Guild Wars 2

By Jove, I think I’ve found a way to make Mesmer’s dps much more viable! Instead of having AI do out work for us, an elite specialization in the future could make us wear our phantasms instead of summoning them and treating us like the phantasm instead.

Think about Mesmer this way: Mesmer has 3 clone slots to throw up phantasms and each of those phantasms deal a portion of our damage. So essentially, Mesmer’s dps is divided into 4 parts meaning without any phantasms up hitting our target we only do 25% of our damage instead of the full 100%, like how Rangers are split 50/50 between their pet.

So instead of that limiting factor, activating a phantasm skill will put a larger purple transparent version of a phantasm over you that will occupy one of your phantasm/clone slots (you can have up to three). When you have a phantasm you will be treated as if you were phantasm, gaining all buffs applied to phantasms instead (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Phantasm#Related_traits), and you gain access to the skill that the phantasm uses in-game in whatever skill-slot you activated your phantasm in (replacing the skill). When you use this skill you lose the phantasm aura that you got it from. For example, Illusionary Berserker does an attack that is the exact skill that Warriors use with Whirlwind Attack, so you gain access to this one time skill, and then the phantasm is removed and placed in cooldown.

Activating more than three phantasm auras will destroy the one that you activated first and place it on cooldown. Shattering 3 phantasm auras will only apply damage as if you had no phantasms, but will deal damage as if you had three (so you will be the only one that is shattered/doing shatter damage and to compensate for the flat 15% damage increase you get from Domination and near permanent fury uptime from Dueling).

Let me know what you think!

Wear our Phantasms? That sounds so creepy…

Xaylin.1860:

Wear our Phantasms? That sounds so creepy…

Not so different from wearing the skins of our enemies

Combine that idea with https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Enchanter-Doing-Something-fun-with-Phantasms and create something truly awesome

I really like this.

Unterkiefer.8372:

Combine that idea with https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Enchanter-Doing-Something-fun-with-Phantasms and create something truly awesome

Actually his ideas still rotate around having clones as sort of Ranger pets, this idea just takes the AI out completely. Cause some people just hate AI.

I saw it the other way around. Take the idea of making phantasm special (with buffs and visual) and the idea of yourself Becoming a phantasm. So instead of having butterfly wings somewhere beside you, you get to have butterfly wings on you. You enchant yourself. (One phantasm at the time; a new phantasm overrides your current)

I actually had a somewhat similar idea for an elite spec like this a few months ago. I saved it to a notepad doc xD
Sorry for the length, here it is:

“conjure weapons” elite spec which, similar to elementalist conjure weapons, creates
phantasmal weapons.
One appears in-hand, one appears ground targeted.
Weapon on ground can be picked up and used, counts as an illusions, can be shattered, benefits from illusions traits

Could provide an effect around them. They could move to shatter but not otherwise, or shatter with a wider aoe but doesn’t move

When wielded, #5 is always a shatter-like skill. Consums all of the weapon’s remaining charges (perhaps scaling on number of charges) to do an effect, through which the weapon is destroyed.

Cooldowns in the range of 30-45 seconds (with appropriate duration/charges to match), considering they can be shatter, and perhaps destroyed(depending on how they go about balancing these things).

New profession mechanic:

The idea here is that instead of summoning illusionary entities on the battle field, the mesmer summons illusionary equipment to use. Conjures provide illusionary weapons. Regular illusion skills provide illusionary equipement (which act as buffs).
Everything can be shattered, and phantasm traits should still function.

Illusion summoning skills now provide buffs instead of summoning illusions into the world. The buffs are visible in the form of illusionary equipement that appears on the mesmer, such as phantasm-looking shoulders or gauntlets or greaves (or something as basic as floating orbs around the mesmer which represent the buffs).
The buffs count as illusions for the mesmer’s total illusion cap, meaning you can have 3 at most and summoning new ones gets rid of the older ones. Clones give a generic clone buff. Phantasms provide a phantasm specific buff.
The buffs can provide various effects. For example the clone buff can act as a health bar providing bonus HP for each clone buff, and the buff gets removed when you take the corresponding amount of damage. The phantasm specific buffs could pulse an effect (releated to the phatasm in question) from the mesmer’s body.
The buffs can be shattered. At first I figured the full shatter would simply emenate from the mesmer themself, until I realized how badly that would screw you over when playing with ranged weapons. So instead, perhaps shatters can simply functions as ground targeted AoE when in this spec.

A particular point that makes this spec desireable/interesting, is that it provides mesmers with a playstyle that is divorced from “in the world” AI based illusions (or “pet playstyle”). As a point of balance, mesmers themselves are a bit weaker to compensate for their phantasm’s damage and shatters, similar to how rangers have lower dps to compensate for the damage provided by their pets.
The “illusion buffs” would bridge that gap by making the mesmer stronger, while getting rid of on-field illusions as a mechanic.
Personally speaking, I’ve always wanted to be able to play my mesmer without having to deal with illusions. Similar to how a necromancer can play without minion, and a similar sentiment to rangers who would like a no-pet spec. This could provide. And it can do so functionally without having to modify existing illusion summoning weapon skills in a significant way. The same way Guardian’s dragon hunter spec substitues on effect for Virtues with another.