[Feedback] Utilities, Cloak, and Mirrors

[Feedback] Utilities, Cloak, and Mirrors

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Posted by: Fay.2357

Fay.2357

Please post feedback regarding the Mirage utilities, the Mirage Cloak mechanic, and the mirror mechanic in this thread. I’ll try and edit the OP regularly to keep a compilation of thoughts updated.

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Posted by: Sodeni.6041

Sodeni.6041

First of all, mirage mirrors are a terrible design. In PvP and WvW its way to risky to walk over to them just to gain a mirage cloak. Also, certain utilities such as crystal sands encourage the mirage to place mirage mirros ON TOP of enemies so you have to walk onto your enemy which is also a death trap and a completely bad design of a utility.

Utilities don’t do much anyway except giving mirage cloak. The heal skill does way to little heal compared to its cooldown and the other effects. And the elite skill should have its range increased to 600 range.

People will still take blink and null field when playing pvp or wvw because the new utilites don’t offer much … utility.

Mirage cloak is only good for stomping enemies to be honest. You lose mobility by not being able to dodge roll (super speed trait doesn’t negate that!) and ambush attacks are clunky and do not enough damage.

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Posted by: Sodeni.6041

Sodeni.6041

By the way, you should make a threat about the mirage’s design in general. I would like to mention the bad implementation and the design flaws of this spec

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Posted by: Fay.2357

Fay.2357

By the way, you should make a threat about the mirage’s design in general. I would like to mention the bad implementation and the design flaws of this spec

Try and put that sort of thing into the PvP, PvE, or WvW feedback threads. General feedback like that is always more useful when it’s discussed in the context of actual gameplay.

For example: I hate mirage because it relies on clones.

That’s less useful than: I hate mirage reliance on clones because in WvW group fights illusions are rarely something that can be relied upon, and this negatively impacts the class effectiveness.

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Posted by: takatsu.9416

takatsu.9416

A lot of points have been addressed already above and in all threads.

Another question though what exactly is the elite skill for, aside than the ridiculously short range issue? how exactly does that even synergize with the whole mirage core system? Chrono’s elite skill was a well, a darn nice one.

But tbh, the Mirage could have been centered around mirrors as a whole new concept and way to play, and it might have been interesting and a totally different option.

Mirrors right now only give mirage cloak, which is a blur/evasion, casting opportunity and superspeed to make up for lack of dodge movement…. they’re hard to get to in the first place, it doesn’t give survivability and make it easier, but even if say we had these all accessible, its equal to simply just giving us more endurance for dodges or letting us trigger extra charged mirage cloaks whenever we want. It’s also basically loosely something like a traditional sword 3, sword 2 blur, shatter burst… without the immob. It conceptually doesn’t add anything. Even the whole idea of forcing a damage burst is redundant because that’s what we already do… Why are there even mirrors if it doesn’t actually do anything new.

Now I keep thinking about what if the mirrors meant a lot more, each one would not expire or at least not expire until much later and they’d give mirage cloak in addition to different effects, such as clone attacks out of “ambush” if the enemy bumps into one, aoe condi trap if enemy touches one, aoe boons, (my ideas are limited im sure there are more fleshed out genius ways these could be used) and you can literally place these all over the field as you’re playing, maybe they can be stealthed to be unseen by the enemy, therefore providing a different way of mesmer strategy in positioning and outsmarting the enemy over time. I’m not sure how practical for each game mode but at least it would offer something completely different. It’d almost be like a trap build for mesmer and would fit into the whole core concept of the mesmer, creating illusions/mirages and modifications of the world around in order to confuse or manipulate enemies. It’d still synergize with core mesmer abilities such as respositioning with blinks and decoy and so on.

This is of course not going to happen. But what I’m trying to say is they half heartedly half cooked things together into all these gimmicks that weren’t brought out to their full potential. Dependency on clones or clone deception with sync’d attack is entirely a different story. We could’ve gotten like a bodyguard system and have clones literally mirror all our movements even if it doesn’t deal the same damage for true clone deception. And then we’re also talking about burst dps with ambush and so on. Trying to do all this all at once, just doesn’t make sense and has created a mess.

Go full out with the mirrors, or they’re kind of pointless and impractical. At the very least create an elite spec with a strong sense of identity and strategy or else its worthless. We are also all needing a dps boost but i don’t feel that could really come from an elite spec, we’re already playing for burst damage, that’s more of our base numbers. This is a conceptual issue here

(edited by takatsu.9416)

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Posted by: Carighan.6758

Carighan.6758

General change
Picking up a Mirage Mirror spawns a clone.

False Oasis
Increase the radius of the oasis to 450 (so 900 total diameter). Then, when it ends and the Mesmer is still inside that radius, spawn the mirror at the mesmer instead of in the middle.

Crystal Sands
It’s a bit clunky. I mean it’s the best utility skill, but still weak. I think it’d be fine if it were just 50% more projectiles or something.

Illusionary Ambush
Now fills up to 3 illusions via clones before teleporting, but the extras have a limited lifetime of 5 seconds.. Also leaves a Mirage Mirror where you started.

Mirage Advance
Remove the cast time. Reduce the CD to 20s. Make it leave a Mirage Mirror where you started.

Sand Through Glass
Spawns 3 Mirage Mirrors during the roll backwards, not just one.

Jaunt
Leaves behind a Mirage Mirror each teleport.

In other words, this spec would barrage you with evades and clones. Constantly. No exceptions. It’d give it a theme, which it is sorely missing right now. That’s right, IMO the big problem especially in regards to the skills is that there is no theme.

Another question though what exactly is the elite skill for, aside than the ridiculously short range issue? how exactly does that even synergize with the whole mirage core system? Chrono’s elite skill was a well, a darn nice one.

This is what I mean. Can you tell me the common factor what makes our “Deception” skills a shared skill type? Because I sure as hell cannot :P

I’d at least give them all Mirage Mirror production. That’s something at least.

The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.

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Posted by: Curunen.8729

Curunen.8729

Merge Illusionary Ambush and Mirage Advance into a single skill.

Increase range on Jaunt to 600.

Add a contextual optional directional movement to dodge:
- hitting dodge button only just provides Mirage cloak and does not move you.
- pressing a directional key (forward /left/right/back) and dodge key together does a 200-300 range blink in the direction you move, and also gives Mirage cloak. This also applies to double tap for dodge.

This retains flexibility of the dodge – you still can blur without moving by hitting the dodge button only, but you also have the option of a directional dodge blink if moving while hitting dodge.

(edited by Curunen.8729)

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Posted by: Ryouzanpaku.1273

Ryouzanpaku.1273

Mirrors – should not stay on the spot, but should move in straight line to the mesmer – slowly at the start but accelerating and connecting with mesmer in 5-7 sec. (if they hit somebody on the way they do their effect).

Mirage cloak should either baseline or via passive get directional blink with same range as dodge would have.

Player plays the game. MetaKitten plays the DPS meter on the golem.

