Collectively, we as a class, have been asking for all kinds of phantasms/illusion reworks to the class across the game. With the recent balance patch, Anet has finally “spoken” with how they are willing to alter phantasms with:
Both the Phantasmal Disenchanter and Defender skills now have on-cast effects to gain a little more immediate effect and to differentiate the utility skill from the Mental Defense trait.
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Phantasmal Defender: This utility skill now applies protection for 4 seconds in a radius around the mesmer. The damage reduction from this illusion has been reduced from 50% to 33%.
This has me intrigued for two reasons.
1) Immediate effect
2) Ability to balance a weaker version of a skill into a trait.
1) is great and especially appreciated for WvW where illusions die instantly in a lot of zerg settings. 2) is where things get interesting though. The class needs more illusion generation but inspiration was the only trait-line that was able to summon another phantasms with a GM trait. PoM+CP with 3 quickly spawned phantasm interaction got out of hand a bit and now Mesmer is in a weaker spot because of it. What if we just delete PoM but give every trait line a way to spawn phantasms? And/Or just rework phantasm summon skills to have more of that #1 effect.
Berserker: Reduce phantasm damage by 20-30%. Add an AOE effect around the target when cast. Hit 5 targets with 240 radius with a power coeff of ~1-1.5. Similar treatment to phantasmal defender.
Furious Interruption: Spawn a berserker on interrupt. ICD = berserker CD. So taking Imagined Burden for example would reduce the CD but prevent power block damage. Would also be mutually exclusive with shattered concentration. Did anyone use this trait before either?
Swordsman: The sword is a “melee” weapon but this summon is a 1200 range skill (while #4 is a 900 range). The sword is also pretty underused in most game modes. Add a 300 range melee swipe to the phantasm summon. Power coeff around 2.0. If you aren’t in 300 range of the target, you still summon the phantasm from range as normal. It just does double damage if you are in 300 range of the target. Dueling already has DE so I didn’t think a new illusion skill needed to be added here although I still like another idea I had of making the sword trait summon a phantasm on #4 instead of a clone so that the off-hand sword would have two phantasms when traited. This would probably need to have it bumped up to GM level.
Mage: Even with the new buffs it still kind of sucks. Similar to the sword, add a 240 radius flourish of burning around the Mesmer. 2 stacks for 4 seconds.
Ineptitude: I am a bit more skeptical to change this as although I don’t personally use it, I know others use this trait. However, if I’m advocating the deletion of PoM and the addition of more phantasms built into trait lines, this could also replace PoM and shuffle with another trait. When you blind a target, summon a mage. Trait interaction with the pledge would have this summon still clear conditions and the ICD would be reduced while in stealth. The mage/illusion trait line change would add better condi clear viability to the class in PvP while making a burning Mesmer just a bit stronger in PvE.
Other phantasms and chaos could also receive similar reworks. Mirror effect for 1 second on warden summon. Or a whirl finisher for example.
Thoughts?