Illusioner

An illusioner is an unused illager that casts spells and is armed with a bow. The spell is used on itself for defense or on a player while it is attacking.

Spawning
Illusioners have no spawn egg in the creative inventory. They can be spawned only using datapacks or the command. Illusioner spawn egg mods also exist outside Minecraft, making illusioners easier to spawn if opened.

Unlike other illagers, illusioners do not spawn in woodland mansions, raids or pillager outposts. Similar to the unused giant mob, they do not naturally spawn in any biome.

Drops
When killed by a player, any naturally spawned equipment, including their unenchanted bow, has an 8.5% (9.5% with Looting I, 10.5% with Looting II and 11.5% with Looting III) chance of dropping and drops with a random durability.

Illusioners also drop 1 ominous banner, if it is a raid captain.

is dropped on player kills.

Behavior


Although they do not naturally spawn in raids, illusioners spawned by the player attack players, villagers, iron golems, and wandering traders within 16 blocks if a raid occurs. It attacks with its spells and its bow, firing an arrow every second, sooner than a skeleton.

It is the only illager that can see its target through walls.

The Illusioner moves quickly and always tries to maintain a consistent distance between itself and the player, retreating if the player gets too close, and advancing if the player retreats.

In Java Edition, any illusioner can join a patrol if sufficiently near a patrol captain.

The illusioner has two spells: a spell that blinds its opponent, and a spell that summons duplicates and makes the illusioner invisible.

Casting blindness
The illusioner casts its blindness spell only if the regional difficulty is greater than 2.

Upon first engaging a new opponent, an illusioner casts a effect that lasts for 20 seconds. It signals this attack by raising its arms, making a low pitched sound, and producing a black mist.

The illusioner does not cast this spell more than once on the same opponent, unless it has first shifted its attention to another opponent, and then back to that original opponent.

This spell resets the illusioner's spell cooldown to 1 second, and resets the cooldown for the blinding spell to 9 seconds.

Unless the illusioner is summoned using commands, it cannot attack with a non-bow item in its hand, cannot used tipped arrows in its offhand slot (but can use spectral arrows), and cannot use enchanted bows.

Summoning duplicates
As long as an illusioner is engaged in combat, it casts an effect on itself that lasts 60 seconds and refreshes the effect whenever the Invisibility's time runs out. It signals this spell by raising its arms, making a strange high pitched sound, and producing a blue mist.

When an illusioner becomes invisible – through this or another method – it creates 4 false duplicates of itself.

These hover and waver at short distances from the actually invisible illusioner, though they do not space themselves out until the first time the illusioner is attacked. They face in exactly the same direction as the illusioner, and move somewhat in step with the original, appearing to no-clip through blocks like a vex does. Despite using the shooting animation whenever the original uses its bow, only the real illusioner can shoot and be damaged.

Eventually, if the clones were not triggered and are still bunched together, they move to new positions. The Illusioner can also do this once in a while to "refresh" the clones' positions.

When the real illusioner is damaged, its duplicates all snap back to where the real illusioner is, then quickly snap back out to new positions, making a teleporting sound, signaling the hit.

If an invisible illusioner receives the effect, all of the duplicates glow, while the true illusioner remains invisible.

When catching fire, only the invisible illusioner burns.

The duplicates dissipate once the illusioner's Invisibility effect ends.

This spell resets the illusioner's spell cooldown to 1 second, and resets the cooldown for the invisibility spell to 17 seconds.

Entity data
Illusioners have entity data associated with them that contain various properties.

Trivia

 * The illusioner displace sound is the same as the enderman teleport sound, albeit with a slight distortion at the end.
 * Illusioners shoot backward when in a boat.
 * Illusioners hold bows in a different direction compared to skeletons (more diagonally).