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Posted by: glenndevis.8327

glenndevis.8327

Utilities

False Oasis: Takes too long to heal up. Too long cooldown. Make it a 25 sec cooldown and 3 Pulses, 2 healing pulse and a last Vigor & Mirage Cloak. Useless as it is right now. I will talk about the Mirror part more later on.

Illusionary Ambush: Should detarget like Axe #3 to make the Mirage’s detarget mechanic not only bound to Axe. Shouldn’t teleport you up or down to another platform. Other than that nice utility.

Mirage Advance: Not sure where to start with this one. I understand Anet doesn’t want this to be 100% like the Thief Shadowstep. But there are multiple ways of making this skill useful without doing so.
Make the “return” frame like 30 seconds to 1 minute. This way Mirage could use this skill as a means to escape a losing fight. Also give the return part of this skill grant stealth.

Crystal Sands: Honestly haven’t tested much with this one. Seems solid for PvE but it should hit all enemies inside the aoe 6×. I’ll talk about the Mirage Mirror part later.

Sand through Glass: I like the concept of this skill. It’s a stunbreak/escape skill, however it’s not that useful. For some reason this feels so delayed in actual combat. Should evade for a distance of 600 & remove a condition. Also the Mirage Mirror part is annoying & useless. Just give the Mirage a Mirage Cloak instead of a normal dodge so we can trigger ambushes of that without having to run back in. Would be nice if this spawned a clone as well when using it.

Jaunt: Distance is too short. Make it a 600 distance & he count recharge should be 15 sec. Maybe even 900. I also feel a confused design standpoint here. Mirage needs to kite around to avoid dying & Jaunt seems to be a nice skill for that. However Jaunt has damage on it meaning to do more damage we should Jaunt towards people. This could just mean that in PvE we can Jaunt towards enemies and in PvP we can use it to escape. Either way the only real problem with this one is the very short range. In a sense it’s just a worse blink. Could be Nice if this spawned a clone as well.

Mirage Cloak: Honestly, well done Anet! I love this whole Mirage Cloak mechanic. But there are some problems with it.
It’s a waste to be forced to use dodges (a wonderful defensive tool) to be able to any decent damage. To make matters worse Mirage is pretty much forced to use Deceptive Evasion to get a good enough clone supply which means we need even more dodges meaning we won’t have any dodges for when we actually need to dodge an incoming attack.
So these suggestions might help:

More clone uptime: There could be various ways to accomplish this.
- Make Axe #2 auto spawn clones without there needing to be an enemy nearby. This would make axe clone generation more consistent.

-Give Mirage more ways to spawn clones. Maybe through utilities. Like the Sand through Class suggestion I made before.

-Give Mirage clones more health. They die from anything instantly. I understand this won’t be much of a problem in PvE but in PvP and even worse in WvW they die instantly. Scepter clones aren’t as vulnerable because they blink backwards when using their ambush making it harder for them to get cleaved down all at once.
Clones need AT LEAST a 100% health increase.

Diffirent ways to access Ambush attacks:
-I know this isn’t directly part of the Mirage Cloak mechanic but it would be great if Mirage could trigger ambushes out of stealth. Like Thief can with their ambushes. Give Infinite Horizon an added effect that when the Mirage goes in stealth, clones gain ambush.

Mirage Mirror: Yeah the part of the Mirage mechanic I despise A LOT.
I really don’t understand why someone could possibly think that this would be a fun & useful mechanic for Mirage.
It’s near useless & its more of a bother & annoyance than anything. Sure the Mirrors look pretty but that shouldn’t justify such an annoying & unpractical mechanic.
It doesn’ need just a buff. It needs a complete rework.

Instead of adding Mirage Mirrors to utilities like Crystal Sands & Sand through Glass those skills should just grant Mirage Cloak instead.

Also Mirage would need an extra skill/mechanic that gives us access to more Mirage Cloaks. A way that doesn’t make us “play fetch.” I said it before and i’ll say it again, imagine how Daredevils would feel if their skills would drop endurance bars on the ground and they’d have to go & fetch them.
A mechanic liek this just doesn’t work in a game like GW2.

A way to grant Mirages more way to get Mirage Cloak would be to give us a new F5 ability that grants us Mirage Cloak on a 15 second cooldown.

However there should be a trait (replacing Shards of Glass) that reduces the cooldown of that skill by a few seconds whenever we (or a clone) successfully dodge an attack.
Blinding and giving 2 stacks of confusion & 2 stacks of torment to the foe’s attack we dodged. (2 sec cooldown to prevent this trait to trigger of you & multiple clones dodging.)

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Posted by: Xenon.4537

Xenon.4537

1. The mirror duration is way too short. It needs to be more like 15-20 seconds to allow the mesmer to choose when they want to back track and walk over to the mirror.

2. The Shards of Glass trait is terrible. RNG on a trait with a 20 second internal cooldown is extremely unreliable and not even remotely worth taking over the other choices. Remove the RNG and keep the 20 second cooldown.

3. The mirrors themselves should do other things with they are on the field. Perhaps a trait to make them reflect projectiles?

Wild suggestion: Rework mirage mirrors into a new F5 skill. Instead of granting mirage cloak when you touch a mirror, make an F5 shatter specifically for mirrors. When you shatter 3 mirrors it gives you and allies 3 seconds of mirage cloak (1 second per mirror) and lets you fire off multiple ambush skills.

4. All the deceptions are underwhelming and mostly not worth taking under any circumstance over other skills. Add stealth to at least some of them. Sand Through Glass would be awesome with stealth. Also it would help if the mirror generation was stronger.

5. Mirage cloak itself is great, but the window of opprotunity to fire an ambush skill needs to be longer. Sometimes I miss it because I was in the middle of another casting animation when I got mirage cloak. Also sometimes clones fail to fire their ambush skill.

6. Some ambush skills (such as staff) are clunky and rarely effective. The staff one has a slow animation, the projectile is slow, and the tracking is slow so it fires orbs in odd directions which usually miss my target by a mile if they are just walking around.

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Posted by: Levetty.1279

Levetty.1279

I’d like to echoe that mirrors don’t work. In PvP and WvW its basically a giant marker to the enemy that ‘hey the mirage is about to run here slap down your aoe fields’. If the idea behind Mirage Cloak is that we can keep attacking while dodging then spending time stopping what we are doing and running after a mirror to get the cloak defeats that purpose. The only way I can fix this is to get rid of mirrors and just have those abilities give you mirage cloak.

Crystal Sands: either needs to send the shards from you to where you placed them, then maybe come back to you and form the mirror there, if they keep mirrors, or keep it as it is but add more shards so they have btter coverage of the area and increase the damage of each individual shard.

Sand through Glass: get rid of the mirror and just give Mirage the cloak after they have moved back.

Jaunt: As others have said the range is too short. 900 would be good. Upping the power damage would give it use in PvE as well as a decent AoE attack for Memsers.

Illusionary Ambush: Reduce cast time and CD and make a stun break. The cast time in particular makes this hard to use in most situations.

