Phantasms are boring, rework some of them

[agrippastrilemma.8741]

• Staff - Phantasmal Warlock - Make it remove boons instead of just inflicting a miniscule amount of power damage. Fits well with the theme of staff as more of a utility weapon.
• Focus - Phantasmal Warden - Make it ground-targeted. That way you can actually use the whirl finisher and projectile bubble in a smart way rather than it just being fire-and-forget.
• Torch - Phantasmal Mage - Make it pivot around its own axis.
• EDIT: Sword - Phantasmal Swordsman - Maybe make it a leap and at the end of the leap you summon the phantasm. Would give core Mesmer a mobility option.

Phantasmal Berserker and Duelist are fine.

Edited April 13, 2023 by agrippastrilemma.8741

[Dr Meta.3158]

Good ideas.

[dead.7638]

Agree, staff is due for a buff.   Might as well rework the buggy axe phantasms as well.   If anything having phantasms hit their target would be a great start on a rework with all of them.   I do believe nerf after nerf they have unintentionally created inconsistency with many of mesmers skills that need to be fixed and I’d be happy.

[viquing.8254]

There are 2 phantasms as utility slots too...

[Dr Meta.3158]

I think part of the reason why they won't touch phantasms is because of power shatter builds. That initial phantasm rework led to that digusting chronophantasma build back years ago.

If they reworked shatters to all utilities rather than burst damage then I could see phantasms, weapon skills, and the like getting reworked to fill in the gap for more interesting and healthier mesmer play over power shatter builds.

Edited April 13, 2023 by Dr Meta.3158

[Salt Mode.3780]

It's quite hilarious because iWarlock use to do so much damage based on the number of conditions on the enemy way back in the day. Now it's just clone fodder. 

 

[semak.7481]

20 hours ago, agrippastrilemma.8741 said:

• Staff - Phantasmal Warlock - Make it remove boons instead of just inflicting a miniscule amount of power damage. Fits well with the theme of staff as more of a utility weapon.
• Focus - Phantasmal Warden - Make it ground-targeted. That way you can actually use the whirl finisher and projectile bubble in a smart way rather than it just being fire-and-forget.
• Torch - Phantasmal Mage - Make it pivot around its own axis.

Phantasmal Berserker and Duelist are fine.

Sword phantasm is so good that you forgot about its existance /s

[agrippastrilemma.8741]

3 hours ago, semak.7481 said:

Sword phantasm is so good that you forgot about its existance /s

Lmao I actually did. Ill edit

[agrippastrilemma.8741]

15 hours ago, viquing.8254 said:

There are 2 phantasms as utility slots too...

Any ideas for them?

[semak.7481]

On 4/12/2023 at 3:50 PM, agrippastrilemma.8741 said:

EDIT: Sword - Phantasmal Swordsman - Maybe make it a leap and at the end of the leap you summon the phantasm. Would give core Mesmer a mobility option.

What about making it land...?  I thought we need phantasms to do some damage for us. I want old sword phantasm that did a leap and poked for 5k+ damage (it was at the time when phantasm didnt resummon themselves, it was a good phantasm, wtf it was changed).

Also torch phantasm should be less than 30s cd, 30 is too freaking long, it doesnt hit hard even and you can avoid it simply by walking because of how slow it is. They could remove daze and make it much faster + set cd to 20s

[Delrago.2098]

1 hour ago, agrippastrilemma.8741 said:

Any ideas for them?

Would love for disenchanter to be a multi hit, maybe 3 total,  with the last hit removing an extra boon or two.  Not really sure what they could do for defender tho. 

[phokus.8934]

Give me that teleport to target for sword phantasm.

[agrippastrilemma.8741]

54 minutes ago, phokus.8934 said:

Give me that teleport to target for sword phantasm.

Would be a fine option too. Summon phantasm if you hit your target. Makes it have more counterplay too.

Edited April 13, 2023 by agrippastrilemma.8741

[Thorne Templar.6784]

Some of my own thoughts on mesmer phantasms:

Consistency and ease of use: 

The sword phantasm will frequently miss if the target moves slightly out of the way. I'd like some sort of update to its attack to make it more reliable.

The focus phantasm's whirling defense attack has such a long cast time that it isn't super practical against weaker enemies that die quickly. However, it also blocks (reflects if traited) projectiles, so I wouldn't necessarily make it faster just because of that. I agree that making it ground targeted would make it more skillful to use.

The phantasmal defender utility isn't super useful or fun in my opinion, and I haven't really heard much about it in any context. I might make the taunt effect stronger/make the damage from blocking attacks scale more. (Another thought is giving everyone affected by the phantasm a second or two of quickness to make them attack the phantasm faster and get more blocks in the limited time.) Another option for this utility is just rework it into something else entirely.

Overall fun level

The staff phantasms just do vulnerability, which is fine, but not as interesting as it could be. I'd like for it to do additional damage/conditions if some other condition is satisfied to make them more interesting.

The pistol phantasm is fine. However, it'd be fun to have it summon two phantasms instead that split the same amount of damage between them to give it more of an "ambush" type of feel for the weapon.

