How do phantasm mesmers deal with....
Use a skill that will make a clone when your phantasm cooldown is close to end or available. So you can put the phantasm back right after lauching the skill that will make a clone (like Mirror Blade)
Tricky part : Try to be good in your observations. If your Phantasms is about to attack, don’t use the skill that will overwrite them.
If you are a 100 % full phantasm with Desenchanter, Defender and Signet of Illusion, don’t get Deceptive Evasion. You can… but with all the skills you have available to make a clone or phantasm, you will lose a phantasm if you dodge.
I hate going Scepter in a Phantasm build for that reason.
(edited by Krispera.5087)
Before I give an in-depth response, I need to know if you are talking pve or pvp.
Work on your timing
Basically you want to use phantasms when you don’t need your evasions. If an enemy misses a burst you won’t need to dodge/stunbreak for a bit so summon phantasms or if you’ve already used all your dodges/stunbreaks you might as well just shatter and use phantasms cause you can’t make clones anyway.
It is useful to note however that clones are replaced before phantasms when generating new illusions so you should only have problems when you have three phantasms out because one has to be replaced.
ya, the only time this matters is if you have 3 phantasms.. since clones replace clones before phantasms. so if you have 3 up(in pve) just do normal damage. if one dies put another up. even in a phantasm build its still better to shatter then to have your illusions cleared by an cleave attack of a boss or w/e.. if its just leveling then it dosent matter, one rotation and the mob is dead anyway nomatter what your weapons are.
pretty much. if you have a illusion circle empty it dosent matter if you fill it with a clone or phantasm. if you have them full and any are clones it dosent matter what you do either. if they are all full of phantasms and its a long fight,,,,, put your hardest hitting phantasms in all the slots. thats mostly for dungeon bosses. if the boss is meele and cleaves you may want to put a ranged phantasm on them… if they do projectiles you may want to put 3 wardens on them, if they chase you you may want 3 berzerkers on them to snare.
Before I give an in-depth response, I need to know if you are talking pve or pvp.
pvp
shatter builds will always be better in pvp, compared to phantasm builds.
not only in terms of damage, but utility
not sure i would make a blanket statment like that.
shatter builds will always be better in pvp, compared to phantasm builds.
not only in terms of damage, but utility
I’d disagree .
Jalliel [AI] – Yak’s Bend
Ok, pvp phantasm build. Heres the deal:
Mesmer, no matter what spec, is a hyperactive playstyle. You aren’t going to have nearly enough time to actually get 3 phantasms out on one target unless they’re afk. You’re going to be constantly spawning new ones, doing leap/swaps, and shattering for some burst. The ONLY time you will run into a situation where you have to decide between phantasms and clones is in pve, where you can actually have a chance of stacking up 3 phantasms on one target.
Since you can only spawn 2 damaging phantasms quickly, that’s the normal number you will end up with. The 2 phantasms will go down, and you’ll continue juking around with your other various skills while you let your phantasms do the work. Once your phantasm skills come up again, you can shatter your existing ones, and drop new ones. This also means you’ll never run into the problem of overwriting a phantasm with a clone. Additionally, if you somehow do manage to get 3 phantasms up on one target, overwriting one with a clone for an active combo like leap/swap/blurred frenzy will never be a bad thing to do.
In pve, if I do manage to get three phantasms up and I don’t want them to go away, I typically swap to greatsword. It’s auto-attack won’t spawn a new clone. At that point, I tend to just focus on my utility skills (like mantra of pain, feedback, etc).
WvWvW is not PvP (killing poor level 30’s trying to get to the zerg with you guild 5 man in ascended isn’t PvP) neither to some degree is hotjoins. And anyone who does do TPvP knows that 90% of people run bunker builds, which a shatter Mesmer cannot ever kill since their damage is spiked on blowing up illusions which is easy to spot and easy to use invuln/block/dodge abilities. That is why I switched to phantasm, because they can only block / invuln etc… so much and those illusions will keep on hammering them wile im a safe distance away or buffed with defender.
Im running a 10(15% dmg) – 15 (bleed on crit ((even without condition dmg its 250 damage over 5 seconds per crit which is a potential 2k dmg increase to dueliest and 1k to berserker)) and 20% crit for illusions) – 20 (some nice survive) – 25(15% dmg) – 0 build with defender/illusion HP signet/null field. I use S/P (our best combo) and I opt in for GS over Staff just because the staff auto attack is beyond terrible (losing the low cd blink hurts but its def more dmg), and knocking thiefs out of shadow refuge is a great feeling.
