Guild Wars 2

I feel like Mirage will be strong on PvP.

I don’t like the idea of the enemy needing to be near the Axe #2 to spawn a clone.
Jaunt’s range is way too short.
The whole Axe #3 skill seems pointless when the enemy can just cleave down all clones with 2 autos.

I would like to see the clone on death trait back as well. People wouldn’t be able to mindlessly kill clones but they should actually think about which one they should kill.

Put Speed of Sand into our main Mirage trait, make Infinite Horizon our grandmaster minor and clone death where Infinite Horizon is atm.

I also agree with those who have said Illusionary Ambush and Mirage Advance should be merged into a single skill. Then make a new Deception to fill the space.

And yes there needs to be some sort of additional endurance gain trait somewhere, or something built into axe’s auto attack. Maybe something like regain a small amount of endurance whenever you gain mirage cloak. Even with Duelling and vigour, the regen is too slow to be practical.

Anyway I don’t want to be a negative nancy about everything – I actually love the theme and concept as well as the realisation of certain skills and mechanics. Mirage has potential to be a lot of fun to play and I certainly prefer the deceptive style of gameplay over mindless shatter spam. But it’s not there yet.

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

Axe:

• Increase attack speed
• Increase damage
• Reduced casting time for Axe 3

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
  “New” Illusionary Advance
  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.

Traits:

• Self-Deception: Using a deception skill will break enemy targeting and grant quickness and vigor for 2s
• Renewing Oasis: No Change
• Riddle of Sand: Triggered upon gaining Mirage Cloak

• Nomads Endurance: Added Power Attribute Adjust: 150

• Shards of Glass: Baseline and have a 66% chance to create a Mirage Mirror
• Mirage Mantle: Daze nearby foes and Gain Protection and Stability when Mirage Cloak ends.
• Mirrored Axes: No Change

• Speed of Sand: You move 25% faster. Now has a 1s duration when you gain Mirage Cloak.

• Infinite Horizon: Baseline
• Elusive Mind: No Change
• Dune Cloak: Moved to Major Master Trait and replacing Shards of Glass

(Will edit as a play around more with the elite, but so far it has a long way to go before it hits lives)

Tseison.4659:

Buff Everything

Mirage needs useful traits and utilities that actually increase throughput. Outside a lone minor that increases condition damage for the short duration of mirage cloak, there’s virtually no % damage increase.

None of the traits beside a grandmaster increase condition application or in any way introduce utility or damage.

What’s worse, mesmer has very poor throughput increase traitlines for condition damage.

Chaos only offers a 10% toughness>condi damage, and illusions only a 9% throughput increase with 3 illusions up (which is just bad considering thief gets 10% increase just for having any condition on a target).

Compounding Power also undermines any trait that adds conditions onto shatters because the mesmer relies on his illusions being up to maintaint hat 9% damage boost and ramp up condition application.

Shatters are even worse to condi builds.

I won’t even mention how bad the ambush skills are. The axe one takes forever for the projectiles to hit the target, which means it will be dodged even easier than a Gravedigger from necromancer, which never lands on anything with a heart pulse. They do no damage for the windup they have.

Then there are the utilities. A single utility to apply confusion, the rest are selfish garbage with no impact.

I mean, come on, if the class won’t have the utility of a chronomancer, it needs to have the DPS output.

And it doesn’t. Virtually all the traits are dodge/mirror gimmicks which don’t do anything for dps, opponent control, or group utility.

It is about as empty an elite spec as the non-staff/scepter clones are empty/void of use other than shatter fodder.

The class can’t just be about the gimmick of dodging, considering daredevil does that dodging even better and with a metric ton of damage and more mobility to boot.

I also don’t know why they would bother with ambush skills for sword and greatsword when the elite spec traitline and utilities offer absolutely no support or synergy for these weapons or power builds for that matter.

It’s also curious how the mesmer version of shadowstep deception utility has a humongous 3/4 cast time while steal has no cast time, and in the case of shadowstep no target is required while the mirage deception requires a target and is only 900 range.

The cooldowns of these deception utilities are way too long for what very little they do/offer.

