Guild Wars 2

So, I’m greatly enjoying my mesmer (rerolled into mesmer until they fix all the necro bugs) and thought I’d ask for opinions. I was curious as to what are peoples’ favorite phantasm and why (please give your reasons rather than just the phantasm’s name)

All but the Torch’s Phantasmal Mage and the Utility Phantasmal Disenchanter.

Focus’ Phantasmal Warden is great for AoE tagging, single target damage, or anti-ranged at the cost of it likely dieing fast if nothing else got the enemy’s/enemies’ attention first. NEEDS Phantasmal Haste though. (AoE, Anti-ranged, and “Building-targets” uses, but not against moving targets)
Pistol’s Phantasmal Duelist is great for its short CD and a hard hitting single-target multi-attack, which is great for proccing Bleeds from Sharper Images as well and more likely to survive being ranged. (Bleed Proccing & “Building-targets” and Phantasm Spamming)
Staff’s Phantasmal Warlock is just perfect, hitting the hard and then hitting even HARDER for each unique condition on the target. Great against Bosses. (For Dungeons/Events)
Sword’s Phantasmal Swordsman hits hard but also tries to keep out of melee when not using its skill. Rather nice benefit for clone survival if it draws aggro. (In situations where the target goes after the Phantasm repeatedly in Melee.)
G.Sword’s Phantasmal Berserker is another AoE capable Phantasm, that Cripples and can hit hard at times. Not my favorite all the time, but it still see plenty of use. (AoE, Kiting, and against Moving Targets.)
Utility’s Phantasmal Defender is not a damaging one, but taking half the damage done to nearby allies/clones/phantasms to itself can help make yourself, your illusions, and your allies take one bad hit at the very least. (Support uses, Purely.)

Basically, get 1 of each weapon, put them in the bag, and if you can predict/know what is coming up swap to the weapon combo that works best.

That said, Solo PvE sees me carrying the Focus (ie. Warden) the most often out of convenience. The only source of Haste we have via skill (and can rely on unlike Signet of Inspirations) helps travel around.

sword/GS/focus/pistol are all awesome

I love phantasmal warden. I killed a champion wurm today with three of them. Everytime it launched its attack at them, they deflected it and it killed itself.

iBerserker, because it kills everything on the map everywhere always.

Swordsman no question for me because he hits like a truck, doesnt stay in melee range and is good for moving targets. The warden just irritates me because he roots himself and at high level i find most targets are moving alot unless i stay in melee range. The only beef i have with the swordsman tho is that I usually always get the aggro with him out for some reason. If i get out 3 on a boss I have to kite like mad.

watching 3x iwarlock do insane crits on event bosses makes me snicker a little.

The focus one. I just love how it attacks, it look so ridiculous, but it’s amazing at the same time (and it’s damage is pretty nice as well =D).

I love the Torch Phantasm. The ability to cause confusion and grant retaliation to my melee ally is fantastic. You dont see the numbers you cause, but just know your retaliation does a lot

#1: iWarden + Phantasmal Haste + Sharper Images
#2: iDuelist + Sharper Images

@Disenchanter
I don’t see why so many ppl dislike it. I always thought that it’s just very situational. Like NullField, you barely use it.
But here, I found the iDisenchanter the most useful spell in CoE at the golem with boon towers. Just spawn 2~3 iDisenchanter and you don’t need to kill the towers.

Disenchanter isn’t useful because it’s slow, sustained condition removal rather than the instant full condition removal of Arcane Thievery and Null Field (Null Field isn’t an instant full removal, but it’s close enough). As condition removal is primarily important for a sudden burst of dangerous conditions, slowly removing them one at a time isn’t reliable.

This is from an sPvP PoV, mind you.

Berserker.
Spin to win.

Berserker ftw

i love that range of GS + spawning him right on target and not by myself dmg+cripple before enemy can even get to me and i like casting him on walls in WVW

Warden.

Throw down that temporal curtain, slam those mobs into a crumpled heap on a wall with into the void, drop a warden as you run into the dazed pile and start hacking away like a 2 man whirlwind of knives.

