C9 - illusionist Guide and Skill build

The Illusionist is one of the three advanced classes available to the shaman. It is a very mobile class that lay down blades on the ground that will slice up enemies in its path. In addition, Illusionists also have a pet that can distract the enemies, allowing the Illusionist to focus her damage on the enemy for a short period of time before exploding. All in all, if you like kiting mobs, high mobility, and sucking large groups of enemies in a big tornado, then the Illusionist is for you!

The following abilities are specific to the Illusionist class.

Level	Name	Type	Upgrades (6 sp per upgrade)
20	Phantom Upper	Action	23, 26, 29, 32, 35, 38, 41, 44, 47, 50
20	Phantom Blade	Action	23, 26, 29, 32, 35, 38, 41, 44, 47, 50
20	Phantom Crash	Action
20	Phantom Tornado	Action	23, 26, 29, 32, 35, 38, 41, 44, 47, 50 w/7 sp per upgrade
20	Illusion Wind	Command
21	Air Mana Pierce	Command
22	Phantom Scrape	Action	22, 25, 28, 31, 34, 37, 40, 43, 46, 49 w/ 7 sp per upgrade
24	Phantom Cry	Action	27, 30, 33, 36, 39, 42, 45, 48
25	Alluring Illusion	Action	28, 31, 34, 37, 40, 43, 46, 49
26	Illusion Decoy	Command
28	Phantom Bolt	Command	31, 34, 37, 40, 43, 46, 49
30	Illusion Flasher	Command	33, 36, 39, 42, 45, 48
30	Phantom Punch	Action	33, 36, 39, 42, 45, 48
33	Phantom Bind	Action	36, 39, 42, 45, 48
35	Phantom Excalibur	Action	40.45, 50
35	Phantom Excalibur	Action	38, 41, 44, 47, 50
37	Phantom Ascent	Action	40, 43, 46, 49
40	Soul Valkan	Action	43, 46, 49
43	Phantom Hand	Command	46, 49
43	Soul Valkan Flash	Passive	48 w/ 7 sp per upgrade
45	Furious Storm	Passive

Phantom Blade is going to be your bread and butter. It releases a blade that will slice up anything in its path before exploding, dealing additional damage to the enemy. It is an instant cast with only a 7 second cooldown, allowing you run around and release them in the enemy's path as you kite them around.

You get a more power version of Phantom Blade at level 35 called Phantom Excalibur. It requires rank 5 in Phantom Blade.

Phantom Crash is an ability that go along with Phantom Blade/Phantom Excalibur/Alluring Illusion and allows you to manually detonate these skills. Learning to correct time and detonate these abilities will be a key skill as these explosions deals a lot of damage and interrupt your enemies.

Phantom Upper is another cool ability that is used when enemies get close to you. It deals quite a lot of damage and knock enemies in front of you into the air. It has great synergy with Phantom cry, an ability you obtain at level 24 as you can stun your enemies with Phantom Cry, follow it with Phantom Upper to knock them back. You can add in Illusion Flame after Phantom Upper for a great combo at close range.

Phantom Tornado is your super devasting AoE ability that consumes skillstones (4). It essentially suck the enemies in front you into a massive tornado that deals continuous damage and prevent them from attacking you as long this ability is active. This will be your only mass AoE ability until you get Phantom Bind at level 33 and Soul Valkan at 40.

Illusion Wind is a very cool ability that is similar to "blink" abilities from other MMOs. It teleports the caster in any of the 4 directions rapidly, great for getting away from mobs or dodging attacks. It has only a 10 second cooldown as well, which means you can use it very frequently in combat once you have mastered it. It is a bit tricky to use, as it requires pressing Q + right mouse button and then use one of the 4 movement keys (WSAD) but with enough practice you can master it pretty easily. It is one of the hallmark abilities of Illusionists.

At level 22, you obtain Phantom Scrape, a skill that requires a short casting time and places a massive blade at the location you specify, damaging all enemies nearby before exploding. It is another ability you sort have to practice with it as it can be tricky putting it in the right place and enemies can interrupt you while you try to get the cast off.

Phantom Cry, obtained at level 24, is another super useful ability. It is a close ranged instant cast ability that deals massive damage and stuns all the enemies nearby for a few, giving you time to escape or cast other abilities. It is fairly yummy in PVP as well to stun your opponents.

At level 25, you obtain Alluring Ilusion, which is essentially a pet that will attract all nearby enemies to attack it and explodes when all of its health has being depleted or can be manually detonated with Phantom Crash.

