Guild Wars 2

Just to provide insight at the illusion generation rate of each Mesmer Utility

Without Illusionists Celerity

• 0.0465 Illusions per sec : 1.5s cast : 20s cd : 1 Illusion : Phantasmal Disenchanter
• 0.0444 Illusions per sec : 0.0s cast : 45s cd : 2 Illusion : Mirror Images
• 0.0317 Illusions per sec : 1.5s cast : 30s cd : 1 Illusion : Phantasmal Defender
• 0.0250 Illusions per sec : 0.0s cast : 40s cd : 1 Illusion : Decoy

With Illusionists Celerity

• 0.0571 Illusions per sec : 1.5s cast : 16s cd : 1 Illusion : Phantasmal Disenchanter
• 0.0555 Illusions per sec : 0.0s cast : 36s cd : 2 Illusion : Mirror Images
• 0.0392 Illusions per sec : 1.5s cast : 24s cd : 1 Illusion : Phantasmal Defender
• 0.0313 Illusions per sec : 0.0s cast : 32s cd : 1 Illusion : Decoy

Interesting as this may be, no one uses any of the utilities mentioned because of their illusions/minute rate of generation. This is obvious for the phantasms, but less so for the clone ones.

MI and decoy are used as stunbreakers and stealth, etc. However, they are also used because they provide instantaneous clone generation, the precursor to instantaneous shatter burst. Clones on dodge roll provide far higher clones per minute, but don’t have the ability to burst generate clones. That reason over every other is why MI and decoy are so invaluable to shatter builds.

I disagree with “no one” :-p

“No one” and “every” are two words that fast track you to losing a debate ;-)

I agree that the stunbreaker aspect of Mirror Images and Clone are large reasons why they are taken, as well as the “instant illusion” aspect of each and the stealth from decoy (always appreciated).

However, for those builds that are not shatter builds but want to maintain the illusion cap (perhaps they are taking 2+ of the per illusion bonus traits), this information could be beneficial.

I know some people aren’t fans of decoy and seeing that if you don’t need another stunbreaker and/or don’t care about the short durations stealth that you’re better off with any of the other 3 for illusion generation could be useful.

I half agree about clone-on-dodge being the best source of generation. It is nice, but it also eats up endurance. The statement that it is the best also ignores the beauty of taking both a weapon trait and Illusionists Celerity for illusion generation … especially Blade Training with Sword+Sword.

Ultimately, I’m just trying to get more info out there that I’m not seeing on the forums so that perhaps we can spark some more interesting discussions on the Mesmer class. I think we have one of the best (if not the best) community on here of all the classes, and I wish to leverage that to its fullest :-)

It sure as heck beats the Ranger community where some of us are friendly but most of us are angry.

The cast time on iDisenchanter is way too long

As Kavia points out, you’ve disregarded the cast time in your calculations. This puts iDisenchanter at 0.0465 illusions/sec or 0.0571 w/ Celerity (assuming you’re on land). It’s still slightly more illusions/sec than Mirror Images, but the difference is practically negligible.

Whoops, thanks. Updated OP to include cast times and illusions-per-sec to be calculated as: num_illusions / (cast_time + cd)