Guild Wars 2

Persistence of Memory – Illusions Adept Major Trait

This trait reduces the cooldowns on your phantasm-casting skills by two seconds for each phantasm that gets shattered. I was testing this earlier in EBG with iDefender and iDisenchanter and I was able to pump out iZerkers every 8s while aggressively shattering (w/ Imagined Burden and Illusionists Celerity). I imagine that if one is skilled enough they could shatter after a phantasm volley and then immediately recast instead of waiting the 5-6s for the phantasm to attack again.

Here’s an example of build that I thought up: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQJARWlknhK1YhawRNwtGLpG0ZUay0Rv+a2O5AOQAA-TJhFABA8EAAvMwI7PkwlAAA

What do you guys think?

This is super cool in theory. I haven’t seen many people talk about this trait, but 2 seconds seems very strong especially considering that you are already in the Illusions trait line with Illusionist Celerity.

Maybe try recording some videos for us, and thanks for testing this out for the community, darling!

^^

This trait has been under the radar for the whole patch, might be worthwhile to test it.

Hm, esp with ether signet, and that signet that recharges shatters, you could in theory throw out and shatter some clones, then throw out and shatter some phantasms then possibly recycle phantasms for another go

Problem is in high lv pve it’s not uncommon that even iduelists die the moment they are summoned.

Try the molten duo for example, more often than not the phantasm will be dead before a 3 clone shatter after their volleys are over.

Moreover, that’s an 8 sec cd of you doing absolutely miserable damage, and having to interrupt your autoattacks for a 1 second cast time again. Compounding Power is just a flat 9% boost to everything, it’s better in pve.

in pvp I can see some uses for thios trait but I bet most people will still want compounding power for the xtra mindwrack burst that mesmers rely on as mesmer sustained damage is really bad.

Just wait for Chronomancer and you’ll be able to Shatter the Phants twice.

I don’t know if it is worth taking both idefender and ienchanter just for the sake of shattering them and reducing cooldown.

By taking the GS trait and illusion line. You already have mirror blade and izerker on pretty low cooldown. Shattering 3 phantasms give you 6% cdr, which is about 1 sec. It is really not that big of a deal. Considering in a real fight situation, you also need to spend a lot of time on staff kiting and supporting.

It is after all an adept trait. Not build defining in any sense but some nice extra is you like to shatter your phantasms.

Exciton.8942:

I don’t know if it is worth taking both idefender and ienchanter just for the sake of shattering them and reducing cooldown.

By taking the GS trait and illusion line. You already have mirror blade and izerker on pretty low cooldown. Shattering 3 phantasms give you 6% cdr, which is about 1 sec. It is really not that big of a deal. Considering in a real fight situation, you also need to spend a lot of time on staff kiting and supporting.

It is after all an adept trait. Not build defining in any sense but some nice extra is you like to shatter your phantasms.

It’s not percentage reduction. It’s 2s per Phant.

@Zenith: I don’t think there there would ever be an application for this in PvE until Chronomancer gets here.

@Excite: They wiki is wrong. Each phantasm shattered reduces phantasm cool downs by 2s.

I did some duels in PvP earlier with the test build. Observations:

Running into similar issues as a mantra setup. You need stealth access to cover phantasm spawns and blinds are a PitA. Final build wound up being S/P & GS with more or less a pre-patch 44006 setup with empowered illusions and phantasmal fury.

I’ll see if my guildies uploaded anything tomorrow. In the mean time for anyone out there looking at the trait, just play it like standard shatter but with a lot more phantasm uptime.

Dude, you made me realize how neat is this trait!

I’ve been toying with your setup, but dumped Ether Feast for the signet and can actively generate even more iZerkers… I simply don’t have time to swap out of GS because everything comes off cooldown so fast! I’m thiking of the second set as a survival failsafe with sword and torch, probably will change inspiration for chaos since that line doesn’t seem vital to your build.

Esplen.3940:

It’s not percentage reduction. It’s 2s per Phant.

That makes it a lot easier to plan your shatter usage, as well. Assuming you’ll have 3 Phantasms up, you’ll wait for your weapon’s Phantasm summon cooldown to reach ~6 seconds, then you shatter and immediately resummon it. Then swap weapons and resummon your other weapon Phantasm. Supplement with a clone or a utility Phantasm or the pDefender from Mental Defense.

This definitely gets way better when we get Chronomphantasma, of course. Then we can recover potentially 12s off all of our Phantasm cooldowns by shattering twice.

tobascodagama.2961:

Esplen.3940:

It’s not percentage reduction. It’s 2s per Phant.

That makes it a lot easier to plan your shatter usage, as well. Assuming you’ll have 3 Phantasms up, you’ll wait for your weapon’s Phantasm summon cooldown to reach ~6 seconds, then you shatter and immediately resummon it. Then swap weapons and resummon your other weapon Phantasm. Supplement with a clone or a utility Phantasm or the pDefender from Mental Defense.

This definitely gets way better when we get Chronomphantasma, of course. Then we can recover potentially 12s off all of our Phantasm cooldowns by shattering twice.

Moreso with the time swap thingy.

Zenith.7301:

Compounding Power is just a flat 9% boost to everything, it’s better in pve.

If you assume illusions all die the moment they are summoned, you have to assume Compounding Power provides 0% boost, too.
Otherwise if you get to consider CP to be a 9% boost (i.e.: permanent 3 illusions up), then someone else can assume they can always run full-power shatter, phantasm or phantasm-shatter.

Carighan.6758:

Zenith.7301:

Compounding Power is just a flat 9% boost to everything, it’s better in pve.

If you assume illusions all die the moment they are summoned, you have to assume Compounding Power provides 0% boost, too.
Otherwise if you get to consider CP to be a 9% boost (i.e.: permanent 3 illusions up), then someone else can assume they can always run full-power shatter, phantasm or phantasm-shatter.

The difference here is phantasms have much longer cooldowns than illusions. When my phantasms get killed, I can keep Compounding power running its bonus through the clones, so the uptime of that trait is better given that clones are much easier to replace than phantasms.