Phantasmal Duelist

Phantasm. Fire multiple crippling bullets at your target and summon an illusion that unloads its pistols on your target. — In-game description

Phantasmal Duelist

Profession

Mesmer (skill list)

Weapon

Off hand pistol

Type

Phantasm

Summons

Illusionary Duelist

Game link

API

10175

“

0.5½  

20

18

 

Phantasmal Duelist

Phantasm. Fire multiple crippling bullets at your target and summon an illusion that unloads its pistols on your target.

 Damage (3x): 120 (0.33)^?

 Illusion Damage (8x): 928 (0.92)^?

 Illusion Damage (8x): 808 (0.8)^?

₃ Cripple (1s): -50% Movement Speed

 Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile (20% chance)

 Range: 1,200

— In-game description

Phantasm

Phantasm	Skill used	Effect
Illusionary Duelist	Illusionary Unload	Deals damage and causes a projectile finisher.

Mechanics

• Phantasms have their own unique weapon strength that is independent of the player's equipped weapon rarity. The duelist has a weapon strength range of 2406-2825, with the midpoint being 2615.5.

Related traits

Dueling

• Phantasmal Fury — Your phantasms have fury.
• Duelist's Discipline — Pistol attacks from you and your illusions have a chance to cause bleeding. Interrupting a foe recharges pistol skills. This trait can only reduce recharge on enemies with defiance bars once per interval.

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

• Phantasmal Blades — Phantasms that successfully complete their attack launch a blade at their target and grant you fury when they expire.

Notes

Bugs:

• With the February 6, 2018 game update, the attack from the mesmer was changed to fire three bullets instead of one, with each bullet dealing 230% more damage than it did before the update. However, the actual update only increased damage each bullet deals by 10% (0.11 per bullet), totaling 0.33 for all three bullets.
• The phantasm will often not attack an object that must be destroyed. It will do nothing until an enemy NPC comes within range, at which point it will start attacking the NPC (rather than the object it was meant to attack).
• The distance at which the phantasm starts shooting is inconsistent. It will often run in closer than 900 or 1200 range even if cast multiple times from the same location against a stationary target.
• The tooltip for the skill shows both the PvP and PvE strike damage while in the open world. The skill only does 8 strikes, not 8 strikes x2.

Version history

For a detailed skill history, see here.

Patch	Changes
May 02, 2023	Reduced cooldown from 20 seconds to 18 seconds in PvP and WvW.
February 25, 2020	Competitive content update: (Competitive split) Reduced power coefficient per strike of the phantasm attack from 0.115 to 0.1.
February 07, 2018	Fixed a bug that prevented bullets fired by the mesmer from having a chance to bleed when used with the Duelist's Discipline trait.
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. The attack from the mesmer now fires three bullets that quickly travel to the target after a short delay. Each bullet deals 230% more damage than the previous version of this attack.
February 22, 2017	In addition to its previous effect, this skill now fires a slow-moving homing bullet that cripples its target if it hits.
June 23, 2015	Specialization update: Pistol skills used by you and your illusions have had their range increased to 1200. Phantasm damage has been increased by 15%.
September 09, 2014	Fixed an incorrect damage skill fact.
May 20, 2014	Updated the skill facts to have the appropriate damage indicator (separate from the general fix to minion skill damage).
November 26, 2013	This skill no longer indicates a loss of damage when traited with Empowered Illusions.
October 15, 2013	The Illusionary Duelist's attacks now have a 20% chance for a projectile combo finisher instead of 100% when traited with Duelist's Discipline.
August 06, 2013	This skill now has its range increased with Duelist's Discipline. Fixed a bug that enabled the duelist from being cast at 1200 range at all times.
March 26, 2013	Reduced the range to 900, matching its current listing.
December 14, 2012	Damage now matches the tooltip. Increased damage to match the lost damage from a previous bug fix.
October 07, 2012	Increased recharge to 20 seconds.
August 28, 2012	Game release: Phantasmal Duelist has been added to the game.

Trivia

• This phantasm wields two pistols with the same skin as Ilya and Lyss.