Guild Wars 2

The community gave a lot of feedback regarding the Mirage.

However, I fear that Anet is not going to fix the Mirage. They had ~2 years time to make up the concept of this elite spec and they did not realise how badly it synergizes with core mesmer, shatters, phantasms, etc. ( I don’t want to get into much detail because they is enough in other threads.)

And they also didn’t realise how clunky that the entire spec is (mirrors, ambush attacks,).

That’s why I doubt they gonna listen to our feedback. It’s also only ~30 days left until the release of PoF so they wouldn’t even have enough time to fix the Mirage…

What do you guys think?

It’s hard for me say for how long they’ve been developing mirage as I don’t have any gaming developing experience or understanding of the working process of Anet team.
I believe Anet is listening to the feedback and will do what they can realistically, but I wouldn’t expect anything major, just tweaked numbers, trait reworked.
Honestly, I will be happy if they take their time, but eventually make mirage feel smooth and exciting to play, even if it happens mid/late expansion.

Nomalu.7152:

It’s hard for me say for how long they’ve been developing mirage as I don’t have any gaming developing experience or understanding of the working process of Anet team.
I believe Anet is listening to the feedback and will do what they can realistically, but I wouldn’t expect anything major, just tweaked numbers, trait reworked.
Honestly, I will be happy if they take their time, but eventually make mirage feel smooth and exciting to play, even if it happens mid/late expansion.

They said that the Mirage was the first elite spec of Gen 2 they designed. I seriously don’t know why they didn’t make a beta weekend ~2-3 months before release so they would have time to fix the specs.

No, I don’t honestly think Mirage will be fixed. I think the new specs will be dumped into PvP mid season with little to no tuning. that ought to be fun.

Ithilwen.1529:

No, I don’t honestly think Mirage will be fixed. I think the new specs will be dumped into PvP mid season with little to no tuning. that ought to be fun.

I wish Anet would just give a statement on whether they will fix this spec and listen to our feedback or just tweak some numbers and ignore the fundamentally flaws of the mirage.

I think it will be impossible for Anet to fix Mirage in time for the expansion release and it will likely always be a bit of a mess in terms of the contradictory design and the overall clunky nature of the spec. However, Anet will pump up numbers, speed up animations and lower CDs and we’ll be able to make something viable out of it for all game modes – it just won’t ever be that…exciting compared to some of the other specs being released.

Personally, I have zero faith in them in fixing Mirage before launch. They’re just like every other company out there (gaming and non gaming). They won’t listen to majority of the feedback and the ones that they DO consider – needs to be run by x department and then x department and then approved by said person and who knows how long that’ll take.

When Mirage hits live and if: Jaunt, Mirage Mirrors, Axe, Ambushes, Traits and any other things we as a Mesmer community came together to discuss about – isn’t fixed, then I won’t be bothering in picking up the Elite and sticking with core Mesmer until they try again in the next expansion.

That depends entirely on your subjective view of the state that Mirage is in, and keeping expectations realistic.

The “Mirage is junk and needs to be completely re-designed” crowd will almost certainly be disappointed and to them Mirage will likely never be a play-style they enjoy.

If you are more in the camp of “I like the basics of Mirage, but it needs many adjustments and tuning to values of skills, traits, and utilities” then I am almost certain you will see a LOT of that before it is released.

I happen to be in the latter camp. I think Mirage was pretty cool already, but yeah lacking some synergies, a bit clunky in feel here and there, but nothing that can’t be fixed with tuning.

Windwalker.7421:

The “Mirage is junk and needs to be completely re-designed” crowd will almost certainly be disappointed and to them Mirage will likely never be a play-style they enjoy.

My problem is – Scourge feels more Mesmer-y them Mirage :/
On the other side – it is not a real problem as I can simply play my Necro… <shrug>

Mirage doesn’t need much fixing. Just a few tweaks to skills and redesigning a trait or two and it’s good to go. I’m not worried. Some people are acting like it was a horrible experience. It wasn’t that bad. I was doing great with it when I played and I had a lot of fun.

But I will say that beta should have been back in June, not a month before release.

Ryouzanpaku.1273:

Windwalker.7421:

The “Mirage is junk and needs to be completely re-designed” crowd will almost certainly be disappointed and to them Mirage will likely never be a play-style they enjoy.

