Guild Wars 2

She spawns the white circles and does her AoEs in a set pattern. Learn the position of the first 3 white circles and the order of her blasts and phase 1 is a cakewalk, especially if you have a pull skill.

In phase 2 you just have to burst her down while keeping track of the explosions. They are an hourglass shape that rotates predictably, if you get caught in one wait 2.5s and dodge. Bring condition removal for the conditions she puts on you.

On the 06/25 Patch Notes the following change was ‘made’:

Mesmer:
Mind Spike: Reduced the base damage by 20%. This skill does an additional 50% damage to targets with no boons.

Instead, the skill does less damage if you personally have a boon. Considering most sword Mesmers have at least 10 in Dueling for Blade Training this means they also have the 5pt trait which grants 5s of Vigor on a Crit. So, they are pretty much guaranteed to now always receive the nerfed damage value.

It would be nice to have this acknowledged. If you post a patch note and don’t even do what the patch note or updated tool tip says you did then I’d think acknowledgment and correction would be a priority, especially when the mistake results in a nerf that the profession has to live with until you can get around to it. I just spent the past six months playing my Mesmer with my Berserker Phantasm unable to land hits reliably, Id rather not spend another six months having my damage nerfed by more than 10% because I have a boon.

Portal is not a ‘main reason to play a Mesmer’. I certainly never said, "Ooh I want to roll a Mesmer so that everyone will expect me to get places for them and portal their lazy butts through the area I just went to.’

The portal device costs a charged lodestone and 75 Watchworks, let alone the other stuff you’re already at a few gold for a single use Mesmer portal. The new runes are usable by Mesmers, so you didn’t really lose anything, in fact our 33% Confusion duration trait just seems all the better now.

Ross Biddle.2367:

The pace of the weapon is slow, yes. It’s simply a matter of getting used to it.

Once you do, and if you build right, you can wreck absolutely any class and build with it. There is a large gap between an initiate to the weapon, and a skilled user. Once you ascend that “slowness” becomes irrelevant.

You can use that exact same argument with pretty much everything. It ignores balance and feasibility in lieu of “if you play well”.

You could use the same logic to justify never using your utility skills or swapping weapons. Neither is a balanced game approach but it’s entirely feasible for someone to do well despite because they are a good player.

P.S. One tip I’ll give the OP is that in sPvP you can use the Torch or Decoy stealth to cover the wind-up animation of skill #3. Though, personally with Torch in sPvP I almost always swap to staff during the stealth so I can drop Chaos Storm and do AoE Chaos Armor.

Sirgit.2945:

As I was on one of my story missions, I came across Tactician Syska, a powerful Mesmer disguised as a charr.

Trahearn goes on to say, “If she did use illusion, she’s either a mesmer or in league with one." And, “If illusions are part of this problem, we’re probably facing a powerful mesmer.”

This leads me to believe that Mesmers, if powerful enough, can have the ability to not only create duplicates of themselves, but show an outward appearance of a completely different race.

Now let me preface this with that I used to play the enchanter class in Everquest 1. They were pretty much the equivalent to the Mesmer class in Guildwars. They had these “play” spells they could learn that would transform them into any other race. I say “play” spells because they really didn’t grant any other benefits aside from night vision for certain races.

I think it would be pretty cool if we could get some spells that would allow us to transform race. Just as maybe a fun little trick to add to our arsenal. Not that it would help with battle or give the upper hand on anything per se.

What do yall think?

I loved my Dark Elf Enchanter. It’s probably an alien concept to most MMOs these days but in EQ1 your Race/Class determined how many NPCs reacted to you. Certain races were aggressive towards others by default. Dark Elves were welcome in very few of the other cities (so much so that even in the main Trade city there were places the inkies (Dark Elves worshipped the God Innoruuk) had to stay so NPCs wouldn’t attack them.

Even a human might not be overly welcome in his home city if he started as a necromancer, there were hidden passages to help with this though.

