I have the same problem.
And worse of it, you can damage the portal without the pre-event (portal spikes) with the skyscale attack to trigger the portal guardian instantly. People who don't need the Realm Portal Spiker anymore or who don't care about it damage the portal with skyscale and as a result I have had it multiple times that I didn't even get 1 portal spike, because this event phase was skipped.
It is so awful! I don't wanna hate on other players ruining events.
Please fix this, Anet!