Guild Wars 2

I am trying to understand the point of having 1 trait and 1 signet that both add 20% or 50% respectively to the health pools of phantasms.

The part I am trying to understand is this: Was the phantasm spec never intended for pvp? I haven’t tried and pve with mesmer so I don’t know how effective a phantasm build is but in pvp all the npc’s, including the class specific ones in the mists that are meant for training, can and do often 1 shot the phantasms with or without the supposed +70% health pool.

I have tried testing out the health pools on a couple of occasions and am sure that they are receiving their bonus, but with such miniscule health pools what’s the point?

If you have any insight into this please explain to me what you think/believe/feel/or actually know.

I don’t think there is a point tbh, terrible trait and signet.

Signet is bugged anyway. Trait may be as well.

Signet’s effect does not kick in until about 5 seconds after the Illusion is conjured, which makes it rather pointless as that’s when you need the extra health to keep them alive.

Also, Phantasms are more fragile than Clones, despite what the main site says. Clones used to be more fragile in Beta but then they greatly increased Clone health, without touching Phantasm health.

Thank you for the replies. I suspected others may feel the same as myself on this.

I’m trying to figure out what role mesmers are really supposed to be playing still and I thought I had found a niche until that got nerfed and then found another which promptly got nerfed as well.

I love the mesmer class and don’t really find I enjoy the other classes as much. I seem to really enjoy the chaos and pandemonium all the clones and phantasms create. Also tough for mesmers to get boons when the phantasms have a shelf-life of about 10 seconds.

I just get used to having no boons but vigor on my mesmer, it comes with the territory.

It’s seems like now, the only truly effective builds are shatter spamming (which is possibly the direction Anet wanted to steer mesmers to). Phantasms need a few buffs for sure if they’re to be used as anything but shatter fodder. Even the Defender dies too easily, and the whole point of that phantasm is to increase your survivability by absorbing damage.

A possible reason why the Defender dies so easily is that it actually transfers damage from all allies (and Illusions) in range, not just you. AoE attacks can therefore bring it down very rapidly.

The signet and trait arent very good in pve either, normal mobs still take them down in 1~2 hits. Dungeon mobs always 1 shot phantasms even with these traits.

Does phantasm health scale with your own VIT stat? It might make them more worthwhile if you run a high vit tanky build.

Trazzt.3942:

Does phantasm health scale with your own VIT stat? It might make them more worthwhile if you run a high vit tanky build.

No. They are affected by Toughness though.

Are these traits/sigil still bugged? Do we still not know the health pool of illusions and what they may or may not scale off of? The wiki does not have this information.

I’ve used 20% health trait and signet together, even waited for the health to kick in. Your phantasms will still be 1-2 shot, it’s that terrible a situation our illusions are in in PvE and large scale PvP.

For PvE at least illusions should be aoe/cleave immune and removed from the aggro list of mobs/bosses.

Holy necro…

Kyin.1678:

Are these traits/sigil still bugged? Do we still not know the health pool of illusions and what they may or may not scale off of? The wiki does not have this information.

You can find this information here (in the wiki): http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusion

Embolism.8106:

Signet’s effect does not kick in until about 5 seconds after the Illusion is conjured, which makes it rather pointless as that’s when you need the extra health to keep them alive.

Also, Phantasms are more fragile than Clones, despite what the main site says. Clones used to be more fragile in Beta but then they greatly increased Clone health, without touching Phantasm health.

So buffing phantasm health might make them viable?

No. Look at ranger pets. They biffed the health vastly, the pets still die to PvE aoe easily and wvw zergs, including drakes and bears.

Anet has designed it so AoE amd telegraphs have to BE AVOIDED, NOT TANKED THROUGH.

The bosses’ telegraphs do such egregious amounts of damage, you’d have to have pets with absurdly high health pools to be sustainable through eating the damage.

Zenith.7301:

No. Look at ranger pets. They biffed the health vastly, the pets still die to PvE aoe easily and wvw zergs, including drakes and bears.

Anet has designed it so AoE amd telegraphs have to BE AVOIDED, NOT TANKED THROUGH.

The bosses’ telegraphs do such egregious amounts of damage, you’d have to have pets with absurdly high health pools to be sustainable through eating the damage.