Mirage Advance: Make a stun break.

The actual Cloak itself really is just a worse dodge. Being able to carry on attacking is marginally useful especially with how poor ambush attacks are and not really worth giving up the roll of dodge.

Using a defensive resource for more damage thourgh ambush attacks just adds more resource management for a class already weighed down by managing illusions. This could be relieved if the trait line was more like Daredevil where they got an extra dodge and traits that straight up gave them endurance. Mesmer just has vigor on shatter, a boon they already have decent access to anyway.

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Posted by: musu.9205

musu.9205

mirror needs to be tied to every mes weapon . maybe clone skill or maybe phant
we should gain more mirror around battle field . and buff its effect a little bit .

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Posted by: FranzM.1298

FranzM.1298

Mirrors – should not stay on the spot, but should move in straight line to the mesmer – slowly at the start but accelerating and connecting with mesmer in 5-7 sec. (if they hit somebody on the way they do their effect).

Mirage cloak should either baseline or via passive get directional blink with same range as dodge would have.

This.

From what i’ve read so far people are suggesting more mirror cloak generation or more endurance generation.

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Posted by: Tseison.4659

Tseison.4659

Class Mechanic:

  • Increase endurance bar from 2 > 3
  • Mirage Cloak increased from 1s > 2s
  • Increase the damage of all ambush skills
  • Hitting a foe with an ambush skill OR a deception skill restores some endurance. 10/15 or 25
  • Mirage Mirrors placed on the ground should effect other Mesmers that have the Mirage spec equipped
  • Increase window for ambush skill cast from 1.5s > 2s
  • Ambush attacks are Unblockable
  • Works with Phantasms
  • Mirage Mirrors should heal or give endurance for a small amount when picked up.

Healing:

  • Increase base healing
  • Gain stealth for 3s

Utilities:

  • Crystal Sands Deals damage to all enemies within the target location, regardless of being hit by a shard. Shards will still form in the centre to create a mirage mirror.
  • Illusionary Ambush COMBINED W/ Mirage Advance
    (As I thought of on Friday, these two utilities would be best combined)
    “New” Illusionary Advance
    Cast time should be instant.
    You and all your illusions shadowstep to a random point around your target, blinding your target and nearby foes and gaining Mirage Cloak. Illusions’ actions are interrupted when they change focus to the targeted foe. You may reactivate this skill to return to your original position and restore some endurance. 30/35s cooldown
  • “NEW” Gathering Sand You create a sand like refuge around you, inflicting confusion and blind to foes nearby and granting you protection and resistance. OR instead grants pulsing stealth to yourself only.
  • Sand Through Glass Increased evade range from 300 > 400 and gain Vigor
  • Jaunt Range increased from 400 > 600 OR Range increased from 400 > 900 but only 2 charges.

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Posted by: Sodeni.6041

Sodeni.6041

  • The mirage lacks synergy with core mesmer trait-lines. Core trait-lines are heavily focused around shattering illusions and buffing phantasms, which are counterproductive for the mirage.
  • The mirage is clearly not meant to shatter illusions because without clones you can’t perform ambush attacks, yet we still have the same F-skills! There should absolutely be different ones that synergise with the mirage’s design.
  • Phantasms don’t do ambush attacks and are therefore worse than clones so you dont usually use one of your 5 weapon skills.
  • Even clone’s ambush attacks are very lackluster, weak and clunky.
  • In order to do most damage you have to dodge and get mirage mirror, this means that you don’t always have a dodge available when you need it for survivability.
  • Mirages are required to keep up clones, yet clones die like flies in pvp and wvw. There is simply not enough clone generation available. Even with more clone generation they would still be too unreliant due to their low health and survivability.
  • As already mentioned, mirage cloak is a weaker dodge because of it’s reduced mobility.
  • The axe #2 ability should not summon a clone on the mirage’s casting position. Most of the time a clone won’t be summoned because enemies run away. This skill should act like staff #2 where you automatically summon a clone onto your target.
  • Mirage mirrors are a clunky design. They require you to walk to them (which is very risky in pvp and wvw) to gain mirage cloak (0.75 sec) which is not worth the risk and effort.

These are my main cons I come up with.
Anet still has one month time to fix the mirage. Hopefully we will se some readjustments!

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Posted by: Xenon.4537

Xenon.4537

I want to reinforce what others are saying about cloak. It is frustrating to spend endurance on dps, especially when the ambush skills are so finicky.

There should be more accessible ways to produce ambushes. I suggest allowing us to use ambush skills from stealth in addition to cloak.

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Posted by: Menaka.5092

Menaka.5092

Mirage Cloak: if you compare it to Daredevil, it’s worse in every possible way. We don’t get another endurance bar, we have very limited endurance regeneration, even slotting Dueling, the movement on the sides and back is crippled by how the movement works in GW2 (did anyone try it with action camera?), we don’t get any meaningful way of customizing the dodge for condi/power/other builds. Also, the notion that any pvp player would be fooled by the blur effect is absolutely ridicolous.

Mirror mechanic: Mirage doesn’t get any movement speed bonus, mesmer doesn’t have any decent access to movement speed. And our secondary mechanic is obviously “walk towards the mirror to activate your primary mechanic”. How didn’t anyone see a problem with this? Also, we have very limited ways to create these mirrors. The only possible way I can think this could somewhat work is by wasting Jaunt to get to the mirrors. As usual, mesmers have to work hard against their own mechanics to achieve any result.

Utilities

False Oasis: has a long cast and heals over time; it creates a mirror after a while (the description is somewhat confusing: is the creation of a “mirage” important in any way?). I don’t see any reason to take it over any other heal since the mirror mechanic is pretty hard to use in any pvp context.

Crystal Sands: in theory our best option to apply some aoe conditions, in practice it pales compared to what Firebrand, Revenant and Necromancers/Scourges can field. Just another gimmick.

Illusionary Ambush: this felt like the most consistent of the utilities, when paired with main hand sword gives a nice option for a gap closer.

Mirage Advance: a shadowstep with a long cast time and a short range. Not worth taking over blink.

Sand Through Glass: this could make sense if it had 10s cooldown. On a 30s cooldown it’s just pointless.

Elite

Jaunt: the extremely limited range make using it really painful. I ended up either using it for safe stomps (burning 2 charges) or to run away from angry zergs (using all the charges). I guess it could make sense also in a gs burst from close range, and for some condi application on a condi build.

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Posted by: Daniel Handler.4816

Daniel Handler.4816

Mirrors

  • picking up mirrors is antithetical to pretending to be a clone
  • they force the use of jaunt and axe 2, thereby limiting build diversity
  • they lead you into danger, tolerable in PvP, suicide in WvW.
  • they aren’t fun. I get that a proactive/aggressive style is new to the mesmer, but that does not require a pick up mechanic. Look at where forage, fragments of faith, and Revenant staff fragments fail, and then look at where conjured weapons and ventari fragments succeed. Don’t turn this into an endless truffle hunt.
“Kentigem”-chief. Born cycle of Dusk. Wyld Hunt:
Learn as much mending and medical info as possible so that it can be added to the Dream.
Become the first Chief of Mending and guide the newly awaken as well as those who want to learn.