Other ideas I couldn't fit elsewhere:

It'd be interesting to have a phantasm that focused on giving boons instead of doing damage (maybe a ground targeted utility skill).

Phantasms only there for visual purposes: What if there were phantasms that "hold down" the null field or feedback bubble?

[viquing.8254]

4 hours ago, agrippastrilemma.8741 said:

Any ideas for them?

Their old concept made it usefull while not being op.

Currently they can't be good because :

- They have only one attack so the attack has to be strong or the cd low.

- Chronophantasma kitten who double attacks.

So we end with 2 dead utility slots.

There is 2 options IMO :

- Remove chronophantasma to a phantasm trigger some actions from mesmer or heal you or your allies or whatever.

Or

- Give some effects triggered by the mesmer similar to "Fire multiple crippling bullets at your target" from https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Phantasmal_Duelist which will not be triggered twice by chronophantasma. or "Throw an illusionary greatsword at your foe" from https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Phantasmal_Berserker

Edited April 13, 2023 by viquing.8254

[Junkpile.7439]

Torch - Phantasmal Mage

Player could high five with phantasmal mage and get 2 stacks of might. After that mage just disapear.

[Dr Meta.3158]

It would be cool if, given that shatters ever get reworked to be all defensive/control utilities, domination had an adept trait that allowed phantasms to daze for 1/2 second when they hit their first attack to replace Rending Shatter with.

[Salt Mode.3780]

Or just let us shatter our phantasms before it changes into clones...they can still turn into clones after the duration but during its uptime allow us to shatter it...it would already massively improve phantasms...

[viquing.8254]

Phantasmal defender : channel a pulsing barrier on the mesmer who pulse heal on allies surrounding the mes 180 range for 3 sec.

Phantasmal disenchanter : channel a pulsing condiclear on the mesmer who pulse boon clear on ennemies surrounding the mes on a 180 range for 3 sec.

[Stavros.8249]

I really hate defender and staff one. The sword should have the previous animation. It was one leap and stab. Also the focus one is a little slow.

[dead.7638]

The virt swords 3 is my ideal leap.   If only it would hit the target.   Very annoying that it doesn’t 50% off the time

[Curunen.8729]

For iWarden I'd like to see it more representative of it's artwork, eg:

- player cast animation like shield block (arm swiping inwards) - immediate gain 1s aegis

- spawn phantasm directly in front of player

- phantasm gives intial aoe pulse of 2s resolution and protection (5 allies, 240 radius)

- phantasm reverted to melee cleave, no change to duration

- phantasm heals allies in radius, relative to damage dealt (encourage to pull targets into the cleave to deal more damage and get more healing)

- if in range, phantasm will also throw axes to player's current target only which deal less damage than the cleave

 

I'm not a fan of too much ground targeting, especially with focus 4 already having that, so here it would be about positioning yourself to use iWarden and having predictable function from there.

Edited May 3, 2023 by Curunen.8729

[agrippastrilemma.8741]

3 hours ago, Curunen.8729 said:

For iWarden I'd like to see it more representative of it's artwork, eg:

- player cast animation like shield block (arm swiping inwards) - immediate gain 1s aegis

- spawn phantasm directly in front of player

- phantasm gives intial aoe pulse of 2s resolution and protection (5 allies, 240 radius)

- phantasm reverted to melee cleave, no change to duration

- phantasm heals allies in radius, relative to damage dealt (encourage to pull targets into the cleave to deal more damage and get more healing)

- if in range, phantasm will also throw axes to player's current target only which deal less damage than the cleave

 

I'm not a fan of too much ground targeting, especially with focus 4 already having that, so here it would be about positioning yourself to use iWarden and having predictable function from there.

Overdesigned and unnecessarily complicated. Why would you not be a fan of ground targeting? No logical reason to be against it.

Edited May 3, 2023 by agrippastrilemma.8741

[Curunen.8729]

2 hours ago, agrippastrilemma.8741 said:

Overdesigned and unnecessarily complicated. Why would you not be a fan of ground targeting? No logical reason to be against it.

Then pick one or two of those features.

No logical reason to introduce unnecessary ground targeting when there are many ways it can be made functional spawning on the player. That's sound enough logic for me.

Bottom line - this is purely subjective.

[agrippastrilemma.8741]

14 hours ago, Curunen.8729 said:

Then pick one or two of those features.

No logical reason to introduce unnecessary ground targeting when there are many ways it can be made functional spawning on the player. That's sound enough logic for me.

Bottom line - this is purely subjective.

Of course it is subjective, doesn't mean I can't disagree or ask what the logic behind being against ground targeting for this skill is. We have duelist that spawns on top of you, and Mage that spawns at your enemy. It would be more interesting to have a different mechanism for focus, and it would suit the projectile bubble and whirl finisher mechanic very well and make it far more usable. It also makes a lot of sense with the stationary nature of focus - you pop it down, it does its attack where you put it, then disappears.

Edited May 4, 2023 by agrippastrilemma.8741