Guild Wars 2

With the change of the Phantasmal Avenger (Shield Phantom) being a shield wielding melee Phantasm this skill is a little redundant thematically. So I had the following suggestion to breath some life into this Phantasm.

Phantasmal Commander: Summon a banner wielding Phantasm to lead your other Illusions. Existing illusions switch targets to assist the commander when he is summoned. The commander maintains range and provides nearby players a buff that redirects a portion of the damage they take to your illusions.

The maintained range and spreading damage among all illusions gives the Phantasm a bit more longevity (though the percentage would need to be reduced) and the retargetting of illusions gives some unique options. Otherwise it acts as the Defender did but rethemed to differentiate it from the Avenger thematically and also making it a potentially more useful group defense tool.

I also quite like the idea of a Utility Phantasm wielding a Banner (a recognizable utility skill type).

I love this idea, never knew I wanted it but now I need it

I love to run persistent phantasm builds. I’d like to See it still redirect damage from allies to itself, but also gain a significant health boost and also gain your effect, and remove it from the trait and replace the trait version with something else.

Being able to “switch” all my phantasms to a new target would be a huge utility I’d love to have, and I’d gladly give up a utility slot for that function.

Phantasmal Commander: Summon a banner wielding Phantasm with high health to lead your other Illusions. Existing illusions switch targets to assist the commander when he is summoned. The commander attempts to follow the nearest ally near the foe, and redirects 50% of incoming damage from allies to itself and grants continual Might (15s) to nearby allies.

Swiftwynd.1685:

I love this idea, never knew I wanted it but now I need it

I love to run persistent phantasm builds. I’d like to See it still redirect damage from allies to itself, but also gain a significant health boost and also gain your effect, and remove it from the trait and replace the trait version with something else.

Being able to “switch” all my phantasms to a new target would be a huge utility I’d love to have, and I’d gladly give up a utility slot for that function.

Phantasmal Commander: Summon a banner wielding Phantasm with high health to lead your other Illusions. Existing illusions switch targets to assist the commander when he is summoned. The commander attempts to follow the nearest ally near the foe, and redirects 50% of incoming damage from allies to itself and grants continual Might (15s) to nearby allies.

Yeah I’m just not convinced. Uses a utility slot, and is just so over complicated. It’s not as though Phantasms have super long CD’s.

Phantasmal Defender wielding a banner instead of chasing his target in melee range and bashing them with his shield is a good start. But what he does needs some revision.

• Maybe give him a buffing effect Pulse protection for example. Pulse protection AND maintains an etheral field in a 240 radius or something.

• If you really wanted give him an active effect that sits on your bar. Destroy him for aoe 5 stacks of might. Or blast finisher.

• Simple, straight forward, functional, makes sense, works, provides things everybody could use in all kinds of builds.

Maybe make it such that our phantasms won’t die upon target death if the commander is active, and thus capable of acquiring new targets that would be quite something.

After a lot of thought I decided that I think the defender is perhaps not perfect but not as bad as a lot of people think. It’s a rather long thought process, but essentially in amounts to the fact that this is a lot like protection, but giving 50% damage reduction instead of the lower 33% that protection grants, and its duration instead of in seconds is based on a health pool. It’s defending one person against one enemy lasts a lot longer than if its defending a lot of people against a lot of damage sources or one really huge damage source.

I think it balances out. But in order to verify my thought processes I’m going to do some experiments with it. The only real problem is against small numbers you wouldn’t really need it, and against a big source it’s utility may be questionable. If it gave 50% protection against just one massive hit against a group though, it might still be worthwhile. I’m not entirely convinced, which is why I am NOT planting my banner so to speak on this idea. I can certainly understand the thought processes involved in saying it sucks.

That being the case, a phantasm carrying a banner and having some effect similar to what we listed here does sound like a lot of fun lol, and the ability to redirect your other illusions to compensate for things like clones created from random dodging might be really nice.

The problem I have with this phantasm is:

• it is worse the more enemies around
• it is worse the more allies around
• it has only 7.2 k HP.

Assuming it’s just you vs enemy, but the enemy cleaves, the phantasm will save you 2.4k (if 4.8k damage are given, the phantasm takes 4.8k and saves you 2.4k damage). 2.4k life after 1.5s cast on a 25s CD… Not amazing.
1 ally: 1.8k HP saved. 2 allies : 1.4. 3 allies (which is the max since attacks usually don’t go beyond 5 targets) : 1.2k.

And this was actually a fairly ideal case, because you dodge while the phantasm doesn’t.

I primarily wanted to just retheme it to something other than a Shield since we have that already. Even if it was exactly the same as it is now but wielded a banner it would at least be thematically distinct.

Silverkey.2078:

The problem I have with this phantasm is:

• it is worse the more enemies around
• it is worse the more allies around
• it has only 7.2 k HP.

Assuming it’s just you vs enemy, but the enemy cleaves, the phantasm will save you 2.4k (if 4.8k damage are given, the phantasm takes 4.8k and saves you 2.4k damage). 2.4k life after 1.5s cast on a 25s CD… Not amazing.
1 ally: 1.8k HP saved. 2 allies : 1.4. 3 allies (which is the max since attacks usually don’t go beyond 5 targets) : 1.2k.

And this was actually a fairly ideal case, because you dodge while the phantasm doesn’t.