It works great when facing a large pack of mobs as you can use the pet to hold them at bay while you send in your Phantom Blade/Phantom Scrape/Phantom Excalbur and then explodes all of them with Phantom Crash for massive damage.

Illusion Decoy at level 26 will allow you to summon your pet when you knocked down on the ground, allowing you a quick escape.

At level 28 and 30, you get Phantom Bolt and Phantom Punch respectively. Both are abilities you can use when you are dashing (shift + movement key). These are not my favorite abilities as their usage is rather limited and do costs a lot of SP points.

At level 30 you also get an upgrade to Illusion Flame called Illusion Flasher. It essentially adds another attack to your Illusion Flame but will cost 1 skillstone per use.

Phantom Bind is you next big AoE ability after Phantom Tornado and its obtained at level 33. It essentially grab all the enemies nearby 9 times, dealing damage with each grab. Costs 1 skillstone per use.

Soul Aura, obtained at level 35, its shield for yourself and your party members that will absorb a significant amount of damage and make you invincible (immune to all attacks and debuffs while it is active). .Think of it as Phantom Wall for your party members! I like to drop it right before a big pack of mobs so I can release my big AoE skills like Phantom Tornado uninterrupted.

Phantom Ascent is another blade ability at level 37 on top of your Phantom Blade/Phantom Excalibur/Phantom Scrape. It is a giant vertical blade that deals a massive amount of damage, especially single target.

Finally at Level 40, you will receive Soul Valkan. It is my favourite ability and can be used as a single target attack or AoE attack. It essentially lifts you into the air and allow you to shoot energy orbs from a long distance!

At level 43, you receive your last non-passive skill – Phantom Hand. This one requires Level 5 Mana Cipher to learn. This is a essentially a giant hand that slap the enemies around and then pound the ground, knocking them back. I had some diffculty getting this skill to work properly.

After 43, you get two passives for your Phantom Tornado and Soul Valkan to make them even better. Both passives are extremely nice and I highly recommend taking them.

Point Allocation at 50

With so many abiliites and so little SP points, you have to make some decisions regarding which abilities to get and which ones to forgo.

Here is my point allocation at level 50 with 1047 SP points.

You have your basic 4 phantom blade abilities to go along with phantom crash: phantom blade, phantom scape, phantom excalibur and phantom ascent.

For your big AoE abilities you have phantom tornado, phantom bind and soul valkan.

When enemies get too close for comfort, you have phantom cry to stun them, phantom upper and illusion flame to knock them back.

Alluring illusion is there to distract your enemies and soul aura give you a little bubble that shield you while you bring down the pain.

For Command abilities I have Mana Piece as a basic attack I can use to point and shoot if the enemy is too far away for my phantom abilities. Illusion wind, my "blink" ability, and Illusion Flasher to enhance my Illusion Flame. I choose to take Phantom Hand here although not to the max rank.

In terms of passives Fast Casting is a must have as a fair bit of our abilities have a casting time and faster casts decrease the chance you will be interrupted.

Furious Storm and Soul Valkan Flash are essentially must have upgrades to make your big AoE abiliites more powerful.

Mentalism I and II ensures that I never really run out of mana and critical increase give you an additional 9% chance to crit at max rank for more damage. I actually don't need max MP increase with Mentalist passives as my mana never run out so I put all the points into Max HP increase instead to help with survival.

Ability usage and combinations

Two of the abilities I find myself using the most are Phantom Blade and Phantom Excalibur. These two abilities work best if mobs are running towards you as you can put them in front of you and manually explode them using Phantom Crash right before mobs get to you. I use Phantom Scrape when enemies are a bit far away and I have time to get the cast off.

Once the enemies are in melee range, you can pop Alluring Illusion and then back away so use more Phantom Blade/Excalibur/Scrape on the mobs who are now distracted by your pet. Once you get Soul Valkan you can use this after you released all the blades to maximize damage. Your other option is to stand there and use Phantom Cry, this will stun majority of the mobs and then you can use Illusion Flame/Phantom Upper to knock them back.

For large group of mobs, you can drop your phantom blades etc while you are running around to gather them up. This will damage them as you are running round. Once you have them all gathered, you can use Illusion Wind to quickly blink forward and cast Soul Aura if you have it. This will protect you while you get a cast of Phantom Tornado/Phantom Bind off. If you have Soul Valkan you can use it right after Phantom Tornado to essentially decimate the group of mobs.