Guild Wars 2

PHANTASMAL BOULDER

• Cast-time: 1 second
• Recharge: 50 seconds
• Phantasm. Conjure a large Phantasmal Boulder that falls from the sky onto target location and knocks foes back where it lands.
• Damage: 400
• Knock-back: 240
• Radius: 180
• Range: 900
• Combo Finisher: Blast
  • PvE HP: 19,943
  • PvP HP: 8,354
  • Animation details a boulder quickly constructing itself from nothing in mid-air above the point at which it is about to drop. Hang-time and falling skill animation are identical—but activate twice as quickly—as Elementalist’s [Dragon’s Tooth].

ROLL BOULDER (Phantasmal Boulder chain skill)

• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 0
• Command your boulder to roll in target direction, knocking down foes in its path. Phantasmal Boulder shatters upon completing this command.
• Damage: 300
• Knock-down: 2 seconds
• Roll distance: 900
  • Upon using this skill, Phantasmal Boulder gains 3 seconds of stability.
  • Upon using this skill, Phantasmal Boulder will spin quickly in place for a ½ second in order to show that it is about to roll.

THIS THREAD SERVES THREE MAIN PURPOSES:
first to say that this game needs more player-available skills that pose environmental hazards on the battlefield; second to say that summons need more active skills and that said active skills should typically take the form of player-directed line attacks; and thirdly (also most optionally because ANet isn’t really cool enough to do something like this; I’ll leave a related infographic at the bottom of this post anyway) to say that Phantasms are pretty bunk due to their fire-and-forget nature and making them more into active Mesmer-buddy summons is perhaps the biggest way to really make Mesmer a truly engaging class (for both Mesmers and their opponents) with more active combat options to promote more interesting fights.

ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARDS AND TERRAIN SHIFTING
This game needs them. Environmental hazards and terrain shifts are effectively one-time-use pets that directly and actively change the flow of a battle before leaving the field. Things such as rolling boulders, a wall of stones, a solid cylinder (that maybe could tip and fall in a certain direction to damage and launch foes while also forming a wall) are things that directly interrupt a battle and may even pose line-of-sight problems for opponents while providing a quick haven for allies.

With respect to moving environmental hazards, the only real options you have are thing that roll or leap in a line, but even so, such a thing could quickly turn the tide or change the dynamic of a fight by breaking up combat. This sort of thing is very viable within the GW2 engine. The only issue is creating the command to allow a player to directly target the movement of a summon.

Regarding terrain shifting, employing the terrain to take away an enemy’s advantages (i.e. fighting in tight spaces or “line-of-sighting” an opponent by corner-hugging or dancing around a stump/tree/rock) is something that always changes combat and can create openings for players to counterattack or set up for a powerful combo. The idea of terrain shifting would be to give a player ability to create that solid stump or wall in the open plains via a skill. I’m not sure how viable this idea is within the GW2 engine, but it is worth a thought.

SUMMONS WITH TARGETABLE ABILITIES
This needs to be a thing. This absolutely must be a thing. Having summons be outside of a player’s control denies that player the ability to truly anticipate and outplay an opponent. Instead a player using summons has to rely on awkward, internal, skill-specific attack queues and the sometimes sketchy pathing abilities of single-target summons. At this point, I’ll refer to the infographic about Phantasms that I attached to the post above this one. Making summons have AoE-targeted or directionally targeted skills would open a lot of doors for players to make interesting plays based on the flow of a battle.

The only issue for this is getting the player to be able to target a summon’s movement. Doing an AoE-targeted attack might be simple enough, but for something like a line attack (a type of attack of which there needs to be SO MUCH more in this game), the command would have to either manifest itself as a directional target layout pointing out of the summon (ala the Warrior’s [Whirling Attack] that follows the player’s cursor) or as an AoE target circle—the center focus of which would be the summon’s final stopping point during its attack (the effective range of placing such a circle would be tied to the summon and not to the player).

Reserved for future posts

So… I’m guessing it’s a skill?

TehPwnerer.7215:

So… I’m guessing it’s a skill?

It’s a skill and a petition for more intuitive and battleground-shaping summon abilities.

So… You want more elementalists?