Guild Wars 2

I know that Illusionary Persona can greatly increase your Mind Wrack damage. But it seems to me that the damage comparisons (e.g. here) assume that all the clones hit, including yourself.

If I understand the math correctly, there is no damage increase with IP if you keep your distance from the target when using Mind Wrack. Is this correct, or am I overlooking something?

From my understanding, for the clone damage it does not matter if you have the trait IP or not.

Depending on the number of clones shattered, the individual clone damage gets reduced. But since shattering 3 clones still does more damage than shattering two, you still want to shatter more.
F.e. Shattering 3 clones: Each clone does 1500 damage; so 4500 in total.
Shattering 2 clones. Each clone does 1700 damage; so 3400 in total.

The illusionary persona damage is calculated separately. It is equivalently, if you would have just shatter 1 clones (f.e. dealing 1850 damage).

In my opinion down to the mathematics they would hit around the same amount if (xmesmer) was hitting from far away. Although for all intensive purposes it really comes down to play style as I find for myself to move from IP to just a usual shatter takes some adjustment.

Although IP persona is useful in the sense that it provides a strong nuke, and it is what mesmers excel at with a iZerker, 2, Blink, Dodge F1 rotation for example.

IP is also important so that you can instantly F4 when you’re in trouble.

You are correct – the scaling on Mind wrack stops at the third clone to shatter, whether that is actually a clone or you, doesn’t matter. that said, a two clone +IP shatter vs a 3 clone shatter do the same damage if they all strike at the same time.

The part that is difficult with the mesmers shatter damage is that to get the extra damage, all the clones need to pop together, and often there will be a little running involved for the clones, and that can remove the bonus of clones shattering together

Besides extra damage(which isn’t there always but when you throw a mirror blade into the guys face from right in front of him is nice)
You also have an instant daze around you which allows you to interrupt a heartseeker for example instead of using diversion and hoping it’ll come to the thief just about as he was gonna hit you with heartseeker.
Also you get 1 more second of distortion. Also allows you to distort with no clones up which can help you a lot in a lot of different cases.

Hamster.4861:

You are correct – the scaling on Mind wrack stops at the third clone to shatter, whether that is actually a clone or you, doesn’t matter. that said, a two clone +IP shatter vs a 3 clone shatter do the same damage if they all strike at the same time.

This is absolutely incorrect. IP works completely differently, and that’s what makes it so strong.

Say you do a 2 clone shatter. Each clone will do X damage. Now, you do a 2 clone shatter with IP. Each clone still does X damage, but now your IP also does X damage. This means that in a 1 clone shatter, IP doubles the damage, a 2 clone with IP is 1.5x the damage, and a 3 clone with ip is 1.3x the damage.

The reason IP is so strong with mind wrack is that it doesn’t apply the ‘next clone’ scaling, it simply adds on an additional packet of damage without lowering it. Basically, a 1 clone shatter with IP does roughly the same damage as a 3 clone shatter without IP.