Guild Wars 2

I was just fighting the giant in the Charr town of Nageling, southern Diessa Plateau, on my 60 mesmer (downscaled to 20). Literally half the time I used a skill that was supposed to spawn an illusion, no illusion spawned.

The skill would animate, do its sound effect, and go on cooldown, but no illusion appeared and none of my three illusion indicator dots would change from empty to full.

Skills I was using were Staff 2,3 and Mirror Images, and Phantasmal Defender. Fighting this giant in group fight (about 7 of us) was the first time I’ve noticed this.

I was staying on the edge of the 1200 range, and might have blinked backwards out of it using Staff 2 or Mirror Images. But also a few times this happened I was too close the giant, had aggro, and was trying to spawn illusions to decoy and escape.

Anyone else experience anything like this or have any clue what was going on?

iirc this giant has some kitten aoes, maybe he wiped them right as they spawned?

Maybe that was it, or a combination of things. I notice it every now and then when fighting regular mobs or veterans, figure it’s a timing glitch or something, but it was happening a lot more against that giant.

Your target might have dropped, which would have caused the skills not to summon clones (yet still go on full cooldown). The targeting system in GW2 is…lacking, to say the least, and I’ve noticed during many fights that my target will very frequently switch away from what I initially selected onto some other random thing in the area—usually a friendly PC/NPC, but sometimes another enemy or even an environmental object.

I’ve gotten to be pretty OCD about checking to make sure my target is still what I want before using any illusion-summoning skills, because they will fail if anything but an in-range enemy is targeted. Annoying, but not much to be done about it until/unless the bugs in the targeting system are fixed.

Sounds like summoning an illusion without a target being selected. Some “bigger” npc’s make you effectively lose target on them.

Ok, thanks, maybe I’ll try that fight again and pay closer attention to both range and target dropping.

nidwin.6731:

Sounds like summoning an illusion without a target being selected. Some “bigger” npc’s make you effectively lose target on them.

You can’t use illusion summoning skills without target though(except Decoy), or atleast I can’t, red message pop up in middle of my screen. I’ve never had illusions troubles on giants.

Actually you can when you lose your target, very annoying as the skills don’t show the red bar.
Also out of LoS when still having a target will make your summoning fail.

nidwin.6731:

Actually you can when you lose your target, very annoying as the skills don’t show the red bar.
Also out of LoS when still having a target will make your summoning fail.

strange, I always cast my phantasms out of sight, people are kitten about izerker nuking them out of nowhere

Lol even if you lose your target, it will auto target closest nearby. So normally even if you lose target it would still summon something. If it’s the giant that I’m thinking of though, there’s a very good chance it’s his aoes. Normally any time I run into this, then learn a mob’s attacks, it’s been AoE.

Poplik.8697:

iirc this giant has some kitten aoes, maybe he wiped them right as they spawned?

There’s a number of issues that could be causing it.

Momentarily dropping combat, with stealth, evasion or roll sometimes causes it. Where you shouldn’t really drop combat, but it drops, and illusions immediately despawn.

Another thing I think might hapkitten when you spawn an illusion, it doesn’t immediately have full health. That is, I sometimes spawn iWarden, and let the mob beat on it for a bit. Fully traited for bonus HP, it can take 2-3 hits. BUT, sometimes when it spawns, before it even phases in or starts attacking, the mob quickly attacks it and 1-shots it. Which is incredibly annoying given how long the Warden’s cooldown is.

If you’re really close to the range limit it will sometimes not work. Try to be a bit closer.

sometimes creating a clone with staff 2 on an incline does not work. that’s the only thing i’ve been able to reliably recreate.

The only clones I have noticed not being created when I play are from sword #3 if I am slightly out of range (which is super annoying) and GS #2 which does happen somewhat frequently (unsure of reason, but definitely not being killed, traits for clone death don’t proc)