Anyhow, one important facet if the illusions is that it changed your racial base faction. So my Dark Elf Enchanter would just throw up an illusion and walk into town unmolested, well, except by the Minstrel’s Guild, but that their fault for having such campable spawn points. I’d be walking through town and some random NPC with a lute would come running out of a building to attack me.

The entire weapon is sluggish, that’s why it sees so little use.

1. Slow flying missiles with an extreme arc that are easy to dodge, along with the 3rd attack having a very long animation.

1. A channeled effect that prevents you doing any other attacks and then has a very slow counter-attack animation (and it used to be even slower).

1. A slow wind-up/delay on a channel.

So not only do all if the skills involve a slow animation, but also similarly sluggish methods of delivering the effect (slow high arcing missiles & channels).

This is on top of being a rather disjointed weapon so far as it’s role.

Doesn’t it say ‘personal portal’? There’s nothing to indicate there that it will let’s groups teleport. There is already some limited functionality of this with portal guns.

Anyhow, all the whine is silly. It doesn’t replace Mesmer portal, especially if it’s personal only… Or have you forgotten that one of the draw backs of having portal is that you’re the one who has to actually get to the place to port people to?

We should get changes because the profession needs them, not because one of our more menial skills to use is being given PvE limited easier access. gg Mesmers indeed, listen to yourselves.

Don’t mind Nuka, he/she isn’t the most polite individual.

The ICD is 0.25 and really doesn’t bother me. I agree with the principle, that if you say you’ll fix something then you should. But I can also see why it’s not a priority.

dani.1956:

Levitas.1953:

dani.1956:

Dastion.3106:

Mesmer Design Philosophy:

Mesmers rely on illusions in order to accomplish their goals. They need illusions to accomplish some of their highest damage and control, and without the illusions, they become fairly fragile. They can deal with enemy boons better than most classes, but enemy conditions can often be a problem. They share some of the stealth and mobility that the Thief enjoys, but suffer from a low health pool if you get past all their tricks.

Necromancer Design Philosophy:

The necro boasts the highest natural health of all the caster classes, and also has death shroud to extend that life total even higher. While they don’t have some of the escape or damage reduction capabilities that other classes boast, they do have a lot of ways to win attrition fights. They have access to poison on multiple weapons, they are able to combine condition damage with raw damage, and they have multiple disables to interrupt enemy skills. Necomancers also have multiple movement disabling abilities, while allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health.

Paper, meet scissors. Necros are one of the more difficult professions for us to go up against because they excel at attrition battles whereas we do not. Even then, nothing is set in stone. You can build yourself to be able to survive a necro.

Too bad illusions damage nerfed to the ground !

Do we play the same class?

You should be banned ! Flaming on forums but you’re not a real player ! I’ve been watching you in-game for 4 hours you didnt log 1 time ! So how can you tell l2p if you’re not even playn the game or in the game or loggin the game at all ?

Wait, what? Lol. You’re telling someone they’re not a real player because they haven’t been logged in in the past four hours? In the US it’s anywhere from 8-11am on a Monday. People have lives and jobs.

Also, that’s not flaming, it’s being flippant at best.

Err, when was Illusion damage nerfed? I think I see how this discussion is going to go. So just go on playing the victim. Mesmer has bigger issues than our ability to go toe to toe with a Necro.

Mesmer Design Philosophy:

Mesmers rely on illusions in order to accomplish their goals. They need illusions to accomplish some of their highest damage and control, and without the illusions, they become fairly fragile. They can deal with enemy boons better than most classes, *but enemy conditions can often be a problem.* They share some of the stealth and mobility that the Thief enjoys, but suffer from a low health pool if you get past all their tricks.

Necromancer Design Philosophy:

The necro boasts the highest natural health of all the caster classes, and also has death shroud to extend that life total even higher. While they don’t have some of the escape or damage reduction capabilities that other classes boast, they do have a lot of ways to win attrition fights. *They have access to poison on multiple weapons, they are able to combine condition damage with raw damage*, and they have multiple disables to interrupt enemy skills. Necomancers also have multiple movement disabling abilities, while allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health.

