Guild Wars 2

So, I am really interested in running a Phantasm build. Been doing the condition staff for a while, and am wanting to make something that focuses more on doing direct damage through Illusions.
I notice you can’t get it all with Phantasms. To get all the Phantasm traits 10/15/0/25/20 is necessary, but that doesn’t allow you to get the weapon traits that actually create those Phantasms. If you want more damage from Phantasms you have to drop Phantasmal Haste in the Illusions line to get more into Domination, etc.
What do you think is the most reasonable choice to drop from the possible Phantasm traits? Did you choose to take them all and just have slower weapon recharges, and if so, do you find that that works well?

I’m running 10/20/10/25/5 (the 10 in chaos lets me get manipulation cooldowns or reduced damage). I also gave up on Phantasm fury and instead opted for sword cooldown since I run s/s + staff

I also grabbed Deceptive Evasion to help confuse the enemy while my phantasms chunk them.

Espen’s setup is the same as my PVE variant for the build in my Sig. It works great in PVE, but I don’t recommend putting all your focus on phantasms in wvw. The main variant in that build is good for wvw and still uses phantasms quite a bit with some stealth and ambush tactics.

I don’t often use any of the weapon recharge traits when I run phantasm, I usually run scepter/sword, sword/pistol or sword/torch and the cool downs with the weapon swap cool down work out quite well. You just have to figure out what you want as far as damage vs. utility. I generally run 0/20(II/X)/20(IV,VII)/25(IV,II)/5 or 20/20/0/25/5

I take both weapon cooldowns (swords and staff for me) since they stack with Illusionists Celerity and I can pop out phantasms faster. I lean more heavily on the utility side and use them for passive support for myself as much as direct damage, so I run 0/15/20/25/10, having dropped Phantasmal Fury, Empowered Illusions, and Phantasmal Haste and picked up Compounding Power and Illusionary Defense.

My main reason is Signet of Illusion not working properly for the last SEVEN FREAKING MONTHS. But even if it was working, shatter is just much better to kill more than 1 target at a time.

I use this build (it’s a variant of pyro’s pve support build) for pve and dungeons.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgQQNAR7al4zioXVz5GaNJxZGQ35oFQ6hqT9qLVA3A;TMArQGFsJA

The berserker and duelist seem to hit for between 4000 and 7000 plus the other direct damage is quite nice. Mobility comes from runes of the centaur. Survivability comes from decent health pool (about 19K), three condition removals from menders purity, and a fair amount of extra healing from regeneration from the phantasms, the whole- party heals from restorative mantras, leeching sigil, and crit-heal food. Basically all berserker gear, so crit chance and crit damage are pretty high.

The one big thing this gives up is the 20% recharge rate improvement for phantasms (and maybe bleeds on crits by illusions, but I have very little condition damage). In return, the healing is better, the greatsword skills come back faster, and I find it very handy to be able to pop things for 1000 – 2000 with mantra of pain while I’m casting other skills (the main reason mantra of pain is there is for the heals on recharge, but during Orr events, it’s nice to be able to quickly tab and tag). With feedback, time warp and radiation field plus mirror blade, berserker and duelist, I can make and exploit my own fields. The greatsword skills seem to give a pretty decent AoE capability, and with this weapon set, I can always fight from range.

For me, this is a lot of fun to play. Skills come up quickly, and I don’t feel bad about occassionally shattering the illusions because I can replace them quickly. No matter what’s going on, you can alwasy do something with mantra of pain (either use it or recharge it) – though it took me a little time to learn to track the mantra usage. If you don’t like mantras, you could definitely take the last 10 points out of Domination and put it to good use elsewhere.

Hope that’s helpful.

I run this build: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-Pg-Fc;0VPVz0z6RVV71;9;4JE-T429-1;3347;9G3G3G3G35BFK

In the link ignore utilities and equipment. I run zerker with the exception of a Valk chest and legs. I am not a fan of rune sets and I put gems in my gear. (2 Valk and 4 Ruby) My utilities change all the time, but I usually run in a small group with Blink, Mirror Images, Decoy and Mass Invis. These allow me to position for dropping my phantasms. In large group warfare I get rid of mirror images in favor of Feedback and possibly toss in Null Field. Of course, I’ll load Portal and Time Warp as needed. In dungeons I might even swap in Mantra of Pain.

I based this off the phantasm builds of others before me. I run the build in all facets of the game and so far I have had nothing but great success. I would love to have 20 points in illusions, but I just can’t do it. I give up points in Illusions in order to get more out of the Inspiration line and keep my power up. My primary focus in game is wvw and what my build brings is high damage and a little team support. My build requires me to rely heavily on the iwarden which is very powerful against players that don’t know what is going on or those that group up too much. For this reason, I only recommend this build if you are very comfortable swapping weapon sets often.

