Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,
So, I may be one of the rare few who typically bring Illusion of Life along with me into dungeons. It is a great lifesaver in moments in which the team almost fails. Anyhow, the way I remember it working before they “patched it” a while back was that when you cast it on a downed player, they would get up for a short period of time before going back to the same downed state they were in, unless they killed something or were killed of course. If they killed something within the time period they were in Illusion of Vengeance mode, they would rally and could keep fighting. It was great, and it was appropriately given a good cooldown for PvE use. I am not sure if it was changed for PvP/WvW reasons but now it works much differently.

Now, if I cast it on someone who is downed, they get up for a short time and will go back to the same downed state if they are neither killed nor kill something (which is how it used to work). However, if they kill something, they don’t rally but instead go back to downed. I am confused as to why this is how it works… Is this intended? With all the other professions who have a more direct way to AoE rally teammates, I figured this one was already indirect enough to not warrant further nerfing. As it is now, it is only good as a delay tactic for someone who is downed. Basically, giving them enough time to get up, run away and go back down in a safer spot…

I just want some clarification from someone that this is what they want or if it is truly bugged. Thank you for any kind of response.

What you’re describing sounds like a bug to me. I use Illusion of Life in dungeons all the time and don’t have this problem, so the fact thakittens happening to you with some measure of frequency means that it’s either bugged (most likely) or that the targets that you’re rezzing somehow aren’t getting kill credit (this seems unlikely).

I’ve seen this happen when used on Warriors who use their self-rezz at around the same time. For some reason it seems the rally credits their rezz, but IoL is still ticking and will re-down them a few seconds later.

IoL has been nerfed a few patches ago. Yet, it didn’t become useless. Like Warriors Vengeance (downed get up), you now need to kill something and get exp for it to remove IoL’s debuff. So most minions or buildings won’t help you (since then).
Vengeance and IoL seem similar but ain’t. Vengeance has a chance to rally (untraited), IoLs chance is 100% (should). Vengeance kills you, IoL downs you.

But to compare IoL to other classes’ rev skills, it’s kinda balanced, probably stronger than most. Ele and Guardian have rev skills with pointless long casttimes. Within 3s casting, I could rev the guys manually. They’re very situational. Rangers revive skill is instant, but its effect is not. Just Warriors reviving banner is like the most superior one, but it’s an elite.
The only really, really awkward feature of Illusion of life is, that it does not ressurect NPCs …

The rezz-skills do seem balanced all in all. They’re hugely different, but that’s what makes them kinda cool. Thieves are the odd one out, but Shadow Refuge does sort-of double as their rezz-skill.

I also like Engineer’s AE toss-rezz. It balances nicely with ours, theirs has a smaller radius and takes 5 seconds of ticking, ours is instant once the effect goes off and hits more, but is temporarily unless you rally.

Well, let me give you guys the scenario that I tested it in last night. Two people went down around the Champion Icebrood Wolf in the beginning of CoE after he did his two no-tell-insta-down moves. I used IoL on them because we were within a sliver of killing him and I wanted to test it one last time. They both got up with IoV going. I watched both of their durations on the IoV to make sure they didn’t go down because of time. They both went down at exactly the same time as the Wolf died, and the Champ Wolf definitely did not use his not-tell-insta-down moves to kill them. The time on their IoL didn’t run out, I watched. So it seems to me that IoL credited that they got a kill, but didn’t let them rally off of it. Because they went back down before the duration ran out on IoL. Seems like proof to me that there is something awry.

Yo, illusion of life is baller. This skill needs to be fixed asap.

My only issue with Illusion of Life is that if they don’t kill something then they get downed again and it counts against their total, I’ve had allies die because I used this on them and they’d just reached their max penalty. I was thinking it would be nice for tough fights so that an ally in a bad position could at least get up and move to a better spot, but without being able to know for sure if I’ve just consigned them to death because there is nothing for them to kill I tend to avoid it in all but pvp

Dastion, that’s a more general thing though. It happens on other skills working in similar ways, too. And yes I’d like to see that changed, too.