Guild Wars 2

Current Functionality:
“Gives allies Illusion of Life at the target location, allowing them to get up from downed state and keep fighting. Fully revives allies if they kill a foe.”

Generally resurrection skills are only worth equipping for long boss fights where there is nothing for players to rally on; which makes this particular utility skill very useless. I have literally never used it or seen it used.

In fact the ONLY time I ever have my group equip a resurrection skill are for the boss fights in Fractals such as the Molten Boss and Mai Trin where the shockwaves and barrage phase make manual resurrection a bad idea.

This skill is extremely badly balanced; other classes have not only AOE rezzes but also grant buffs, have passive effects, etc.

In the very least please remove the requirement to kill a foe. If not then please consider balancing this skill in other ways. Have it give better buffs then other rezzes, give it a passive effect that makes it worth using over mantras or signets; ; give targets clones to increase their survival; and/or lower the cool down.

Resurrection skills as a whole are very rarely used in PvE, as getting downed is almost always an avoidable mistake.

Illusion of life is a PvP skill, and an incredibly strong one at that. It’s fine as is.

You also have to consider that this skill is usable in PvP, and there I would say it’s quite balanced. Reviving up to 5 allies instantly is a big deal and easily turns the tide of a fight. I do, however, see how this skill could be a lot less useful in PvE but I don’t think it needs to be changed because of that.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Illusion of life is a PvP skill, and an incredibly strong one at that. It’s fine as is.

It is?
That means there are people using it?

I can think of situations when to use it but aren’t resurrection skills of every other class much better?

The Wiki says:

Bug: Rallying causes those under the effects of Illusion of Life to become downed. This does not apply in Structured PvP.

In WvW, assuming I cast Illusion of Life on pile of 5 downed allies nearby and they manage to defeat 1 enemy within next 15 sedonds, will just the one ally making the stomp get fully revived while the other 4 go back to downed with further downed penalty?

I think there are some good uses in mass-combat in WvW, but the issue is that it casts quite long for a temporary skill. If it were instant…

LunarNacht.8913:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Illusion of life is a PvP skill, and an incredibly strong one at that. It’s fine as is.

It is?
That means there are people using it?

I can think of situations when to use it but aren’t resurrection skills of every other class much better?

The only other res skills you’ll typically see brought in a tPvP game is the ranger’s elite spirit or (sometimes, not always) the warrior banner. These skills are game changers in team fights, so it’s not really a surprise at all that IoL is very potent in that game mode.

I’ve run it for my fair share, and honestly almost every time that I use it is during a close fight where my team has a good shot of getting a down. If nothing else, it gives you 15s of an extra person fighting that you didn’t have before. A shatter mes doesn’t really have to give anything up to work it into their utilities either.

LunarNacht.8913:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Illusion of life is a PvP skill, and an incredibly strong one at that. It’s fine as is.

It is?
That means there are people using it?

I can think of situations when to use it but aren’t resurrection skills of every other class much better?

The resurrection skills of every other class are worse. Every other class has limitations such as up to 3x longer cast times, smaller radius, no radius at all (sigils target) higher cooldowns, taking an elite slot, or some combination of all of those.

In a fight, this skill won’t make a difference if your team is getting destroyed, but if the fight is close, they’ve got 1 person down maybe, and your team needs a bit of a boost, this skill will win fights every time.

the cast time is rly rly low , and 15 seconds r soo much, its pretty awesome balanced

and the getting downed in pve/wvw is a bug i think?

I consider it a better version of the warrior’s downed skill Vengeance. Here’s why:

1.) Affects multiple allies
2.) 100% chance to remove the buff (and therefore fully revive the player) without needing to trait for it
3.) Returns allies to the downed state rather than kill them if they are unable to kill something themselves

Admittedly, it’s been a long, long time since I’ve used the skill (over a year!) so I might be wrong about that last point.

its true as long as the players arent on that red downed state zone in wich they instantly die^

used it on my shatter build alongside decoy and blink today seveal times(tpvp) it works wonders

Keyce.8137:

I consider it a better version of the warrior’s downed skill Vengeance. Here’s why:

1.) Affects multiple allies
2.) 100% chance to remove the buff (and therefore fully revive the player) without needing to trait for it
3.) Returns allies to the downed state rather than kill them if they are unable to kill something themselves

Admittedly, it’s been a long, long time since I’ve used the skill (over a year!) so I might be wrong about that last point.

Yeah, that’s accurate. It’s also got a nice long 900 base range, traitable to 1200, and you can trait it for 20% cooldowns too.

Using the warrior downed skill is the worst argument you could have made. The Warrior utility res is an AOE ressurection but other benefits as well, such as aoe buffs

Emissary Vex.5690:

Using the warrior downed skill is the worst argument you could have made. The Warrior utility res is an AOE ressurection but other benefits as well, such as aoe buffs

Except it’s not a utility. It’s an elite, with an extremely long cooldown.

I’m not sure why you guys keep thinking Illusion of life is better. Sure it has a faster cast time and slightly shorter CD then the others but first of all half the the time it doesn’t rez the players after rallying.

Secondly and most importantly all other rez skills don’t re-down the player if they don’t kill something. They are just rezed. That is prob why the CD is SLIGHTLY lower then most and the short cast time.

zexion.5842:

I’m not sure why you guys keep thinking Illusion of life is better. Sure it has a faster cast time and slightly shorter CD then the others but first of all half the the time it doesn’t rez the players after rallying.

Secondly and most importantly all other rez skills don’t re-down the player if they don’t kill something. They are just rezed. That is prob why the CD is SLIGHTLY lower then most and the short cast time.

If you’re using Illusion of Life after your team got rolled, you’re doing it wrong. Otherwise it completely turns around fights.

Also I did a little check on other classes that have utilities (not elites) that revive and ours is easily the best. It revives multiple allies with a 1 second cast time and the main part is that we don’t give up anything crucial to have it other classes (besides Guardian probably) have to build around having a revival utility or they lose out on a much needed defensive/offensive skill. Then on top of that besides the Ranger revive (that you can only use on one person and makes your pet immobile and useless) the cooldown of other revives is 20-55 seconds longer than ours which is a big deal. Not to even mention the 3 second cast time for all of them which make them pretty much useless in any competitive situation.

At the very least, Illusion of Life will allow party members in a dungeon (lets say Arah, against Lupi) to get back up and either try to burst him down in the about fifteen seconds they have on their feet, OR it allows them to run out of the boss room, fall back to the downed state, and revive themselves and each other.

Since Lupi won’t follow them out of his room, they are fairly safe from harm.