Paper, meet scissors. Necros are one of the more difficult professions for us to go up against because they excel at attrition battles whereas we do not. Even then, nothing is set in stone. You can build yourself to be able to survive a necro.

Heal runes happen when you hit 6, always. In the WvW jumping puzzle you can get the stealth fountain buff and even though it blanks out all but your #1 skill you can still spam #6 to gain swiftness while running through the puzzle stealthed.

Your premise is that Guardians are the only profession that truly benefits from the Human heal, however – you are missing exactly why this is so.

Guardians already have incredible passive HPS in their Virtues mechanic. This is why all Guardian heals are long CD and provide a secondary effect. The Guardian doesn’t really need more pure healing because it is built in, what they need are ways to get around issues that their passive healing doesn’t address. Condition removal and blocking provide this, while the ally heal gives them a support option when that’s not necessary.

You don’t really need to heal every 30s because your passive regeneration allows you a lot of sustainability. Instead, your longer CD bigger heal skills allow you to heal when you actually need it while providing bonus effects.

You’re making a huge mistake by focusing on HPS without consideration for other effects. Shelter can easily avoid 2k+ HP and match Dwayna, while the Signet can remove conditions and effectively heal as much or more than Dwayna.

Also, you failed to take casting time into consideration, this closes the gap a little bit since 1s more on a 40s CD hurts the HPS less than it does on a 30s CD.

Illusionary Persona gives you an extra instance of your Shatter effect without Shattering an Illusion.

Shattered Strength gives its bonus per Illusion Shattered.

It’s somewhat confusing, but I can see why they wouldn’t want to give the trait even more synergy than it already has.

It’s old. ANet is pretty bad about fully testing their changes to
Clone auto-attacks, GS Clones still don’t pierce enemies last time I checked (only really relevant if you have Sharper images, but still).

Here is what happened:

-In beta ANet simply cloned and modified the Guardian Trident main attack (dmg to enemies heal on allies), except they gave the Mesmer version Confusion on the main hit but still left the healing in allies. This, combined with a bug that gave both skills a ridiculous attack rate made Mesmers OP underwater, easily stacking massive confusion solo while healing themselves too.
-Sometime during beta ANet dropped the confusion and made the skill give allies boons. However, they forgot to change the clone version, which is why our trident clones were OP for many months.
-During one patch they stealth changed the weapon set without any comment. The main attack gained bleeding for both the Mesmer and his clones. However, they still forgot to change the Clone’s version for when it hits allies. This is what you are seeing, in fact if you look closely you’ll notice the clones actually heal allies for an extremely small amount.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Snip.

You did read the thread title, right? He made no indication of interest in utility so I stuck simply to the direct comparison asked under the circumstances given.

The OP specifically asked in reference to Shatter which trait will give more damage assuming all shatters hit. The slightly larger bit above my TLDR goes into that in depth. The TLDR was just saying exactly what you said earlier, IP is a GM trait so of course it is better than an Adept (which you seemed to think I didn’t know since you told me that, despite having just quoted my TLDR).

However, in a later post the OP indicated not being worried about the loss of utility from IP because he was interested in the utility gained from the Chaos tree, going so far as to indicate an interest in ‘buffs on Invisibility’. So my response was to say that IP was hard to pass up unless your build hinged on a specific other GM trait, I specifically used Prismatic Understanding as an example since the OP has shown an interest, but I still went over the non-IP benefits if the rest of the Illusion tree since its not just IP you give up if you go zero Illusions.

So, considering I answered the OP’s original question exactly as asked and then further discussed the benefits of 30 Illusions vs 0 zero Illusions and further made specific allowance for the build the OP had shown an interest in (Prismatic Understanding) I fail to see what in the world your problem is

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Dastion.3106:

Even if he’s shattering from range his Shatter damage will be less because he isn’t able to Shatter as often without the 30% shatter CD reduction.

