Guild Wars 2

Heyas, I’ve been playing around with a more phantasm based build lately, and whiles the 50% extra phantasm health from signet of illusions is somewhat useful, the shatter recharge active seems pretty pointless. Giving extra health just so you can kill them more often seems a tad on the counterproductive side.

Maby it would be more frequently used if it gave all phantasms 2s distortion on active instead.

It’s secretly a shatter signet, but it’s effective on hybrid builds. The fact that it’s useful on phantasm builds is a side effect, especially since a bug makes it so the +50% hp only applies 5-10 seconds after the illusion has been summoned.

I think the idea is to allow them to live long enough to allow you to shatter them…
I don’t really use signets or anything else which could be used to pick my mesmer out of the herd.. but this one seems like it almost may be worth it. I already use the shatter recharge trait though so it may be superfluous

Darnis.4056:

I think the idea is to allow them to live long enough to allow you to shatter them…

Yeah that’s probably the idea of its design. In a shatter build a killed illusion is a pure loss.
I find this signet quite good and versatile in its usage: shatter build, phantasm build, “tanky” build.
Of course fixing it would make it actually useful.

I use it sometimes in my dungeon/fractal runs as a defensive slot.

If I know I’m going into a long drawn out boss fight where keeping my phantasms up will net more than shattering constantly, I’ll use it.

The bug rarely bothers me.

And the active is heads and tails nice if I need a second distortion very quickly. It isn’t something to blow cooldown on willy nilly.

The bug here is that it only applies the extra health for 5-10 seconds after summoning? But I run my skills with a decoy/mirror images/signet of illusions I really like it so that I can recharge my shatters whenever I please instead of getting to 50% health.

I run a phantasm build and I use this signet. Even with the current bug I find it essential to my playstyle (even to the point where I have removed the keybind to ensure I don’t lose the passive).

To answer the question of the topic I would say a definite yes, the active is counter productive…… for my build.

Of course this is from a pure WvW perspective so my view is biased.

Signet of illusions is designed to be beneficial to both shatter (active effect) and phantasm (passive effect) builds. Everyone is happy slotting this skill.
To me this is a good example of active/passive combination.