(edited by Daniel Handler.4816)

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Posted by: Hackuuna.4085

Hackuuna.4085

I think Jaunt is fine as it is because if you increase the range too much it becomes too strong. I love that it is useful to both power and condi specs. I’d rather have 3 uses out of it that are short range than a nerf that makes it only 2 charges for longer range.

I prefer the current design of it because it plays into the strengths of mesmer: positional play with potential for bursts. It’s critical that it have multiple charges with relatively short recharge on the ammo.

I think folks are looking at it as another teleport and are missing out on how useful it is for so many different situations.

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Posted by: FJSAMA.2867

FJSAMA.2867

Mirage Mirrors:

Having to move to a beacon on the ground, when they often spawn at the opposite location of your movement is bad, harmful, and very predictable to enemies.
Suggestion: make mirrors shatterable by enemies that touch them. Increase mirrors lifetime increase radius of the shatterable effects to 240. Make it grant mirage cloak to mirage regardless if mirage is near or not. Someone (including self) trigger mirrors, mesmer gain cloak and the offensive effect fire (pbaoe on the spot) in a 240 radius.

Utilities:

Jaunt: Range is so low it is frustrating. Change: Increase range.

False Oasis: Long CD and cast time for it effect. Pulses are small leaving you vulnerable to pressure and poison application.

Crystal Sands: Bad for uneven terrain. Very spaced bolts make it fail enemy models unless they are waiting in the center in the end of skill.

Illusionary Ambush: Sometimes it shadowstep far away from your target. Make it a useful gap closer and let it be usable when out of range, like guardian Judge’s Intervention. Make it shadowstep closer to your target (melee range) if you cast time inside the range.

Mirage Advance: Long cast time, redundant when we have Illusionary Ambush. Make it a ground target skill, lower cast time.

Sand Through Glass: Long CD, short distance, lackluster effect. Increase its distance and make it remove movement impairing conditions on top of its current effects.

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Posted by: Dondagora.9645

Dondagora.9645

F5: Illusions shatter and weaken nearby foes, then reform into Mirage Mirrors.

I think that’d make more sense.

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Posted by: Levetty.1279

Levetty.1279

I think Jaunt is fine as it is because if you increase the range too much it becomes too strong. I love that it is useful to both power and condi specs. I’d rather have 3 uses out of it that are short range than a nerf that makes it only 2 charges for longer range.

I prefer the current design of it because it plays into the strengths of mesmer: positional play with potential for bursts. It’s critical that it have multiple charges with relatively short recharge on the ammo.

I think folks are looking at it as another teleport and are missing out on how useful it is for so many different situations.

It doesn’t need less charges to make up for buffing it. It just needs the buff.

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Posted by: Arshay Duskbrow.1306

Arshay Duskbrow.1306

Utilities: Underpowered and overpriced on recharge. Transferring illusions between targets is actually useless since they die when the target dies; there’s nothing to transfer and a third of your utility slots are wasted.

Mirage Cloak: Terrible. Dodges should not have to be spent to bolster offense, and removing the movement aspect from them is a nerf to one of the most core abilities in the game, moving out of AoE.

Mirage Mirror: The worst of them all. There is no redeeming feature to this awkward and useless mechanic. I cannot even begin to fathom how this mechanic made it so far into development. Needs to be completely removed from the spec altogether.

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Posted by: RBMoose.1439

RBMoose.1439

Mirrors do not work, and were tagged onto utilities in a way that does not make sense.
Sand through glass is my favorite example of this:
1. You evade backwards and leave a mirror at the location YOU JUST EVADED AWAY FROM, in other words, you felt it necessary to use your OS skill to get away from the target, and now the mirror that you want to activate is back with the enemy/AoE field you escaped from.
2. The mirror has a short life span so you either run back to where you just evaded from, or let it expire and serve no purpose…
3. The mirror does nothing to the enemy by default, doesn’t shatter on them releasing a clone or causing conditions, just…. disappears.

Other utilities can be entertaining, but are generally gap closers for a lightly armored melee condition class, what could possibly go wrong…

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Posted by: Windwalker.7421

Windwalker.7421

Other utilities can be entertaining, but are generally gap closers for a lightly armored melee condition class, what could possibly go wrong…

lol! Nicely put! ;-)

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Posted by: Xenon.4537

Xenon.4537

Mirage Mirror: The worst of them all. There is no redeeming feature to this awkward and useless mechanic. I cannot even begin to fathom how this mechanic made it so far into development. Needs to be completely removed from the spec altogether.

Someone on the design team saw an animation made by one of the effects artists, and they “just haaaaad to have that in the game” somehow.

I think the mirror mechanic could be a thing… but it will require a lot of huge changes… And I doubt Anet will want to go through the pain of that. They tend to fix mesmer problems with bandaids, even when open heart surgery is required.

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Posted by: Roda.7468

Roda.7468

Add a contextual optional directional movement to dodge:
- hitting dodge button only just provides Mirage cloak and does not move you.
- pressing a directional key (forward /left/right/back) and dodge key together does a 200-300 range blink in the direction you move, and also gives Mirage cloak. This also applies to double tap for dodge.

This retains flexibility of the dodge – you still can blur without moving by hitting the dodge button only, but you also have the option of a directional dodge blink if moving while hitting dodge.

Omg this would be amazing and would totally fit the theme of you used deceptive evasion.

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Posted by: Medatius.6092

Medatius.6092

Cloack
What’s there to say, the new dodge felt a bit weird at the start, but after a while it’s amazing and the possibilities of dodging whilst casting/stomping is just great. The superspeed on the grandmaster minor should be a little longer to be able to cover a longer distance forwards, since backwards superspeed won’t do a thing. Either way one of the most fun mechanics in a long time

Mirrors
I think I’m one of the few people who actually like them, because they give you something to do and to watch out for. For the Mirror utilities see below and regarding Shards of Glass, I think it should have a much lower internal cooldown, because in the heat of the battle you’ll easily miss a mirror or will be too far away even with the Blink/Jaunt option. So the lower internal cooldown on Shards of Glass should make up for you missing them or the mirrors being too far away. Also, should Infinite Horizon become baseline and the Ambush skills get buffed then the Mirrors would gain value automatically due to that.

