Alrighty folks, this is gonna be a pretty long one, so buckle up.
What Would Change?
The biggest change is as follows:
Phantasms can only be damaged if either the phantasm itself or the Mesmer that owns it is targeted. Attacks used without a target will not deal damage to the phantasm.
That’s the core of the idea. In addition to that, phantasm hp would be reduced significantly, allowing for the phantasms to be destroyed much easier when actually targeted.
This would obviously be a pretty huge change, so I’m going to go through and try to analyze the effects it would have on every aspect of the game.
Why this mechanic?
I picked this mechanic because it already has an existing implementation in the game. One of the mistlock instabilities causes non-targeted mobs to take half damage. This means that implementing this idea wouldn’t be entirely new development, but could pull from an already existing mechanic.
Effect in a 1v1 (Self)
Not going to lie, phantasm builds and phantasms in general are going to take a hit here. Since either the Mesmer or their phantasms are generally targeted in a 1v1, this means that the damage reduction portion of the change will rarely activate, but phantasms will be easier to kill due to their lower health.
However, given the recent focus on incorporating shattering into most/all builds, I don’t see this as too huge of an issue. If a decent shatter cadence is maintained, phantasms should still last long enough to do their job and then shatter.
Effects in a 1v1 (others)
Folks fighting you won’t notice a huge difference here. Phantasms will squish easier, but they’ve always squished pretty quickly. The only time when this change might be noticed is if someone is attempting to simply spam aoe without bothering to choose a target cough d/d ele cough, in which case the phantasms will get a lot harder to kill.
Effects in a PvP Teamfight (self)
This is where the change really starts to shine. Generally, team fights have enough aoe pressure that you’re lucky if a phantasm survives for more than one attack. With this change, the phantasms will be resilient unless directly targeted.
At this point, your personal positioning and playstyle starts to matter more as well. If you’re bunkering down on the point, you’ll be a main target and will be taking a lot of damage to your phantasms. If you’re more of a transient target playing a bursty role or more of a lockdown support, you’re going to be in a position to avoid that direct targeting most of the time, which lets your phantasms really do their job.
Effects in a PvP Teamfight (others)
People are going to start noting that Mesmer phantasms actually do things if they’re left alone. Since the phantasms have low health, removing them will be as simple as a quick target and then autoattack, but it will be forcing a direct response to the attack rather than laying aoes as normal and letting that be sufficient defense from any phantasms.
On this note, it’s extremely important that this change is communicated well. If it is implemented without communication, the simple mechanic of needing to target to do damage will appear to be a broken damage immunity without more investigation. Communicating the change ensures that everyone knows what’s going on with the phantasms, and how to react to them.
Effects in WvW Groups (self)
This is one of the areas where the most marked improvements will occur. Currently phantasms are guaranteed to die instantly upon their use (instantly minus one second with protected phantasms). With this change, the phantasms will remain as dangerous attacks until targeted and killed. Since targeting the Mesmer itself will be rare in this environment, it means that the phantasm will need to be the entity that gets targeted.
This will put mesmers on a much more even footing with most other classes in respect to area damage (yes, even with chrono wells). This will allow us to use aoe phantasms such as the zerker and the warden to actually act as a more persistent aoe similar to what other classes can do. It also allows for a boost to the strike team role as it lets single target phantasms perform their job, whereas they simply die before even getting an attack off right now.
Effects in WvW Groups (other)
People are going to start noticing phantasms now, and will need to react to them. If you put a lava font or meteor shower or combustive shot or any other strong aoe near a group, it forces a reaction of some sort, whether to move or block or otherwise mitigate it. Now, phantasms will cause that too, in the form of targeting and then killing. This will be a new aspect of response that hasn’t ever been needed before, and people will probably take a bit of time to adjust to it.
Effects in PvE
This one I’m most unsure about, primarily because I don’t know if monsters use a targeting schema that lines up with how players do. However, I’m going to assume that they do, and analyze it based on that.
Random aoes and cleaving attacks will no longer deal damage to phantasms, as they must be targeted. If the boss actually turns and munches on it it’ll die, but not other than that. Additionally, this actually makes it advantageous for the Mesmer to not have aggro from the boss, since that targeting would also allow the phantasms to die. This may be particularly helpful in raids, as aggro mechanics have been suggested as being an addition here.
Overall in PvE, this change provides a decisive mechanic that a Mesmer can use to sustain their phantasms much more effectively. It’s not perfect survivability and isn’t intended as such, but will drastically improve the damage capabilities of Mesmer in PvE.
Fringe Cases
This section is pretty much just about the pDefender. Unlike the other phantasms, this phantasm functions purely off of being an hp sponge for your group. This means that the hp reduction inherent to this change would not allow it to work.
I’m not entirely sure how it should be handled quite honestly. The change could simply not apply to it, or apply in some sort of limited aspect without the hp reduction, or its specific mitigation mechanic could be modified.
Conclusion
That’s pretty much it. This suggestion, if implemented, would completely revamp the function and form of phantasm survivability in this game, pushing it from purely health-based, which scales poorly in PvE and WvW, but too strongly in PvP and 1v1, to a mechanic based system that scales appropriately throughout all game types. This change would not have a negative impact on the abilities of others to fight a focused battle with a Mesmer, but would enhance Mesmer offense in the areas that it is typically extremely weak in: large fights and PvE.
As always, I’m open to suggestions on how to improve this idea.