Guild Wars 2

Recently I’ve seen a lot of Mesmers recommending to go 25 points in Inspiration to get Phantasmal Strength [phantasms do15% more damage]. I know along with the pretty much mandatory 10 point Domination trait Empowered Illusions [illusions do 15% more damage], your illusions start hitting like trucks with a 30% damage increase. However the first 20 points in Inspiration seem so lackluster, it’s making me question the investment.

The whole Inspiration tree is very support oriented, and the best traits for PvP are just…not that good:
Warden’s Feedback: Useless in sPvP. Kinda nice when you use a Focus in WvWvW. It’s still easy to just avoid the Warden altogether though. A better option is to just use Feedback in WvWvW.
Persisting Images: Meh. No one (smart) is going to sit there and attack your clones. The best way to fight a Mesmer is to go straight for him and mow him down ASAP, and I’d rather spec against players who do that.
Vengeful Images: see above.
Phantasmal Healing: Too minimal to really care about since Mesmers don’t stack Healing Power.

You have to go 25 points in Inspiration, getting barely useful traits on the way, just for another 15% increase in phantasmal damage…wouldn’t it be better to just go in the Dueling tree for awesome kitten like more Precision/Crit Damage, Sharper Images , Confusing Combatants; Phantasmal Fury, Duelists Discipline, Dodge Clones (!), or even Desperate Decoy?

Warden’s Feedback: Useless in sPvP. Kinda nice when you use a Focus in WvWvW. It’s still easy to just avoid the Warden altogether though. A better option is to just use Feedback in WvWvW.

1. Warden’s Feedback makes any 1v1 in sPvP against a class that uses ranged projectiles a joke. No one “stands behind the Warden”, but that doesn’t mean YOU can’t position yourself behind it.

2. Why not use Feedback + iWarden + Curtain reflect in WvW? Obscene reflect chaining for even more obscene awesomeness.

Phantasmal Healing: Too minimal to really care about since Mesmers don’t stack Healing Power.

Don’t need to stack healing power to get a solid return for this trait.

wouldn’t it be better to just go in the Dueling tree for awesome kitten like more Precision/Crit Damage, Sharper Images , Confusing Combatants; Phantasmal Fury, Duelists, Discipline, Dodge Clones (!), or even Desperate Decoy?

Last I checked, the FOTM Phantasm army build was, in fact, 10/20/0/25/5 + 10.

Build adapted to node-sitting would have 10/15/15/25/5 for the protection spam.

Depends on your build. There are a surprising amout of viable mesmer builds.

And to your comment on noone is going to attack your clones. Builds with toughness and some HP are the kind of builds if you don’t kill the phantasms you will die before killing the mesmer.

I tend to run with Inspiration in PvE/WvW and Chaos in PvP. Illusionary Defenses and Mirror of Anguish in Chaos help me from getting spiked down by Wars/Thieves, while Medic’s and Warden’s Feedback are just too awesome in PvE/WvW to pass up.

I think the main issue is that there are a lot of mesmers flocking to the cookie-cutter 10/15/0/25/20 phantasm spec because they’re too lazy to think for themselves.

Haven’t bothered with it in spvp since they nerfed the rate regen is handed out (and in turn protection QQ) from phantasms. It’s still decent, but honestly I prefer 30/30/0/0/10 for my phantasm build lately. The haste in illusions feels too lackluster to pick up, and 25pts in inspiration is far too heavy an investment when I hate using warden in structured. Maybe that’ll change when zerker needs los again.

25 inspiration is a iWarden build. That’s pretty much it. It’s a very solid build. It is not the highest DPS build, but it’s really high up there for Dungeons and PvP.