I open with defender and use iberserker + w/e GS abilities are needed depending on the situation (boon removal if they have boons, kb is they are in my face etc…) then i switch to s/p summon duelist and then stun move in auto attack and save sword 2 as a more defensive ability rather than offensive since my build has no reliable escape it works well when getting 100b etc (which will only do 50% dmg thanks to defender)… The problem im having is im afraid to use sword 3 gs 2 staff 2 etc… because ill lose my defender or my duelist or berserker losing either tons of dmg mitigation or tons of damage for that small utility (immob/6sVuln+might/blink etc…)
(edited by Zepidel.5349)
@Zepidel: First, in any mesmer build, you need 5 points in illusions. In a PHANTASM build, a build that is completely built around summoning illusions for damage….if you don’t have 5 points in illusions, its a wonder your build works in even the slightest way.
Now, having 5 points in illusions and the cooldown traits for your weapons means that the phantasm cooldown should be around 12 seconds. Having the cooldowns that low means that losing a phantasm from an overwrite will hurt far less.
Additionally, in a phantasm build, the idefender is not usually necessary. The reason being that you should be able to kite hard enough to avoid most damage, and you’ll be able to resummon the phantasms faster than they can effectively kill them anyway. Try taking signet of illusions to beef up your phantasms a bit more, and then blink and decoy for defensive escapes. With that sort of setup, you should never really encounter a situation where you’ll be overwriting a vital phantasm with a clone.
@Zepidel: First, in any mesmer build, you need 5 points in illusions. In a PHANTASM build, a build that is completely built around summoning illusions for damage….if you don’t have 5 points in illusions, its a wonder your build works in even the slightest way.
Now, having 5 points in illusions and the cooldown traits for your weapons means that the phantasm cooldown should be around 12 seconds. Having the cooldowns that low means that losing a phantasm from an overwrite will hurt far less.
Additionally, in a phantasm build, the idefender is not usually necessary. The reason being that you should be able to kite hard enough to avoid most damage, and you’ll be able to resummon the phantasms faster than they can effectively kill them anyway. Try taking signet of illusions to beef up your phantasms a bit more, and then blink and decoy for defensive escapes. With that sort of setup, you should never really encounter a situation where you’ll be overwriting a vital phantasm with a clone.
I rarely need to resummon due to signet of illusions making them tanks, or the situations that i do find myself needing that 3rd phantasm because 1 died something is off cooldown (I dont see a reason to recast a phantasm if there is already 3 up when i could be using another ability during that cast time) (which was my reasoning for not grabbing that passive, ontop of condition damage and shatter cd does pretty much nothing for me). blink is nice, decoy will kill one of your phantasms and running a build w.o. condition removal is a very bad practice.
(edited by Zepidel.5349)
@Zepidel: First, in any mesmer build, you need 5 points in illusions. In a PHANTASM build, a build that is completely built around summoning illusions for damage….if you don’t have 5 points in illusions, its a wonder your build works in even the slightest way.
Now, having 5 points in illusions and the cooldown traits for your weapons means that the phantasm cooldown should be around 12 seconds. Having the cooldowns that low means that losing a phantasm from an overwrite will hurt far less.
Additionally, in a phantasm build, the idefender is not usually necessary. The reason being that you should be able to kite hard enough to avoid most damage, and you’ll be able to resummon the phantasms faster than they can effectively kill them anyway. Try taking signet of illusions to beef up your phantasms a bit more, and then blink and decoy for defensive escapes. With that sort of setup, you should never really encounter a situation where you’ll be overwriting a vital phantasm with a clone.
I rarely need to resummon due to signet of illusions making them tanks, or the situations that i do find myself needing that 3rd phantasm because 1 died something is off cooldown (I dont see a reason to recast a phantasm if there is already 3 up when i could be using another ability during that cast time) (which was my reasoning for not grabbing that passive, ontop of condition damage and shatter cd does pretty much nothing for me). blink is nice, decoy will kill one of your phantasms and running a build w.o. condition removal is a very bad practice.
The 5 points in illusions allows you to play with your game a bit more, rather than being more locked into summoning illusions and hoping they don’t die. It allows you to shatter more frequently (not due to shatter cooldown) because you’ll have more chances to shatter based on your phantasm cooldowns. Shatters, of course, can either be geared towards bursting the rest of the hp off of that thief, or using distortion when it’s necessary while still being able to maintain your damage output by resummoning your phantasms quickly.
You have 25 points in inspiration, so take mender’s purity for condition removal. Since you are (I think) aiming to use this for tPvP, null field would be a smart choice to take over either blink or decoy. Decoy overwriting a phantasm is another reason why 5 points in illusions is so important, because it allows you to use decoy (one of our most potent defensive utilities) without worrying about hurting your damage significantly.
shatter builds will always be better in pvp, compared to phantasm builds.
not only in terms of damage, but utility
I’d disagree .
I respectfully disagree as well. When phantasms get a lucky proc from signet of illusions right away the game instantly becomes absolute hell for your target, regardless of profession. Fix the signet, both in application and health increase (which could stand to be 75 and not 50%) and phantasm builds will be in a much better state.