My problem is – Scourge feels more Mesmer-y them Mirage :/
On the other side – it is not a real problem as I can simply play my Necro… <shrug>

Right?!!! They could’ve EASILY introduced hexes and literally give mesmers a reverse “barrier” in a way.

But maybe when we go to cantha.

Ryouzanpaku.1273:

Windwalker.7421:

The “Mirage is junk and needs to be completely re-designed” crowd will almost certainly be disappointed and to them Mirage will likely never be a play-style they enjoy.

My problem is – Scourge feels more Mesmer-y them Mirage :/
On the other side – it is not a real problem as I can simply play my Necro… <shrug>

Several of the new elites felt Mesmer inspired. The best part was watching them complain about their Mesmer-y mechanics.

Renegade- Why are our utilities destructible!!!?!!?

Scourge- Feels bad using so much resource and time setting up and moving these pillars…

Spellbreaker- Damage feels kinda weak and the utility this spec provides is super niche.

Simonoly.4352:

I think it will be impossible for Anet to fix Mirage in time for the expansion release and it will likely always be a bit of a mess in terms of the contradictory design and the overall clunky nature of the spec. However, Anet will pump up numbers, speed up animations and lower CDs and we’ll be able to make something viable out of it for all game modes – it just won’t ever be that…exciting compared to some of the other specs being released.

That’s also my biggest concern. They will just apply tons of band-aids on the Mirage and that’s it.

Tseison.4659:

When Mirage hits live and if: Jaunt, Mirage Mirrors, Axe, Ambushes, Traits and any other things we as a Mesmer community came together to discuss about – isn’t fixed, then I won’t be bothering in picking up the Elite and sticking with core Mesmer until they try again in the next expansion.

Yep, now we have to wait 2-3 years until we get a better spec sadly

I don’t want it to be some sort of self fulfilling prophecy, where we expect nothing will happen, so A-net does nothing on the justification we’re expecting nothing anyways.
It might be a bit slippery slope, but with literally no contact, and a general history of how our development has gone down, it’s not unexpected to just get one or two underwhelming changes as the expansion drops.

But there has always been dev bias against mesmer. Even back when all we had was Power Shatter for PvP lot of them thought we were broken af.

Daishi.6027:

I don’t want it to be some sort of self fulfilling prophecy, where we expect nothing will happen, so A-net does nothing on the justification we’re expecting nothing anyways.
It might be a bit slippery slope, but with literally no contact, and a general history of how our development has gone down, it’s not unexpected to just get one or two underwhelming changes as the expansion drops.

But there has always been dev bias against mesmer. Even back when all we had was Power Shatter for PvP lot of them thought we were broken af.

I completely agree with everthing you said!

Daishi.6027:

… and a general history of how our development has gone down, it’s not unexpected to just get one or two underwhelming changes as the expansion drops.

For plain old balance patches I would totally agree with you, but not for X-pacs!

I remember Chrono was one of the cooler new elites in HoT, and was mostly well received from the start, but I remember especially DH triggering a huge kitten-storm of negativity.

Then in one patch Anet simply hugely over-tuned some of the numbers of the DH skills, traits, and utilities without changing anything about the base mechanics at all. Suddenly most people were happy, and it went on to become one of the most popular professions to this day. (And it received a continual stream of nerfs ever since…and sadly well deserved ones.)

Anet also caught a LOT of flak about HoT being too much of a power-creep, so I don’t blame them at all if they are more careful this time around. I’d rather end up with a balanced or even slightly underperforming Mirage that ends up getting buffed up, then getting a clearly OPd Mirage that ends up being nerfed over and over again.

We as players are often quite schizophrenic. We want an expansion to be cool, we gripe when our class doesn’t get clearly OPd stuff handed to it, and then when we do, we gripe about power creep! (Because naturally all the other classes had to get OPd stuff as well to be cool and enjoyable to play.)

Windwalker.7421:

That depends entirely on your subjective view of the state that Mirage is in, and keeping expectations realistic.

The “Mirage is junk and needs to be completely re-designed” crowd will almost certainly be disappointed and to them Mirage will likely never be a play-style they enjoy.

If you are more in the camp of “I like the basics of Mirage, but it needs many adjustments and tuning to values of skills, traits, and utilities” then I am almost certain you will see a LOT of that before it is released.

I happen to be in the latter camp. I think Mirage was pretty cool already, but yeah lacking some synergies, a bit clunky in feel here and there, but nothing that can’t be fixed with tuning.