30 Illusions is very difficult to top because it helps just about every build, unless you’re going for a build that revolves around the Grandmaster in another tree (Primatic Understanding).

Illusion CDR, Might, Extra Confusion, the amazing bonuses from IP – I wish our other trees were half so juicy.

“20/20/30/0/0 vs 0/20/20/0/30” Did no one read the OP? Of course a grandmaster illusion trait will be better than an adept trait (at least that is how it should work) but he wants to compare the damage of two different builds.

No, I didn’t read it. That’s why I just so happened to give him a detailed comparison of Mind Wrack vs Mental Torment on his Shatter damage and then further tell him what he would be missing across his entire build by going zero into Illusions.

/Sarcasm

And he doesn’t want to compare the damage of two builds, he wants to compare Shatter damage ‘assuming all shatters hit’. Perhaps you should read more closely, as you obviously missed the OP’s intent as well as the intent in my post which, based on his last response, seems to be what he was looking for.

I always come check the profession forum post to find out what the unmentioned changes were :-/

Anyone want to take bets on whether or not they fixed Mind Stab doing less damage if YOU have a boon?

Even if he’s shattering from range his Shatter damage will be less because he isn’t able to Shatter as often without the 30% shatter CD reduction.

30 Illusions is very difficult to top because it helps just about every build, unless you’re going for a build that revolves around the Grandmaster in another tree (Primatic Understanding).

Illusion CDR, Might, Extra Confusion, the amazing bonuses from IP – I wish our other trees were half so juicy.

IP is the most potent trait Mesmers have. If the choice is the two then you’d be foolish to choose Mental Torment, maybe if you’re somehow a power build that never gets in melee, but even then it would be hard to argue against IP’s benefits.

-IP allows you to shatter without clones. That gives you an on demand daze and distortion.
-IP mimics the ‘per Illusion’ effect of each Shatter. You have to consider how this effects the scaling. Suddenly a single Illusion Shatter is equitable to a 2 illusion shatter (100% boost), a 2 Illusion Shatter is equal to 3 (50% boost), and a 3 Illusion Shatter is equal to 4 (33% boost). So at IP’s weakest bonus you’re still getting over 50% more of a boost than from Mental Torment, and you’re getting it for ALL of your Shatters in addition to the ability to shatter without clones.

But wait, there’s more. Let’s just compare Mind Wrack’s boost. Mind Wrack does not scale linearly, it deals less damage per clone the more clones you have, but the total damage goes up. This is meant to make single Illusion Shatters more viable, but because IP mimics the per-illusion effect it has a very powerful effect.

The approximate scaling is that a single Illusion Shatter does ~49% of the max damage (max dmg being the total damage of a 3 Illusion Shatter), 2 Illusions do ~74% (37% each), and 3 Illusions do, of course, 100% (33.33% each).

So an easy example is:

Without IP
1x Illusion: 490 damage
2x Illusion: 740 damage (370 x2)
3x Illusion: 999 damage (333×3)

IP doesn’t just upgrade it to a 2x Shatter, it just adds another instance of the damage that shatter does. So:

With IP
0x Illusion: 490 (IP damage only)
1x Illusion: 980 damage (490×2)
2x Illusion: 1,110 damage (370 x3)
3x Illusion: 1,332 damage (333×4)

So with IP and a single Illusion out, your Mind Wrack does nearly as much damage as a 3 Illusion Shatter would do without, and with less chance if an Illusion dying before it reaches the target.

Meanwhile, Mental Torment is a straight 20% boost across the board to one Shatter.

TLDR: IP is a Grandmaster that affects all Shatters and Mental Torment is an Adept that affects one. Get IP.

This Mesmer skill is definitely NOT working as intended. Previously this skill dealt static damage, hit up to 3 targets enemies, and removed a boon from each. As of the June 25th Patch notes the following ‘change’ was made.

Mesmer:

Mind Spike: Reduced the base damage by 20%. This skill does an additional 50% damage to targets with no boons.