Whoever said Mesmers can’t AoE farm

Warlock is just a killing machine.

Ryuujin.8236:

Warden.

Throw down that temporal curtain, slam those mobs into a crumpled heap on a wall with into the void, drop a warden as you run into the dazed pile and start hacking away like a 2 man whirlwind of knives.

Whoever said Mesmers can’t AoE farm

Yup. And in the few places where that doesn’t kill em right there, like in dungeons, throw down some staff clones (Mirror Images) and CS on the whole lot and it’s pure sick destruction. Mind Wrack and repeat until everything is dead, and there’s a pile of mobs at your feet.

So to fully answer the topic question: Warden and Berzerker for trash mobs, Warlock for bosses.

I love the Warden, especially with Sharper Images & along with Warden’s Feedback. Nothing better than seeing some massive Fireball being returned to sender.

Warlock is the one I go with for Champions. I just switch to my staff, hang back and let them Crit for massive, massive damage.

Gaiawolf.8261:

So to fully answer the topic question: Warden and Berzerker for trash mobs, Warlock for bosses.

Or pretty much this.

Illusionary Duelist. For no reason except that he shoots rapid fire lazers out of his pistols. I wish I could be him.

Swordsman. Not only is he consistently moving out of melee range, but both before and after his attack he’s actually evading. He hits hard (unlike the Mage), he’s mobile (unlike Warden and Duelist), and he’s survivable.

I would love the Berserker more if the situations I wanted to use it in (AoE) didn’t get it killed immediately because its target splatted.

iBerserker does 527834278742884231 times as much damage as all the other phantasms combined to Trebuchets. Obviously iWINNAR beasts the competition.

iWarden is amazing with focus trait and empowered phantasms (-20% c/d on phatasm attacks). So much so it’ll probably be nerfed (mostly because it’s a -50% c/d at the moment instead of 20%).

If a foe stands in the full iWarden AoE it takes an incredible amount of damage — depending on the mob and build, anywhere from 1200 to 2200 points at lvl 80.

Add in the fact iWarden blocks/reflects projectiles and it’s just too powerful to pass up in any dungeon.

iBerserker is also amazing

iSwordsman, because I roll with swords and he does too. I always open with him, and from as far as 1200 out, he always makes a lasting impression and grabs aggro beautifully. By the time I run up, drop a leap clone and dodge-roll in behind a mob (or mobs), he’s usually almost dead, but has taken a lot off his target and bought me enough time to finish things off with Blurred Frenzy.

I love sending him out to destroy objects and other things while I attend to other matters.

For ranged, I use the staff, and that’s almost always against bosses with AoE spam, because I almost always use my swords for everything else. When I’m doing that, I love the iWarlock, because when I get three of those bad boys going on a condition-stacked DE boss, I am guaranteed gold even if I came in late.

Solid performers both. I have no complaints.

Duelist is probably my favorite. Good range, tends to live longer, one of the higher damaging single-target phants, and stacks up bleeds like a mofo.

Zerker is the obvious choice for aoe situations.

I never liked Warden even before last night’s patch. Swordsman..I’ve tried. I really have. While single hits are much harder than duelist, it feels slower and dies easier. Mage is useless. Disenchanter is, sadly, useless. Sounds awesome for fights with lots of conditions, but it’s made of tissue paper and too slow. Warlock is…OK…but needs a LOT of unique conditions up before it starts getting good. (if Winds just gives you stack after stack of burning, he’s not getting anywhere)

Single target = iSwordsman. Super survivable and does amazing damage.

AoE = iBerserker. Spin to win, sucka!

:D

The problem I have with the iSwordsman is he doesn’t get much out of Sharper Images (and sword is in the Precision line where you get the most out of it). Warden, Berserker, and Duelist all hit pretty hard as well but get nice bleed stacks on top of it.

Porckchops.3986

The problem I have with the iSwordsman is he doesn’t get much out of Sharper Images (and sword is in the Precision line where you get the most out of it). Warden, Berserker, and Duelist all hit pretty hard as well but get nice bleed stacks on top of it.

