Guild Wars 2

This is the changes they made.
Phantasmal Defender: The cooldown on this skill has been reduced from 30 seconds to 25 seconds.

Dev note: This reduction should increase suitability a bit by enabling the defender to be active more often.

I’ve tested it & would luv your feedback on it. My conclusion is yes! if you manage to pull the PD out you will be able to take major hits & severe punishment from thief & others hard hitting classes. & actually enjoy a fun fight. But unfortunately problems comes again from the 1 1/2 sec casting time. Witch seems to plague the mesmer class over all. Unless your invisible, you’l get ganked or interrupted before you can pull the PD out. Conclusion, The PD needs to be an instant cast to make it worth wile. Any Mesmer tried yet & what do you think?

I don’t see how a ~17% reduction in CD on a basically completely unused skill will suddenly make that skill used more often. The change was sadly a waste of development effort.

The issues with PD are:

1) As you stated, an abysmal casting time. Same for the iDE
2) It has far too low HPs to be meaningful in anything but a 1v1, and even in a 1v1 it’s still not worth the utility slot over many other better utilities.
3) It’s attack damage & speed are pathetic, it moves too slow, and the nerf to the Illusions minor trait has killed off the only use this phantasm has ever seen.
4) It takes one of our 3 slots for Illusions, and that means you’re innately trading off damage for survivability. This is something Mesmers can ill afford.

This so called “defensive” Phantasm doesn’t even allow us to hold a point, or tank a foe in melee for even just a few seconds. It gets roughly 2-3 shot against any close quarters opponent. The long casting time just adds insult to injury.

Windwalker.7421:

3) It’s attack damage & speed are pathetic, it moves too slow, and the nerf to the Illusions minor trait has killed off the only use this phantasm has ever seen.

Guessing you mean inspiration there. Regardless, this is all accurate. The balance devs don’t actually know what needs to be done in order to make skills better, they just know that some skills aren’t very good. As a response, they buff random things about them in the hopes that it helps somehow. This is how we got random duration increases on confusing images/iMage, and this random cooldown decrease on iDefender instead of the actual changes they needed to be more functional.

Fay.2357:

Windwalker.7421:

3) It’s attack damage & speed are pathetic, it moves too slow, and the nerf to the Illusions minor trait has killed off the only use this phantasm has ever seen.

Guessing you mean inspiration there. Regardless, this is all accurate. The balance devs don’t actually know what needs to be done in order to make skills better, they just know that some skills aren’t very good. As a response, they buff random things about them in the hopes that it helps somehow. This is how we got random duration increases on confusing images/iMage, and this random cooldown decrease on iDefender instead of the actual changes they needed to be more functional.

It’s really depressing knowing that only few abilities are viable to play on the mesmer.

You know the trait that gives phantasms retaliation?

PD also defends all of your allies.

And triggers retaliation for EACH instance that it splits damage.

It also has more hps than any other phantasm. Couple that with the increased health of phantasms trait and signet…

Note, I’m not saying this is intensely viable. If you have several allies and AoEs are going off everywhere, it will pop fast. But it will also pop a lot of retaliation as it dies too. It isn’t OP, possibly not even on par with other abilities, but it is a kinda fun change of pace.

Morfedel.4165:

You know the trait that gives phantasms retaliation?

PD also defends all of your allies.

And triggers retaliation for EACH instance that it splits damage.

It also has more hps than any other phantasm. Couple that with the increased health of phantasms trait and signet…

Note, I’m not saying this is intensely viable. If you have several allies and AoEs are going off everywhere, it will pop fast. But it will also pop a lot of retaliation as it dies too. It isn’t OP, possibly not even on par with other abilities, but it is a kinda fun change of pace.

Like i mentioned before, PD needs tweaking before it becomes viable & interesting to play. The casting time is the main problem cuz theres no way to pull it out in time especially with a 900 yrds distance from ur target. So no matter how many buff it can dish out, worthless in the long run. ps: apparently other bugs arise. chek link
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Phantasmal-Disenchanter-is-Bugged/first#post4738631

Vieux P.1238:

Morfedel.4165:

You know the trait that gives phantasms retaliation?

PD also defends all of your allies.

And triggers retaliation for EACH instance that it splits damage.

It also has more hps than any other phantasm. Couple that with the increased health of phantasms trait and signet…

Note, I’m not saying this is intensely viable. If you have several allies and AoEs are going off everywhere, it will pop fast. But it will also pop a lot of retaliation as it dies too. It isn’t OP, possibly not even on par with other abilities, but it is a kinda fun change of pace.

Like i mentioned before, PD needs tweaking before it becomes viable & interesting to play. The casting time is the main problem cuz theres no way to pull it out in time especially with a 900 yrds distance from ur target. So no matter how many buff it can dish out, worthless in the long run. ps: apparently other bugs arise. chek link
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Phantasmal-Disenchanter-is-Bugged/first#post4738631

I was referring to phantasmal defender, not disenchanter, lol, but fair enough

EDIT: I’m noting it in the other post, but according to the wiki notes it appears that the disenchanter is intentionally like that.

The problem I have with it:

1.) Cast time is too long. max 3/4, better instant.
2.) Health in PvP only 7.278
3.) He buffs everything around him. So AOE damage really kills him fast.

Morfedel.4165:

You know the trait that gives phantasms retaliation?

PD also defends all of your allies.

And triggers retaliation for EACH instance that it splits damage.

It also has more hps than any other phantasm. Couple that with the increased health of phantasms trait and signet…

Note, I’m not saying this is intensely viable. If you have several allies and AoEs are going off everywhere, it will pop fast. But it will also pop a lot of retaliation as it dies too. It isn’t OP, possibly not even on par with other abilities, but it is a kinda fun change of pace.

The retaliation only lasts 5 seconds. It was nerfed because I made a build from it that actually worked. The defender also only has about 7k hp in PvP (roughly). Yeah, it’s more than the others…but it’s worthless for actually defending multiple people from anything significant.

Its not worth taking. There are much more useful skills that the mesmer can use to survive. In my random hit join experiments I once ran a tanky point defender inspiration mantra mesmer. It did no damage but it was very hard for the other puggies to take down. Defender in that build would just take up a useful slot for another mantra like the stability mantra which was key for getting off my 3k heals off on mantra charge.

If I had to choose defender or disenchanter to be removed in place of a new skill I would choose defender. At least disenchanter has decent condi/boon removal. But the cast time should be brought in line with other phantasm skills.

I played around with it for a bit, and had done so before, using Restorative Mantras to keep myself and Phants healed. In 1v1 vs. a test mob or two it’s pretty ridiculous, and for a moment you think it could be really OPd. Then you head to PvP with it, and you will find out why it doesn’t work at all.

In order to get this “amazing” tanking power, you need MoP to proc RM as much as possible, Sigil of Illusions naturally, and of course PD itself. Uh yeah. No escapes, no stun breaks, no condie clears. You will get torn to shreds, and so will the Phantasms for all the reasons listed above. Between the long channeling times on Mantras and the PD, your opponent would have to be pretty ridiculously stupid to let you get both of those off with consistency, and when he gets the PD down fast the whole house of cards comes crashing down hard.

Yeah Pyro’s Immortal build was the only time the PD had a short moment of viability, and it was a hella fun build. RiP