I’m in the latter camp. The mirage has a cool theme, but it lacks cohesion and the implementation is very poor in my opinion. Mirrors need a lot of work before they will be a useful AND fun mechanic, I’m worried that they will be left mostly alone and will be relegated to either useful or fun though. Ambush attacks need rebalancing, and a lot of traits need to be looked at. And that isn’t even mentioning the deception skills.

I disagree that the implementation was poor. I think even Mirrors will be fine if the mirrors last a little longer, and Jaunt gets an extra 100-200 distance. I believe Jaunt is a big enabler of Mirrors effectiveness, although I agree they could use a little more. (1x Condie cleanse or maybe 2s of Resistance, bigger radius on Weakness, and I really would like to see a trait that heals us for ~1k when we shatter a Mirror.)

I do think the Mirror shattering mechanic could be revised to use F5 to shatter them, or something else that doesn’t require running through them. (F5 teleports us to the mirror! ) Would be nice, but if they lasted at least 8 seconds or so, they would be much more tactical in use.

Same for Ambush, my main gripe is that the window for using them is so short as to make it plain obvious when the Ambush is coming. Kinda defeats the purpose of the word “ambush”. ;-)

All of those are pretty easy fixes/tweaks, as are tuning Jaunt, False Oasis, some of the Ambush attacks (GS, Staff, maybe Sword a tad), and Deceptions.

Simply tweaking the numbers a bit should take a single dev less than 10 minutes to do, and through the beta weekend they should have a pretty good idea what numbers need tweaking and about to which level.

Let’s be honest, the fine-grained tuning will come after the release anyway… ;-)

I think that an increased duration is the absolute base changes needed to just make mirrors not miserable. Ideally they would receive far more changes including, but not necessarily limited to:

• Longer duration
• Better effects when shattered
• 3 major traits tied to mirrors. Turning them into a real mechanic we can trait to improve
• An F5 tied to shattering all mirrors on the field
• A constant AoE effect around them (even if its literally just pulsing weakness and their pathetic damage) until they are shattered

Judging by Mesmer’s history in GW2, I think we may be in for a long ride. I hope they’ve been listening to the ample feedback and are able to filter their own ideas, because Mirage immediately struck me as a class that was put together based around their attachment to superficial things (the name, how cool Mirrors look, etc.) rather than solid, cohesive mechanics.

In GW1, Mesmer was just about the worst PVE class for most of its life. It wasn’t until the last few years of GW1 where Mesmers went from being the worst to the best in PVE due to damage that ignored armor, on top of the myriad of disruptions they already had…So changes are possible!

They were always one of the most irritating classes to go up against in PvP though.

Windwalker.7421:

Daishi.6027:

… and a general history of how our development has gone down, it’s not unexpected to just get one or two underwhelming changes as the expansion drops.

For plain old balance patches I would totally agree with you, but not for X-pacs!

I remember Chrono was one of the cooler new elites in HoT, and was mostly well received from the start, but I remember especially DH triggering a huge kitten-storm of negativity.

Then in one patch Anet simply hugely over-tuned some of the numbers of the DH skills, traits, and utilities without changing anything about the base mechanics at all. Suddenly most people were happy, and it went on to become one of the most popular professions to this day. (And it received a continual stream of nerfs ever since…and sadly well deserved ones.)

Anet also caught a LOT of flak about HoT being too much of a power-creep, so I don’t blame them at all if they are more careful this time around. I’d rather end up with a balanced or even slightly underperforming Mirage that ends up getting buffed up, then getting a clearly OPd Mirage that ends up being nerfed over and over again.

We as players are often quite schizophrenic. We want an expansion to be cool, we gripe when our class doesn’t get clearly OPd stuff handed to it, and then when we do, we gripe about power creep! (Because naturally all the other classes had to get OPd stuff as well to be cool and enjoyable to play.)

The difference is that DH wasn’t fundementally broken from a design point to begin with and was sitting on a solid base in core Guardian.

Mirage cloak is worse then a normal dodge in any way that matters. The mirror mechanic doesn’t work. It isn’t a good fit for the game in any mode. Running around to hit the mirrors to get a cloak throws away the advantage they claim mirage cloak gives you with being able to carry on attacking while dodging. Core Mesmer has a massive problem with its Phantasms vs Shatters design and now Mirage makes it worse by making it Phantasms vs Shatters vs Clones. Throwing endurance away for damage isn’t the best idea on a class as squishy as Mesmer.