Been having massive fail on condi builds, but somehow I’m doing quite good in PvP with power GS/staff build. See if anyone else want to test it out.
Marauder + adventure runes
Dueling – 1,2,3
Chaos – 3,3,3
Mirage – 2,2,2
Utilities are mirror heal, SoI, blink, mantra of resolve and jaunt.
SoI is a bit of a free slot, you can go portal or mirror images if you want.

Between phase retreat, blink and jaunt you can be really annoying to melee players. And the high reflect and stability uptime makes you easier to dash in and out without being focus by range (down a couple of deadeyes with reflects). Offensive just rely on GS so its a bit reliant on how well opponent dodge, I suspect this will fail against bunker opponents which haven’t encounter many in beta because everyone want to test that deeps. While it is difficult to hold points, I do find myself easy to fight or even win in 1v2 with this much in-combat mobility.

Some of my key points from playing mirage, not limited to this build:
Pro:

• Very easy for mirage to stomp opponents
• Infinite horizon allows you to tweak utilities a bit, and synergize well with BI
• Jaunt synergize well with GS, allow you to dash in and out like a thief to reset your burst even if you fail
• Jaunt + mantra of resolve allow you to move out of inspiration, though you will still have difficulty when focused or fight condi thief (like inspiration anyway after the nerf).
• Super speed is handy if you want to leave battle to reset, especially with blink/jaunt

Con:

• Nobody ever got tricked by clones unlike what dev feared, and this is day 1!
• Ambush rarely got used with the short time window, should be around 3 seconds
• Ambush from clones goes completely unnoticed, hence I just discard infinite horizon. Scepter clone is kinda alright but does fall short when there’re so many projectile denial.
• False Oasis is too slow and the overall heal is too low for a skill of 30s CD.
• Almost all utilities are not comparable to what we have on base mesmer, they give too little for the CDs.
• Jaunt is annoyingly short for an elite skill, basically mesmer still can’t live without blink
• Axe ranges are wonky and all 3 skills hardly hit without some significant HP sacrifice. Skill 1 is close range that’s difficult to stack on opponent, skill 2’s clone died the moment it spawns in enemy AoE, skill 3 misses almost all the time if opponent move out of original position (very bad design!!!)

Overall I feel really lackluster even though I’m surprisingly more successful on power build. Personally I don’t feel the difference of having mirage or not. I’m not the best player but I feel like the overall skill ceiling isn’t as high as chrono, which determines how far this spec can go and how much hope and time players can invest in it. I think devs are way too cautious with concept of mirage and didn’t actually test its effectiveness, and I seriously hope this beta will change their mind.

In PvP standpoint:
Nope, Chrono is way better. Well of Eternity is still Mesmer’s best heal and the new utilities are way too much to be added in Mesmer’s kit. None of them can replace base Mesmer’s Blink and Portal, and for the third slot there’s a lot of already good options other than the Mirage ones. Jaunt is nice, but a lower CD Moa or Double Gravity is way better than Jaunt’s awful range and small damage. For the traits, it’s a mess. None of the traits feel impactful in a PvP standpoint, except for that GM one that allows you to stunbreak.

In PvE:
It just replaces the Chaos line in our condi builds. Though it is exciting that it may present a new playstyle with clones and ambushes rather than Duelist Phantasms, it pigeonholes PvE mesmers into only 1 build. It would be a lot better if it had some power traits as well to replace the Domi line in base Mesmer, just like how Tempest, Daredevil and Reaper caters to both builds.

As a mesmer main, this makes me sad. Instead of giving us a viable dps-spec for once, we get this crap where we have to run around to collect those mirrors to get access to some skills that feel like trash anyway. Damage is abysmal, but that was kinda to be expected.

Just finished giving the Mirage a spin in sPVP and most of what has posted here I’m in agreement.

The one thing I’d like to emphasize is the quick cooldowns of the ambush skills & how their activated. Just make F5 trigger ambush skills…. have it work the same: F5 isn’t active until you receive Mirage Cloak. It can still have a ICD on it, but just make it a easier to use.

I’ve been pretty excited for this elite spec for a while, it has a cool name, and concept.

That being said, in practice it’s laughably bad. The concept is great, but it feels like a half-built elite spec to be honest.

It feels the least elite out of all the elite specs so far. Every class gets some significant new f1 mechanic. Engis holosmith form, warriors get counter, necros get shades, etc.

