Guild Wars 2

So, part of the appeal of mesmers is that they summon illusions that are supposed to be distractions to enemies; to take targets and get hit instead of you. except in pve the mobs always know which one is you. not cool. It’s annoying to build a character that is supposed to have decoys and the decoys don’t work.
/endrant

Depends on the clone and your attacks as after I spam a clone I give it a second to build aggro. On top of that I generally spam sword clones there the only ones that constantly chase the target and the best to act as a decoy lastly the skill decoy works rather well in dropping your own aggro if you already have illusions on the target. Only time I care about decoys in pve is for either champions are large mobs even then its not required.

In general mobs behave like this:

phantasms > Mesmer > clones

and

damage received > no damage received

If your phant misses the mob at first attack, it won’t grab the aggro, except you are too far away. If it hits, in 9 of 10 cases it also gets the aggro. If you summon no phants but only clones, then 75% of the time you will have the aggro. If you stop doing damage (eg. when kiting) sooner or later the mob will focus a clone.

then the problem is that when illusions die or are shattered, then you become primary target simply because you were next in line? Every time I use Decoy, the mob will always just stand at the spot I disappear from, taking hits from my phantasms, then chase me again when I reappear.