This is all before we get to how undertuned the weapon, traits and utilities are.

This is before we even get to what new ways to play Mesmer this spec is supposed to add.

I’m sure Anet will fix issues & balance somes tuff by the time the expansion comes. Balance changes can easily happen after the expansion launches.

However, i’m afraid they won’t fix Mirage’s biggest issue, Mirage Mirrors.
Making them an actual FUN and USEFUL mechanic that supplements what Mirage is supposed to be (Deceptive) is going to take a major rework or even a complete replacement of the Mirrors.

Even if they make them more useful, without major changes to the Mirrors they’ll still contradict Mirage’s design, deception. (Having to run to a place to get an effect on a class where you’re supposed to be confusing & deceiving is something Anet really didn’t think of when designing Mirage.)

The Mirror part i’m really concerned about. It needs more than just a buff or a small fix.
Something I think Anet won’t do anymore at this point.

It’s sad since I really like what Mirage is to be or do but the Mirage Mirrors ruin it all.

I don’t mind if we don’t get a huge rework – I’m actually ok with a lot of things as they are, for example I like not having an F5 as that’s one less key to bind! Gives me some space on the keyboard to move things around as I’ll most likely be redoing my control setup for comfort with Mirage due to different button pattern than Chrono.

There’s a few things I hope they fix but I expect Mirage will be good enough to compete with other specs by the time pof launches, if not shortly afterwards so not too worried.

I no longer care. Just going to play a scourge instead.

To be honest? I’m already enjoying my reaper more than I was Chrono.

I love everything about Mesmer, I just can’t stand playing mesmer anymore. It’s too freaking underwhelming.

They didn’t wait til a month before launch to demo the expac with the intention of tweaking much of anything.
What you saw was what we’re getting.

The final HoT beta started 3 weeks before release, and they had time to make these changes for druid: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Post-BWE3-Druid-Changes

They may have 9 specs this time, but they have 5 weeks instead of 3. That suggests they should have time for a few changes, but more elaborate ones would likely have to wait.

I think at the very least, it’d need:

• ~100% more duration on the Mirrors.
• 20% (Scepter) to 200% (Greatsword) more damage on the ambushes.
• Infinite Horizon baseline.

Optionally, but quite necessary, something like this needs to happen:

• F1 and F2 removed for Mirage.
• Those two buttons now summon clones of the current weapon, one a single one on a short CD, the other three on a longer CD.
• F3 and F4 no longer shatter illusions, but in turn also only have the single self-shatter effect.

I am curious – people seem to see this spec as very clone dependent… Can’t you just drop infinite horizon and focus on boosting your own ambush? That’s what I did for most of the beta and it seemed like a perfectly consistent way to reduce the importance of illusions.

Toeofdoom.6152:

I am curious – people seem to see this spec as very clone dependent… Can’t you just drop infinite horizon and focus on boosting your own ambush?

Not realistically. Even with Scepter, your own Ambush by itself is so weak that I wish it wouldn’t override the autoattack.

Because while it is minimally stronger, it’s so little so that it just doesn’t matter. There’s 0 gameplay difference. You happen to do a tiny bit stronger an autoattack automatically when you dodge.

Yeah, I’m trying to separate discussion of power level versus mechanics – I agree most of the ambush skills are not super convincing and the gs one is really bad and I expect large balance passes on all specs in a few months

But if we’re already asking for buffs here, why not ask for the individual ambushes to be actually useful and keep the option of ditching clones entirely? If infinite horizon ends up too powerful they can tone it down like chronophantasma independently.

Ambush skills are not hard to fix. All they need to do is increase ambush window and reduce ambush cast time.

The clunky mirror mechanic will require more thoughts. This is probably the most gimmicky and clunky feature of all elite specs.

The other bigger issue regarding clones survivability is much bigger that involves base mesmer as well. It will take much longer to fix.

Exciton.8942:

The clunky mirror mechanic will require more thoughts. This is probably the most gimmicky and clunky feature of all elite specs.

And they could be really strong, assuming we kept generating them somehow. Say the shatter to mirror was passive, and all Deception skills generated them.