Utilities
Generally, deception, yes, I’m all for it, I feel there’s some work to be done still though. Unfortunately all of them are selfish utilities, I would have hoped for at least one that has some group benefit

False Oasis
I think it’s an okay-ish heal, I tried it a long time, but it wasn’t quite on par with Ether Feast healing wise. Granted it gives vigor and the Mirror, but I still feel it needs an upgrade, either shorter cooldown and less pulses to get the full healing (maybe 3) or make it bigger and a water field plus let the mirror spawn a lot earlier, not quite sure, but it needs a buff

  • Could use a buff, see above

Crystal Sands
Well, this skill is horrible, the shards won’t spawn as soon as there’s a bit of terrain in the way, the damage is none existent, so I didn’t see any reason to use it

  • Could use a decent rework

Illusionary Ambush
Technically one of my favourite skills (basically like axe 3) but suffers from worse teleportation issues, because as soon as the enemy is moving it puts you where he was and a lot of the time it faced me away form the enemy so that I couldn’t even attack. Could use a much lower cooldown, so that there would be the option to retarget your illusions more often whilst not having to rely on axe. Also there’s the issue of ambush skills being so weak at the moment that the damaging component isn’t very dangerous, but the evade due to mirage cloak is nice

  • Could use a much lower cooldown, reliability tweaking

Mirage Advance
Another really bad skill, can’t be used when out of range, why is there a cast time on it, it’s a shadowstep/blink, the cast time definitely has to go and when trying to port back, even the smallest obstruction will make an invalid pathing message pop up and you just won’t teleport back, not even towards the rough direction of where you’ve been. Also, range is too short should be 1200

  • Could use pathing changes, range buff, no castime

Sand through Glass
This one surprised me a bit, it seemed rather bad at first, but after using it in duels and roaming I really grew to like it. That said though I think it could use a buff still, maybe by giving it ammunition or just lowering the cooldown or putting a condition cleanse on it or something, since mirage is lacking in that area quite heavily

  • Could use buff either via cooldown, potential condition cleanse, giving it ammunition

Jaunt
I like the idea a lot for an elite, but the range is too short for sure, I think it should be 600, I mean come on, vault has 600 and is more spam-able than this and does ridiculous damage, speaking of which, maybe a little bit more damage?

  • Could use range buff to 600, damage buff (not more condition application I’m talking power damage)

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Posted by: Tracy.2865

Tracy.2865

I felt like giving us mirrors and giving us a dodge that let’s us stand still, was very counter intuitive. The dodge is great if you’re using a play style where you try your best to blend in with your clones. But if you’re using that play style, the mirrors are pretty much useless because they’re always so far away from you.

So here’s an idea on how to improve mirrors:

Let the mirrors be able to be shattered by allies (including your own clones etc.)

However, since some people aren’t playing the ‘stand still and blend in’ style, they may like to be in control of shattering the mirrors themselves, instead of an ally touching it.

So what if, instead of changing it completely, just put this ability as a trait. This way, players can decide how they want to use their mirrors. My suggestion is to replace the Major Adept trait, Renewing Oasis, with a trait that allows allies to be able to shatter mirrors.

Playing with player allies is more obvious on how this would work. Leave a mirror, player ally shatters it to help your own damage. It creates a nice team oriented ability and would probably be a lot of fun to play.

As for playing alone, while trickier to use, I still think it could be a lot of fun figuring out the best ways to get your clone to the mirror. One example is to use a skill that creates a clone on top of you, and then use the Sand Through Glass skill, which should instantly shatter your mirror. Because currently, it doesn’t make much sense for you to create something you’re supposed to touch, and then jumping away from it.

Instead, I think it would be more rewarding to have the option to create team play and skillful play within your own clone system.

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Posted by: Daishi.6027

Daishi.6027

Mirage Cloak Functionally I think was actually done pretty well. Baseline super speed (apart from taking a minor slot, as opposed to just being naturally part of the effect.) makes it feel as natural as regular doge while moving.

The added utility of safe stomps in PvP since the quickness nerf is welcome, and clutch doge casting is nice. But outside of that I find it’s inconsequential if it wasn’t absolutely required to make ambushes work.

It’s added (and arguably marketed) intention to help fool players is unrealistic, no one is going to fall for clones even if you drop target which is something incredibly limited anyways. Until we can subtly swap places with an illusion, while changing their target to the illusion you swapped with, and our illusions always reflect our health bars, AND had some mechanic where they had a static kitten to die thing, no one is truly going to fall for it, outside of the players who get lost in illusions anyways… But nothing screws with that more than Mirrors.

Mirage Mirrors
These are petty bad. It’s like telling dare devil “run here if you want your 3rd doge!” I’d be willing to accept them more if they 1. Lasted longer. 2. Spawned closer. and 3. enemies couldn’t see them. It’s bad enough we need to go out of our way to get our 3rd doge, and to gain access to underwhelming skills but nothing says “HEY I’M THE REAL ONE!” louder than being the only thing who is moving in it’s direction.

Also we don’t even generate them enough. You “maybe” get “1” every 20 seconds on shatter when traited. You get one at the end of two utilities, only one of which is competition to other utilities, and it’s a tough sell. Then finally we get one at the end of a mediocre at best heal, that you need to use preemptively to damage that isn’t a large burst to be effective. (this one bothers me to no end, our heal should have been in the vain of Withdraw with Trickster for thief.)

Utilities

Illusionary Ambush This is probably my favorite. It’s a relatively safe engagement. It drops target, it brings all your illusions with you, the safety of it also comes from mirage cloak to proc your ambush right off it. This was great and a ton of fun, would have had good synergy if all ambushes that weren’t scepter were good with event horizon. But that’s ok, I just took elusive mind and loved it. This is the instant through walls blink I’ve envy’d for years and we now have it.

Mirage Advance Having a shadow step/shadow return skill was great, I simply loved that it existed! But that got shattered pretty quickly. It comes out too slow… It should have been instant like it’s big brother Illusionary Ambush, and it adhering to line of sight was the worst for many triggering reasons I will not elaborate on right now.

I was willing to accept the shorter distance for a blind and no target drop, but with the added effect of a return. But no, the line of sight issue, and cast time ruin it. No other shadowstep or teleport has to put up with this amount of crap.

Sand Through Glass This one was ok. A doge and a mirror for 30 seconds is a bit of a hard sell. If this was given two charges and they make mirrors less unwieldy I would consider it a lot more.

Crystal Sands The damage it does if everything hits is decent, but it’s easily screwed by terrain, and it’s unlikely to land every hit. It might turn out to be okay dps in some (probably more casual) PvE content. I’m kind of indifferent to it, I’d like it buffed or reworked but I wouldn’t know how to fairly suggest it form such little use.

Jaunt Not a “utility” but I might as well include this. Gotta say I can’t help but compare this to a Blink cut into 3 parts. But I find it a little clunky. 600 Range each would be nice but I can understand the hesitation on that. Removing the 1/2 cooldown between use would go a long way to streamline it, and make it a decent cluch condi clear. If the cooldown can’t fully be removed perhaps a quick global like we have on shatters to avoid bugs. The damage is inconsequential unless you are a condi build. It’s alright to secure kills which mesmer sorely needed, but that is mostly due to re-positioning than the damage. I think it would be better if each use proc-ed mirage cloak after getting a rework to our ambushes, and the damage was removed. If it has to proc a condition for the sake of utility, weakness would be a good one. Ultimately this skill should be safer and less clunky to use than it is.

