Guild Wars 2

Drawing Guy is actually right, i want clones/phantasms to persist after the initial enemy dies.

I do however not think that my proposed change would turn the mesmers illusions into pets.
They would retain their squishiness, meaning they would die just as fast as they do now once the enemy starts attacking them. Thus they would retain their roles as constantly recycled decoys (clones) and as part of the mesmers burst (phantasms).
Also, unlike pets, they would still dispel the moment no hostile npc is close by.

All, that would change is that clones/phantasms would no longer dispel after every killed enemy but rather after every finished encounter, making combat a lot more fluent and opening the doors for some new strategies since the mesmers would now have a little more control over the number of their clones and thus could decide when it is the most appropriate time to shatter rather than shattering every single time three clones/phantasms are out.

As it is now mesmers are actually hurting their own overall dps by killing a single target too fast. My proposed change would remove that problem without notably increasing the mesmers overal dps. It would allow the mesmer to deal better with groups of trash-mobs but it would not change anything when fighting harder opponents (Veterans/champs/other players).

That said, i also like RebelYells idea of giving every unused clone/phantasm a weaker, single target mind wrack. This would also give the incentive to keep the clones/phantasms alive and not shattering them every opportunity.

I really love the Mesmer, i think the class mechanic is by far the coolest in the game.

There is a problem with it though when playing PvE content.

As it stands i can only summon clones and phantasms when i am locked on to a target. The clones/phantasms will actively seek out and attack the target and when shattered run up to it and explode.

The problem arises once the selected target dies. All clones/phantasms dispell the moment the original target is defeated. This is not really a problem in PvP where you fight a very small number of enemies, mostly in 1v1.

In PvE, however, you frequently fight large numbers of relatively weak enemies. The logical strategy is to take out the target with the smallest health pool first to decrease the number of threats, especially as a mesmer who lacks reliable AoE.
The problem is that every time i kill an enemy, i lose all my clones and phantasms that i need to distract the enemies, to damage my enemies or to shatter.
I cannot count how many times i tried to shatter my clones for some nice AoE damage just for the to die beforehand because i killed my target too fast.

So here is my solution:

Give clones/phantasm some kind of radius. When the primary target dies the clone/phantasm seeks out the nearest hostile npc within its radius. When no hostile npcs are in the clones/phantasms radius, it dispels.

I think this change would make Mesmers a lot more fun to play in PvE (at least for me) and and also improve their viability against large groups of enemies without making the too powerful.

The tool belt skill Hidden Guns the engineer gets by picking the charr racial skill Hidden Gun seems to be missing some of its sound effects.

When i hit an enemy with the skill i get the sound of the bullets hitting but not the sound of the guns actual firing.
When i use the skill without hitting anything i get no sound at all.

This is not really a great problem, but it is a little irritating.

Since i only started playing my engineer two days ago i do not know if that is an issue caused by the recent patch or if it was always like that.

I agree wholeheartedly.

This is an issue which should have been fixed a long time ago.

Time and time again i have lost my target through the simple act of trying to turn my camera around. This can be especially aggravating when facing a boss and trying to interrupt its big hits. I do not mind dying to a strong enemy, but when the reason for my (or my teammates) death is something this banal, it really takes away from my ability to enjoy the game.