Mesmer gets nothing. We get a new dodge that is cool but then ambush skills that are complete garbage.

Mirage cloak is good but ambush skills are not and thats why running over a mirror at some arbitrary distance away is not worth it.

Its damage is also poop.

I’m not sure what the devs were thinking on this. The spec needs a massive buff and slight rework in my opinion.

They should have changed something with the shatter skills.

Refia Montes.3205:

In PvP standpoint:
Nope, Chrono is way better. Well of Eternity is still Mesmer’s best heal and the new utilities are way too much to be added in Mesmer’s kit. None of them can replace base Mesmer’s Blink and Portal, and for the third slot there’s a lot of already good options other than the Mirage ones. Jaunt is nice, but a lower CD Moa or Double Gravity is way better than Jaunt’s awful range and small damage. For the traits, it’s a mess. None of the traits feel impactful in a PvP standpoint, except for that GM one that allows you to stunbreak.

In PvE:
It just replaces the Chaos line in our condi builds. Though it is exciting that it may present a new playstyle with clones and ambushes rather than Duelist Phantasms, it pigeonholes PvE mesmers into only 1 build. It would be a lot better if it had some power traits as well to replace the Domi line in base Mesmer, just like how Tempest, Daredevil and Reaper caters to both builds.

Why the chaos line?

Dueling offers nothing for condi either as you won’t be using pistol or swords.

You’ll just run axe (or scepter)/torch+illusions (compounding power)chaos (10% toughness to condi, staff recharge trait)mirage.

And even then the spec will be pretty mediocre.

Amazing spec. It is a bursty, high-risk kit with lower sustain than Chrono but more sustained damage.

Also, pistol is now viable.

Insp bottom-mid-top
Illu top-bottom-bottom
Mirage bottom-bottom-mid

Sigils: Doom/Fallibility on both
Rune: Rune of the Krait
Amulet: Sage

Heal: Ether Feast
Utilities: Portal Entre/Exeunt, Phantasmal Disenchanter, Illusionary Ambush

Elite: Jaunt

Weapons: Scepter/Torch, Axe/Pistol

Zenith.7301:

Refia Montes.3205:

In PvP standpoint:
Nope, Chrono is way better. Well of Eternity is still Mesmer’s best heal and the new utilities are way too much to be added in Mesmer’s kit. None of them can replace base Mesmer’s Blink and Portal, and for the third slot there’s a lot of already good options other than the Mirage ones. Jaunt is nice, but a lower CD Moa or Double Gravity is way better than Jaunt’s awful range and small damage. For the traits, it’s a mess. None of the traits feel impactful in a PvP standpoint, except for that GM one that allows you to stunbreak.

In PvE:
It just replaces the Chaos line in our condi builds. Though it is exciting that it may present a new playstyle with clones and ambushes rather than Duelist Phantasms, it pigeonholes PvE mesmers into only 1 build. It would be a lot better if it had some power traits as well to replace the Domi line in base Mesmer, just like how Tempest, Daredevil and Reaper caters to both builds.

Why the chaos line?

Dueling offers nothing for condi either as you won’t be using pistol or swords.

You’ll just run axe (or scepter)/torch+illusions (compounding power)chaos (10% toughness to condi, staff recharge trait)mirage.

And even then the spec will be pretty mediocre.

I guess 100Condi+18% condi duration is worth less compared to DE and Sharper Images. You will still run Pistol, I’m pretty sure, cause letting it even do one barrage then replacing it with a clone immediately is a DPS increase. Can’t really say for sure though.

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

Some of my key points from playing mirage, not limited to this build:
Pro:

• Very easy for mirage to stomp opponents
• Infinite horizon allows you to tweak utilities a bit, and synergize well with BI
• Jaunt synergize well with GS, allow you to dash in and out like a thief to reset your burst even if you fail
• Jaunt + mantra of resolve allow you to move out of inspiration, though you will still have difficulty when focused or fight condi thief (like inspiration anyway after the nerf).
• Super speed is handy if you want to leave battle to reset, especially with blink/jaunt

Con:

