Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone.
A question that bothers me is the one in the topic. I don’t know why Anet made all phantasms on our weapons similar damagedealers (except iMage).
As far as I know the iMage was meant to attack everytime the enemy casts a skill. Why is this great idea not ingame?

Also I think they meant phantasms to be similar to the hexes in guild wars 1 with the difference that they have to be destroyed to stop being annoying. Right now almost every phantams is a lame damage source.

My Ideas for improvement:
iMage:

• rework the AI and the skill so it can attack every second once but trigger only if the enemy uses a skill.
• remove bounce and retaliation of the projectile
• reduce the confusion stacks to 1 stack for 3s and increase the raw dmg

iWarlock

• lower the raw dmg
• remove 10% dmgfact
• give it a random condition to apply on hit
  5s bleed (n stacks)
  3s torment (n stacks)
  3s poison (n times)
  (n= number of conditions the foe has)

iDefender

• doesn’t reqire a target anymore
• the defender now casts an aoe boon on the target area (5 targets)
• area radius 240
• boons to apply are 3s protection/5s aegis/3s regeneration
• spawns on your location and casts on a 600 range the aoeboons every 6s
• it will not move unless it’s pushed out of range of the target area

iWarden

• doesn’t require a target anymore
• now is a aoe skill that can be castet anywhere
• will not move anywhere

iBerserker

• slighly reduce dmg
• increase cripple duration

iSwordman

• stays meele damagedealer

iDuelist

• stays range damagedealer

iRabbit

• will be pulled out of the iMages hat

Me Games Ma.8426:

<snip>

iRabbit

• will be pulled out of the iMages hat

I want this.
:D

But regarding the rest – some big changes. I like that the iwarlock is power based, and I’m not sure that having idefender and iwarden castable without a target is a good idea.

Having said that, I’m mostly indifferent to any of the changes, so wouldn’t mind either way.

Curunen.8729:

Me Games Ma.8426:

<snip>

iRabbit

• will be pulled out of the iMages hat

I want this.
:D

But regarding the rest – some big changes. I like that the iwarlock is power based, and I’m not sure that having idefender and iwarden castable without a target is a good idea.

Having said that, I’m mostly indifferent to any of the changes, so wouldn’t mind either way.

What do you think is bad about phantasms beeing targetless?
IMO theese two are not there to attack but to defend so I’d like to control where they stand. With this change you could fight a player on a point having a defender standing outside supporting you. Both phantasms iWarden and iDefender would be groundtarget skills what would also grant us to spawn an iWarden on a wall in WvW. This would improve mesmers overall because we’d get a new aoeskill. Almost like Chaosstorm… just as phantasm.

Regarding the iWarlock I’d say because of that most of my conditionbuilds are without our conditionweapon. This phantasm doesn’t trigger sharper images as often as it should to be good for a conditionbuild and in conditionbuilds it also doesn’t deal enough dmg to be worth it. So either they could change the staff or just its phantasm.

^Only because of the principle of illusions as “being in the enemy’s mind”, so it doesn’t make sense much for phantasms to be summoned without a target.

However things can change, and as I said I don’t mind personally either way.

Me Games Ma.8426:

What do you think is bad about phantasms beeing targetless?

F1-F3 won’t work with them for one thing.

But I do like your ideas, I agree that phantasms are boring and all about mediocre damage and little else. Some should have no damage component, some should have more conditions, some should apply boons. Right now, the only phantasm that is both interesting and useful is Disenchanter.

Not entirely sure where you got the idea that the iMage was supposed to attack whenever the enemy did.

Phantasms won’t ever be targetless. Don’t even bother. They’re better being tied to targets, it eliminates the AI goofs that rangers and necros have to deal with.

In an old interview which I won’t bother looking for, they did mention that in an older iteration of the mesmer that phantasms weren’t copies of the player avatar but rather had their own unique look. (I’m pretty sure Vassar’s phantasms in AC are a remnant of that)

The torch used to have a phantasm which if I recall was called backfire and it did attack the enemy when he attacked which in a sense was an interesting emulation of the Gw 1 skill.

But then they decided to go with the current version we have of phantasms for the sake of keeping it simple, making them essentially look like pinkish player clones using other profession skills, somewhat.

Mechanics aside I really would have loved for our phantasms to have an unique look, different from our clones.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Not entirely sure where you got the idea that the iMage was supposed to attack whenever the enemy did.

Phantasms won’t ever be targetless. Don’t even bother. They’re better being tied to targets, it eliminates the AI goofs that rangers and necros have to deal with.

Thanks to this post now I remember it more clearly. Before the release they had a phantasm called backfire. The skill of the iMage is called like this too. I’ll look for the dources of this information as fast as I can ( i’m in school right now) and post them here.

~ Me Games Ma

The idea is good, in any case. Although my favourite idea would stage our damage entirely on Phantasms (sustained damage) and Shatter (burst effects, not only damage).

But anyhow, the idea has merit. If Phantasms were much more utility-based, we’d have room in which to grow our raw power or room for unique utility.