I’m conflicted with the Mirage. Due to all the strange mechanics and weapons introduced here, I’m not actually sure the different ways to play the spec and what kind of damage it’ll do. Something I do notice is that Mirage offers no team support of any kind, so the spec doesn’t have good DPS it won’t have anything at all.

I doubt they will do any major changes. Numbers reworked and traits changing are about the only thing I would expect. They may do more balancing once it releases.

I’m always amazed by how long the development is and the state the classes release in. Honestly feels like they don’t play the game with how ridiculous the numbers are (gs ambush comes to mind).

@Carighan – Mirrors need at least 12 second duration, which would be 300% what it is now. 8 seconds is still too low, but 12 seconds allows you time to plan out your next play before jumping in to get the mirror. They also need other fixes, but that’s in a different thread.

@Toeofdoom – I agree that it would be better to significantly buff the personal ambush attack. But it needs far more than the plain damage buff that carighan wants. They need to have their cast times reduced significantly, none of them should be more than 1/2 second cast. We need a slightly longer window to use them. Clones should be dealing the same as us assuming our personal ambush attacks aren’t buffed significantly. Remove the root on scepter. Then they would be in an ok spot, nothing spectacular, but not as kitten as they are right now.

OriOri.8724:

I think that an increased duration is the absolute base changes needed to just make mirrors not miserable. Ideally they would receive far more changes including, but not necessarily limited to:

• Longer duration
• Better effects when shattered
• 3 major traits tied to mirrors. Turning them into a real mechanic we can trait to improve
• An F5 tied to shattering all mirrors on the field
• A constant AoE effect around them (even if its literally just pulsing weakness and their pathetic damage) until they are shattered

I always thought that shattering the mirrors would devalue them abit. The way i went about it instead was to up their generation. Like the theme about mirage is to confuse the enemy. What better that maving mirage create a zone of power where theres alot of mirrors and the mirage can jump aroun with its great mobility.

Also remove the cd of ambush attacks and make them available from stealth as well.

If its only a single shatter that shatters the mirrors then it doesn’t devalue them at all, since you could choose to shatter them or not. Plus, wouldn’t it be great if we could shatter them with an F5, and that would launch an ambush attack from the mirror at all targets close to it? It would really give us more battlefield control, since we could launch attacks on people we aren’t necessarily close to. It would also Mirage a lot more AoE, by being able to use ambushes from multiple mirrors at once potentially.

Literally my only complaints with Mirage are that mirrors don’t persist long enough in the world, and that infinite horizon feels mandatory.

Idk why so many of you seem to be under the impression Mirage is just completely worthless and unusable, it seemed very solid to me, just different due to the dodge mechanic.

Durzlla.6295:

Literally my only complaints with Mirage are that mirrors don’t persist long enough in the world, and that infinite horizon feels mandatory.

Idk why so many of you seem to be under the impression Mirage is just completely worthless and unusable, it seemed very solid to me, just different due to the dodge mechanic.

We have been quite clear why over multiple threads.

The easiest (And most boring) way to give Mirage a place would be to make sure it can consistently put out 34k damage per second while being able to bring the kind of utility core mesmer can bring. That would ensure that it’s a solid DPS option in groups where there is already a Chronomancer, making it the equivalent to current condi ranger.

And while Mirage should be a good condition damage spec, there are so many mechanically problems with the Mirage that I can’t see them getting fixed in the less than month we have to release.

Tempest was poorly received when players first got their hands on it, but there was a lot of time for Arenanet to tweak various aspects of it. We don’t have the time for that with Mirage, especially considering just how badly thought out a lot of Mirage is.

Mirrors are just not a good mechanic at all. Deception skills are all underwhelming. Ambush skills are mostly terrible and even Scepter, the one good one, isn’t as strong as it needs to be and has serious problems. Mirage is a dodge spam specialization like Daredevil without the third dodge bar or insane endurance regeneration that Daredevil has access to. It barely has access to vigor.

Infinite Horizon is a red herring and is confusing players as to the Mirage’s roll (Mirage is very much about shatters). Clone ambushes do very low damage and don’t even compare to Dune Cloak’s 20% increased condition duration on bleeding targets, aka all targets. A lot of people want Infinite Horizon baseline, but actually it needs to be removed and have the player’s ambush attack actually be worth a kitten . And replaced with a good trait.

Mirage can’t even evade away from opponents properly without wasting invincibility frames.

