Guild Wars 2

I find that my Mesmer is awesome out side of dungeons. However in dungeons I’m mediocre, my clones die so fast that i cant even use them for what they are suppose to be used for. Does any one have this problem or have come up wit ha way to deal with this.!

get sword. use blurred frenzy. profit.
if u have problems with clones or phantasms dying too fast. then feed some squishy guardian to monsters, then they will let you summon stuff in peace.

also clones inherit your toughness, so it helps. tho might not work for you if going in as glass cannon.

btw what do you mean by “i cant even use them for what they are suppose to be used for”. i use clones only as fodders to absorb one or two hits, unless i shatter them. as for phantasms, ranged ones don’t have any problems surviving for a while. as for melee ones, depends on monsters. e.g. iWarden does nice vs ranged ones, but i don’t expect it to last long vs group of melee monsters or some boss.

Pure phantasm build is not ideal for dungeons. Setup time is too long for trash, while bosses ussually have too much aoe to ever allow you to set up all 3 phantasm for max dps.

I go for 20/20/0/0/20 (+10 into choas for 50% fall dmg, but Illusionary Persona would be much better), and summon, dodge, phase retreat, allow a few attacks and mind wrack. This setup allows me to constantly setup new illusions (clones or phantasms), either to add tiny dps, serve as meat shields and soak up attacks, steady dps through phantasms or simply spike dps through shatters.

Or to answer your concern directly – clones serve multiple roles, not just as damage. In dungeons, contrary to open world, their role is heavily influenced by encounter. It pay off to be more flexible there.

I run a condition build in CoF, which is the only dungeon I have done, and have no problem using clones and phantasms. Staff/ Sword, Focus. Mixing it up depending on situation.

I usually play a sword/x shatter build
Between blurred frenzy, distortion, and dodges i can usually stay in a bossses face, and in places like CoE against subject alpha the invul is nice against all the aoe.

I might get chastised for this, but I play in dungeons the same way I play in PvP. I just spit out clones as fast as possible and shatter a lot. Anytime a Phantasm is involved I try to wait for it to get an attack off and then shatter everything immediately.

With all the methods I have to get clones out, I am usually never dry during trash fights at all. I try to save Decoy for when I catch some aggro, but I can kite/escape other ways pretty easily as well.

Aside from that, I just go through my rotation with GS and Staff. During certain fights I can get 3 iWarlocks up and let them spam though while I use my GS. I tend to almost never actually die and have, in many scenarios, kited bosses around and chipped away at them while my group ran back, so the fight didn’t reset.

Ashley’s post describes exactly what I do. It allows you to pace the event. If I feel the need to burst, I can spit out clones, mindwrack, and then spit out another set of clones and hit cry of frustration, dodge out and settle in for sustained dps. If I need to set up for long term, I concentrate on keeping the clones/phantasms alive a bit longer to take more hits and relieve the group from some damage. In this situation, I would run a circle at distance from the mob and drop a clone/phantasm every once in a while. This sets up a daze shatter if required and also makes the mob run around smacking my clones vice swinging at party members. If I have aggro, I kite and if it gets to hot, decoy out, drop clones and blink out if required.

I think one of the things which keeps mesmers alive is constant movement. I am very very rarely stationary. If I happen to be in travel mode (carrying my sword and focus) I just drop a clone, swap, blurred frenzy, drop a warden, dart out. Sometimes I even make sure the mob stays there on “me” by decoying out so the warden can do it’s thing.

I find blink is a great skill in dungeons. For instance, the bonus boss in AC – troll, does a stomp that if you can’t get outta the circle for you get instadowned. If I see a member get caught in that mess, I would blink to him, decoy, time warp and rez (time warp if multiple members down).

Clones are there for two things – shatter fodder or being hit once or twice (Edit: for staff users – condition loaders). They are quick distractions not meant to be tanks. For every clone the mob hits (except for aoe type hits) that is one less hit someone else had to take and is one “time unit” tick away that someones skill is coming off of cooldown.

tl;dr : Clones and Mobility keeps you alive.