• Nobody ever got tricked by clones unlike what dev feared, and this is day 1!
• Ambush rarely got used with the short time window, should be around 3 seconds
• Ambush from clones goes completely unnoticed, hence I just discard infinite horizon. Scepter clone is kinda alright but does fall short when there’re so many projectile denial.
• False Oasis is too slow and the overall heal is too low for a skill of 30s CD.
• Almost all utilities are not comparable to what we have on base mesmer, they give too little for the CDs.
• Jaunt is annoyingly short for an elite skill, basically mesmer still can’t live without blink
• Axe ranges are wonky and all 3 skills hardly hit without some significant HP sacrifice. Skill 1 is close range that’s difficult to stack on opponent, skill 2’s clone died the moment it spawns in enemy AoE, skill 3 misses almost all the time if opponent move out of original position (very bad design!!!)

Pretty much this. The only success I’ve also had is running jaunt and mantra of resolve so that I don’t have to run inspiration. I was able to run dueling/chaos/mirage condi and not have it be horrible in wvw but who knows if it is because people just panicked at seeing new particle effects.

1. Ambush is way too short of a cd. It is pretty much dodge and press 1 or you don’t get your ambush. (And even worse, hope that you don’t get interrupted/clones killed if you try to delay your ambush for as long as possible).

2. Mirage mirror time is too short. I was trying to play around with mirage mirrors but the duration is so short that you rather have to immediately chase after you create it or use a jaunt charge just to get it. It seems like having to waste an elite charge to get a blur is horrible trait off. There is no tactical use of it at a 5 second duration. You pretty much need to run at it or you might as well not have made it.

3. Axe 3 needs some type of immobilize or cripple or some type of faster activation time. Maybe it is because of wvw lag but almost every time I tried to use this skill the target would already be out of the circle of clones by the time we all teleported there. Axe ambush was also really slow moving projectiles so I pretty much stopped bothering to use ambush on anything but scepter.

4. Jaunt range is too short. Really no other comment then this. The only use for jaunt is additional condi cleanse to supplement mantra of resolve (but really, most of the time resolve can just do it all) or to run at a mirage mirror (and honestly this was painful to think I was using 2 resources to get one blur effect).

Really I’ve only tried condi PU and power ambush. I guess I’ll continue to try other specs but Mirage is pretty much as constraining as I thought it would be with its focus on clones and very little production/sustain of them (I don’t count that first trait that gives you one clone if you have 2 clones and use a deception skill. The cds on all the deception skills are way too long for that and I would rather use deceptive evasion+energy).

Phantasm skills are more or less useless now.

It’s not nice having to waste valuable defensive skills on some damage.
It’s not nice having 1 out of 5 weapon skills be practically useless.

Also the ambushes are weak (other than scepter, scepter ambush is fine.)

Hard time thinking of a good offhand to use other than torch. Scepter is great, axe is ok for clone generation and detarget but pistol sucks for condi in pvp and same with focus.

Utilities:
-False Oasis: Takes too long to heal. Make it 2 pulses that each heal for like 4k each.
-Illusionary Ambush: I like this one, but cd is a bit too long.
-Sand Through Glass: is alright. However, somehow someone managed to interrupt it?
-Crystal Sands: Haven’t tried it much yet but it’s alright from what i’ve seen.
-Mirage Advance: Pretty useless skill. Requires a target, no stunbreak. It’s just a crappy version of thief shadowstep.
-Jaunt: too short of a range. Can’t find much use for it.

In general I feel like Mirage doesn’t synergize well with base spec lines.
Good traits that would work well together everywhere but no way u can get em all coz they’re spread in diffirent lines.

Jaunt is strong. It’s like Phase Retreat, it can be used even when you’re in the middle of a cast or stunned.

Ambush skills are too inconsistent. Staff clones do normal condition damage, Sceptre clones do half duration, Sword clones do low damage and interrupts (though they don’t seem to utilise interrupt traits), and GS clones are just why. Actually GS Ambush is a huge why: the Spear ambush would fit better here.

The Ambush window is presumably short to make us choose between using Mirage Cloak defensively or offensively. The problem is with Infinite Horizons Staff and Sceptre can use it defensively while getting comparable offensive output, whereas Sword and GS cannot.

Axe and Deception skills are largely meh. False Oasis is weak and most Deception utilities don’t quite do enough for their CDs. The Mirage Mirror mechanic is nice but doesn’t last long enough and isn’t very controllable: I’d prefer if shattering a Mirage Mirror give you Endurance instead.

