Guild Wars 2

If iDefender, iAvenger, iWarden, iDisenchanter and iMage could target allies, would you be more willing to take them?

I mean we must have the tech for that, right?

What if these phantasms could be cast with no target, so that they follow you around and activate their skills with you as the primary target? iMage would grant you fury, iAvenger alacrity, and most importantly iDisenchanter would become a reliable form of condition removal.

Why isn’t this a thing?

Doesn’t this mess with the whole idea that phantasms/clones aren’t build to last (when using the utility on yourself)? In optimal conditions you would have a pemanent phant following you around similair to a necro AI.

Ignoring all I said: Heck yeah this should be a thing, though iDefender could use a larger health pool!

They aren’t build to last even if you can cast them on yourself. Why? ‘Cos we’re shattering left and right in spvp while we’re bringing only dps phantasms in pve (maybe shield could be an alternative, but that’s still only theorycraft). In zergs they would die in 2 seconds anyway (not 1 ’cos you have traited invul on them!).

I think the problem is what happens when you shatter them? What are they going to target and shatter on?

I think a better idea would be to have some of them automatically fire their first shot at yourself or an ally rather than an enemy, but still have an enemy target.

Actually, I’ve been giving this a lot of thought recently. If you target an enemy, perhaps you can have some of the phantasms have a default AI where the bounces favor for example allies with the most conditions, or yourself, or enemies with the most boons on them, talking about the disenchanter here of course. As one example. We could possibly even have a phantasm management panel that we could open up or we could define what is going to be favored for various phantasms into bouncing attacks and things like that.

Another possibility would be to just make some of them more stronger, at least in the beginning. In the example of bouncing attacks for example take a cue from magic bullet and a have the bounces have stronger effects in the beginning. Perhaps they could give some kind of a stacking effect, like the first time you get hit with a bounce you get 3 stacks of something then two stacks then one stack. Possibly some kind of unique effects.

Just off the top of my head, as a possible example, perhaps you could have the disenchanter whenever hit the target ithe first time grants three stacks of something called disenchanter’s boon or disenchanter’s curse depending on the target, it has its effect equal to the number of stacks, for example removing three boons or three conditions, and if you don’t have the full amount of boons or conditions removed, then perhaps it could add 10% boon or condition duration for a few seconds for each booner condition it didn’t remove.

Then it would lose one stack, the next bounce it would only add to stacks to the target only if it didn’t already have any stacks at all.

And the mage then for example would be able to stack more burning, and stack might instead of fury at three stacks then two stacks than one stack, etcetera etcetera

I only mention all this because I think you would still need a target for shattering purposes.

Sorry if this is disjointed, I am driving and using a voice translator program.

This is a pretty good idea, although I doubt it’s going to happen any time soon. I also think that the bouncy Phantasms would still suck even if we could attach them to an ally.

Maybe we’ll get a Phantasmancer elite spec with the next expansion that modifies all Phantasms like:

• Untargetable/invincible
• Don’t count toward illusion limit
• Cannot be shattered
• Do not disappear when current target dies
• Only one Phantasm at a time
• Always target Mesmer’s last attacked enemy

Imaginary pets, more or less. iDefender might need some reworking so it’s not a permanent 50% damage reduction, but otherwise I think most Phantasms should work without modification other than a +150/200% damage bonus on the Elite spec or something.

I don’t mind them being enemy targets (with the exception of Defender and Disenchanter), but I’d like to be able to ground-cast them (and in the case of Warden, have him revert to the super old status where he stood still unless he lost LoS).