The Bleed stacks from Duelist add up to nice burst added pressure, yes, but then there’s so much downtime that they fall off. Give the Swordsman Phantasmal Fury (assuming they actually fix it of course), and its bleeds feel more sustained pressure on top of the already harder hitting single strikes.

You don’t need to have 4 stacks at once, nothing later, nothing later, and then another 4 stacks to get use out of the trait. Maintaining single stacks does the same damage, just sustained rather than burst. When you compare the two (Duellist’s inherent burst nature) it’s not really that Swordsman doesn’t get much, it’s that it’s not as in your face.

But illusions don’t have to be in your face about everything they do. That’s part of what it is to be a mesmer, subtlety.

3x warlock with time warp.

iberzerker in a pack makekitteniggle.

really? g i g g l e is kittened?

giggle is not kitttened, otherwise “iggle” wouldn’t show up in your post.

Before the nerf, Warden was my fav PVE-wise, also kind of liked the offhand sword phantasm, altho it was a kitten since forever, it’s just kind of cool.

Post-nerf, i changed to pure direct-damage build as phantasm are no longer viable in any shape or form.

iZerker

LoS? What’s that??

I’ve started to get a liking into iSwordsman. Other than that, I guess iWarden, if he either fits what I use him for. Kinda a pain how he doesn’t move some times, while it’s nice that it doesn’t move other times.

I drop iWarden on a down player so the enemy rezzers run up.

Then they run away from iWarden.

Then I Into the Void the players back into iWarden.

Then I swap back to GS and MB-iB-MS them. Now there are 4 downed players make happy.

2864

(rerolled into mesmer until they fix all the necro bugs)

If you’re trying to get away from bugs and you roll mesmer, you’re gonna have a bad time.

The one with the lowest cooldown because keeping them around for too long bores me and disrupts my shattering.

That said though I Berserker isn’t too shabby … the aoE damage + multi hits and the cripple are nice Cooldown isn’t too bad either

iBeserker. Satisfying to watch it fly through a group of mobs and cripple them all.

Spin to win!!

station.6421:

iBeserker. Satisfying to watch it fly through a group of mobs and cripple them all.

Spin to win!!

zerker ftw !

I find the berserker, duelist, swordsman, and warlock to be similar enough in damage output when you use the appropriate stats that I don’t really have a preference. I find the mage and disenchanter to be ineffective, the defender doesn’t mesh with my playstyle, and imo the warden’s advantages no longer make up for its shortcomings.

Invictus.1503:

So, I’m greatly enjoying my mesmer (rerolled into mesmer until they fix all the necro bugs) and thought I’d ask for opinions. I was curious as to what are peoples’ favorite phantasm and why (please give your reasons rather than just the phantasm’s name)

Are you really sure it was a wise decision to change bugs in one class to even more bugs on another class?

This entire thread is a great display of cluelessness. There’s really only one Phantasm that works well with Phantasm traits, the rest is only garbage due to bugs. This phantasm is the only one that allows perm regen and up to 100% protection uptime. It will prolly get “fixed” as well because some mesmers also think their dps is good because GS1 can reach 2500 dmg and the warlock can crit for 8k-12k. LOL they prolly have tried other classes and failed at doing proper dps with them.

About Phantasm traits there are even ones that are not compatible with others, that means taking both kittens the character.

Edit: BTW it has nothing to do with Phantasmal Haste.

Love the defender, recently fell in love with the Disenchanter.

That puppy strips 2 boons and 2 conditions per target every 5 seconds, (4 with trait).

With a 16 second cooldown I could make me and my allies nearly immune to conditions and enemies un-boonable lol.

It’s actually quite silly, though the fact that it stills spawns on your target is a bit lame.

Defender is just crazy awesome if you actually get the hp trait/signet and a little bit of tough/vit. A massive battery spread dmg shield with that extends his retaliation to everyone, very good stuff.

Does the retaliation actually trigger back damage when the defender looses HP ?
That sounds interesting.

3 Wardens inside a Time Warp is still one of the greatest things I have ever seen.
Sadly, with the nerf (though it was justified) it’s significantly less of a spectacle and I think I might call Duelist my favorite again.

Wardens animation is still pretty great though.