There is a lot of problems with the Mirage, some of which are problems with core mesmer that were bandaided over with Chronomancer like how difficult shatters can be to land in PvP without Time Catches Up. It’s a lot of work to be done and to be honest they might already consider Mirage to be in a good place and not thinking about a serious rework.

Durzlla.6295:

Literally my only complaints with Mirage are that mirrors don’t persist long enough in the world, and that infinite horizon feels mandatory.

Idk why so many of you seem to be under the impression Mirage is just completely worthless and unusable, it seemed very solid to me, just different due to the dodge mechanic.

The problems with mirage:

• All ambush skills except for sword are utterly abysmal.
• The mirror mechanic is fundamentally flawed. Who wants to go chasing their dodges around the map? Nobody, that’s who.
• The axe skills are weak, buggy, and clunky
• The deception utilities are largely weak and clunky
• At least 1 trait at every level is utter garbage

Fay.2357:

Durzlla.6295:

Literally my only complaints with Mirage are that mirrors don’t persist long enough in the world, and that infinite horizon feels mandatory.

Idk why so many of you seem to be under the impression Mirage is just completely worthless and unusable, it seemed very solid to me, just different due to the dodge mechanic.

The problems with mirage:

• All ambush skills except for sword are utterly abysmal.
• The mirror mechanic is fundamentally flawed. Who wants to go chasing their dodges around the map? Nobody, that’s who.
• The axe skills are weak, buggy, and clunky
• The deception utilities are largely weak and clunky
• At least 1 trait at every level is utter garbage

Funnily enough, these complaints are extremely similar to base mesmer complaints.

Most of our utilities are weak or clunky. Everything outside of sword & GS is weak/buggy/clunky.
The illusion & shatter mechanic is fundamentally flawed, who wants to try and maintain any number of illusions when they can be killed in less than a second preventing the damage from shatter mechanics to land in full.

Oh, and at least one trait out of pretty much every level of every spec is useless.

I feel like you could probably expand these complaints past mesmer at this point. A lot of classes have clunky/useless B.S.

We’d have a lot more variety if they fixed the base classes.

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Fay.2357:

Durzlla.6295:

Literally my only complaints with Mirage are that mirrors don’t persist long enough in the world, and that infinite horizon feels mandatory.

Idk why so many of you seem to be under the impression Mirage is just completely worthless and unusable, it seemed very solid to me, just different due to the dodge mechanic.

The problems with mirage:

• All ambush skills except for sword are utterly abysmal.
• The mirror mechanic is fundamentally flawed. Who wants to go chasing their dodges around the map? Nobody, that’s who.
• The axe skills are weak, buggy, and clunky
• The deception utilities are largely weak and clunky
• At least 1 trait at every level is utter garbage

Funnily enough, these complaints are extremely similar to base mesmer complaints.

Most of our utilities are weak or clunky. Everything outside of sword & GS is weak/buggy/clunky.
The illusion & shatter mechanic is fundamentally flawed, who wants to try and maintain any number of illusions when they can be killed in less than a second preventing the damage from shatter mechanics to land in full.

Oh, and at least one trait out of pretty much every level of every spec is useless.

I feel like you could probably expand these complaints past mesmer at this point. A lot of classes have clunky/useless B.S.

We’d have a lot more variety if they fixed the base classes.

They can only be done if you analyse them individually. the problem with Mirage is that even when you try to see them with the rest of mesmer around, they don’t make sense.

Apart from sword and GS, we have other good weapons like staff, torch and shield.

Shatters might be flawed individually, but when you put them around a class that easily generates illusions and greatly benefits from shattering them, where is the problem? The problem exists with Mirage, a specializations that benefits from keeping alive extremely weak IA, but chrono that loves shatter spamming or core mes with their spikes?

And sorry, but the worst chrono trait available is still better than an average Mirage trait…

Ansau.7326:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Fay.2357:

Durzlla.6295:

Literally my only complaints with Mirage are that mirrors don’t persist long enough in the world, and that infinite horizon feels mandatory.

Idk why so many of you seem to be under the impression Mirage is just completely worthless and unusable, it seemed very solid to me, just different due to the dodge mechanic.

The problems with mirage:

• All ambush skills except for sword are utterly abysmal.
• The mirror mechanic is fundamentally flawed. Who wants to go chasing their dodges around the map? Nobody, that’s who.
• The axe skills are weak, buggy, and clunky
• The deception utilities are largely weak and clunky
• At least 1 trait at every level is utter garbage

Funnily enough, these complaints are extremely similar to base mesmer complaints.

