Not being able to use Shatter's at will...

[Arionell.3574]

...feels EXTREMLY clunky. Now I feel like I must have 3 illusions to even consider shattering becouse how underwhelming they feel without 3 illusions.Anet, you hate the distortion so much that you absolutely must get rid of it? Fine... but for the love of everything you believe in, give me back my shatter-at-will!

They literally removed the ability to clutch-heal and main way to cure conditions, without giving any compensation for it. And as I said, it feels extremly clunky to use shatters now. I really dont care about the nerfing bits in general, but when they are willing to change something so much that nerfing is the only thing that matters and you dont even consider the fun-factor, then we have an issue here. I dont care how underpowered or overpowered a class is. If its not fun, theres absolutely no reason to play it in my book and this comes from a semi-competitive player.

They couldve done a billion things to achieve the same nerfs, but they somehow they managed to do it with the worst possible way.

Here's my two cents. Revert the shatter changes and find a way to do what you wanna do without completely butchering the core mechanic.

[Delofasht.4231]

Jokes on us, Shatters have always been clunky to use and only reliable at point blank range on a profession that does not want to be in melee range except during bursts. The issue here is, half of the shatters want to be used from range as setup (Cry and Diversion) or to actually provide some pressure and not actual burst. This is completely foiled by clones running at the enemy and getting killed en route by AoE fields or direct attacks, so only way to use ANY shatter reliably is in melee range. To provide cover they opted to rely on active defenses which need to be used offensively, but these are also frustrating to enemies to play against. So the whole Mesmer issue ends up being a lack of consistency or counterplay because of the design of clones.

Illusions were always the biggest coding mess, and while I love the idea of them, the implementation is lacking. Clones specifically being a destroyable resource has always been an issue, because then the scaling needs to be pretty extreme for them to get a payoff for getting the right number out and in the right position to shatter them effectively.

In short, fix the real issue before we even worry about Illusionary Persona being on Chrono: Make shatters reliable by making clones immune to damage and the effects of shatters applied by Mesmer next attack (still scaling with number of clones). With the effects made reliable and predictable they should be able to be more easily avoided and thus the crying about Mesmers reduced as a result.