Guild Wars 2

I want to lead this off by saying that while I have been playing my Mesmer since release he is not yet 80, largely because I have taken the opportunity to try out almost every other class to some degree.

That aside, for the entirety of my time playing my Mesmer I have enjoyed a Phantasm-heavy build. Until today I was playing with a Staff/Sword+Pistol setup, the traits that reduce the recharge times of the skills of those weapons, and the general Illusion recharge reduction trait. I keep iDefender on a utility slot because it really is a good Phantasm for a lot of situations.

This has allowed me to pretty much keep up a Phantom army most of the time and focus on CC and protecting myself. The damage output was good but not amazing, and large pulls can be problematic (the adds kills the Phantasms quickly), but overall the kill speed is acceptable given the safety factor.

Given this, I don’t understand the nearly across-the-board change to the Phantasm recharge times, and I’m hoping for a little insight.

I’m not angry about the nerfs — the class performs well and I know you have a vision for how skills are supposed to work — but given that the time-to-live of phantasms in PvE is typically quite low and in PvP is frequently measured in single-digit seconds, I can’t help but wonder if a better solution may have been to reduce the base damage or the scaling a bit and then make the phantasms a bit more durable instead of increasing the cooldown.

Honestly, I’d like to see the phantasms on the battlefield a bit longer or see them not get one-shot by pretty much everything than have them deal out one decent hit of damage then get destroyed.

I’m hoping they are moving towards more damage coming from the Mesmer rather than from our kitten pets so that all the whining will end.

Everyone is confused as well. I don’t think there was anyone who thought phantasms needed a longer cooldown in pve. Literally no one. Meaning this change was made for pvp but even then it’s kinda iffy. You’re just going to have to deal with it now because as far as i know anet doesn’t give explanations to changes they make, at least not to my knowledge.

They don’t want us using phantasms, so they’re slowly nerfing them to the ground. If that’s what you enjoy from this class I would suggest playing another class.

All rhetoric aside, a Mesmers without Phantasms is basically an Elementalist with single-point instead of AoE damage.

The clones don’t really add much in group-based PvE. In that environment one of the most important jobs a Mesmer has is to set up ranged phantasms in safe places so that they can deal steady damage. The increase to cooldowns makes this harder, and will negatively impact DPS more in situations where they are dying.

I would prefer if Phantasms were pure utility (Disenchanter, Defender, Warden and Mage are sort-of utility already), and not a source of damage. That’d make them much easier to balance long-term.

Tiresias.6473:

…This has allowed me to pretty much keep up a Phantom army most of the time…

Given this, I don’t understand the nearly across-the-board change to the Phantasm recharge times, and I’m hoping for a little insight.

I think you just answered your own question.

Dashwood.3215:

Tiresias.6473:

…This has allowed me to pretty much keep up a Phantom army most of the time…

Given this, I don’t understand the nearly across-the-board change to the Phantasm recharge times, and I’m hoping for a little insight.

I think you just answered your own question.

I don’t think he did answer his own question. He next went on to say “the damage was good but not amazing”: given some other classes have amazing damage by comparison, why shouldn’t a mesmer (who has phantasms as a distinguishing feature of the class) be able to keep said phantasms running – yet if they do it’s considered some sort of an exploit by people like you?