Phantasm Tweaks

We know our Phantasms currently has problems. No cleave, broken AI mechanics, single target focused. I would propose some changes to make Phantasm play less clunky overall.

Firstly we need Phantasms to not become useless when facing big groups. They're tied to one mob till they die. There should be a functionality where they stay for like 5 seconds after their first target dies, and can retarget to the next target Mesmer attacks. Make this baseline for Mesmer or as a trait. Either would help Mesmer Phantasms a lot.

Phantasmal Swordsman: Number of Targets: 3Phantasmal Duelist: Number of bounces: 3Phantasmal Warlock: Number of bounces: 3

• Both of this changes is to make these Phantasms do a bit of cleaving.

Phantasmal Warden: This Phantasm doesn't do much in PvP, and is only shatter fodder for most of the time. PvE it has its use as a projectile blocker but otherwise it's not stellar. Increase damage and make the reflect baseline? I don't know what could I change to this guy to make him better.Phantasmal Berserker: Sometimes not all of this guys hits connect. Maybe fix that? Also some extra damage.Phantasmal Mage: Just remove the fury bounce on allies. It's not really that good and just outright useless. Just make his attacks only bounce on foes, and put the Fury on cast instead.

Swordsman targeting 3 people doesn't really make sense, since it's literally leaping at a single target, and I think it's ok to have a purely single target phantasm.

Duelist would make sense bouncing similar to Magic Bullet, but that pulls away from it being Illusionary Unload.

Warlock needs an overhaul considering it's our strongest Power Phantasm on a supportive condi weapon.

Warden should not get changed. It's actually in a great spot with the reflect on trait and projectile destruction when untraited. You can use (or abuse) this to get out of stick situations in PvE. If you change that to make it useful in PvP, you significantly hurt the PvE aspect to the skill.

Berserker has had many changes to fix his skill hitting and right now it hits a good amount of the time. Sure, in PvP he won't get amazin angles which makes him easy to dodge, but that's going to happen no matter what they do since it's Warrior GS3.

Mage still kinda sucks even with all the changes they've done to it. It's on a fantastic weapon because The Prestige can be spammed in PvE for a damage boost and in PvP it's just on-demand stealth which is always usable. To be honest, Mage would be the best (and only) condi Phantasm (bar underwater) if it weren't for Sharper Images. Just some food for thought.

@Esplen.3940 said:Swordsman targeting 3 people doesn't really make sense, since it's literally leaping at a single target, and I think it's ok to have a purely single target phantasm.

Yeah it does look like that, but maybe you know it damages the people that the Phantasm passes through as well? I don't know but... I really want to have this guy to have more cleave.

Warlock needs an overhaul considering it's our strongest Power Phantasm on a supportive condi weapon.

I agree with that.

The best I can think of for Swordsman is that he cleaves the area on impact (similar to Sword auto cleave range).

Warlock I could see doing a reverse SoI where it takes all the condis on the enemy and adds stacks to them (1-3 depending on the condi).

The warlock functions the same as the original "Feast of Corruption". FoC was changed because it didn't make sense to have a power scaling skill on a condition weapon. The same logic applies to the warlock, I don't understand why they didn't update its functionality at the same time they changed Necro's scepter.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Feast_of_Corruption

Could have even been super lazy and applied the same changes to the warlock- 2 stacks of torment + 1 additional per condition on your target.

@Mikkel.8427 said:The warlock functions the same as the original "Feast of Corruption". FoC was changed because it didn't make sense to have a power scaling skill on a condition weapon. The same logic applies to the warlock, I don't understand why they didn't update its functionality at the same time they changed Necro's scepter.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Feast_of_Corruption

Could have even been super lazy and applied the same changes to the warlock- 2 stacks of torment + 1 additional per condition on your target.

That's what I've been asking for a long time, but they ignore it. It could use very well, since Staff is a weapon of conditions, and is very good sinergy.