Sorry to make this post here, but I was typing out a post in the official thread and posted it only to find that the window closed while I was typing out the post.
What I was wanting to say is that I have messed around with the initial attacks on phantasm summoning skills today, mostly the ones on torch and pistol, and I feel that while the torch phantasms initial hit lines up well with how the weapon plays, applying meaningful stacks of burning to targets while dealing a low damage hit makes since for torch as it is a mainly utility and stealth weapon with burning as its main damaging condi. All in all well thought out and a decent exchange for the attack revealing you on phantasm cast.
The pistols initial attack however feels wrong to me. Pistol is a weapon which plays well with any sort of build, power condi or hybrid (pending on trait selections) and on a whole is a very offensive weapon, with the stun/daze/blind/confusion on the 5 skill and high power damage on the phantasm, both skills having access to bleeding through traits. However the attack added to the pistol phantasm deals a almost meaningless amount of power damage and applies a cripple to one enemy, which always felt like more of a greatsword/phantasmal berserker thing (cripple through traits/baseline cripple on the phantasmal berserkers attack) so it feels like it doesn’t fit in well with the weapon, as well as revealing you and only applying a small amount of cripple.
I would feel better about the pistol phantasms initial attack if it was more inline with how the weapon functions normally, being something like 1-2 stacks of bleeding or another damaging condi or perhaps maintaining the slow bullet but being a daze instead, maintaining pistol as a rupt weapon. A slightly higher baseline damage for the skill would also feel more meaningfull, as it is a weapon that functions very strongly with power damage as well as condi. But not to the extent that the pistol phantasms damage needs to be nerfed.
On a whole however, I like the way that anet is going with these attacks, though being revealed on phantasm cast is a little odd and takes a bit to get used to, perhaps it would feel more balanced if the hit that revealed you was more than a few hundred damage tops, and I feel like something like this should be added to the other Mesmer weapons phantasm attacks, for instance making a crippling attack on greatsword phant, a slow attack on shield phant, ect.