Note, my focus abilities reflect which makes my warden reflect. Therefore, if I am facing a ranger, engi, pistol thief etc and I drop a warden on them they tend to blow themselves up. So many players get tunnel vision and think that they can ignore the damage of the warden (which is dumb because it’s huge) and take me out by standing there blazing away like a turret. I have literally defeated people with just the warden and because I have high health I just stand there taking whatever damage they can get past the warden, waiting on them to down themselves. Even on melee’s I can keep them in place for a few seconds with Leap/swap, into warden, into Blurred Frenzy which is tremendous damage. By the end of that, they usually want to create distance and heal, if they aren’t down, and I swap to GS and throw out a izerker and possibly iWave to interupt heal. That will down most people, though guardians can be a problem and must be whittled away. I am more prone to ignore a bunker guardian than take the time to actually down them unless I know they have blown their cooldowns and are basically a warrior with no utilities. (Don’t forget to Mind Stab guardians)

Interesting. It looks like a vast majority of Phantasm-ers drop Phantasmal Haste. This actually makes sense to me since the illusions line gives us condition damage and shatter recharge, which don’t help much with Phantasms. Also it does make more sense to get those weapon skills since it’s more likely the enemy will die and you will need to re-summon than it is that it will stay alive long enough to make Phantasmal Haste worthwhile.
I find it frustrating that I have to lose at least 1 Phantasm trait to make a Phantasm build. I haven’t had to do that with other builds.

I run a phantasm build going with 10/20/20/0/20. I don’t have the +15 for illusions to buff, but I gain a good deal of survivability while buffing my phantasms with the +20% recharge and +phantasm health. Coupled with knights gear, I find this very viable in wvw causing great deal of damage with my GS and run either staff or sword/torch. When I’m doing zerg things, staff is a nice tool to jump into the lines to hit back liners and quickly jump back out. Sword/torch I use while roaming and capping. It gives me those added close range defense/offense that are great in small group fights.

I run a 10-15-20-25-0 It gives you every major phantasm trait besides 20% faster cooldown on phantasm abilities in exchange for 200 toughness/regen/some protection/and mirrored anguish.

Using duelist/warlock/defender with the 20% more hp + 50% more hp signet makes them extremely tough and the defender almost never dies making me pretty kitten tanky on top of illusions doing 5k damage every 6 seconds or so + whatever i do and retaliation its a very solid build.

Shatter build is fun but when everyone and their kittening cousin are running 0 skill required bunker builds you just never kill anything. Codition built anything is worthless against anyone with a cleanse or not dumb enough to atk when they have confusion so I tried it once and never looked back. Phantasm is def the way to go for mesmer.

The mesmer community will throw a fit when they finally fix signet of illusions to pulse every second and give 50% more health as intended.

A lot of people do give up phantasmal haste. I take it, because the utility it provides with iWardens in some situations is too massive to lose. The dps increase it provides is nice as well, but the main thing is allowing 100% projectile reflect uptime with only 2 wardens, instead of requiring 3.

See, now that’s interesting. I tried a build that went 0/20/0/30/20 and kept Phantasmal haste and ran Sword/Pistol and Sceptre/Focus and it actually downed things faster than the build that dropped Phantasmal Haste for more power and damage from Domination+Phantasm trait. I think it would work better in dungeons, too, because of the reflect on the wardens, but also because you have a ranged and melee Phantasm, not counting the defender, so you spread the love with retaliation on clumped phantasms near the enemy and regen for meleers and ranged teamates.
The speed that the Phantasms attacked actually made up for the fact that they didn’t do as much damage, and the secondary ability of their attacks (like the warden reflect) would happen more often, too.

Why would you ever consider going “Phantasmal Haste” ?

if THAT is correct:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Phantasmal_Haste

than taking that Trait is quite useles ^^
in normal pve the enemy is dead before the second attack could trigger … besides the cooldown reduction is quite small regardless …

i get that i-warden becomes more usefull … but little more than 1 sec cooldownreduction? … is it realy worth it ?

“buuuuuuut if it works for you go with it ^^”

P-haste is great for the warden. Problem is it appears bugged for some other phantasms, esp the swordsman, which is why a lot of players don’t take it.

I use this build for running dungeons: http://tinyurl.com/bo5w4xb
(10/30/20/10)

It’s a high damage build (not highest) that allows me to swap between adding more reflects or providing additional healing through mantras. I’ll typically run with 2 mantras (dmg and condi-cleanse or stability, depending on fight), for an additional 8% damage boost. If I have a dodge&spank fight, I’ll swap out for all 4 mantras to give an additional 16% damage boost.

Additionally I can swap between clone-on-dodge and pistol cd/range, again depending on the fight.

What’s nice is you can launch your phantasms and if you find your allies are getting beat down, can start spamming your mantras to give some healing.

I’ve found this to be the most flexible build for dungeon running.

One an aside: one thing I’ve seen in a lot of mesmer dungeon videos is a lack of people swapping abilities/weapons on the fly. This is not an optimal use of a mesmer.

For example, just in CoF path 1, I’ll use: pistol, focus, torch, decoy, feedback, null field, portal, defender, illusion of life, blink, mantra of pain and mantra of resolve in addition to greatsword + sword.

In my phantasm build for pve, I avoid offhand sword because it doesn’t work with pHaste.

My build is used mainly in fractals and dungeons, where mobs have plenty of hp to survive multiple attacks from phantasms, and bosses many hits.

Additionally, having the massive utility of a hasted warden in my pocket for when I need it is absolutely invaluable.

The chart in the wiki is correct…I spent a few hours counting frames of video to get those numbers. The skill recharge is calculated from the END of one skill to the beginning of the next. Those numbers in the chart are not good for discovering overall dps, they simply show exactly how much pHaste affects the recharge.