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Mesmer Illusions for Menial Tasks


mightylemur.7160

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I'm not sure where lore ends and mechanics begins, but it seems like illusion magic needs a mind (other than the Mesmer) to influence in order to operate? To the point where most clones and phantasms are targeted.

In which case, they would need at least one flesh and blood assistant to be fooled by the illusions for the illusions to actually manifest and do things. I suppose there might be examples of illusion magic without minds around (but how would we know?) or maybe self-delusion is a possibility, but that approach sounds like it might have some dangers.

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@perilisk.1874 said:

I suppose there might be examples of illusion magic without minds around (but how would we know?)

It's arguably, just a gameplay abstraction, buuut... we have seen illusions work their magic on doors, turrets, portals, and the like. If (and that's a big if) they can damage inanimate objects, it stands to reason that they can carry/chop/whatever them too.

The other hurdle, though: just how autonomous are they? We've only seen them employed on tasks the mesmer's also focused on. It might be possible to have an illusion dice the onions while you're frying the rice, but what about having one do that while you're down the street picking up those peppers you forgot?

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@Aaron Ansari.1604 said:We've only seen them employed on tasks the mesmer's also focused on. It might be possible to have an illusion dice the onions while you're frying the rice, but what about having one do that while you're down the street picking up those peppers you forgot?

What about the fake Countess Anise in the party during The Dragon's Reach? Though the illusion seemed to be minimally engaged with its surroundings, and she is on the high end of the ability scale, so it doesn't necessarily contradict the general principle.

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@perilisk.1874 said:

@"Aaron Ansari.1604" said:We've only seen them employed on tasks the mesmer's also focused on. It might be possible to have an illusion dice the onions while you're frying the rice, but what about having one do that while you're down the street picking up those peppers you forgot?

What about the fake Countess Anise in the party during The Dragon's Reach? Though the illusion seemed to be minimally engaged with its surroundings, and she is on the high end of the ability scale, so it doesn't necessarily contradict the general principle.

That's the example I was going to use. Anise is supposed to be a very powerful mesmer, but with her attention elsewhere her clone could only manage repeating the same few responses to people around her.

So maybe a simple, repetitive action like sweeping would work, but cooking would probably be too complicated. A bit like the combat versions - they can handle an auto-attack but can't use multiple abilities or kite/dodge. Although even with a simple task I imagine you'd run the risk of ending up in a Sorcerer's Apprentice style scenario where they manage to completely mess it up, even without actually doing anything wrong.

But maybe they'd be ok with supervision? So a mesmer chef could create an illusion to stir sauce or kneed dough while they're prepping the other ingredients, as long as they're in the room to make sure nothing unexpected happens, and then unsummon them when the task is done.

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If you go to Lornar's Pass and to Olia's Clearing you can hear a conversation between 2 NPC's and it goes like:

Lionguard (1): Why don’t we just cast some spells and force the weather to give us more wind?Lionguard (2): Because. It takes energy to influence the weather. More energy than it would take to just saw the logs up by hand.Lionguard (1): I hate your logic.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stonescatter_Wash

So chances are it would take more energy (and probably concentration) to cast the spells to do whatever you need doing rather than just doing it yourself. Whether or not you could conjure multiple illusions to do multiple tasks in a shorter time at the cost of energy is another question. I'd probably say it's not an option in general as it would be fairly taxing on the mesmer for no real gains.

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Asurans actually did try to use them as cheap (free) lab assistants for a while, but after discovering they have a 100% chance of shattering and killing everyone nearby when they complete their task, they opted for the much more reliable golems to do the work. They only have a 12.9% chance of catastrophic explosion.

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