Guild Wars 2

Wait, hold on! Before you stick your nose up into the air and say “Hmph, any good player always knows where the Mesmer is.” (Looking at you, Pyro) read on, as I feel this statement may not be as absolute as many believe.

PRETENDING TO BE A CLONE
At one point or another, every Mesmer gets to experience satisfaction of watching an opponent -say some eager Guardian leaping in with his greatsword and spinning to win- on a clone that they were so sure was the actual Mesmer. You can tell their frustration, you can tell somewhere inside they’re saying to themselves “$@#$! Mesmers!” and you want to do it to them again and again. Taking a moment to pretend to be a clone isn’t just for fun though. There can be a number of useful reasons to do this, such as health regeneration (Ether Signet), letting your cooldowns recharge, tricking your opponent into leaving themselves open or taking a moment to plan your next move. People won’t be fooled for more than a couple seconds, but in a fight even half-seconds count!
It turns out that part of being a talented Mesmer is forcing your opponent to have a hard time catching you, and learning to understand how you appear from their point of view is a big factor in that. Here are the tools you’ll need:

• A form of stealth: (Desperate Decoy; Dueling V, Veil, Mass Invisibility, or Decoy)
• A staff, scepter, or sword.
• Patience and precision.

PLAYING HIDE-&-SEEK WITH STEALTH
Stealth breaks targetting, meaning that the moment you dissapear your opponent has to scramble to find you again. Since the opponent does not have a 360 field of vision, there will always be blind spots that they will not see. The trick is to utilize these blind spots to allow yourself to reappear out of their sight. It is common for a Mesmer to scramble around behind the opponent, since it forces them to wheel their camera around, but the problem here is that such a technique is too simple. Adding an illusion into the mix forces the opponent to divide their attention, but there are a number of other techniques you can do to add to the confusion. -Remember that any skill that does not do damage does not break stealth, including:-

• Illusionary Leap/Swap (Sword 3: You can even AoE immobilize opponents and remain stealthed)
• Phase Retreat
• All Utilities (Except Mantra of Pain’s attack)
• All Phantasm Summons
  This means you could DodgeClone > Phase Retreat > Illusionary Leap + Swap and even summon a phantasm all while stealthed, leaving the opponent with all sorts of things to deal with other than you.

THE CLONE LIFE
This would be all for nothing if you still end up sidestepping and jumping around like a spazz the moment you come out of stealth. Sometimes it is better to just chill, expecially when using ranged weapons such as Scepter, Staff, or Greatsword. Remember that clones:

• Attack at a specific pace
• Do not sidestep
• Only move to keep in range of the opponent
• Are again bugged not to wield offhand weapons. Wtf anet!?

This isn’t some gamebreaking technique and isn’t something you should expect to utilize often, but it is one of those small things that separate good Mesmer from bad Mesmer. Despite playing Mesmer for years, I sometimes find myself having to take a split second to reorient myself when an opponent catches me offguard with smart positioning and a screen-full of particle effects (Warlord of Chaos.. /sideglance) . Remember that as a Mesmer, we are required to be more creative than most other classes in order to succeed, and little quirks like this are skills that take just a bit of practice to edge you over the competition.

Have there been any updates, changes, or tests to clone/phantasm HP? I figured I should add something about illusion health in the OP but I don’t wanna be inaccurate.

Agree 100%. It’s not about fooling everyone all of the time, that would be clearly OPd. However, even the most seasoned pro will take a split second longer to identify a well-played Mesmer over a poor/spaz Mesmer.

I do think people often want to dismiss this way too easily, and in a sort of “self-fulfilling prophecy” they simple don’t even try to play “pretend”, which in turn reinforces their belief that it doesn’t work. (Since people don’t have a hard time spotting them when they’re spazzing about.)

I especially like doing this with condie builds, to get some ticks in while they’re trying to find me, or to let Staff + IE Clones build up some pressure before MtD shattering on them.