Right now, to my knowledge, Mesmer illusions borrow from the Mesmer’s armor, power, precision, critical damage and healing. Here’s my source for this info: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusion
Now, I think most people agree that Mesmer illusions are really strong, but pretty squishy, generally. So I was really trying to think of a selfish solution to my problem with my build that is caused by my phantasms dying too easily. My phantasms do lots of defensive things for me like granting regeneration, or reflecting projectiles. I’m not a damage-based Mesmer, but neither am a bunker Mesmer, just to give some context. So the solution that I thought might be cool is this:
Phantasms and clones borrow all of your stats, but at a reduced percentage. So like, they would still borrow power, precision, crit etc from the Mesmer, but instead of taking ALL the Mesmer’s crit , they would only take maybe 50 of it. Same idea with power and other stats.
What this would do to some of the common builds:
1) your common burst shatter builds (they typically allow the phantasm to do one attack, then shatter it at the end for burst, combined with other skills) would lose some of that initial burst, which is good because this is the really OP build that honestly needs to be toned down.
2) impossible to kill “legion” builds based around phantasm uptime would not have the same sustained damage (power is now converted at a 100% ratio to illusions. I’m suggesting they only get 50% of that, so they would effectively do half their current damage), but they would also borrow vitality, so they would live longer and synergize better with all the traits you can get.
3) The condition Mesmer who loves making illusions crit to stack bleeds would be simultaneously buffed/nerfed. He would not see as many crits, or as high of bleeds, but since illusions would be borrowing his vitality, they would have better survivability and would offer more sustained damage.
I really think this idea might help to tone down some of the ultra powerful shatter burst specs, and also really help poor Mesmers out in PvE where we really need it. The key difference with my suggestion and the way things work right now is that illusions do not borrow our vitality. They die too easily. I am more than willing to sacrifice ~50% illusion damage for a better uptime.
To anyone who will rage and say we can’t nerf Mesmer, think of it this way: your damage won’t necessarily decrease, it’ll just be distributed differently. So instead of all that cheesy burst up front, your illusions will live longer and will give better sustained damage. I don’t think this is a nerf, just a change-up.
To anyone who will rage that we can’t make illusions more tanky for reasons X or Y: realize that this suggestion would nearly half the illusion’s damage. It’ll make it a bit more important to focus down the real Mesmer, which I believe is how things were meant to be with the class anyway.
Please, any opinions or discussion on this are more than welcome.
Temariah Dawnsong – “A new dawn is coming; sieze the day.”
Leader of The Harbingers of Serendipity [LIFE] : Fort Aspenwood