I've got some pretty decent combos that work effectively, except for one part: phobia/amplifyphobia. I find that this causes them to fear and move from the room just as I go in for the mindburst. Does phobia cause them to fear, or amplifyphobia? I'm not sure how those two skills work, exactly.

Essentially, any suggestions for effective combos? The ones I have already are based on healing, but I'm not quite sure where to go from here.

In regards to Illusions - how useful is Phantasms, really? I've only got up to claws and I'm wondering if it is worthwhile transcending. I don't use Phantasms a lot because I usually rely on TP/meld, but have recently started using Wounds, Claws, and Evenblade. Essentially, where and why should I use these?

First: If you go Phobia - Amplify (has to be in this order), it afflicts with 1 random phobia and then Omniphobia. With Omniphobia, the presence of any fear affliction causes further fear afflictions to crop up over time, bogging them down with mental afflictions. You might not get much mileage out of it as an Aquamancer, since the Aeromancer meld and Hallifax skills in general have far better synergy.

Second (prefix all of these with whatever beast actions you want; spit, hypnoticgaze both are decent):
Stupidity/Paralysis/Vamp
Paralysis/Pacifism/Vamp
Deadening/Paralysis/Vamp*
Reckless/Addiction/Vamp
Addiction/DominateSip/Vamp
Addiction/DominateDebate/Vamp
Phobia/Amplify/Vamp

*Probably the best hindering combo. Systems will assume mental afflictions while Deadening and Paralysis both can't be cured by focus mind, only herbs/focus body. Focus mind will catch nothing, Deadening will increase the balance loss for a fair amount of time and if they don't cure it focus body will take even longer to get out of.

Third: Claws is as far as you -really- need. Use Evenblade when you're helping lead up to, say, an absolve or toadcurse kill. Maintain Phantoms and Claws religiously; you don't really spend power on much else. I can't really say what effect Wounds will have for you.

As for what illusions to use? The most faceroll method is to just illusion burst vessels, causing everyone to automatically chug health/sparkleberry like nobody's business. Add on addiction afflictions and, well ... if people don't catch on they probably won't last. This is a total pain in the arse to deal with in a group, though, as all of your allies are subject to your illusions too.

Slit throat illusions work decently against older systems. Rune doublesling illusions are solid too, but there are very few afflictions available in Runes that won't be cured with focus mind or a telepath-curing herb anyways. If you didn't get that; the idea is to make the enemy think they have a high-priority affliction that, when they go to cure it, their attempted cure won't touch any of the TP afflictions you just dealt. So mental afflictions in general won't help (focus mind) while some afflictions won't help at all (salve/purgative balance cures) while others you won't get much use out of even if you want to (most anything that is herb cured by wormwood, kombu, galingale or pennyroyal; they'll just eat these for your illusion and cure your afflictions by accident).

For dominate debate it's hard to guess what mindset they have, don't you have to force them to change their mindset? And I thought that was to easy to just change again. Is the force debate good enough that you don't need to have the right mindset?

Mindset doesn't matter; set your own and make them debate in the style that's weakest to the one you have up. Extra points if you manage to hit them with debate afflictions beforehand.

Naturally, this only works as an initiation tactic since they'll need bal/eq to debate in the first place.

Thanks! I hate to hog all the questions here but what would be the best way to stick addiction?

It's not going to 'stick', none of your afflictions will. You can try to cover it up for a few seconds at most. It's a one-shot thing; if they sip under it they essentially lose their next sip in the process, making Psychicvampirism's flat 33% ego drain all the more brutal.

Illusory wounds does well against people who have systems that aren't prepared for it. Most system prioritize mana and ego as mine does, so if my ego isn't below 50% (which is when it takes priority over health) then I would sip health and ruin my balance. Combine that with addiction and it sucks. However dealing with illusory wounds is so easy that it's not going to be reliable against everybody. For those curious: illusory wounds sets your health to 66% of your max, my autosipper now ignores health if my health is exactly 66.6% and that solves the problem.