“I control time and space; you can’t break free.~”
“Maybe I was the illusion all along!”

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Posted by: Allarius.5670

Allarius.5670

Utilities – Mostly okay conceptually, but require tweaks for functionality and ease of use and functionality.

Cloak – Solid concept and great execution. Tweaks in various traits and an increased window of ambush availability, but the core of Mirage Cloak is great.

Mirrors – Great idea but needs polishing by granting improved control to the player. Feels like it should have a greater inherent integration to the Mirage. I’m not a fan of adding profession mechanics just for the sake of it, but I think this is a place where it could help. Definitely needs longer life time.


Profession Mechanic F5 (not a shatter): Mirage Mirror

  • Allows you to place a mirage mirror within 900 like Crystal Sands
  • Holds ammo and recharges over time. Base ammo is approximately 2.
  • Traits and deception skills that grant Mirage Mirror restock ammo charges. Some utilities may add more (for example Crystal Sands).

Would grant greater control of placement. Integrates Mirage Mirror into the spec naturally while feeling like less of an oversight. Enables Mirage Cloak without having to add additional endurance regeneration or supply.

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Posted by: Ohoni.6057

Ohoni.6057

Mirrors seem dumb to me, and poorly explained. If I understand correctly, basically you end up spawning mirrors all over the place with various abilities, and then if you walk through the mirror then you instantly “evade” for a second or so? Like an auto-dodge? That’s pretty weak, because you’d really need some expert micro-management to really take ideal advantage of that.

I think a better implementation would be to just have the mirrors recover your Endurance each time you run through one. That would make them much more flexible, since they would still be tied to your new Evade skill, but would allow you to activate the evades when you needed them, rather than when you happened to be on top of the mirror.

I’d almost even want an optional Trait that would grant Mirages the same triple-dodge that Daredevils get. It would be a completely different situation since they wouldn’t be moving while using them, and wouldn’t have the fancy GM dodges the DD gets, but it would help them better make use of the new mechanic.

And if that seems OP, then how about this double whammy, make it so that they only naturally regenerate the default two bars, or even just the first bar, and have to use mirrors to fill up the remaining bars if they want access to them. That could be an interesting mechanic to play with, I think.

“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”

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Posted by: Ansau.7326

Ansau.7326

The utilities need to be buffed. Jaunt at 600 range is a must, it’s a freaking elite skill anet.. The rest, they felt interesting for their gimmikcks, but it is quite hard to choose them when we have such variety of good utilities.

About mirage cloak, quite good execution, but I felt it needed to be full 1s of evasion since we lose so much mobility.

Mirrors mechanic is one of the worst anet ever developed. Scrap them and integrate their use with the F5. Instead of generating mirrors in random places, open the F5 and when activated we get their effect. This should also aliviate the limited use of dodges now we use for defense and offense.

Ansau – Sylvari Mesmer – Exiled Warriors [wE] – Gandara

i7 5775c @ 4.1GHz – 12GB RAM @ 2400MHz – RX 480 @ 1390/2140MHz

(edited by Ansau.7326)

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Posted by: Carighan.6758

Carighan.6758

The idea of the mirrors is great due to the dual-use of evade as both a defensive and an offensive tool. For a Mirage.

However, there are tons of inconsistencies:

  • The Ambush skills are (overall) just weak, making the dual-use doubtful.
  • Among the ambush skills, there is 1 good, 1 useful and the rest I wish I could disable so I get another auto-attack in.
  • Not all deception skills spawn mirrors, making me wonder why they are a skill category if they have no common element.
The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.

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Posted by: OriOri.8724

OriOri.8724

Mirrors are a neat concept, but fall completely flat (hell, they even admitted that they put them in there because they liked the art, not because they had a solid design surrounding them. Like wtf were they on when they decided that was an acceptable way to design our elite spec?).

Baseline changes for mirrors to be a good mechanic in my opinion:

  • 12-15 second base duration of the mirrors
  • When shattered, mirrors grant mirage cloak to you and all illusions (just in case infinite horizon doesn’t go baseline, because I doubt it will). This at least makes them more powerful offensively.

More changes that I would like to see:

  • Mirrors heal you when you shatter them. If its a balanced amount, it will help make up for the clunkiness of shattering them and putting yourself in possibly awkward or dangerous positions to get them
  • Mirrors pulse weakness and their damage to all foes near them every second until they are shattered. Again, pulsing weakness helps make it technically safer to go shatter the mirror, plus I think it fits thematically.

(Probably) Not going to happen but I would like to see:

  • The entire Mirage traitline reworked and given 3 major traits that tie to mirrors. Some ideas:
    A – Shattering a mirage mirror procs all shatter related traits (probably would be GM tier, would prob need a small ICD to be balanced)
    B – A mirror generating trait that is more useful AND reliable than shards of glass
    C – Shattering a mirror generates up to 2 illusions, and they perform ambush attacks as well
    D – Adding a boon/condition to the effect generated when shattering the mirror
    E – Shattering a mirror reduces recharge on all deception skills by 2 seconds

Even if we just got the first 4 changes, I’d be pretty happy with where mirrors are as a mechanic. Anything else I would then go about changing the skills that generate the mirrors (eg placement of mirrors and stuff).

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Posted by: kokowu.8745

kokowu.8745

Thematically, I don’t understand Mirage Mirrors. If we’re the Mirage “artist”, why are we having to run to our own mirages? Isn’t the whole point of the name “Mirage” supposed to make our opponents see things that aren’t there, therefore putting them in a state of confusion and on the defense? Running to our own mirrors to activate our class gimmick not only puts us on defense instead, but is also clunky.

Also, I didn’t get to test this during the weekend, but what do opponents see when we put down the mirrors? Is it the same diamond graphic? If so, then it’s not really much of a mirage is it? If that’s the case then the whole mirage theme is even more half-baked.

Now to discuss the more gameplay side of things, I think there should be a punishment for enemies destroying our mirrors/clones. It would actually bring back some of the punishment and calculated risk aspects that Mesmers were famous for in GW1.

I don’t have much else to say about our utilities that hasn’t already been said, and I agree with with the feedback so far.

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Posted by: glenndevis.8327

glenndevis.8327

I felt like giving us mirrors and giving us a dodge that let’s us stand still, was very counter intuitive. The dodge is great if you’re using a play style where you try your best to blend in with your clones. But if you’re using that play style, the mirrors are pretty much useless because they’re always so far away from you.

This is actually something I didn’t even think about. But holy kitten that’s right.
Why give Mirage Mirrors?
Mirage is about (clone) deception & making clones be more effective.
Mirrors do none of that. And on the contrary they make it very clear which the real mesmer is when you run towards one.

I really despise the whole mechanic & it doesn’t suit Mirage at all.
Just a tacked on way to give Mirage a not so boring way of gaining more Mirage Cloaks (which Mirage desperately needs.)
Why does this have to exist on Mirage. It’s literally ruining the spec for me.

