What exactly does Illusionary Weaponry do?

What's it do? I can't find a description of it anywhere except for the one on RPGstars and that one doesn't make much sense how they explain it.

" For 30 seconds, you deal no damage in melee, but whenever you attack in melee, target foe takes 8-34 damage."

The most damage you may do with a mesmer weapon is probably something like 15~20 on stronger monster. With this enchantment you can do up to 34 damage.
So when you do melee attack, you do the the damage from your enchantment instead of the damage from your weapon.

I don't know if armor can reduce this damage tho. I never tried the skill. But the description is pretty clear to me.

Illusionary Weaponry totally ignores any kind of armor.

Try using Frenzy with it.

You will then see how good it is.

Regards, Ashleigh.

Yeah..I learned how awesome it is the hard way..I got my ass handed to me by a R/Me..

It ignores armour, it ignores enemies using a stance that makes them harder to hit, basically, every time you attack you do x amount of damage (depending on illusion level) You cant do more, and you cant do less. While this sounds good, you cant ad damage to it, by for example, doing a power attack.
This is because of the way iW works. What actually happens, is every time you swing you miss, (which is why power attack doesnt work.... you have to hit for it to register) but the target is registered for x damage. This is great on armoured targets, or targets that are plain hard to hit (e.g. with distortion on). Whatsmore, it also ignores spells like aura of the lich, which is meant to reduce all damage done to you by half. iW is in a sense, the trump card. You cant do jack about it, unless you have enchantment removal.

FYI, you can still reduce their weapon attack rate by casting shadow of fear. They will swing their sword slower, thus reducing the dps of IW.

Quote: Try using Frenzy with it.

You will then see how good it is.

Regards, Ashleigh. I personally prefer flurry since you aren't affected by the damage reduction and there is no penalty. Only downside is flurry lasts for 5 seconds instead of 8 seconds (for frenzy). It's still spammable though and you can keep it up 100% of the time if you so choose.