However, this is not what was done. The actual damage increase/reduction is not -20/ +50% and it doesn’t care whether or not your enemy has boons. The damage changes were closer to -10/ +20 and, more importantly, it bases the damage off whether or not the Mesmer Himself has boons.

Against an sPvP golem using steady swords, 3 hits of Sword without boons/crits are:

103/104/188
(The third hit is Mind Spike.)

With a boon and no crits, the damage becomes:
103/104/157

It actually gets worse if you do start including crits because many, if not most, Mesmers who run MH Sword also have at least 5 points in Duelist. So everytime you crit you’re giving yourself 5 seconds of Vigor – which will reduce Mind Spike’s damage.

Sorry, but this post was never edifying. Here is a revelation for you: It you want to contribute to the community then just spell out what you want to say. Say, “Hey! Scepter is actually a good weapon and here is why”.

Layering your posts with condensation and vagueness may boost the egotistical sense of self you obviously crave, but it doesn’t add any value to the community. All of your posts and self referential descriptions just make you sound like someone with low self-esteem who has to boast about their ‘knowledge’ so that they can feel competent, yet also has an inferiority complex that causes him to be vague about that knowledge so that you can give yourself a false sense of superiority.

What makes this suck is that even if it worked based on the target it’s still a 10% dmg nerf if they have boons and a 8% buff if they don’t, compared to what would have been 20%nerf/20%buff if the notes were accurate.

1) Post this to the bug forums.
2) Report as a Bug in game. Don’t be too wordy, just simply quote the tooltip and say "Damage is not increased if target has no boons. It instead triggers off if the Mesmer has no boon.

I always go with a more armored look with my Mesmer and avoid stuff that looks like robes. Unfortunately, most of the gloves boots on those sets suck so I had to look elsewhere, thus my mix and match. First photo is what I WAS wearing (Vigil with Svanir Boots/Gloves) now I’m wearing the new steampunk armor set with the Svanir Boots and Exotic Acolyte Gloves to keep my more ‘armored’ look (really the gloves that came with the Aetherblade Armor were horrible).

Throw a Berserker at a target dummy. During his rest have a Guardian use the staff 12 stacks of might buff and then use Signet of Inspiration, that should be a quick 24 stack for the Phantasm and make an obvious difference in his dmg numbers.

A semi controllable illusion swap wouldn’t really provide much value. You wouldn’t be able to choose the Illusion you swap with because there are no ally targeted skills in GW2.

Admittedly, it IS fun to stealth and see “Block, Block, Block” and convert all if those to retribution :P

Are you using the pistol trait? The phantasm is only 20% finisher chance without it.

Shatter wasn’t really affected, except for Blurred Frenzy.

I tried a 0/20/30/0/20 Prismatic Understanding build today, it was surprisingly effective.

The interrupt mechanic really needs some looking into if they want to make an interrupt build even remotely viable. If they made daze no more than a 1-2s duration and changed it to “The next skill used is interrupted and placed on an X second cool down” THEN it would be viable. This game just isn’t built like GW1 to allow for reactive interrupts reliably.

In beta the Sylvari root utility was AoE ranged target and didnt have a max duration. Also known as “win a fight every time it’s off CD”, it was pretty nasty. I still use it sometimes, it’s nice for stopping the boss under the lava bucket in the dredge fractal.

If it didnt allow them to rally then it had better not count against their downed penalty. As it stands, even working properly you can potentially kill an allied player by using it on them when their penalty is maxed and there is nothing kill able within 15s.

Pyroatheist.9031:

It’s not a trait issue. I used the same traits as godmoney on the target golems in the pvp area and got only 1 clone spawn. Still trying to replicate it.

It might have something to do with the Illusion HP Change. Perhaps by splitting their health between game types they had to create a separate version if the skill for each type? That would explain why it isn’t working in sPvP.

I’d say go try it in WvW.

I didn’t call you a liar, but please realize that wild claims are hardly rare in these parts. I was skeptical when only one person mentioned it since there are ways to get accidental clones (ie if you throw a feedback in front of an enemy Mesmer and he casts Ether Clone, the reflect causes you to get a clone).

