Guild Wars 2

I’ve played my Mesmer up to 55 without realising how awesome and valuable Sharper Images is: “Illusions inflict bleeding on critical hits”.
With this trait a pair or trio of clones can take down a trash foe. Posters here have said how fundamental this trait is to many builds, or life as a mesmer generally.

Clones do the #1 weapon skill you have when you summon them, but they do none of the damage you can do with the skill. They do, however, apply whatever condition that the number 1 skill does. The weapons that have conditions caused by #1 are:
a) Staff (randomly bleeding, burning, or vulnerability).
b) Sword (Vulnerability on the first and second of three chain skill)
c) Trident (Currently clones cause Confusion, although the skill doesn’t cause confusion, it only gives does might, swiftness, vigor to allies)

Weapons that don’t apply a condition are:
a) Scepter (though the wiki says third of three does confusion?)
b) Greatsword
c) Spear

So without Sharper images trait (15 points in on the Precision trait line), only Staff and Trident clones can hurt foes and contribute to your damage outlay before you shatter them.
Even then, the Trident is bugged to do this, so eventually only the Staff will be capable of causing condition damage from clone attacks. Sadly, the Mesmer is the only class I enjoy getting into the water with because of the Trident bug.

I’ve read a lot of comments, and experienced for myself, how tough and boring a Mesmer can be up until higher levels. It doesn’t really get good until about two Master Traits are possible.

So I wonder if clones should always be able to apply a damaging condition? Two possibilities for this are:
1) Make Sharper Images standard for all Mesmers. It makes sense that when an illusion crits, it doesn’t literally stab the foe in the heart or eye or brain, but instead crits in a way that makes sense as an illusion. A critical hit of 0 damage clearly is no crit at all.
2) Give all Mesmer #1 skills a condition that clones can apply, mostly all damage-dealing conditions hopefully, and not necessarily on every hit.

If clones become known for applying conditions, the 1-70 levelling experience for players would no longer be a laborious trek of newbies asking “Why do these clones seem so impotent?”. Players would learn faster the value of putting clones on multiple enemies, and would have a greater sense of contribution to groups and large events.

Even if a condition on every hit is too overpowered, then there are ways of balancing it that don’t require 15 points in one trait line, and everyone can still benefit from it.
Could clone conditions become standard to make it a more effective class for the whole journey?

Yes.

I don’t think there is any willingness to revisit Mesmer illusions though. Consider that one of the most useful clone types (Trident-wielders) are only that way unintentionally, because of a bug that hasn’t been fixed since launch.

My impression is that you’re only supposed to use illusions in a certain way. Giving them more utility would work against their main purpose as minion bombs.

Roven Leafsong.8917:

Yes.

I don’t think there is any willingness to revisit Mesmer illusions though. Consider that one of the most useful clone types (Trident-wielders) are only that way unintentionally, because of a bug that hasn’t been fixed since launch.

My impression is that you’re only supposed to use illusions in a certain way. Giving them more utility would work against their main purpose as minion bombs.

From my point of view as a condition mesmer I see a need for our illusions to be changed. Sharper images has become a mandatory trait for condition builds and as a result the rabid amulet has as well.

The trait sharper images promotes not playing as a minion bomber since illusions need to be up to apply conditions and since staff is our only semi-reliable condition weapon swapping away from it just makes the mesmer weaker. We need damaging conditions for our illusions on another weapon set and a channeled 5 stacks of confusion from scepter does not cut it.

Yea, I remember talking about these things back in beta, wanting Mesmer to be more like how I wanted to play. Now that I’m playing higher levels I can understand the way it works with traits and all, but it’s also been a hard slog to endure getting here.

Nota bene: The 3rd strike of sword clone removes boon which is also useful (sometimes alot).

I wouldn’t go as far as saying that every no1 attack should cause condition, but I agree on the idea that every one of them should have some utilities to make the clone somewhat more worthwhile.

Roven Leafsong.8917:

Yes.

I don’t think there is any willingness to revisit Mesmer illusions though. Consider that one of the most useful clone types (Trident-wielders) are only that way unintentionally, because of a bug that hasn’t been fixed since launch.

My impression is that you’re only supposed to use illusions in a certain way. Giving them more utility would work against their main purpose as minion bombs.

Really outside of tagging mobs in a large group DE I don’t even use shatters unless I’m just finishing off a mob or just for kicks. Traiting into bleeds on crit, % outgoing damage increase, and % incoming damage decreases makes shattering feel like it does more bad than good for me since I’ve not heavily invested into making a shatter mesmer.

All clones can cause bleeds when traited, anything more would be OP.