Mirage traits are a bit of a mess. Adepts and Masters are again rather meh. The minors aren’t that hot either. GM is where it starts getting interesting but only really between Infinite Horizons and Elusive Mind, which to me largely depends on what weapon you use due to how inconsistent Clone ambushes are.

IMO Infinite Horizons should be the GM minor and Speed of Sand should be a GM Master with a buffed effect, say 33% longer Mirage Cloak duration on top of a longer duration Superspeed (the current duration is pretty negligible).

Why did Anet have to make ambushes rely on dodges?

I think a lot could have been diffirent with Mirage but making such changes right now would mean a complete overhaul of the whole elite spec.

I think a “simple” change would be instead of giving these utility skills those annoying Mirage Mirrors we get a short cooldown F5 skill that gives us Mirage Cloak.

Axe #3 barely ever hits as well, it’s way too slow.
Axe #2 clone spawning is too inconsistent.

It feels bad to have to use dodge for offense. It didn’t feel that bad with Daredevil coz they had an additional dodge anyway. But our additional dodges coughMirageMirrorcough are kinda annoying to use.

Mesmer is back to feeling like that it works against itself with Mirage. Part of might be that we are spoiled by Chrono. Chronos felt fast and smooth to use. Mirages feel slow and clunky. A bit part of it is that the cast times are so long. Mirages are asked to play more like thieves, but need to take twice as long to do anything.

The whole profession feels like they went ahead and nerfed every skill ahead of time because they knew people would complain if mesmers were too competitive.

Abelisk.4527:

Amazing spec. It is a bursty, high-risk kit with lower sustain than Chrono but more sustained damage.

Also, pistol is now viable.

Insp bottom-mid-top
Illu top-bottom-bottom
Mirage bottom-bottom-mid

Sigils: Doom/Fallibility on both
Rune: Rune of the Krait
Amulet: Sage

Heal: Ether Feast
Utilities: Portal Entre/Exeunt, Phantasmal Disenchanter, Illusionary Ambush

Elite: Jaunt

Weapons: Scepter/Torch, Axe/Pistol

Without the Dueling line you have almost zero bleeds. You have your axe autos and the procs from your krait runes.

DaShi.1368:

The whole profession feels like they went ahead and nerfed every skill ahead of time because they knew people would complain if mesmers were too competitive.

It feels more like they didn’t have the resources to finish all the elite specs. They had a bunch of really cool ideas that didn’t quite work together, but they went ahead and duct taped them all together anyways because they were out of time…

I blame Soulbeast and Weaver.

Mirage is weak in pvp to be honest. This spec is soooo clone reliant yet they die like flies…

I am disappointed because all we get is a new dodge mechanic thats it. With chrono we also got just one additional shatter. Anet really doesn’t want to put as much work into mesmers as in other professions that get exciting new mechanics.

It’s definitely interesting, I ran the usual condi cancer using axe/torch – staff wanderer/nightmare-undead.

With the 3 Jaunts, Phase Retreat, Illusionary Ambush, Axes of symmetry it can be really hard for any melee to track you down. You can keep mobile while spewing out the usual condi cancer. Ran the usual mirror images stun break and the necessary mantra of resolve.

The 5 second vigor on the oasis i feel could be a little more, maybe some endurance restore rather than vigor so it doesnt just get stripped.

The whole walking over mirage mirrors thing i just avoided, it’s just plain bad. The only thing i had with the mirage mirrors was the Oasis heal. Because a lot of the time im standing on it for the pulses anyway.

And the ambush feels slow, whats with that massive staff wind-up animation before it fires off? You have already burned a dodge or skill to give you the mirage cloak and now you have to wait for the animation?

Simonoly.4352:

Yeah this is so much weaker than I was expecting. There’s going to be some massive buffs in certain areas.

This isn’t a class that historically gets “massive buffs”.

msalakka.4653:

Simonoly.4352:

Yeah this is so much weaker than I was expecting. There’s going to be some massive buffs in certain areas.