At this point, possibly the best option is to do what Blizzard did about 2 years ago in Diablo 3: Summoned minions and pets died insanely fast to AoE that was avoidable by players. Of course, summons in these games don’t automatically dodge AoE, so Blizzard just made it so that AoEs dealt much, MUCH less damage to all summons. (Technically they adjusted the damage separately for each skill based on how much damage was expected to be taken by players before they had time to evade, but in GW2 it can simply be a flat AoE damage resistance).

All summons in this game should tank a ton more AoE damage, but still take full damage from everything else. This would make Elementals, Turrets, Spirit Weapons, Illusions, and Minions all last longer in the situations where they are currently useless.

GideonAI.5341:

All summons in this game should tank a ton more AoE damage, but still take full damage from everything else. This would make Elementals, Turrets, Spirit Weapons, Illusions, and Minions all last longer in the situations where they are currently useless.

Of course; and you would not only see teams with 3 turret engis in PvP, but teams with 5 of them. Terrible idea.

Also, phantasms usually live long enough in most situations. Exceptions might be high-level fractals, where they are oneshotted by some mobs. Though even then, they usually get one attack off. Ranger pets are mostly fine in PvE as well, and minions anyway.

That being said, I feel a bit like I’m still the only one who noticed that this topic is more than two years old.

Saturn.6591:

GideonAI.5341:

All summons in this game should tank a ton more AoE damage, but still take full damage from everything else. This would make Elementals, Turrets, Spirit Weapons, Illusions, and Minions all last longer in the situations where they are currently useless.

Of course; and you would not only see teams with 3 turret engis in PvP, but teams with 5 of them. Terrible idea.

Also, phantasms usually live long enough in most situations. Exceptions might be high-level fractals, where they are oneshotted by some mobs. Though even then, they usually get one attack off. Ranger pets are mostly fine in PvE as well, and minions anyway.

That being said, I feel a bit like I’m still the only one who noticed that this topic is more than two years old.

You are so talking out of your kitten if you say phantasms are fine in pve.

Split skill balancing in spvp if it bothers you, make em ignore only 30% of aoe damage or something instead. Fact is phantasm builds dont exist in spvp for a reason.

Saturn.6591:

GideonAI.5341:

All summons in this game should tank a ton more AoE damage, but still take full damage from everything else. This would make Elementals, Turrets, Spirit Weapons, Illusions, and Minions all last longer in the situations where they are currently useless.

Of course; and you would not only see teams with 3 turret engis in PvP, but teams with 5 of them. Terrible idea.

Alright then, considering Turrets are the only “minions” that players can actually choose the positioning of (besides Ranger pets), leave Turrets out of the AoE resistance. The point still stands for the other summons, which cannot be positioned by the player.

Zenith.7301:

You are so talking out of your kitten if you say phantasms are fine in pve.

Nope; I don’t own a cat. With that being said, I really think phantasms are mostly okay in PvE. I’ve not had any issues with them dying too fast outside of high-level fractals. Then again; in high-level fractals, I myself can get oneshot as well by certain mobs (e.g. earth elementals hitting 17-18k with their AoE).

Zenith.7301:

Split skill balancing in spvp if it bothers you, make em ignore only 30% of aoe damage or something instead. Fact is phantasm builds dont exist in spvp for a reason.

Yeah, and that reason is that people nowadays prefer to build for more team-utility. Like boonstrip and heavy AoE-damage (which you get with shattering; thus no phantasm-builds). And while phantasms aren’t meta anymore (they used to be for a while iirc), they are still used for some sustained pressure inbetween bursts.

If they ever do decide to go with the idea of summons/pets/etc. take less damage from AOE/Cleave, they could possibly borrow some code from the high level fractals as there is one instability that states that damage done to enemies you don’t have targeted is reduced.

That is … if someone cleaves my illusion but doesn’t have it targeted, they do less damage to it. If they have it targeted, they do full damage to it.

I think that would be a nice way to get around the fact that technically most of the attacks in GW2 are “AOE”.

Saturn.6591:

Of course; and you would not only see teams with 3 turret engis in PvP, but teams with 5 of them. Terrible idea.

You could always lower turrets’ direct health to make up for their new AoE resistance.

Lower the turrets’ direct health … let turrets be affected by conditions (please!).

It irks me when I see illusions/minions/pets affected by them (especially mine!) but then Engineer turrets couldn’t care less.

Conditions not affecting turrets, doors, etc. is something I hope they are looking into with their investigation into helping conditions in the future.