Guild Wars 2

If I start fights with a phantasm skill in PVE before the target has otherwise been engaged, the phantasm appears to die on the first hit that it takes. If I otherwise start the fight with an auto attack or other direct damage skill, the phantasms summoned after that tend to last 3-5 hits from most PVE mobs.

This has happened since game release. My mesmer is currently mid-60s.

PVE: GS/Staff or GS/Scepter+Focus
WvW: GS/Scepter+Focus …never anything else
sPVP: Staff/Sword+Pistol …Sometimes Focus sometimes GS

+1
Main hand pistol, please.

As long as you never ever use mind stab, GS is excellent. I only don’t use it in some dungeons, when berserker likely to draw agro. The only time I ever use mind stab is to remove regen from PVE mobs. The root is suicidal in PVP. If GS3 did decent damage, I might put it in rotation, but its single target damage is less than auto attack and the aoe radius isnt’ large enough to hit more mobs, unless they are standing close enough that their shoulders are clipping into each other.

Shatter does a decent amount of damage, especially when traited and geared for it. The reason shatter seems puny is that it strips us of our primary damage and defense – while our direct attacks don’t do very much damage.

Direct attacks from weapons (ie blurred frenzy, mind stab, mirror blade) should do more damage – in line with what similar abilities from other classes do, and un-traited phantasm damage should be lowered a bit to compensate.

Wow, many of these items explain why certain traits and weapon combos aren’t working well for me.

Taldren.7523:

10. This one I don’t know if it is a bug or intended … but when the change occurred so that range checks were made on clone/phantasm creation … players were also given the ability to evade our ability to summon said clone/phantasm. If our clones/phantasms couldn’t be countered by walking away, being killed, or CCed I would guess intended … but given that this is not the case I just had to ask.

Illusions are in a strange spot between summoned pets and direct attacks/dots. There are two issues in this item, though:

1- Range checks causing full cooldown on phantasm summons is extremely annoying, especially in WvW, but I think the issue is more of a UI problem. I would prefer to see a 2-3 second cooldown on abilities when cast out of range (similar to interrupted abilities) than the full cooldown.

2- Phantasms attack on a timer until they die, like full-fledged pets. Can rangers, necros, eles, and engineers have their summons completely blocked? No? Neither should mesmers. My berserker should not completely fail to go off just because someone in an aoe group uses a block ability.