Once someone else pipped in I believed, but we needed more information. Usually for things like this the culprit is the weapon trait, because of how they code those skills (each trait combination that effects a skill is a completely separate skill). That’s why sometimes when a skill gets buffed they forget to also buff the trait version. But I tested that in sPvP and couldn’t get it to work, I tried a few random chaos and duelist traits but still couldn’t mimic it… So it got frustrating that no one would give detail

Thanks Ross!

Godmoney.2048:

Thanks man, hopefully a kitten video is enough to convince some of us…..

If that rather rude statement was directed at me, I believe you and never said I did not, I just wanted to try and figure out what’s causing it – which means we need more detailed information than “it happened”. We just had several people post that it happened but no one would post their trait choices, I believe you even said you’d do so and never did. Detailed information sorta helps to figure these things out

That’s not to say I don’t approach claims such as this with a healthy degree of skepticism. People have a tendency for seeing what they want to see. When the game was first released there were people who swore that clones could stomp enemies in PvP.

I enjoyed being able to zerker+mirror blade from a distance today. It sucks that Might doesn’t do anything for Illusions (or so I’m told) but its better than just losing the extra enemy bounces.

Will someone who is doing it actually post their trait choices?

Except no one has been able to replicate it in a way that they can show others. I attacked sPvP dummies for a good bit and never saw two appear.

I’m going to have to disagree on brushing off the bouncing fix as just a ‘not counting’. It’s obvious they were messing with something behind the scenes to cause the initial issue – they just let it slip in unfinished, much to our annoyance.

If you notice, bouncing isn’t the same as it was before the ‘bug’ appeared. Illusions are now viable targets for bounces where they were not before, and bouncing now sets them low on the priority. This is quite a good quality of life change for the Mesmer.

Like I said, we’re going to have to do more detailed experimenting. I was running 0/0/20/20/30 at the time. What are your traits?

Based on what the two of you wrote, IF it is trait based then it’s somewhere in Duelist or Chaos and no more than 20 points in, since that’s the only cross-over in your builds.

We all know that about a month ago ANet fudged something and made it so that pets, illusions, etc. were viable targets for bouncing effects – previously these effects ignored them. If you threw a mirror blade from too far away at a single target it would hit once and stop, even if you had a clone or berserker beside it.

However, the bouncing had no priority other than closest target, which resulted in a dramatic decrease in our effectiveness since we had Mirror Blade and Winds of Chaos bounces being wasted on clones when there were better viable targets around.

The good news is that while some of you did notice that they fixed this today and wrote it off as “just a bug fix” you missed that they left in the ability for these bounces to hit Illusions, though they’ll now only do it as a last resort.

This is quite a nice buff to Staff and Greatsword since it allows us to maintain 1,200 range and still bounce our skills off of an enemy, to a clone, then back to an enemy (though you need elasticity for Staff). I always thought it silly that GS#1 required I be >900 units away for max damage, yet GS#2 required I be <600. At least now I can throw out a berserker and have him assist with the bounces.

We got some crappy changes today, but this is definitely an improvement worth noting.

Might want to rethink your experimenting methods, it’s only proccing a single clone for me. Tested with and without the scepter trait.

All these changes did was reconfirm the result I keep coming to when I try to do a different build. Which is, “Just spec 30 into Illusions.”

The whole line is basically a band-aid on poorly developed mechanics. Illusions are an unreliable resource? Get 20% CDR. Shatters are weak? Add confusion to them, give yourself the ability to shatter without illusions and vastly improve the low-end shatter effectiveness for 1-2 illusion shatters, on top of a 33% increase in shatter effectiveness at the top end.

I tried testing it but its difficult via iPhone Remote Desktop :P. Can someone check if Illusions are still somewhere on the priority table? Meaning, if you have 1 enemy and a seeker and cast Mirror Blade from too far away for it to bounce to you, will it bounce between the Phantasm and the enemy?

