Phantasmal Berserker

Phantasm. Throw an illusionary greatsword at your foe, removing boons from struck enemies. Create a phantasm that whirls through foes. — In-game description

Phantasmal Berserker

Profession

Mesmer (skill list)

Weapon

Greatsword

Type

Phantasm

Summons

Illusionary Berserker

Game link

API

10221

“

0.75¾  

12

15

 

Phantasmal Berserker

Phantasm. Throw an illusionary greatsword at your foe, removing boons from struck enemies. Create a phantasm that whirls through foes.

 Phantasm Damage (4x): 1,020 (0.92)^?

 Phantasm Damage (4x): 664 (0.6)^?

 Greatsword Damage: 484 (1.2)^?

 Greatsword Damage: 161 (0.4)^?

 Boons Removed: 2

 Whirling Strikes: 4

 Number of Targets: 5

 Pierces

 Range: 1,200

— In-game description

Phantasm

Phantasm	Skill used	Effect
Illusionary Berserker	Phantasmal Berserker	Deals damage, cripples, and causes a whirl finisher.

Mechanics

• Similar to the Whirlwind Attack this skill emulates, the number of hits that the phantasm actually lands is dependent on the size and position of the target relative to the Phantasm.
• Phantasms have their own unique weapon strength that is independent of the player's equipped weapon rarity. The Illusionary Berserker has a weapon strength range of 2732-3022, with the midpoint being 2877.

Related traits

Domination

• Bountiful Blades — Improves greatsword skills. Mirror Blade bounces additional times, and Phantasmal Berserker summons an additional berserker and deals less damage.

Dueling

• Phantasmal Fury — Your phantasms have fury.

Inspiration

• Sympathetic Visage — Phantasms take your conditions from you when summoned.
• Illusionary Inspiration — Increase healing to other allies. Summoning an illusion heals all allies around you. Virtuoso: Triggers when stocking a blade.

Illusions

• Persistence of Memory — When a phantasm becomes a clone, it transfers its boons to you.
• Compounding Power — Creating an illusion increases your outgoing damage and condition damage for a short duration. Virtuoso: Triggers when stocking a blade.
• Escape Artist — When a phantasm is created, grant it distortion.
• Phantasmal Haste — Phantasms spawn with quickness. Gain quickness when you create a phantasm.
• Phantasmal Force — Phantasms deal increased strike damage for each stack of might you have. Gain might when your phantasms become clones.

Chronomancer

• Time Catches Up — Activating a Shatter gives your illusions superspeed. Shatters deal increased damage to movement-impaired foes.
• Stretched Time — Flow of Time now affects nearby allies. Grant alacrity to nearby allies when you summon a phantasm.
• Seize the Moment — You and nearby allies gain quickness for each clone you shatter. Grant quickness to nearby allies when you summon a phantasm.
• Chronophantasma — The first time a phantasm would become a clone, it instead resummons itself and attacks again. Resummoned phantasms inflict a percentage of the original's damage. (Resummoned phantasms are briefly dazed.)

Virtuoso

• Psychic Blades — Whenever a clone would be summoned, you instead stock a blade. Blades persist indefinitely until used. Your shatters are replaced with Bladesongs that consume your stocked blades, but still count as shatters for the purposes of core traits. While out of combat, you will automatically stock a blade every 10 seconds.
• Jagged Mind — Blade attacks inflict bleeding on critical hits. A percentage of your condition damage dealt heals you.
• Deadly Blades — Blades inflict vulnerability on critical hits. After successfully casting a Bladesong, increase all damage dealt for a short time. This does not stack.
• Phantasmal Blades — Phantasms that successfully complete their attack launch a blade at their target and grant you fury when they expire.

Version history

For a detailed skill history, see here.

Patch	Changes
June 25, 2024	Fixed an issue that prevented the initial strike of this skill from counting as a blade for the purpose of activating traits.
August 02, 2022	In PvE only, increased damage multiplier of initial strike from 0.4 to 1.2.
March 29, 2022	Reduced cooldown from 20 seconds to 15 seconds in PvP and WvW.
February 25, 2020	Competitive content update: Cooldown reduced from 15 seconds to 12 seconds. This skill no longer cripples foes. Instead, the projectile now removes 2 boons. The projectile no longer boomerangs. Competitive splits: Reduced phantasm power coefficient per strike from 0.23 to 0.15.
February 06, 2018	Phantasms can no longer be shattered and no longer count toward your maximum illusion count. Phantasms are destroyed and then replaced by clones after completing their unique attack or if their attack is interrupted. Increased the damage of the thrown greatsword by 100%. Reduced the recharge from 20 seconds to 15 seconds in PvE.
November 07, 2017	Reduced casting time from 1 second to 0.75 seconds.
August 08, 2017	Path of Fire pre-patch: Fixed a bug that caused this skill to not display legendary-weapon projectile effects. The attack from this phantasm now has a consistent move distance and is unaffected by enhancements that change movement speed.
May 16, 2017	This skill now fires a boomerang projectile that inflicts 3 stacks of vulnerability for 3 seconds in addition to summoning a phantasm.
June 23, 2015	Specialization update: Phantasm damage has been increased by 15%.
June 25, 2013	Fixed an issue that was causing the damage from this summoned phantasm to not display. Updated the berserker's attack to make it more reliably hit a static target with all 4 of the attacks.
December 14, 2012	Damage now matches the tooltip.
August 28, 2012	Game release: Phantasmal Berserker has been added to the game.

Trivia

• The Illusionary Berserker's greatsword resembles Vision of the Mists.