Is portal stealing near enemy base when you have catapults and/or giants the most powerful strategy in the game?

Its a game ender for sure when your already ahead, and lock both of the portals.

Do the above, lock the flag, then conquer all open flags on the map because your opponent is sitting in his base.

With cata's it can be tight but not finish the game.

But with Giants, if you manage to cap lock a portal vs the enemy its very hard for them to make a comback.

Usually when giants start rolling out against you, it's going to be GG.  The final nail in the coffin.

Depends on the map a lot too. In Cataract, it's very easy to make this a game ender, but on maps like Prison, it's very hard to keep those flags under control, since it's so easy to move between them.

The thing about prison is that once the front line towers go down you're trapped defending your base because it's so open and exposed.  It's easy to keep those portals, but on the other hand, it's trivial for the other team to control the three flags in the middle of the map, ensuring their eventual victory.  Once you're actually able to steal those portals, your win is usually assured anyways on prison.  Cataract. though, is all about capturing the flanks.  The spawns take weird routes leading to blind spots in some of the lanes, which can make it easy for demigods to sneak up on you. 

On both of those maps, I cannot stress the importance of heavily upgrading your tower hit points and damage.  Keeping those towers up is top priority on those maps, because once they're down it's easy for the other team to lock you in a perpetual game of defense.

You cannot have giants before catapults so I disapprove of your usage of "and/or" in the title.

This is a very powerful strategy for sure, this is usually how i end my games. after about 5 minutes gametime i try to rob the enemy of their spawns, shifting the balance instantly. Even if they choose to recap them and defend, i just pick the other flags on the map meanwhile. more flags = win.

I think it is the most powerful strategy.  That is why I don't really like playing maps that allow this backdooring like Cataract.   I'm sure there are people who will like it for different strategies, but I prefer maps like Exile where you can't capture the portal. 

If this happens to you, how are you "ahead"?  And why aren't you doing it to your enemy?

The funny thing is that this is the strategy we used against the opponents in one map. However, it was our creeps (catas AND giants) from both of their portals attacking their citadel vs. 2 Rooks beating down on our citadel + however many of their catas made it through. The 2 Rooks won.

I'm almost certain we had the same Structure Health upgrades, though that could've made a difference.

tried this yesterday for the first time :p

It was a suicide run to lock the spawn at their citadel, but the win was worth it

It is extremely powerful and meant to be so. Cataract is the map where I see this the most. However, you can easily counter it by getting the portals back and locking them for one thing. The other thing you can do is do the same thing to them.

At some point, the game has to end. Without giants and catapults it would drag on too long.

The problem is when your team mates just don't understand the importance of this and ignore portal control. If you are one guy trying to secure 2 portals against 2 foes that are splitting their efforts and your team mate is off farming creeps like a dork or taking down some non critical structure at the moment, you will pull your hair out.

If I am securing one or more portals as Oak, I usually tell my team mate to go ninja theirs, to pull some heat off. However, a lot of people just dumb and think they can somehow overcome the creep waves even though at that point they can't.

So yeah, portal control late game is key, as it should be.

If you see them heading there, Teleport to it Lock it & Just stay guard around your crystal and move out when needed.

It's the most powerful and it's meant to be. You should NEVER let the ennemy take control of your base flags, NEVER.

exactly

We were ahead in levels and money but they got to the flags without us noticing due to the FOW making it hard to notice. 

We ended up doing it to the enemy too in order to win the game.  But I realized it was a mistake to let them do it to us first, twice. 

This happened to us on the map Mandala in a 2vs2 game. 

How are you supposed to keep your flags under control on such a large map with the FOW playing a factor and you don't have a lot of players to uncover most of the FOW naturally?

Yeah, it does easily occur on Mandala compared to other maps, simply because the portals are so far away from your citadel, and the defenses for your portals are so sparsely distributed.

But also, Mandala is a 4 v 4 map. You're going to be too thinly spread out to easily respond to arising situations like this if you're only playing 2 v 2.

Aside from that, you can see if someone is capturing your portal flag at any time, as your flag does have a small radius of sight. My only suggestion is to keep tabs on your base either through your minimap or through zooming out, have teleportation scrolls on you, use capture locks, and repel the invaders.

taking someones portals takes a huge drive or horrible map control on the team whose portal got stolen. So yeah it can be a game ender, cause its damn hard to pull off vs a good team.

I am gonna say the obvious best strategy depriving war points that wins the game I had a friends stuck at 2 war rank. It was not pretty.

Basic stratagy that I always inform my teammates of on Cataract is to destroy the towers leading up to the enemy portals as soon as they're capable to, and then just sit back and get the warscore up. As soon as giants are unlocked, go capping those portals. If the opponents try to lock the flags, then you just wait it out. If they keep locking them as soon as they unlock, they're probably concentrating all their forces on that one portal. Warp over to the other side, cap and lock that, and then move back to the original portal and take that one while they deal with the other one.

I actually love it when someone starts to take my base portal flag. Generally, they have yet to destroy all towers near the flag, and are down on health because of their run through. I have teleport scrolls waiting for such an occasion. It's a lot of fun to let them take the flag (or start to), then teleport into their exit lane, kill them (which is easier since you have surprise, towers and a Health advantage), then retake the flag.

Net yourself a demi kill, if you're lucky you'll get to take out a wave of creeps while you're retaking your flag, giving you XP as well.

It's fine, just keep an eye on it.

I wonder if I were a victim to you. When my team was ahead, I thought I would end the game by stealing the portals with my sedna general. I let my minions attack the creeps while I healed myself through their towers and stealing the portal. The problems was that I was pretty much a free kill without my minions, all by myself in their base. The beast was coming closer to me and I just couldn't run away.... it was horrible.

Very powerful, especially with flag locks. I remember they were in our base and doing some decent damage. I slipped out, grabbed their portals, and it was GG before they could get back to their base.