Phantasmal Mage

Phantasm. Strike and burn nearby foes. Create an illusion that releases a massive wave of fire that burns, confuses, and interrupts foes. — In-game description

Phantasmal Mage

Profession

Mesmer (skill list)

Weapon

Torch

Type

Phantasm

Summons

Illusionary Mage

Game link

API

10189

“

0.75¾  

20

25

 

Phantasmal Mage

Phantasm. Strike and burn nearby foes. Create an illusion that releases a massive wave of fire that burns, confuses, and interrupts foes.

 Damage: 504 (0.5)^?

 Burning (9s): 1,179 Damage

₃ Confusion (3s): 99 Damage, 148 Damage on Skill Use

 Daze: 0.5½ seconds

 Number of Targets: 5

 Radius: 240

 Defiance Break: 100

 Range: 1,200

— In-game description

Phantasm

Phantasm	Skill used	Effect
Illusionary Mage	Backfire	Deals damage, causes burning, confusion, and interrupts foes.

Related traits

Domination

• Illusion of Vulnerability — Inflict vulnerability when you interrupt a foe. This trait can only affect enemies with defiance bars once per interval.
• Dazzling — Dazing or stunning a foe also applies vulnerability.
• Furious Interruption — Gain quickness when you interrupt a foe.
• Vicious Expression — You and your illusions deal increased strike damage to foes without boons. Disabling a foe removes boons from them. Disables include stun, daze, knockback, pull, knockdown, sink, float, launch, taunt, and fear.
• Power Block — Interrupts deal damage and inflict weakness. Enemy skills that you interrupt have an increased cooldown. Cannot increase recharge of skills with no recharge or skills on creatures with defiance bars. This trait can only damage enemies with defiance bars once per interval.

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.
• Superiority Complex — Your critical hits deal more damage. Critical hit damage against disabled foes, or foes below the health threshold, is further increased. Disabled foes are affected by stun, daze, knockback, pull, knockdown, sink, float, fear, taunt, or launch.
• Ineptitude — Interrupting a foe inflicts blind, and blinding a foe inflicts confusion. This trait can only activate on enemies with defiance bars once per interval.

Chaos

• Chaotic Interruption — When you interrupt a foe, recharge one of your equipped-weapon skills at random. Only affects weapon skills that are recharging.

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.
• The Pledge — Flame bursts from torch skills inflict additional burning.
• 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.
• Malicious Sorcery — Confusion you inflict has increased duration. When you dodge an attack, inflict confusion on your attacker.

Chronomancer

• Delayed Reactions — Disabling a foe slows them. Disables include stun, daze, knockback, pull, knockdown, sink, float, launch, taunt, and fear. This trait can only affect the same enemy with once per interval.
• 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

• Jagged Mind — Blade attacks inflict bleeding on critical hits. A percentage of your condition damage dealt heals you.
• Phantasmal Blades — Phantasms that successfully complete their attack launch a blade at their target and grant you fury when they expire.

Notes

• Phantasms have their own unique weapon strength that is independent of the player's equipped weapon rarity. The mage has a weapon strength range of 2459-2772, with a midpoint of 2615.5.
• The phantasm will first inflict conditions on its target, and then daze.
  • This can be relevant in certain scenarios, such as an enemy mesmer using the trait  Auspicious Anguish, who will gain  Resolution and  Aegis when struck by this phantasm. Assuming they have no other conditions on them.
• The mesmer will also damage and burn nearby foes when casting this skill, although this is not listed in the skill tooltip. This attack deals:

 Torch Strike Damage: 66 (0.2)^?

 Nearby Burning (6s): 786 Damage

Bug:

The damage from the mesmer summoning this phantasm is not listed in the skill's tooltip, but can be seen in the combat log version of the skill's tooltip.

Version history

For a detailed skill history, see here.

Patch	Changes
November 28, 2023	Reduced the cooldown from 30 seconds to 20 seconds in PvE and from 30 seconds to 25 in WvW.
May 02, 2023	Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 25 seconds in PvP and WvW.
February 28, 2022	End of Dragons release: (Undocumented) Added tooltip fact Defiance Break.
July 07, 2020	Icons for daze and stun are now displayed in light purple in skill and trait tooltips.
July 10, 2018	The burning duration of the initial attack has been modified from 2 stacks for 3 seconds to 1 stack for 6 seconds. The attack's burning has been modified from 3 stacks for 3 seconds to 1 stack for 9 seconds.
February 08, 2018	Fixed a bug that caused the daze from this phantasm's attack from benefiting from the Confounding Suggestions 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 mage summoned by this skill now creates a cone-shaped wave of fire that interrupts foes and applies burning and confusion. The mage now spawns near your target instead of near you.
February 22, 2017	In addition to its previous effect, this skill now burns nearby foes when activated.
July 26, 2016	The recharge of the mage's attack has been reduced from 5 seconds to 4 seconds. Burning stacks have been increased from 1 to 2 stacks, with the duration reduced from 6 to 3. The missile velocity of the mage's attack has been increased by 33%.
June 23, 2015	Specialization update: Instead of inflicting confusion on foes and granting retaliation on allies, this phantasm now inflicts 1 stack of burning for 6 seconds on foes and grants 3 seconds of fury to allies. Removed undocumented condition removal from this phantasm. Mesmer skills that create bouncing projectiles will now have them bounce one additional time. Phantasm damage has been increased by 15%.
January 27, 2015	The illusionary mage summoned by this skill now applies 4 stacks of confusion instead of 3 with its attack. The duration of the confusion has been increased from 3 seconds to 4 seconds. The illusionary mage's rate of fire has been reduced by 1 second.
May 20, 2014	Fixed an incorrect number of bounces skill fact. This skill bounces 2 times (hits 3 targets).
December 14, 2012	Damage now matches the tooltip.
November 15, 2012	This skill's confusion has been increased to 3 stacks for 3 seconds from 1 stack for 9 seconds. The recharge on Phantasmal Mage's skill has been increased to 6 seconds from 5 seconds.
August 28, 2012	Game release: Phantasmal Mage has been added to the game.

Trivia

• This skill used to be called Backfire, and the skill used by the mage is still called that in the combat log.