Diversion

— In-game description

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38

Diversion

Shatter. Destroy all your clones, dazing their targets. The shatter effect also occurs at your location.

Daze: 1 second

Number of Targets: 1

Radius: 240

Defiance Break: 100

Range: 1,200

— In-game description

Related skills

Signet of Illusions — Signet Passive: Creates a clone every few seconds. Signet Active: Recharges shatter skills.
Mantra of Distraction — Mantra. Meditate, charging a spell that will daze your target. Diversion's recharge time is partially refunded when this spell fully charges.

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.
Rending Shatter — Shatter skills inflict vulnerability on hit.
Dazzling — Disabling a foe also applies vulnerability. Disables include stun, daze, knockback, pull, knockdown, sink, float, launch, taunt, and fear.
Shattered Concentration — Shatter skills also remove a boon on hit.
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.
Mental Anguish — Shatter skills deal more damage. This bonus damage is doubled against foes that are not activating skills.
Power Block — Interrupts deal damage and inflict weakness while granting you a damage increase. This trait can only damage enemies with defiance bars once per interval.

Dueling

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.
Bountiful Disillusionment — Gain stability when you use a Shatter skill. Grant an additional boon to nearby allies based on which Shatter is used.

Inspiration

Restorative Illusions — Heal and cleanse conditions from yourself and nearby allies when you use a Shatter skill.

Illusions

Maim the Disillusioned — Shatter skills inflict torment on hit.
Master of Misdirection — Shatter skills gain recharge reduction.
Master of Fragmentation — Your Shatter skills are improved.

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.
Flow of Time — Gain alacrity for each clone you shatter. Gain increased critical-strike chance for you and your clones[sic] when you have alacrity.
Illusionary Reversion — Shatter skills generate a clone and grant alacrity if you have enough clones present.
Stretched Time — Nearby allies gain boons for each clone you shatter. Grant boons 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.

Mirage

Riddle of Sand — When entering combat, your first Ambush attack applies confusion. This ability refreshes when you use a Shatter skill.
Nomad's Endurance — Shatter skills give vigor. Strike and condition damage dealt is increased when you have vigor.
Phantom Pain — Gain a damage increase when you use a Shatter skill, increasing per clone shattered.
Dune Cloak — Shatter skills grant Mirage Cloak if you have enough clones present. Gaining Mirage Cloak recharges Mind Wrack and Cry of Frustration.

Troubadour

Syncopate — Deafening Drum releases an additional quick wave after a delay. Deal damage to enemies you disable.

Notes

This skill is locked until level 15.^[1]
An enemy Dazed by Diversion cannot be dazed again until the daze effect wears off. For this reason, Diversion is strongest when using a mix of ranged and melee clones, or ranged clones with the mesmer in melee range. That way, one Diversion occurs right away, while other Diversion needs to wait for the clone to run to the target to get in range, which may cause a second application of daze if the previous daze had already ended.
- Against enemies with Defiance Bars however, all clones shattered will damage the defiance bar with their daze regardless of time elapsed in between their shattering. If only the mesmer hits with Diversion, they will deal 100 damage to the defiance bar with daze. But if they hit with 3 clones and themselves, they will deal 400 defiance bar damage with their daze.

Version history

For a detailed skill history, see here.

Patch	Changes
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.
February 06, 2018	Shatter skills now only shatter clones. Descriptions have been updated to reflect their new functionality.
September 29, 2015	Updated the description of these skills to include the effects added when Illusionary Persona functionality was made baseline.
June 23, 2015	Specialization update: Using any shatter skill now creates the shatter effect on you as well by default. Reduced the recharge to 38 seconds. It now shows the number of targets dazed (1) when untraited.
January 03, 2013	Shatter skills now share a global 0.25 second recharge, to prevent multiple shatter effects triggering on the same illusion.
August 28, 2012	Game release: Diversion has been added to the game.