Is Escape Artist a pointless trait now?

[Seventh Ranger.3968]

It used to be pretty useful for clone generation and occasionally fooling people, but it seems like the devs just wanted to replace it with a useless trait so they never have to use their brains when fighting Mesmers. Is there even any real value in giving distortion to phantasms? That just seems so pointless to me, and more like a subtle middle finger to Mesmer players than anything resembling good balance changes.

[phokus.8934]

Unclear as to what gamemode that you're talking about but EA now is really good in wvw.

[zealex.9410]

For pve not necessarily but imagine in a blob say a pvp fight or wvw, the moment the you spawn your summons they explode.

[Veprovina.4876]

10 hours ago, Seventh Ranger.3968 said:

Is there even any real value in giving distortion to phantasms?

For WvW zergs. But it's not complete. It should include all illusions, phantasms often survive long enough for the attack, but clones get deleted instantly. If they included clones as well, it would actually be a good trait for WvW and make some builds viable. 

Right now, and for the longest time, Mesmers lack their profession mechanic in WvW because it's unusable. This trait could fix that. It's a step in the right direction at least, but needs to work on clones too.

[Gesbo.6420]

I miss old escape artist, I believe its functionality can be added to Desperate Decoy but it's new functionality is very very useful in competitive content. Your phantasms can no longer be manipulated by any crowd control like marks and can easily pop traps with no tradeoff. I guess the name is a bit weird but the trait is super good. 

[Pie.2167]

Escape Artist is very good in WvW now.  Makes phantasms actually get their attack off which almost never happened before.  Though I do miss clone/blade on stealth on my PU Virt.