Guild Wars 2

Why is Phantasmal Strength found on inspirations?

Phantasmal Strength is an increased damage skill and yet it is on a trait that is primarily about defense and healing.

Short answer: Because Anet hates Mesmers.

This universal truth is in play throughout all mesmer related issues.

Well Inspiration is the Phantasm themed trait line, so that’s probably why it’s there. All the Minor traits in each line are actually grouped together well – it’s when you start looking at the major traits where things begin to get a little…..non-thematic.

not really. ihave been asking myself too why it is not in a different traitline.lots of our traits seem to be kinda weird arranged preventing many builds form actually happening. i dont think inspiration is the right trait line for phantasmal strength and ross…i feel u. i feel devs play spvp vs good mesmers too often and balance around their 1v1 experiances instead of seeing the bigger picture.
thats why they never understood why the glam nerf pretty much destroyed the wvw mes and every single patch since felt like another slap in the face. maybe rearranging and reworking traits and traitlines could fix our broken class with uncountable bugs…

Simonoly.4352:

Well Inspiration is the Phantasm themed trait line, so that’s probably why it’s there. All the Minor traits in each line are actually grouped together well – it’s when you start looking at the major traits where things begin to get a little…..non-thematic.

Inspiration is not the phantasm themed trait line. It’s the healing/support trait line. Phantasm traits are spread throughout multiple trait lines, just as clone traits are.

8/13 of Inspiration’s major traits are purely defensive and centered around healing, condition cleansing, or projectile reflection. The rest are cooldown reduction traits or for increasing your own phantasms’ survivability. Phantasmal Strength does not fit the defensive focus of the Inspiration trait line whatsoever. It’s completely out of place.

Imagine for a moment if all 12 traits in Domination where to directly a) increase raw damage, probably based on Phantasms or b) increase the power of binary conditions.

But, important, imagine this with the context that there would be none of these traits outside of Domination.

That is a very good balance model, but I wonder whether people would like it. It means that with 6 points you’re “done” with whatever you want to do primarily. The other 8 points you can use however you want, but they’re not going to be able to boost whatever you selected any further.

I imagine the logic is that anyone going that deep into the Healing/Vitality line will want to keep up their DPS somehow.

If you’re speccing into defensive traits it’s likely you’re more interested in sustained pressure than pure burst damage, so giving you that extra DPS in the form of a phantasm buff isn’t unreasonable.

ASP.8093:

I imagine the logic is that anyone going that deep into the Healing/Vitality line will want to keep up their DPS somehow.

If you’re speccing into defensive traits it’s likely you’re more interested in sustained pressure than pure burst damage, so giving you that extra DPS in the form of a phantasm buff isn’t unreasonable.

Guardian’s Honor 3rd MT: increase dmg when endurance is not full
Thief’s Acro 3rd MT: increase damage when endurance is not full
Ele’s Water Magic 3rd MT: increase damage for each boon on you
Engi’s Alchemy 3rd MT: increase damage for each boon on you

See the pattern?

Interesting how you look at it.

Mesmer is my 2nd “main”, with ranger being my first, and this is actually something I LIKED about the mesmer. When you’re building builds on a ranger is all pretty straightward, with limited flexibility. If you want to use X, you will take this traitline no questions asked. If you want Y you will take these traits.

Mesmer, however, is different. If you want to play a phantasm spec there are at least 2 almost completely different trait setups you can have. The same goes for shatter specs where you find shatter traits in multiple lines… I liked the way the mesmer traits were kinda mish mashed together because it meant you werent nessesarily locked into taking one specific line to make something work but rather could mix things up and create something different even within the same headline (eg Phantasm Mesmer).