Also another comment i’d like to make is how Mirage only has 1 detarget skill while whole spec is based around deception. Nobody is going to fall for deception unless they get detargetted.

Illusionary Ambush should detarget. It functions a lot like Axe #3 but at least we wouldn’t be tied to the axe weapon to make use of this actually useful mechanic.

Mirage Advance as it is right now is kind of pointless. Would be cool if Mirages had a way of swapping between clones (despite that probably being difficult to implement.)
Make us swap places with the clone furthest away from the Mirage & changes the enemy’s target to the clone (or just detargets.)

(edited by glenndevis.8327)

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Posted by: Pollux.3247

Pollux.3247

Mirrors:

As mayny people have said before, there’s a key factor that makes them quite clunky, which is the risk/benefit ratio they offer. In PvP and WvW it’s been stated how telegraphed they are and how little time we have to interact with them, but I also think in PvE they suffer from the same issues. Even being a dps increase because of the ambushes, how much dps do you lose when getting to them if they don’t spawn on top of you? How many times will they be wasted in raids due to mechanics inhibiting your positioning?

Also, traits don’t allow you to have any other interaction with them, so no wonder why people is thinking they’re not optimal at all. My suggestion would be addressing this by creating traits that would allow sinergy with them or either… well, forget about that idea. They also NEED to interact in some way with either positioning if we go for the selfish approach, allies if we go supportive or enemies if we go damage. Something in the lines of:

- Whenever you touch a mirror, teleport you to another mirror. If no other mirror is active, heal -or- blink back -or- generate a clone (or two of them combined).
- Allies that touch a mirror gain the cloak effect. Whenever they gain it, you do too. Cleanse a condition maybe or give you barrier after the effect finishes.
- Shatters don’t affect illusions anymore. Instead, they turn your mirrors in crystal traps that trigger when enemies pass through them.

If they don’t go that way, I think at least mirrors should give you Mirage Cloak when they expire.

(edited by Pollux.3247)

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Posted by: RBMoose.1439

RBMoose.1439

Assuming the utilities themselves don’t change in the actions they do, the mirrors themselves absolutely need to interact with enemies and such. For the evade utility the only logical reason to leave a mirror at the start of the evade is if it can be triggered by an enemy chasing you. Every mirror should create a clone by default, and should have some movement impairing affect, most likely cripple.

Additionally, like others have said, they should be buffed by traits that make them either buff allies, damage enemies further, or maybe create combo fields.

On a separate note, I haven’t run number or anything, but given the cast time and minor dmg increase, without infinite horizon, I am questioning the basis of the ambush attacks being any kind of dmg buff for anything other than condition spec. They take so long to cast compared to AA, and generally do 2x dmg compared to AA. I get that the axe is a condition specced weapon, but why is the entire elite spec revolving around that entire premise, the mirrors (and traits) should be targeted at enabling multiple builds.

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Posted by: zanny.9380

zanny.9380

this is something I posted in another thread as there are many threads of this type out there.

1. Mirrors: they need punish the enemy for being near them when we proc one.
a)Simply put, they need to stack LARGE amounts of vulnerability OR other condi’s on the enemy. this gives the mirage the ability to control THE battle field while playing in to the risk to reward of being a squishy class and needing to get near our enemy.
b)the length of time they are on the field feels short. we should have the choice of proc a mirror and burst condi’s or let it expire and spawn a clone. that would allow the expiration time to remain the same while still giving us plenty of clone generation. which this class NEEDS in spades to ensure ambushes are worth while.

2. Jaunt: as a whole this skill feels like it has true potential. with all 3 charges you have a 1200 range tele. That’s HUGE. the problem is it isn’t a fast tele.
a) Jaunt doesn’t really synergize well with any skill at all. as such if range must b stuck at 400 then allow the range to be extended to 600 when jaunting to a mirror.
b) an ulti should really change the tide of a battle. its ability to rid condi’s, confuse, and adds mobility sounds good, but it falls short. adding a damage based on enemy missing health would add a reason for power builds to pick this skill up and fix its not so great damage.

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Posted by: OriOri.8724

OriOri.8724

Crystal Sands – I like its concept a lot, but its execution is a little underwhelming. Its pretty difficult to do any real damage with it against a stationary target, much less an actual opponent. I’d like to see the power damage be moved to be a component of the AoE field itself instead of being tied to the projectiles, then increase the number of projectiles and have them only apply 1 stack of confusion if they hit. The power damage component could be lowered if this is “overpowered”.

Illusionary Ambush – I love this skill a lot, but it does have some bugs from what I’ve seen. Just fix those, maybe reduce the CD on it as well. I don’t think 20 seconds is unreasonable for a targeted ambush attack.

Mirage Advance – No thoughts on this, I didn’t really play with it.

Sand through Glass – Again, neat concept, but ultimately not that useful as a skill. Its a 30 second stun break that spawns a mirror. Blink is a 30 second stunbreak with 1,200 mobility built in, and can be traited for 24 sec CD. So as a stunbreak it just can’t compete with blink when it has the same CD. I propose changing the evade to a 0.5 second mirage cloak for synergy with the mirage traitline, and then lowering the CD to 25 seconds. Keep the mirror as it is

Jaunt – Increase the range to 600. Otherwise its a really cool skill

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Posted by: tobascodagama.2961

tobascodagama.2961

The only way I can fix this is to get rid of mirrors and just have those abilities give you mirage cloak.

This is a really obvious fix that would work perfectly fine, but it won’t happen because it would further drive home the fact that Mirage offers very little to distinguish it from core Mesmer. (Since there would be virtually no difference then between a Mirage and a Dom Mesmer with Blurred Inscriptions. Except that BI gives a full second of Evade and also cures conditions.)

Amberley Avalen – Charr Mesmer
Tanya Larina – Human Thief
Finchy Whyte – Sylvari Ranger

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Posted by: apharma.3741

apharma.3741

Mirage Cloak:
Seems ok as a mechanic, it’s essentially an evade you can use while doing everything else which is very strong. The ambush attacks range from useful to useless but they could do with having 2s to use them.

Utilities:
False Oasis
Basically it’s an 8100 heal over time on 30s CD which gives vigor and a mirage mirror. Because mirage mirrors are kind of situational at best and at worst absolutely useless Well of Eternity and Ether Feast are much better usually as the former replenishes endurance and removes condi for 1000 less heal and the later with a few clones heals for much more in raw health.

Crystal Sands
This utility looks nice, the art department did a number on it but that’s all I can say about it. The skill barely hits, the cool down is fairly long for what it is and it has no real effect other than damage and give a mirage mirror. It’s a shame it doesn’t happen in reverse, spawn a mirror (for 10s) and when you take it this expanding AoE of sand inflicts 5 confusion on all it hits, can keep the same sand animation but in reverse.

Mirage Advance
Drop it to 1/2s or 1/4s cast and it’ll be good.

Illusionary Ambush
Fine as is, might be nice to have a 20-25s CD tbh as this is a major aspect of mirage.

