Dodging Illusions
That’s actually a pretty neat idea. I’m not sure whether it would be particularly balanced or not, but the idea is sweet.
It would bring more skill into keeping illusions alive which I can only approve of. In terms of balance I think it would make Mesmers in PvP a little too ridiculous. The purpose of illusions in sPvP isn’t necessarily to fool the enemy so much as to punish them for not doing anything about it. An enemy can chase you and ignore your illusions all day long but if you have phantasms going to town on them they won’t last long. And if you’re constantly producing clones they can’t know for sure.
The skill there is actually the reverse of what you say. It’s on the Mesmer to know if the enemy knows which one you are, and if it doesn’t, then YOU have to act like a clone. It’s a really interesting and complex meta game involved in dueling. Especially since a lot of peoples solution to this is just to smash all the clones they can find, and every swing on a clone is a swing not on you and as such pressure relieved.
I know the tricks for PvP to fool players, and it is enjoyable at times, but having them all dodge would not detract from that in the slightest and would actually add another layer to it all.
I think it would be far too imbalanced. You’d just act exactly how a clone would act, wait for them to attack, dodge. Doesn’t matter if they went for you or your clone, you dodge. Suddenly they’re down to half health and haven’t touched you.
Not even starting on how brutal it would be if you could keep your phantasms alive for an additional 2-3 seconds with dodge timings due to their attack timings.
What is a Mesmer who is pretending to be a Clone and with, presumably, 3 Clones already out going to do in the way of damage?
If someone is down to half health by the time they find the real Mesmer, then they’ve been looking for so long that they probably deserve to lose the fight because they have already been out-played.
The mesmer does a LOT of damage with their auto attack abilities, especially a condition damage based one. The longer your illusions stay alive the more desirable condition damage would be, in addition. You throw in some conditions on death and you get to a point where the enemy can’t afford to attack you and just has to run away.
As I said, it’s a really neat idea but I don’t think it could ever be balanced.
Interesting idea, but it would really mess with phantasm attack timings – what happens when you dodge as they’re about to attack? Presumably they’d drop their attack and dodge which would often be undesirable.
It would also really screw focus Mesmers, as the warden would most likely dodge out of range and spend the rest of the fight doing nothing.