On the two Phantoms

[Enoch]

Does anybody have the details on precisely how the Substantial and Essential Phantoms differ?  The spell descriptions recite that Substantial has more health and the ability to cast 3 spells, but how much more health?  My intuition is that a melee wizard (or a Blackbow user) should actually prefer the 4th-level version version, as its duration will be higher due to Power Level scaling. Plus, its stats other than health will be the same as the Substantial version, but it will spend its time fighting with the copied weapon you want it to, rather than casting low-level spells with AI targeting.  Also, it's possible to heal/buff an Essential Phantom to make up for fragility, but summons duration cannot be extended.

Edited September 4, 2019 by Enoch

[Boeroer]

I would always prefer the Essential Phantom (as long as I have a choice) because the Substantial one will often NOT use the weapons you provided but instead cast several of its silly spells.

They are on autopilot so you can't really control what it's doing with its spells. 

This also means they don't count as allies by the way. So no Pain Block or so. That only works on summons you can control.