Guild Wars 2

My biggest gripe about the mesmer profession is that the majority of the phantasm traits only work properly for the duelist, and one trait can interfere with another. Such inconsistency does not encourage build variety, and I am starting to give up hope as the weeks keep passing while traits affecting a core profession mechanic (phantasms) remain alarmingly untouched and broken.

Vengeful Images - Grants retaliation to phantasms.
10s retaliation every 10s – Duelist
10s retaliation applied once – all other phantasms

• This is most detrimental for the Phantasmal Defender, who’s main output relies on retaliation while soaking half of each allies’ incoming damage. Works great for the first 10 seconds, but not after the boon fails to reapply.

Phantasmal Healing - Phantasms grant regeneration to nearby allies.
3s regeneration every 3s – Duelist
5s regeneration every 10s – all other phantasms

• Pair this trait with Illusionary Membrane (2s protection every time you gain regeneration) and the inconsistency makes phantasmal Duelist far more effective than the rest. Compare:
• 2s protection every 3s – Duelist
  2s protection every 10s – all other phantasms

Phantasmal Fury - Your phantasms have fury.
10s fury every 10s – Duelist
10s fury applied once – all other phantasms (with Phantasmal Healing traited)

• Phantasmal Fury interferes with Vengeful Images causing the retaliation boon to not apply.

Phantasmal Haste - Phantasms recharge 20% faster.
15% – Duelist, Berserker, Warlock, Whaler
10% – Warden
n/a – Swordsman, Mariner, Defender, Disenchanter, Mage

• 20 =/= 15, 10, n/a (if these values are wrong, please update the wiki)

Completely agree. The frustration has amounted into wanting to call out John Peters and ask him where are his priorities? These bugs, as well as others, have been documented since beta. Yet, the only “fixes” we see are the bugs that make Mesmers OP. Enough time has passed that these issues should be resolved. In most business avenues flaws lasting for a longevity greater than three months are unacceptable.

It’s time to start fixing class traits and skills, or give us something else. I’m tired of traiting points into talents that do nothing.

I agree. I have avoided any type of Phantasm build because I know this bug still exists. It really cuts down on the viability of any builds that go anywhere near these traits.

I’m not sure why they seem to be ignoring these, I thought for sure they would have been fixed by now. Not only are the traits unequally applied to certain phantasms, but we’ve got minor traits like Phantasmal Fury, Vengeful Images and Phantasmal Healing that break or override each other for any Phantasm besides Duelist!

I can’t even pick traits in game without needing to do extra research as to which traits work and which are broken or break each other, becoming just a waste of points and a false tooltip rather than a useful benefit.

Loafers.4126:

Phantasmal Fury - Your phantasms have fury.
10s fury every 10s – Duelist
10s fury applied once – all other phantasms

• Phantasmal Fury interferes with Vengeful Images causing the retaliation boon to not apply.

this has not been my experience. you can’t test it well in the mists because dummies die before the buff expires, but on events my izerker and iwarlock refresh their fury buff.

note im 20/30/0/0/20 and have no other phantasm buffing minor trait

Thanks for pointing that out Dixa, its Phantasmal Healing that prevents Fury from being re-applied to all the phantasms except Duelist.

Considering phantasms are most of mesmer damage output and they are used in every mesmer builds this should be fixed asap.

Another 2 bugs.

Phantasmal haste doesn’t seem to do anything with Chaotic Dampening/Blade Training + Illusionists Celerity.

The CD for the phantasms don’t change when you take all three of those trait skills.
————
Inspiration trait Vengeful Images has a little bug with it that buffs Phantasms up a bit. With Vengeful Images, your Phantasms attack immediately upon cast. Where as if you don’t use the trait, there is a slight delay in the attack.

@Loafers – Can you please include this in your list of bugs?

I totally agree this should be the priority of any Mesmer changes right now.
It has been pointed out and detailed too long ago to be ignored like that.
This also influences multiple Mesmer abilities, not just one like other issues that have already been addressed.

If it’s not an easy fix, at least communicate with us!

Kain.3480:

Considering phantasms are most of mesmer damage output and they are used in every mesmer builds this should be fixed asap.

This is a HUGE issue and one that is broken in my opinion – They do to much damage and makes the class not really that fun knowing that you press a button or 2 to summon a phantom and see the crits going crazy

I personally think they should change Phantoms and make them just give conditions and boons and move the damage to the Clones and Mesmer. It would be nice if the Clones didnt die when sneezed on and did like 5-15damage. Think it needs to be buffed at least into the 100-200 and remove the conditions they give and move them onto the Phantom as i said

I think that would fix most of the complaining about the class as most people seem to moan about the damage they do and also Moa which is rubbish anyway and Portal which is very situational

Their bug database is probably on fire, I would imagine it will be awhile before they get through their backlog and to the point they can do real tuning over fixing things like ‘DE gets stuck’ and flying orb thiefs.

I’m like 99% sure the Fury and Retaliation were permanent and didn’t have a fixed duration not too long ago.

I’m sure that was a secret (ninja change) and I assumed was an attempt to nerf phantasm builds (still good for 2-3 attacks but not further) so you were to shatter and rotate them more. Of course that’s not going to stop anybody. =p

The only thing I’m annoyed by is fury overriding retaliation and the duration on retaliation for Defender.

This doesn’t stop me from using these in builds, in fact for power phantasm builds I almost never use duelist as it’s inferior IMO. And if I’m ever doing the protection/regen proc set up it’s when I’m using staff or have access to chaos armor otherwise. (leap + glamour)