Sand Through Glass
This skill is silly, it’s like a worse version of blink as it has a shorter range and I can’t use it to cross the Z axis. Why would I use it and want the mirage mirror to appear where I wanted to evade away from?! I would use this to get away from that area not to go back there so this should spawn it 600 units behind where you used the skill and drop it down to 25s CD.

Jaunt
Pretty good elite, make it 600 range and you’re golden, we finally have an elite people might use over Mass Invis, Moa or Gravity Well. Could probably lose the leap finisher on it.

Mirrors:
In general I found they disappeared too quick and ended up spawning in places I wouldn’t be running back to grab them from. They also don’t really reward me for grabbing them, maybe expand the weakness range to 240 or more and double the duration they linger for.

On the whole I wasn’t very impressed by the utilities except Jaunt, some are promising like mirage advance, some are flat out bad.

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Posted by: mortrialus.3062

mortrialus.3062

None of the deceptions feel all that deceptive. Or useful.

Jaunt is an elite deception but what about it is very deceptive? Thief deceptions aren’t the most well defined of utility types, but the majority of them involve stealth or can be used to stealth. Which makes sense as thieves as a class are all about making someone believe nothing is there when there is. Shadowstep is a deception skill, but it also has the unique feature of blinking you back to your original location if you want. So you can deceive enemies into thinking you’re going one direction, only to retreat back where you originally were There’s a deceptive juke element to it.

Mesmers as a class differ from thieves in that they make enemies think something is there when there isn’t, or making something look like something else entirely. So Mesmer deceptions should be more about that.

Here’s just me throwing out a couple of skill ideas:

Friendliest of Fire: Deceive the enemy target, making all their attacks capable of striking allied targets for 3 seconds. 60 Second Cooldown.

Alliance of Convenience: Deceive the enemy target. The Enemy target treats the Mirage as a friendly target for 3 seconds. The Mirage can still attack the target. 60 Second Cooldown.

Convincing Illusions: All your active illusions apply taunt to their current target for 1 second. 24 second cooldown.

Hall of Mirrors (Elite):

Send out a wave of deceptive energy that makes making up to 5 enemies see all units as the Mirage for 10 seconds. 180 second cooldown.

This is just me spit balling here. But when I think of mesmers deceiving people, that’s the sort of thing I think of. Tricking their enemies. Confusing the enemies. Preventing them from properly picking targets. I think they all sound more fun to play with and fit better with the theme of Mirage. Instead we have 3 sub par shadow steps, an evade and a condition attack.

I would personally scrap the whole lot of Deception abilities and start from scratch.

(edited by mortrialus.3062)

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Posted by: Curunen.8729

Curunen.8729

^Yeah I love that – have dreamed about the ability to temporarily toggle friendly fire and deception for ages, similar to things like Harmony/Mayhem/Mass Hysteria and other illusion skills in Skyrim.

Would be amazing if for example an ele does meteor shower and you enable friendly fire om them (or an aoe skill that enables it in a radius).

Or similarly you make yourself appear as an ally temporarily (ok I know Taunt already indirectly provides this, though its not the same).

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Posted by: OriOri.8724

OriOri.8724

I don’t think the GW2 engine can even handle convincing illusions. The other player would have to be on a different team for you to damage them, but if they areon a different team then they can also damage you.

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Posted by: Carighan.6758

Carighan.6758

I don’t think the GW2 engine can even handle convincing illusions. The other player would have to be on a different team for you to damage them, but if they areon a different team then they can also damage you.

Yeah, I think best we could do – but I’d hate that with a passion, effective as it would be – is if clones cast actual skills, including the fields and AE effects and everything. They would do nothing at all, just be graphics, but that’d be slightly more confusing then.

The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.

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Posted by: mortrialus.3062

mortrialus.3062

I don’t think the GW2 engine can even handle convincing illusions. The other player would have to be on a different team for you to damage them, but if they areon a different team then they can also damage you.

If you’re talking about the alignment swapping, there are is already a lot of interesting tech for it and an elite specialization that played with it could be a lot of fun.

Just for example, in Season 3 Episode 2 of LW you have that part where you are supposed to disguise yourself as a Mursaat. This makes all the Jades friendly to you. But if another players sees you, you register as an enemy to them. But you still see other players as friendly (At least I’m pretty sure this was the case). They didn’t enable players to attack the disguised players, but theoretically they could have.

Anyway, I’m just spit balling. Right now the deception skills are all bad, boring and none of them feel particularly deceptive.

[Feedback] Utilities, Cloak, and Mirrors

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Posted by: keenlam.4753

keenlam.4753

There are 3 mechanics introduced with mirage: cloak, mirror, and ambush skills with mirage cloak being the most central.
At the most basic level, their synergy can be seen as:
Mirror —> Cloak --> Ambush.

By Anet’s design (or at least what i think they had in mind),

1. Normally mirage cloak is used defensively by “dodge rolling”, and an entire middle trait line strengthens this use. Let’s call this reactive use.

2. Mirror offers an alternative way to gain cloak but you have to be more proactive with your positioning. Right now this “proactive use” is very clunky because it simply offers more defense and no offense. You trade your positional advantage for a short window of damage mitigation which in most cases is simpy not worth it.

3. Ambush skills encourage offensively use of mirage cloaks. but again, right now they are very undertuned.

Imo, 2+3 can be improved to work together and offer an aggressive playstyle. In fact, there are mirage traits already support a condi shatter build in which mirror and ambush skills can be used to push the dmg output further.

If mirage mirror can be adjusted to offer condi dmg, or dmg boost rather than just being a defensive tool, then Riddle of Sand, Shards of Glass, and Dune Cloak can together make a really awesome condi shatter build.

So my suggestions are:

Mirror now inflicts 10 vuln stacks and 5 bleeds when shattered OR
Shatter a mirror gains you a specific buff stack, upon reaching 3 stacks, your next attack unloads a barrage of conditions.

Also, shards of Glass now has 50% chance instead of 33% chance. OR
give us more ways to gain mirror through utility skills.

[Feedback] Utilities, Cloak, and Mirrors

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Posted by: zealex.9410

zealex.9410

False Oasis Give this skill a return option. In short a new skill will pp up to return to shadowstep to the mirror that it leaves for the durr of the mirror.

Illusionary Ambush+ Mirage Advance Merge these skills. U Shadow step to your foe and perform an ambush attack. Your illusions will retarget to that enemy. You may reactivate the skill to shadwstep back to the original spot.

New empty skill Just make a neat dmg skill

Sand Through Glass Lower the cd abit and add a return to mirror option just like with False oasis.

Crystal sand well make the aear that the shard spawn aply criple? (like a quicksand area) make the shards scale abit better with power to buff hybrid playstiles and make the hitbox of the shards bigger. The skill will have a return to mirror option like False oasis and sand through glass. (ill be honest not sure if this will make it op so i cant tell o.0)

Jaunt Id say make the range 600 and it will be neat tbh

(edited by zealex.9410)