Guild Wars 2

ok so there are this 2 trait skills that grant an extra 15% damage, BUT! here is the problem:

Empowered Illusions: illusions inflict 15% more damage

Phantasmal Strenght: Phantasms do 15% more damage

what i want to know is which ones are the illusions and which are the phantasms, cause Shatter skills also mention Clones, so are there 3 kinds of summon for the mesmer?

this could change my build quite a bit, cause i’ve seen some of this things deal lots of damage (the pistol one, the sword/greatsword one, the staff) and some that deal almost no damage (the scepter ones, some sword clones, one from the GS, etc)

“Illusions” is a term that encompasses everything, clones and phantasms. Phantasms are a subset of illusions and the only ones that do any sort of real damage themselves.

Clones = decoys / shatter ammo, show up as your name.
Phantasms = actual damage, show up as “Phantasmal Warden/Duelist/Etc”
Illusions = term to describe both clones and phantasms.

awesome, so then my phantasms are dealing 30% more damage

now, what increases the illusion’s damage? Power or condition damage?

korelg.7862:

awesome, so then my phantasms are dealing 30% more damage

now, what increases the illusion’s damage? Power or condition damage?

Power mostly I think.

Scaling depends on the phantasm. The Illusionary mage (Torch Phantasm) causes confusion and therefore does more damage with your condition damage. I think all the others are based on your power, but your Illusionary warlock (Staff phantasm) says it causes more damage depending on how many conditions the target has. So this might scale off both power and condition damage, or just condition damage? I’m not sure.

I heard it was best to trait for getting illusions to cause stacking bleeds from their crits for much higher dmg, can anyone confirm this? Does this apply to clones as well?

Kelvik.3785:

I heard it was best to trait for getting illusions to cause stacking bleeds from their crits for much higher dmg, can anyone confirm this? Does this apply to clones as well?

Best is subjective. Many people can make a solid argument that shatter builds are better, or non-condition power phantasm builds are better. It does apply to clones though as well. At least the bleed on crit part.