increase, but increased capacity increases casting time. (trating for both AoE limit and Portal capacity)

3) Portals have easily differentiated exit and entrance colors. (you can at a glance tell if it’s an incoming portal or outgoing portal)

4) Mesmers can “traceback” other teams portals, an elite skill that lets a Mesmer switch a portal direction. Effectivly closes the portal for the bomber and lets the opossing team use the portal in he other direction for half the original portals capacity. (I’m less convinced on how to make this work in a balanced way, but welcome comments)

Yay buff thieves, why not give the detect stealth players to the kitteny ranger that needs to track and hunt things?

ok now my opinion, i think portal is fine, as long as it used legitly. its an ability and paramount to mesmer, using it to move golems jsut means you need ot be aware of where they are. it does have a limited ranger afterall.

as for nonlegit portals, by this i mean idiotic hackers, it is game breaking, they use it to portal thier team from garrison straight into SM without taking walls down, THATS game breaking.

I disagree the portal is a useful tool and makes you look out for mesmers.

My guild uses portal bombs and we were up against another guild that uses portal bombs, it was very entertaining to see which one could pull off better attacks.

So I see no problem with the portal skill.

/signed

Portal as an idea is cool, and we’ve seen lots of strategic use of it, but.. push comes to shove, it makes fights end faster and more decisively, and it’s been months with no culling fix. It’s negative sum, it makes the aggressor feel nice for owning some face but makes the targets feel like kitten for dying without contest. Portal is so powerful that every night some poor mesmer gets the commanders hand stuck up their butt puppeting them, ‘cuz you know.. that’s pretty much how you win.

Yeah, let’s take portals away and force mesmers into feedbackbots or small skirmishes even further.

Should 1 and only 1 class have 1 non-ult ability that makes walls/gate useless? I think not. Portal turns 1 lone hacker into an all star for their team.
Its a game and about having fun. How fun is it every time you take a Keep/castle that 10+ players to be forced to spend 15-20 minutes it would take to sweep all the hiding spots 1 player can hide in(including enough time to counter mesmers stealth ability’s.) Anyone who says its not that hard to find messmers come to T1 and try and do less. You’ll watch your keeps turn back and be made a fool of when you claim cheats.

Anet could spend months and months of developer time closing all the wall hacks/climbs. Then spend more time writing better anti hack code. Then hope and pray they found all their holes to fix this one classes over powered ability. Or just adjust/change/nerf portal in one of the many ways that have been already suggested.

Limit portals to 5 people. Problem solved.

Jefzor.7145:

Limit portals to 5 people. Problem solved.

The people in that Mesmer’s party.. Still useful for moving teams around. All it means is for a zerg to move around they will need more mesmers and if they are committed enough to run around 10 mesmers simply for portals then good on them