Most of our utilities are weak or clunky. Everything outside of sword & GS is weak/buggy/clunky.
The illusion & shatter mechanic is fundamentally flawed, who wants to try and maintain any number of illusions when they can be killed in less than a second preventing the damage from shatter mechanics to land in full.

Oh, and at least one trait out of pretty much every level of every spec is useless.

I feel like you could probably expand these complaints past mesmer at this point. A lot of classes have clunky/useless B.S.

We’d have a lot more variety if they fixed the base classes.

They can only be done if you analyse them individually. the problem with Mirage is that even when you try to see them with the rest of mesmer around, they don’t make sense.

Apart from sword and GS, we have other good weapons like staff, torch and shield.

Shatters might be flawed individually, but when you put them around a class that easily generates illusions and greatly benefits from shattering them, where is the problem? The problem exists with Mirage, a specializations that benefits from keeping alive extremely weak IA, but chrono that loves shatter spamming or core mes with their spikes?

And sorry, but the worst chrono trait available is still better than an average Mirage trait…

Torch I’ll give you, even though I find it lacking in illusion generation similar to focus, while also lacking in some of the utility of focus.

Staff’s auto is garbage. Similar to scepter, the auto attack on staff is just too freaking slow as a projectile. Though, unlike scepter, staff makes up for that bad AA with really good utility.

Utility that doesn’t really scale with anything.

And shield is chrono, I was talking about base mesmer itself in that instance.

Also, if you think for a second I was defending mirage, I wasn’t.

Mirage is crap.

I was just pointing out the funny similarities I see with mirage complaints and base Mesmer complaints.

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Fay.2357:

Durzlla.6295:

Literally my only complaints with Mirage are that mirrors don’t persist long enough in the world, and that infinite horizon feels mandatory.

Idk why so many of you seem to be under the impression Mirage is just completely worthless and unusable, it seemed very solid to me, just different due to the dodge mechanic.

The problems with mirage:

• All ambush skills except for sword are utterly abysmal.
• The mirror mechanic is fundamentally flawed. Who wants to go chasing their dodges around the map? Nobody, that’s who.
• The axe skills are weak, buggy, and clunky
• The deception utilities are largely weak and clunky
• At least 1 trait at every level is utter garbage

Funnily enough, these complaints are extremely similar to base mesmer complaints.

Most of our utilities are weak or clunky. Everything outside of sword & GS is weak/buggy/clunky.
The illusion & shatter mechanic is fundamentally flawed, who wants to try and maintain any number of illusions when they can be killed in less than a second preventing the damage from shatter mechanics to land in full.

Oh, and at least one trait out of pretty much every level of every spec is useless.

I feel like you could probably expand these complaints past mesmer at this point. A lot of classes have clunky/useless B.S.

We’d have a lot more variety if they fixed the base classes.

Well, actually most of those mentioned are mirage only problems. However, at the same time, you are right about other problems being related to base mesmer.

The thing is though that Chrono fixed many of the problems with base mesmer. After that occurred, many, including myself, assumed the devs would be aware of these problems and create fixes for them in every new mesmer elite spec.

The devs were obviously aware of illusion generation still, so they created a trait for it. However, as others have mentioned, Self-Deception is too weak, probably due to the history of chrono. However, the problem with chrono was more that it had two traits, not just one, for illusion upkeep that could play of one another. Also, the illusion upkeep problem before chrono really wasn’t as relevant in pvp as pve. In PvE shattering will still be detrimental with the Mirage. The new elite did nothing about shattering and phantasm upkeep. Sure, they added a fix to another base mesmer problem of illusions not switching targets after a foe dies. However, it is mostly tied to one specific weapon and you can’t/shouldn’t just fix one problem and forget about another. When they created this new elite spec, it was also like they totally forgot or didn’t know about the fact that swatted clones can die like flies.

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Fay.2357:

Durzlla.6295:

Literally my only complaints with Mirage are that mirrors don’t persist long enough in the world, and that infinite horizon feels mandatory.

Idk why so many of you seem to be under the impression Mirage is just completely worthless and unusable, it seemed very solid to me, just different due to the dodge mechanic.

