Illusion - any viable / good strategies?

I've got 2 memsers. A factions Dominatrix and a long neglected prophesies mesmer that I left at level 14 a year or so ago.

I'm looking to do something different with the Prophesies one, which means avoiding domination magic. Illusion has always looked to be weaker when I've glanced over the spells in the two lines, but am I wrong about that?

Are there any good ways to get strong potential out of Illusion magic? The Prophesies toon is a Me/Mo, and a -long- way from being able to change her profession, so I'm limited there.

I have run her to LA and Droks and by virtue of that over to Kamaden and Kaineng - so I can buy her skills from those places as well, and could easily get her to the Nightfall mainland.

So assuming access to elites and the full skill list, assuming I want to keep her in Illusion / Inspiration and never switch to Domination (as I already have another mesmer there), what can be done?

Am I wasting my time in Illusion?

I don't think so. I think Illusion has definite benefits to countering attack based foes and also debuffing foes. Let's see:
[card]Clumsiness[/card][card]ineptitude[/card][card]conjure nightmare[/card][card]phantom pain[/card][card]Arcane conundrum[/card][card]power drain[/card][card]mantra of persistence[/card][card]ether feast[/card][card]resurrection chant[/card]
To use your monk secondary, just take points out of inspiration and throw them in healing/illusion.

Looks like a decent build there. I'll give it a try, and when I get home and access to my PC (rather than my Mac laptop) I'll post up the hacked together build I'm leveling with.

Getting to Mineral Springs to cap that elite up there is going to be a rough trip, but it looks worth it (never been to the spot in GW:EN that it caps from, wonder if that's easier to reach).

The thing is, illusion has more spells to counter attacks than the other mes lines, so the assumption is that you'll take a role of countering attacks and the odd spell counter.

The problem is that there are plenty of other attack counters out there, from blind spams to curse necros. There is also alot more skills out there to mitigate attack damage versus spell damage.

So an Illusion mes has quite a bit of competition for a spot in a party. (even your own H&H party)

Mantra of Persistance is almost a waste because most mobs die fairly quickly. The only time you'll see any real use of it is vs proph bosses. I also like images of remorse a little more than phantom pain for that same reason. In fact mixing PP and MoP is rather counter-productive.

I'm not sure about that elite either. It's good, but if you are going /Mo I'd be very tempted to put 10 points into healing and bring WoH to help the party. :\


EDIT: And arcane conumdrium is a bit of a waste with only one interrupt... Leech Signet along with power drain would make it more worthwhile.

[skill]Signet of Illusions[/skill]

I found Domination counter heavy - with a lot of interrupts. The Illusion spells I dug up seemed to be mostly about health degen - but I'm working from memory here. After all, only a few of the spells in the build above were familiar to me. I think I made the mistake of dismissing the Illusion line some time back after reading that it was weak coupled with the low effectiveness of the early Mesmer spells that are Illusion - which felt a bit like Mending and Heeling Breeze in reverse.

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I personally mix Illusion with assassin skills like [skill]Assassin's Promise[/skill] and [skill]Kitah's Burden[/skill] Keeps you going like the energizer bunny

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One concept I tried to follow when playing illusion was that you served the role of dealing damage to enemies that were not yet targeted, thus minimizing the fact that at any specific point in time your damage is very small (by means of light hexing with conjure/remorse). This works in groups with a lot of wars/paragons since you can hex a bunch of targets which, when the rest of the group focuses on them, will be already damaged. This isn't that effective though, and your real focus in Illusion should largely be disruption.

You will want skills like Arcane Conundrum/Frustration on your bar to slow casters, Frustration being more effective. Ineptitude is a powerful elite, not amazing but not terrible either. Clumsiness is also worth the space if you can manage the energy costs.

It's possible to mesh those ideas together, but the former became less effective with better AoE and higher-hp mobs.

Ineptitude
Clumsiness
Images of Remorse
Frustration
Power Drain
Power Return
Glyph of Lesser Energy / Drain Enchant / utility
<Res Skill>

Is one possible idea, but could probably be improved on significantly since I'm just throwing things on a skill bar.

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