And illusions count as allies, so you’ll almost always get a very diluted effect for yourself with generally no benefit to your illusions.

I actually really like the original suggestion. It has a slight flaw in that it’s most effective when you have two other Phantasms active, but it actively kills your illusions. I really think that a Phantasmal Commander should do something to increase illusion survivability instead. For example, if it worked as the pDefender currently does but specifically only absorbs damage from other Phantasms. That would make pCommander useful to temporarily extend the life of your Phantasms whether they’re in a trash-heavy or AoE-heavy environment.

As for pDefender… It’s fine in concept, it just needs a way bigger health pool than it has. And it’d be nice if its weaksauce attack actually did something useful, like applying Weakness or Taunt or whatever.

Silverkey.2078:

The problem I have with this phantasm is:

• it is worse the more enemies around
• it is worse the more allies around
• it has only 7.2 k HP.

Assuming it’s just you vs enemy, but the enemy cleaves, the phantasm will save you 2.4k (if 4.8k damage are given, the phantasm takes 4.8k and saves you 2.4k damage). 2.4k life after 1.5s cast on a 25s CD… Not amazing.
1 ally: 1.8k HP saved. 2 allies : 1.4. 3 allies (which is the max since attacks usually don’t go beyond 5 targets) : 1.2k.

And this was actually a fairly ideal case, because you dodge while the phantasm doesn’t.

It splits all damage no matter how much so, if a cloaked backstabbing thief hit you for 16000 damage, you take 8000 and Your Illusion takes eight thousand which depending on your build could possibly save your life.

Another thing to note, the phantasmal defender has a lot more hit points than the other phantasms. I’m not sure how much that is though.

Make phantasmal defender scale completely with your vitality.
Just phantasmal defender.

Morfedel.4165:

Silverkey.2078:

• it has only 7.2 k HP.

Another thing to note, the phantasmal defender has a lot more hit points than the other phantasms. I’m not sure how much that is though.

look up

Silverkey.2078:

Morfedel.4165:

Silverkey.2078:

• it has only 7.2 k HP.

Another thing to note, the phantasmal defender has a lot more hit points than the other phantasms. I’m not sure how much that is though.

look up

I saw that, but I saw another source that quoted it as having something around 12000. I checked the wiki and it doesn’t clarify that one way or the other.

I looked at the wrong place in the wiki, I found its hit points, it has over 12,000 in PvE & 7000 in PvP so it looks like both numbers are correct.

Morfedel.4165:

I looked at the wrong place in the wiki, I found its hit points, it has over 12,000 in PvE & 7000 in PvP so it looks like both numbers are correct.

I find this actually weird. The developers have tried to remove any difference between PvE and PvP, but this one remains while it is quite stupid. Phantasms builds DO NOT WORK in PvP, was there a reason to give the illusions nearly half the amount of HP they have in PvE? I don’t mind clones being squishy, they are only meant to be shattered. But phantasms have nearly as much HP as clones…

And now they changed PvE so that NPC deal only 5% damage to pets/minions if they are not directly targeted. I think this is probably a good thing. But what about PvP where the only minions which really work are necro minions and yet they have a on-death trait.

The more i think about it, this needs to be our Elitle Illusion.

Phantasmal Commander

15k hp in pvp and 30k in pve, 1s cast and 30s recast on death.

Lasts until shattered twice or slain. Increases health of illusions you control by 50% and continually grants them Quickness. While active, illusions you control do not fade upon a foes death.

Has a sub skill that can retarget your illusions to a new target, 5s recharge.

Just combine Phantasmal Defender with Phantasmal Disanchanter. That will be perfect.

Defender does not need a rework. It would be well worth taking for the party damage mitigation if only its health were higher.

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

Defender does not need a rework. It would be well worth taking for the party damage mitigation if only its health were higher.

The brunt of the suggestion is a thematic redesign. They gave us a second Shield wielding Phantasm so it would be nice if they were thematically differentiated.

I’m all for a thematic redesign, however if we’re going to ask for it with the phantasmal defender we may as well ask them to fix the rest up as well. Illusory Disenchanter and Warlock both wield scepters, give Warlock a staff, and disenchanter redesigned to a utility style phantasm (see below). Illusory Mage doesn’t wield anything, give it a torch. Illusory Warden duel wields axes, The skill is from ranger OH axe, but created on mes focus 5, perhaps make it cast swirling winds ele focus air, but make the radius much much smaller, so that it functions the same as warden now. Illusory rogue wields MH dagger, I think it would be cool if this was the phantasm that didn’t have a weapon (like the mes in downstate)

In order to achieve this, they would need to re skin some of the weapons so that they are purple-y and translucent. (eg. torch/staff/focus)

I also think the “Utility Phantasms” are an awesome idea. They could use some of the other utilities as well, eg. venoms/shouts/conjure weapons(not sure how it would work) etc. This way they could tie a phantasm to each OH weapon and downstate, and leave the “utility phantasms” to utilities.

Well, Kasmeer’s phantasms stay alive despite target death, I don’t know why mesmer phantasms can’t be the same.

If phantasms persisted after target death then their recharges would have to be lengthened quite a bit to balance it out, and Mesmer already has enough problems with lengthy recharges – it’s been a continual problem with Mesmer balance since GW1. I prefer shorter recharge, more active skill use even if it does suck when you summon phantasms on a target that dies seconds later.