For leveling I used GS clones for thier bleeds. (15 duelist.)
Staff works ok aswell, especially for harder mobs.
you want to maximize your crit chance for this, also get the clones on dodge trait when you can, plus decoy and mirror images.
Additional condition damage helps, but condition duration wont affect the clones bleeds.

clones adopt your crit rate, crit damage and CD damage, plus toughness, but not vitality, power, or condition duration. ( your pre-boons stats )

3 Clones will kill fast and you can spawn them faster than phantasms.

HF

Right now, clones apply these conditions:

Sword – vulnerability
Staff – vulnerability, bleed, burn
GS – none
Scepter – none, but looks it should apply confusion on the third strike.

I think that if they fix the scepter one and add vulnerability to the GS one, they are mostly ok. I know Mirror Blade (GS 2) adds vulnerability on its own, but GS clones are quite useless other than for shattering. I don’t think all of them should add a damaging condition untrained, as they are suposed to enhance your weapon playstyle. GS and sword are precision/power weapons and scepter/staff are condition ones.

Pollux.3247:

Right now, clones apply these conditions:

GS – none

I think that if they fix the scepter one and add vulnerability to the GS one, they are mostly ok. I know Mirror Blade (GS 2) adds vulnerability on its own, but GS clones are quite useless other than for shattering. I don’t think all of them should add a damaging condition untrained, as they are suposed to enhance your weapon playstyle. GS and sword are precision/power weapons and scepter/staff are condition ones.

With 30 in deulist and my crit rate of 75% my GS clones stack bleeds like crazy, if you gave them vulnerability they would be OP, they are already potentialy the highest damaging clone as is.
This is why I used them for leveling ( after you get 15 in duelist )

Max.8563:

All clones can cause bleeds when traited, anything more would be OP.

For leveling I used GS clones for thier bleeds. (15 duelist.)
Staff works ok aswell, especially for harder mobs.
you want to maximize your crit chance for this, also get the clones on dodge trait when you can, plus decoy and mirror images.
Additional condition damage helps, but condition duration wont affect the clones bleeds.

clones adopt your crit rate, crit damage and CD damage, plus toughness, but not vitality, power, or condition duration. ( your pre-boons stats )

3 Clones will kill fast and you can spawn them faster than phantasms.

HF

Yea, I would like to argue here that perhaps either
a) All clones cause a dot condition on crit, without needing to be traited (fill the trait with something else), or
b) Add conditions to the weapon #1 skills without it, or
c) Something else to make this steady damage by clones as standard regardless of traits.

Now that I’ve just found this significant trait, it’s going to give the Staff have a whole new meaning to me, with the bouncing attacks and all.
TO THE MESMOBILE!!

fyi clones dont get the extra bounce, they also dont get any condition duration, so the bleeds, cripple, confusions always do the base duration.

But staff clones are ok without it anyhow, imagine if u had 100% crit rate ( not possible afaik ) your clones would do 1 random condition and 1 bleed, plus the standard bouncing.

This is why I used GS clones in pve, when your crit rate surpasses 50% your GS clones do more damage than staff, naturally if your crit is below 50% then staff clones are probly better.

There is a possible bug whereas the bleeds from clones stop damaging the target if the clone dies, i haven’t confirmed this yet.

Interesting stuff! Thanks for clarifying on the extra bounce trait, too.

Was also wondering if a third option could be:
c) Illusions have 50% chance to apply confusion on crit.
50% might be too high/low, but the idea is there, makes sense with these mystical illusions doing severe effects on foes as their crit, and helps put the mesmer’s confusion condition at a fundamental level within the class.

You seem a bit stuck on the mandatory 15 points, but the traitline is already a mandatory 20 point line for the dodge roll clones. You’d have to hand both those out for free to change that and I don’t see it happening.

Scepter clones really need something though(Along with scepter in general). Greatsword works without a condition because it’s multihit and stacks the bleeds faster than the others. Scepter’s whole gimmick is how fast it summons clones and it’s clones don’t do anything. And it’s confuse should be instant so you can use your block instead of facetanking.

Yeah scepter clones suck badly, they do need something.
I also find the scepter is the worst of our weapons in general, so changing the #1 skill could be an easy way to make it usefull.
Like changing the 3RD hit to a 5 sec confusion, as this would mean the clones need to survive 6secs for each cast of confusion.

Tho i doubt i would use it even with that.

Raze.8467:

You seem a bit stuck on the mandatory 15 points, but the traitline is already a mandatory 20 point line for the dodge roll clones. You’d have to hand both those out for free to change that and I don’t see it happening.

Now I’m confused. I haven’t mentioned the dodge roll clones. Is that also informally standard across Mesmers? Is it’s use different across pvp/pve?