If so, that’s actually a buff since pets were previously ignored by bouncing skills. I always wanted them to be included, but I wanted the bounce to show priority.

Note that from what I was able to test, it seemed to prefer bouncing to a second enemy over coming back to me.

I have never been a fan of CoF. 1 Confusion per Clone is an incredibly weak effect, so weak in fact that we can add CoF’s effect to Mind Wrack and Diversion with a mere 5 points into a tree. I don’t even generally consider CoF worth using over the other Shatters without the trait to DOUBLE it’s effect – and it’s still a close bet. Confusion, and such a weak stack, rarely comes close to what you can do with Mind Wrack, Diversion, or Distortion.

Adding Torment to CoF both fits thematically and makes sense to make the skill more viable. The idea that the target can neither move or attack for the duration without taking additional damage epitomizes this skill. At least even if they stand still and don’t attack you get the weaker Torment ticks.

However, though I think this is a needed change I also think Illusionary Retribution would then be too powerful. It’s not difficult to do a quick full Mind Wrack + CoF with IP for 12 Confusion, never mind the 4 Torment and MW damage. Therefore since this is now our intro trait I also suggest the following:

Change Illusionary Retribution to:

“Mind Wrack now inflicts Confusion and Cry of Frustration grants Retaliation”. (Remove Confusing Cry)

This is the perfect trait for starting the Illusion line, which focuses on Shattering. It takes Mind Wrack, a power based Shatter, and makes it more useful to Condition Builds and it takes COF, a Condition based Shatter, and makes it more useful for Power builds. In essence it says, “Hey, you’re specializing in Shattering, lets make your two main Shatters work with power or condition builds”.

Now you have a trait open where you removed Confusing Cry. Add in something the tree could use, like:

“Hexcraft: Diversion inflicts Weakness”

The end result is that CoF is now a more viable Shatter on it’s own and has something to make up for Confusion’s unreliability. And the Illusion tree now actively works to make Shattering more viable, whatever your build, by providing upgrades for all of your shatters.

My only issue with Illusion of Life is that if they don’t kill something then they get downed again and it counts against their total, I’ve had allies die because I used this on them and they’d just reached their max penalty. I was thinking it would be nice for tough fights so that an ally in a bad position could at least get up and move to a better spot, but without being able to know for sure if I’ve just consigned them to death because there is nothing for them to kill I tend to avoid it in all but pvp

It was a slightly different situation for Thieves, though I can see some similarities.

I’m in the camp that says to just get rid of IC and adjust Illusion CDs accordingly, it’s too potent when it’s a trait that is guaranteed to effect at least 40% of your weapon skills.

They don’t have to do a flat 20% reduction across the board, some skills don’t need it really, but the super long CD phantasms could use a reduction in CD. Plus, that gives them the opportunity to add in a new trait.

It really depends how many stacks of torment it inflicts. A single stack is only 75-150% of a bleed stack, you’ll be hard pressed to match the damage it had before without inflicting several stacks.

I also tend to fall into the mandatory 30 Illusions club too, but it does suck to lose that 5pt option when experimenting.

A better change would have been:

-Reduced all Illusion CDs by 20%, every single one of you had this trait anyhow so it might as well of been built in.
-Replaced Illusionist’s Celerity with Illusionist’s Charge: Shattered Illusions gain Swiftness and Aegis.

I find scepter to be incredibly slow. Every single attack involves a slow wind-up move. The skill#1 should be retuned like the Guardian scepter was (it used to attack just as slowly), skill#2 should act more like Shield of Wrath (no channel, it just summons a shield that blocks an attack or you can detonate), and skill 3 could use a little less wind-up in exchange for making the Confusion ticks progressively worse over the duration instead of a steady amount.

Honestly I’d settle for them just making the #1 skill less slow, maybe more of a magic missile type effect. Ie: “Channel to release a barrage of ether missiles at your target, summon a clone if a target is hit by all 3 missiles”.