Guild Wars 2

My mesmer is relatively new, only being 71 as of this patch, so please pardon my ignorance.

I see a lot of doom and gloom posts saying that there’s now “no reason to use a phantasm build instead of shatter,” but are these comments strictly about PvP and WvW, or are they intended to also include PvE? I was of the impression that shatter builds are great burst, but wouldn’t really be able to sustain their DPS in a dungeon-like scenario.

The problem is that Phantasm die very quick same with illusions and even more so after the patch. They took away Illusionists Celerity (moved it up higher in the tree) which allows you faster cool down on phantasm and clone generation skills. Not to mention the Signet of Illusions nerf.

This basically renders most phantasm builds useless and it is impossible now to keep anything clone or phantasm up for long. The only viable spec is Shatter.

Forget what Titanimite said. At the very least in PvE, Phantasms got a substantial HP buff. More so with the now finally functional (nerfed but with the increased base-HP still very powerful) Signet of Illusions.

Longer-CD as the Phantasms might be, they are quite durable. I actually found myself using the Defender in the instance earlier, without being specced for it.
Not bad at all now.

Thanks for the responses.

Carighan.6758:

Forget what Titanimite said. At the very least in PvE, Phantasms got a substantial HP buff. More so with the now finally functional (nerfed but with the increased base-HP still very powerful) Signet of Illusions.

Longer-CD as the Phantasms might be, they are quite durable. I actually found myself using the Defender in the instance earlier, without being specced for it.
Not bad at all now.

This is what I figured. Slower time to get up to speed for phantasms, basically, but it remains to be seen how much the turnover matters.

Still I have nothing to compare it to, though. Are shatter mesmers capable of respectable sustained DPS in dungeons?

Weirwynn.2390:

Thanks for the responses.

Carighan.6758:

Forget what Titanimite said. At the very least in PvE, Phantasms got a substantial HP buff. More so with the now finally functional (nerfed but with the increased base-HP still very powerful) Signet of Illusions.

Longer-CD as the Phantasms might be, they are quite durable. I actually found myself using the Defender in the instance earlier, without being specced for it.
Not bad at all now.

This is what I figured. Slower time to get up to speed for phantasms, basically, but it remains to be seen how much the turnover matters.

Still I have nothing to compare it to, though. Are shatter mesmers capable of respectable sustained DPS in dungeons?

Yes, I used to run a shatter Mesmer in organized dungeons and you CAN get very good sustained DPS n burst DPS still have yet to try it since the patch

the major damage in pve came from Vengeful Images… which now only last 5 second upon creating..

also we are unable to create illusion as more often, due to the trait move up 20 point…

p.s. true, in pve your phantasm actually have more health, which will make it last a few second longer. but what good does it do? at 80 zerk is like 2~3k damage very 6 second.. which are not impressive at all.. also as you surviving, you will want to make clone to get rid of unwanted agro.. which will replace one of your phantasm.. then you couldn’t summon new ones… sigh..

Main problem of phantasms in pve is that your damage entwined with their survival. Surely you could stack 3 phantasms, but if any of them dies, you lose 1/4 of your potential damage before you can replace it.
Before this patch phantasms that inherited full-berserker stats were literally blown by aoe whistle, even when their hp was boosted by signet or trait. Mixing damage with survival is not acceptable, since best way to get past of any pve encounter so far is more dps.

After patch I heard statements like “30000 hp phantasmal defender” and saw some improvements myself, so worth a try.