The problems with mirage:

• All ambush skills except for sword are utterly abysmal.
• The mirror mechanic is fundamentally flawed. Who wants to go chasing their dodges around the map? Nobody, that’s who.
• The axe skills are weak, buggy, and clunky
• The deception utilities are largely weak and clunky
• At least 1 trait at every level is utter garbage

Funnily enough, these complaints are extremely similar to base mesmer complaints.

Most of our utilities are weak or clunky. Everything outside of sword & GS is weak/buggy/clunky.
The illusion & shatter mechanic is fundamentally flawed, who wants to try and maintain any number of illusions when they can be killed in less than a second preventing the damage from shatter mechanics to land in full.

Oh, and at least one trait out of pretty much every level of every spec is useless.

I feel like you could probably expand these complaints past mesmer at this point. A lot of classes have clunky/useless B.S.

We’d have a lot more variety if they fixed the base classes.

I don’t agree with this at all.

Mesmer has problems, but they’re generally different than Mirage’s problems and the strength of their utilities skills is definitely not one of them. Honestly, Chronomancer is in an excellent place in PvE and PvP. If there’s something we’re really lacking it’s a dedicated sustained high damage spec that could put out 34k+ DPS. It would be great if we had something like condition rangers. Druids are mandatory, but if you already have a druid a DPS condition ranger is a great addition to a group. It should be the same with Chronomancer and Mirage.

Shattering is not a fundamentally poor mechanic. The problem with shattering as a mechanic is that getting out your damaging phantasms in a long scale encounter is such a long ramping process that shattering them only hurts your overall dps. It works as excellent burst. Phantasm generation is the problem. Chronomancer managed to bandaid that problem with Chronophantamsa and Illusory Revision. It’s why I posted suggested in a different thread that Infinite Horizon should be removed (Clones ambushing is actually terrible, Mirage is otherwise clearly meant to shatter, it’s confusing to players, and adds far less damage than the 20% condition duration on bleeding targets trait) with a trait that doubles how many clones and phantasms your abilities summon, giving Mirage similar, unique style of clone generation to Chronomancer and allowing shatters to shine on Mirage. It’s another bandaid but a bandaid is better than bleeding out.

Mesmers should have a DPS specialization that allows them to bring great damage to the raid in addition to their existing utility while also allowing for a more dynamic playstyle than “Set up three phantasms. Occassiona 2 if you’re power or 3 if you’re condi.” That was one of the things I was hoping Mirage would bring to the table.

Staff is great. It does it’s job perfectly in PvP. Scepter could use more damage but it’s by no means clunky or buggy and can do some powerful burst. All of our offhand weapons are great and have a use and place somewhere.

Mirage tries to bring new things to the core mesmer playstyle and all of it is poorly executed. It doesn’t bring that much damage to the table compared to core mesmer. It shares core mesmer’s poor phantasm generation. And in terms of unique things it brings Mirage Cloak is straight up worse than dodge rolling. It’s an elite specialization that demands that we’re constantly spending endurance, while neither giving us the third dodge bar or the endurance regeneration to do that like Daredevil, and all of the ambush skill are severely undertunned given that they cost you either a utility slot or a dodge roll. They are also difficult to hit with because of things like poor tracking.

I actually love the idea of a trait that doubles how many clones and phantasms you summon. However, both might be a little too powerful. Perhaps with the short time span left till the expansion they could pull something together with phantasms though, maybe deriving a trait from the mechanics of signet of ether.

Xstein.2187:

I actually love the idea of a trait that doubles how many clones and phantasms you summon. However, both might be a little too powerful. Perhaps with the short time span left till the expansion they could pull something together with phantasms though, maybe deriving a trait from the mechanics of signet of ether.

I mean is it really that much more powerful than Chronomancer’s Chronophantasma? Mirage definitely needs something to ramp up clone generation. It’s just different flavor of getting twice the phantasms.

Okay the burst potential of having both phantasms attack at the same time could be problematic but you could spawn the 2nd phantasm with daze to stagger out their attacks to be lest bursty. And put an internal cooldown on it. But it really won’t be that problematic with a 10 second icd.

Of course it won’t. Mesmer has been a clunky contradiction in mechanics since the very start, a profession that is supposed to sustain illusions, yet also shatter them. This has not been addressed for five years, and Mirage isn’t addressing it either. What makes anyone think that its MANY other problems will be?