Guild Wars 2

Note: This will mostly be for PvE, not a big fan of PvP, I do it sometimes but I’m not really into it.

Hi, first time posting in the GW2 forums, but I’ve been having immense difficulty choosing whether Inspiration or Illusion would be better for a Phantasm play I’ve been curious to try.

I haven’t played in a while (haven’t played almost since launch period, got caught up in work), but coming back it was easy to notice about the Illusionist Celerity nerf (20% reduced cooldown on illusions moved from Minor to Grandmaster trait) due to all the forum posts about it and how a bunch of builds are now screwed up because of the nerf.

Inspiration Pros
- Focus Trait (Reflect projectiles on focus skills)
- Phantasm HP (+20%) and Phantasm Damage (15%)
- Retaliation and Regeneration aura on Phantasms
- More Health

Illusion Pros
- 20% increased attack speed on Phantasms (Phantasmal Haste), except on Swordsman which seems like from reading the wiki is bugged and doesn’t make it attack faster. Though I’ll be focusing on Duelist/Berserker/Warden Phantasms mostly.
- 20% reduced cooldown on Illusion skills, with what I already planned, this should cut down the CD of phantasm skills from 20 to 12 seconds (16 without Illusion trait).
- Shatter skills cause confusion
- Lots of Condition damage, works very well with all the bleed stacks from the phantasms and occasionally confusion stacks

I’m constantly going back and forth on my decision on which one would work better. The illusion traits will let me keep tossing out Phantasms much quicker (whether to maintain the number of phantasms or building them up to 3) with the cooldown reduction, and the increase in DPS from faster Phantasm attacks and greater condition damage which works well with the bleed stacks the iDuelist, iZerker, and iWarden throw out (I’ll switch out weapons based on situation).

Then again the Inspiration traits give me more health to work with, plus it makes all my phantasms take more and deal more damage (and with more health, the retaliation trait is a bonus), and the regeneration aura + focus support (some people seem to be huge fans of the projectile reflect) abilities would be nice for playing with groups in dungeons, champs, bosses, etc. Plus if I ever decide to run Phantasmal defender, it gets a decent chunk of more HP to ‘tank’ with.

Anyone have thoughts about which trait tree would be better to focus on in terms of a phantasm build? Illusion or Inspiration?

Build considerations …
10/30/0/30/0 = Inspiration Focus, Greater Crit

20/20/0/30/0 = Inspiration Focus, Less Crit, but more power and cooldown reduction (on greatsword abilities) and power bonus on greatsword trait (greatsword phantasm and GS abilities function as AoE damage, I find iWarden’s desire to stay rooted where it is created makes it generally useless for AoE damage since most of the time mobs don’t tend to stay stationary thus the iWarden swings at nothing most of the time)

10/30/0/5/25 = Illusion Focus, Greater Crit

20/20/0/5/25 = Same idea as the other 20/20 build but an Illusion focus.

I’ve mostly been avoiding a shatter based build, didn’t really enjoy the playstyle when I tried it, I was a big fan of playing stuff like the Necromancer from Diablo 2 so I’m pretty happy as a “go my minions!” type of guy.

*Sorry I still have a ton to learn about the game, still relatively new to the game since I didn’t have time to heavily invest into the game at launch

0/20/0/25/25 gives you 15%+ phantasm damage from inspiration grandmaster minor trait, focus traiting, phantasmal haste, illusionists’ celerity, phantasmal fury and traiting on your sword or pistol.

10/30/0/x/x gives you both sword and pistol traiting, empowered illusions and then either 15%+ phantasm damage and focus traiting or celerity & haste.

I usually like 0/20/0/25/25. Lets you swap sword trait for pistol trait and vice versa when needed.

In open world, I run 20/20/0/0/30 for the simple fact, that I can have both, a valid shatter (for most stuff) and phantasm spec (soloing champions) with just switching some traits.

If you go to dungeons, putting 25 in Inspiration first (for reflects) is a wise choise, after that, place traits the way you like to play.

Those 25 points in Illusions are a stretch for Phantasms builds. It may suite hybrid builds, but if you’re not going to be shattering much then those points are better spent in the Dueling tree. Your phantasms will benefit from the extra precision and crit dmg you get as well as the Sharper Images and possible Phantasmal Fury. Empowered Illusions is a must and the last place to dump points for a basic pve Phantasm build is Inspiration. If you don’t take the Focus then try glamour mastery to produce quicker ethereal fields for your phantasms to play in.

10/30/0/0/30 is probably the highest damage phantasm build, but for the sake of dungeons, x/x/x/25/25 is solid because you get focus traiting and the haste and celerity which the 10/30/0/0/30 build has.

Being able to replace your phantasms quicker and them attacking more frequently helps us preserve our phantasm DPS better than just making them hit a little more harder if they’re still going to die just as quickly.

Thanks for the advice guys!

*Thumbs up

colesy.8490:

10/30/0/0/30 is probably the highest damage phantasm build, but for the sake of dungeons, x/x/x/25/25 is solid because you get focus traiting and the haste and celerity which the 10/30/0/0/30 build has.

Being able to replace your phantasms quicker and them attacking more frequently helps us preserve our phantasm DPS better than just making them hit a little more harder if they’re still going to die just as quickly.

This pretty much sums it up. Though I have to stress that I could never get used to x/x/x/25/25. Going 25 points into illusions just for iCelerity was never able to take root in my head.