Guild Wars 2

Something that would mesmer more skillful, enjoyable to play and allow for a higher skill ceiling is ground targeted phantasms. Phantasms and phantasm builds have always been “bad” throughout the game’s lifespan. They are way too unreliable, fighting a phantasm build feels cheesy in 1v1 and useless in a team. All of them would still keep their appropriate range and require you to have a target.

These is my suggestion that in my opinion would improve mesmer alot, on all builds:

- Phantasmal Warden ground targeted allows a choice between a projectile defense and whirl finisher on you, or an Aoe attack depending on where you place it.

- Phantasmal Zerker can be positioned smartly as a whirl finisher and positioned in a way so that it hits more enemies instead of spawning randomly. This increases the skill on this ability. The way it would work is that you would place it on a location, then you would direct its spin like greatsword #3 on warrior. So you place it, then choose the direction of the attack.

- Phantasmal Swordsman is a single target phantasm, but by making it ground-targeted you can position it in a way so that it hopefully doesn’t die instantly. Also, the leap finisher can be positioned in a smart way.

- Phantasmal Mage, Warlock, and Duelist are also single target skills but with ground-targeting they could be positioned smartly on for example a rock or a high-ground to make them live longer, thus increasing the skill on these abilities.

- Phantasmal Disenchanter can also be positioned in a clever location to keep it from getting wrecked by cleave. Phantasmal Defender could be positioned close to a teammate that needs it. This would improve these unused utilities for good mesmers who play smart- a more fun buff than simply increasing the HP stat.

Since i would love if arenanet read this and considered it, i will make a short version:

TL;DR
Ground-targeting on phantasms would vastly increase skillcap on all mesmer weapons and builds by allowing clever positioning of the phantasms. This would make mesmer more fun to play, more fun to play against and would allow a good mesmer to shine as opposed to the class being pushed towards “fire and forget”. All in all an awesome and skillful change to mesmer that is more fun than simply buffing or nerfing numbers.

Thank you. =)