Guild Wars 2

I’m continuing my 3rd or 4rth world tour. ( I forget which ) The last skill point for Snowden Drifts was the Raven Shaman.

She disappeared leaving 2 Phantasms in her wake that all did similar damage to her and had similar hit points. More accurately she looked just like her phantasms.

Players with any experience are not confused by clones or phantasms.

One way to potentially make phantasm builds,( and other types,) work would be to make the clones and phantasms mimic the actions of the Mesmer. They would display whatever animation the Mesmer was currently using. You’d need to add some wandering to the clones so that they didn’t end up following the Mesmer in a blob like necro minions.

If a transformation to “Phantasm Form” were possible, it would be a real mind bender. This could even be an elite skill. The Mesmer puts out phantasms then transforms to look like them. Now you have 2-4 targets that look and act the same. I’ve seen this trick in WvW. A Mesmer was using a tonic to hide among phantasms.

Such a change would be a buff to Mesmer without actually increasing anything. It would also make Mesmer closer to the spirit of the class as presented by ANET.

I’ve been saying this for a while now, a fun rework if they ever properly revisit the underlying Mesmer class design would be to align us a bit with this tickery-aspect again.

Ideally, we’d have virtually no defense and would be frail as hell, but virtually impossible to find or pin down. The ultimate nuisance on a PvP level, and in PvE someone who can wade into the firestorm and come out unharmed – or rather, was never there to begin with.

Back then I thought of the inverse of what you said, a channeled elite “House of Glass” which rapidly spawns clones using a plethora of rather believably animation sets including dodging and leaving AEs, but not only of us rather also of other friendly players, meaning it gets hellishly chaotic and difficult to tell who is who.