Guild Wars 2

With the latest patch, summoning phantasms must now be line-of-sight of target and are now considered normal attacks. This hinders the mesmer’s performance in both providing extra damage and our core mechanic: shattering; it also requires the mesmer players to be more conservative of when to use a phantasm. If this is intended, then here’s a idea of making phantasms useful but not overpowered: Allow only 1 phantasm out at a time but with several criteria:

1a) It DOES NOT count towards our illusion counter (basically having 3 clones + 1 phantasm max) and stays spawned until one of the following conditions is met:

*target is defeated
*mesmer is defeated
*replaced by a newer phantasm (whether same or different one)
*killed by conditional damage (see next bullet).

1b) Since it won’t count with our illusion counter, traits that give extra #% to damage, defense, speed, etc. SHOULD NOT be applied with the phantasm (to prevent overpowering). If the opponent kills the phantasm via condition damage, there is only one trait (Confusing Combatants) that applies to phantasm and punishes the opponent. You can even make that trait only affecting clones (much like Crippling Dissipation and Debilitating Dissipation).

2) Due to its very low health, phantasm should be immune to direct damage, BUT is susceptible to conditions/condition damages and controls. Mesmer’s vitality is not derived to illusions (but toughness is), so if mesmers want the phantasm to stay alive longer (especially during fights that have lots of AoE conditions), they will need to spec into Inspiration or Chaos trait to help give the phantasm more health or more toughness. Since there are plenty of conditions, especially bleed, poison, and burning, that other professions can deal (and mesmers can deal bleed/confusion/burn), it won’t make that one phantasm invincible.

3) SHOULD NOT be counted toward Shattering skills. With only one phantasm as our extra dps/damage-over-time assistance, it would be overpowered if it’s included.

This idea with the three criteria can make that one phantasm a powerhouse, yet can easily be defeated with conditional damages or killing the mesmer. It will be gone when the target is defeated so it still needs to be recast when fighting another target.

Now, this is just one idea and I hope I have covered most of the issues regarding about phantasms in general. Another suggestion is having the same (or similar) idea above, BUT make that 1 phantasm as our pet. I wouldn’t mind having one running/walking around with me. ^^

I’m sure others have similar or even better suggestions. I don’t often post, but with this latest patch, it really hinders mesmer’s performance for our phantasms.

P.S. – Please also fix the other mesmer traits related to phantasm (i.e. – Phantasmal Fury, Vengeful Images, Phantasmal Healing, etc.).

Although it’s a different suggestion, I’ll post it in this thread since I agree that phantasms and F1-4 are both core mechanics of the Mesmer:

Right now mesmers can either focus on phantasms or shattering – so either you shatter your phantasms right away (maybe wait for one attack) or you avoid shattering your clones most of the time.

Why not change the idea of phantasm altogether.
(I know this would require a lot of tweaking numbers, even changing skills/traits)
Let’s take the greatsword as an example:
Using your phantasmal berserker skill will turn you and all your currently summoned clones into a phantasmal berserker, perform his attack (the berserker whirl) and return you and all clones to their original form afterwards.
This would open up so much more possibilities to build your class, you can still focus your traits on either shattering or dealing damage with your “phantasmal form” but getting a bit of both would become viable as well.

PS: I’m sorry about not posting this in a new thread, but when I read “… here’s an idea of making phantasms useful but not overpowered”
I felt like I had to post this in here >.>

I made the topic thread open for others to bring ideas to the table of having phantasms do something different. I figured that I’ll start an idea that I thought of and then hopefully others may like to add their own ideas.

My Phantasm suggestions would do more to enhance quality of life and balancing efforts while bringing phantasms more into line with the apparent dev vision for Mesmer:
Right now our phantasms are treated as only attacks, but our group utilities are tied to their presence, I want to fix this with the following changes

1 – make our utility spells “unlockable secondaries” (think focus 4 pull attack) that are made available after a phantasm is cast, but exist independently of the phantasm. (phantasm dodge/blind/block will no longer utterly gut group utility)

2 – Make our phantasms persist for only one attack (the fact they persist after the first attack, and that there can be more than one up, is unbalanced in that it scales ridiculously —- this leads to forum crying and frustrated rage quitting)

3 – compensate for the above by de-coupling the phantasm count from our clone-count and shatter mechanics, and making them untargetable/invulnerable to guarantee the first attack hits. (provided the mesmer themself is not blind, the target does not dodge or become invulnerable)

Those changes would bring phantasms into line with the way devs described them in this recent patch while reversing the evisceration of our group utilities and putting an end to “phantasm army” (which if you track the patch notes devs obviously don’t want) once and for all.

Additionally, I don’t think our clone mechanic when it comes to shatters is in good shape right now.
As encounters scale, our clones become increasingly useless. They’re supposed to be a source of AOE but die a fraction of a second after spawning when they’re really needed on “aoe packs” in pve.
I’d like to see our clone-to-shatter mechanic changed thusly:
1 – our clones still fill our “dot bar” on summon, but no longer empty when they are killed by any means other than shatter.

2 – “shatter” gets transformed into a 3-pulse aoe radiating from the current target. (Shatter STILL kills all active clones, so the rate at which you spawn and shatter clones would remain un-changed)

3 – Any shatter will still kill all active clones, so the rate at which you spawn and shatter clones will remain unchanged.

The effects of this will be to make the performance of shatters more consistent with event scaling. It would be a huge QOL improvement in general while also providing more consistent results for the balancing of mesmer. (As of now they seem to be always assuming all 3 clones survive and make it in to shatter, which is unreasonable in the most important circumstances.)