Guild Wars 2

Many of us have noticed the effects blind/obstructed/invulnerability have on mesmer phantasm skills, especially being able to blind/evade a phantasm’s first attack twice (once on skill use and another to evade the phantasm’s attack). I am not aware of any other mechanic that suffers from this limitation.

The delay on phantasm attacks compounds the issue. Jon Peters stated recently that the low/no delay seemed to be balanced and reduced the delay, but stated that it caused problems when reducing the delay to 0. We seem to have many bugs introduced the way phantasms are summoned.

So why not solve both issues by making phantasm skills like regular attacks that summon the phantasm at the end of the attack animation? This may have been brought up before, but I have not seen it. So would this work? It seems to me it would, because we would no longer be doubled tapped by blind, and even if the first hit on multi-hit attacks fail, the rest of the attack (including the summon) could still happen. It would just miss the target and then spawn the summon. This would also help out those mesmers that feel summons do too much damage and want to deal more directly.

Of course all phantasms would need to spawn with their skills on CD for balance. Here’s a loadout of how I could see each skill working:

Zerker: You spin around and swipe your blade as an ethereal image of your sword whirls over the AOE damaging and crippling foes in its wake. Where it stops, a Zerker is spawned and will use its skill after its internal recharge.

Mage: You throw an image of your torch (similar to Mirror Blade) at foes that bounces and grants confusion to foes and retaliation to allies. After the last target is hit, the image bounces a final time to the spawn point where the mage is created.

Duelist: You fire a barrage at your target. The last hit ricochets off the target to the spawn point where the duelist appears.

Warden: You create a whirling tempest with the skill’s effects, and the warden fades in at the end of the animation.

Swordsman: You thrust your sword out and hurl an ethereal blade at your foe. After the hit the sword leaps back to the spawn point and the phantasm spawns.

Warlock: You blast your foe with an energy beam that explodes and then converges on the spawn point where the warlock appears.

Disenchanter: Would work like the Mage except you wouldn’t throw a torch image.

Defender: Not sure we need a special attack for him. He’s fine.

I think i posted something like this in a reply to the other thread about how to resolve the whole izerker problem. Make you throw a twirling sword as an attack, which then spawns your phantasm, who has to wait for ICD to make their first attack.

Either way i agree with you, make them work like our clones in how they are created if they are so hard to “balance”

These kind of suggestions are meaningless because the Devs either think the classes are fine aside from very minor things, or they don’t have the ability to make them work the way they want.
Your suggestions are good, and I'd approve of them. But we'll be stuck with the kitten mechanics for a long, long time.

I really like your proposal Gaiawolf, it is a very elegant and aesthetic suggestion which could hold the potential solution whilst retaining balance at the same time!

It’s the same creative style I enjoyed to see (and create myself) back in my Morrowind and Oblivion days

Honestly, I would go even a step further. Have the attacks take place as you suggest, but at the end, spawn a clone. Adjust the damage and cooldowns of the attacks to balance, and do away with us having a split resource. Clones, by in large, work just fine. Almost everything that is broken, or weird, or buggy with us has to do with phantasms. The traits that currently apply to phantasms could still work the same way, and just apply to the specific attack. I think the only 3 traits that would actually need to change are Vengeful images, Persisting Images, and Phantasmal Healing. Vengeful images and Phantasmal healing could just do an aoe burst that gave allies 3-5 seconds of Retaliation/Regeneration when cast, and Persisting images could apply to clones instead.

It won’t happen.

Since the game has been released ANet layed off about 50-70% of their staf (it is normal) adding new animations to professions will not happen at least until 2014.

I’m in favour of this especially because phantasms as they are now are boring to use anyway.
This would definitely make the gameplay also much more interestign than just summoning a minion that does it’s own thing.

Carkara.1846:

It won’t happen.

Since the game has been released ANet layed off about 50-70% of their staf (it is normal) adding new animations to professions will not happen at least until 2014.

This is false they actually hired more….

@OP: I would freaking love that!! If this came true I’d be the happiest Mesmer ever!! And for defender I’d say do something along the lines of launching a shield out that does minor damage and spawns him, he can’t be left out…

I like these ideas, just a ton of new balance issues if the developers were to use them, animations and such are easy since most of these are abilities from other professions anyhow, just use theirs with a different glow effect on the Mesmer to identify the ability from their ability. (Fiery Greatsword on an Elementalist has a nice particle effect to distinguish it from a Warriors) As someone else mentioned though, there are a few traits that are connected to phantasms that would need to be changed, and because of that this probably requires far more work than it initially seems. Plus there might be some issues with giving Mesmers a bit more mobility in a Whirlwind, or a personal Deflection from a Focus. . . (not connected to the phantasm initially), or a Ground targeted effect like a Torch throw, or a Shield Rush from a Defender. . . (that’s the closest I could think of for a Defenders ability).

I would vote for having Phantasms that actually work and inherit all the rest of the stat bonuses we have, Vitality really probably should affect Phantasms (at least partially), Condition Duration, Sigils and Runes procs should grant us their effects from Phantasm attacks since they are our attacks basically. And all of those are things that should not create balance issues overall.

The phantasms should be an elaborate spell effect like elementalist’s dragon’s tooth, and just as vulnerable once summoned to attack. (e.g. not at all)

They should also disappear after connecting their attack, and be de-coupled from our illusion counter.

This seems like the best solution to bring phantasms into line with the devs’ current ‘vision’ of phantasms while removing the triple-penalty of having the summon dodgable, the phantasm killable or its attack also dodgable, and the dodging of the summon also denying us our shatters.

It would also provide more reliable balance numbers.. we would no longer be nerfed based on the upper-bound of having 3 wardens, or 3 zerkers, or 3 duelists up at one time.

plasmacutter.2709:

The phantasms should be an elaborate spell effect like elementalist’s dragon’s tooth, and just as vulnerable once summoned to attack. (e.g. not at all)

They should also disappear after connecting their attack, and be de-coupled from our illusion counter.

This seems like the best solution to bring phantasms into line with the devs’ current ‘vision’ of phantasms while removing the triple-penalty of having the summon dodgable, the phantasm killable or its attack also dodgable, and the dodging of the summon also denying us our shatters.

It would also provide more reliable balance numbers.. we would no longer be nerfed based on the upper-bound of having 3 wardens, or 3 zerkers, or 3 duelists up at one time.

Best suggestion so far.

Yeah, the problem with how phantasms are currently designed is that, if you are in a situation where you can keep 3 of them up, suddenly 2-3 of your weapon skills and f1-4 are either useless, or you actively don’t want to use them, so at that point, you do the best DPS by just sitting there auto attacking, and maybe pressing 1 other button.

I love this idea, sounds much better then what we have now