Going to try and be constructive about what mesmer’s need to be balanced for PvE without breaking PvP. I and others have mentioned (both recently and over the course of several years) that phantasms just need to be affected by all damage modifiers that the base mesmer has. This of course has the potential to throw chrono balance way of out line while still providing alacrity/quickness. So I want to talk about builds and numbers and why I don’t think this would break mesmer balance in both PvP and Raids.
So assumption: Phantasms now inherit all damage modifiers of the mesmer.
In PvP, the main power shatter build is Dom/Duel/X. The main change would be 0.5% more damage per stack of vulnerability. Since vulnerability is often spiked with a combo of GS#2/F3 before being quickly followed up with an F1, this won’t really phantasm damage at all in PvP as they will be shattered with F3. Rune of scholar is a risk reward that isn’t worth it in PvP. Something like Rune of Strength/Sigil of force could have an effect but 5% won’t break PvP and they aren’t always used. Since mesmer is thought to be weak with the upcoming changes, this would be a small but welcome buff.
In PvE: “Max DPS”
Domination: 15% more with EI and 12.5% with Fragility
Dueling: Phantasmal fury, FF (150 ferocity), HM: 15%
Illusions: 9%, Phantasmal Haste, Malicious Sorcery
Gear: Rune of Scholar, Sigil of Force, Seaweed Salad
I’m listing these all out because this is what I would call a max phantasm DPS setup. As you can see, chrono doesn’t fit in there. It also requires spamming MoP for HM. It means we can’t bring rune of chrono or 20% boon duration food. Some of these bonuses already affect phantasms but when it comes to damage modifiers that currently don’t, this would be ~79% buff in phantasm damage. That seems like a lot, so let’s look at some numbers. A swordsman with all those buffs would do about 14-15k to something with 2600 armor instead of ~8k. With PH and 3 swordsman, that’s ~ 12k phantasm DPS on a boss like gorsaval. MoP/auto attack spam can be added in there as well but we’re actually approaching “viable” not OP damage. It might not be meta/max but I wouldn’t kick a base mesmer anymore. Furthermore, with a condi necro/engineer in the mix which would add ~10 conditions, that would also bring Staff phantasms into play. MoP spam would cover up on the auto attacks of staff. This build provides minimal support in the form of one timewarp every 180 seconds with Signet of inspiration on the bar to share a bit extra.
Does this become OP with chrono? We can look at a few variations:
Dueling, Illusions, Chrono: Quickness but no alacrity:
Shield 5 is added into the mix and TW now has a 76 second CD. Rune of scholar still in play but sigil of concentration replaces sigil of air. Bountiful sharpening stone and maybe one or two pieces of commander gear are brought into play to reach 100% boon duration. TW is ~30% quickness uptime on 5 allies while ToT~20% uptime on 10 people. Signet of inspiration can add a bit. Mesmer is still spamming MoP.
Mesmer loses 12.5% and sigil of air while illusions lose ~30%. Gains the equivalent of ~20-40% boost in DPS for 5 people depending on the class. Given how little damage some classes like Herald or DPS druids lose for providing support, this is a fair tradeoff.
X, Illusions, Chrono: Quickness and alacrity:
I’m talking about the new 25% CDR alacrity here. Overall the math becomes pretty hazy here because it really depends on group comp and build. With it comes the ability to maintain quickness ~100% of the time on 5 targets. I won’t go too in depth with math on quickness since it also depends on if the group brings 1 or 2 chronos and both have signet of inspiration/ inspiration trait line instead of a DPS trait line. Rune of chrono is only needed if it’s one mesmer trying to keep quickness on 10 people. But if base mesmer damage goes up, the idea of having 2 chronos isn’t the worst. Also depends on if the bug with PH and the shield phantasm is fixed.
Basically (assuming PH is fixed) each Shield phantasm is a significant loss of DPS but will be able to maintain 33% alacrity on 5 people. So 3 shield phantasms and no wells, while you spam MoP and HM buffs to the shield phantasms would result in 100% alacrity. Or some mix of shield/sword phantasms + wells means no more HM. Either way the trade off for bringing alacrity on top of quickness is heavy but you now bring 100% quickness uptime and 100% alacrity uptime one way or another.
TLDR:
Make phantasms affected by all mesmer % modifers
Fix PH on shield phantasms
Won’t break PvP balance
Will make PvE base mesmer viable damage dealer and not a “kick on sight”. Bringing quickness and/or alacrity will lower the damage but be a fair trade off.