This isn’t a class that historically gets “massive buffs”.

posting here is useless
we need a main post on reddit . coz right in main thread about elites spec , many said they like mirage they are not mes main and they only like mirage visual effect . once pof is on they will flee to op ele or holo or deadeye .

we have a chance to get the buff and reword
but not from forum

Mikkel.8427:

Abelisk.4527:

Amazing spec. It is a bursty, high-risk kit with lower sustain than Chrono but more sustained damage.

Also, pistol is now viable.

Insp bottom-mid-top
Illu top-bottom-bottom
Mirage bottom-bottom-mid

Sigils: Doom/Fallibility on both
Rune: Rune of the Krait
Amulet: Sage

Heal: Ether Feast
Utilities: Portal Entre/Exeunt, Phantasmal Disenchanter, Illusionary Ambush

Elite: Jaunt

Weapons: Scepter/Torch, Axe/Pistol

Without the Dueling line you have almost zero bleeds. You have your axe autos and the procs from your krait runes.

Indeed, that was a draft ofc. My current build is better.

Axe 2 is a very unreliable clone generator in pvp.

False Oasis is as the name imply, false, you have to stand in the same location for 5 sec to get the full heal.

Jaunt, 400 range? seriously? at least make it 600 but the confusion and the remove condition are nice.

Deception skills, create mirage mirror then you have to walk there to collect them, you aren’t gonna fool any one with the new mirage cloak.

Ambush skills are nice except sword and greatsword.
For sword ambush skill, the daze and the dash is good but damage is very very very underwhelming, same as or lower than sword auto? why?
For greatsword ambush skill, what is this? a new lootstick skill? dev know that clones deal little to no damage right? seriously greatsword and spear auto need apply a condition either bleed or vulnerability but greatsword ambush skill look really cool, I am still not using it.

On the plus side:
Guardian got mantras, yep the old mantras, long cooldown and long caste time. People have been say that the casting time is too long, now we will have more voice from the guardian.
The best one is the warrior full counter, give illusionary riposte to warrior, including the damage with 300 range! The original skill was already bad but at least warrior doesn’t have that awkward animation after the counter like illusionary riposte.

You don’t have to stand in the false oasis animation to be healed. That just marks the location the mirage mirror will spawn at. Moving away from the location does not stop the healing.

Accidently posted my feedback here and don’t want to repost it.

Long post short: I do like the concept but it is pretty rough around the edges and many numbers are undertuned. Additionally, some mechanics or traits should be changed/improved to make the spec more appealing to non-condition Mesmers.

So far, i really like the concept of the Mirage, it has potential to be a very nice power and dps spec. But it needs some work.

The mirage mechanic consist in gaining Mirage Cloak through evasion and Mirage Mirror, which then change the skill 1 to be an ambush skill, which is an upgrade version of that skill. There are some issues with this mechanic:

• You lose defense for damage.
• Most of the ambush skills are lackluster or just right out bad in some cases.
• Mirage Mirror sounds interesting, but it’s not worth using in practice.
• Ambush from clones is attached to Grand Master trait.
• Phantasm doesn’t use Ambush, which renders that whole part of the mesmer useless.

My suggestions would be:

• We need more sources of mirage cloak aside from dodging, i would suggest adding it for every shatter skills.
• Infinite Horizon should be baseline.
• Rebalance the ambush skills and make the clones attack as soon as we get Mirage cloak.
• The elite recharge times should be a bit lower. I would trade the confusion for a longer distance or a lower recharge time.
• Mirage Advance shouldn’t need us to be in line of sight of the target to use.
• Mirage Cloak should last a bit longer or make the Mirage Cloak gained from Mirage Mirror last longer.
• Phantasms should use the ambush of your current weapon or, even better, a different version of ambush for each type of phantasm.

I play mesmer since release of gw2 and it is my main char beside my engineer. Here is my feedback.

The good things:
- The new dodge mechanism is just awesome!!! really love it
- Idea behind ambush skills is really nice
- The amount of ports is awesome
- More ways to get some condi cleanse, finally

The critics in general:
- we already have solid condi options something like aoe power dmg would have been great for wvw zerging maybe with an long bow as an magic arrow shooter (:
- movement speed sucks in wvw, cast time of ambush attack skills is to slow
- Clone generation is a bad
- Running to a mirror spawned randomly or far away from you is just not viewable
- Less stealth access
- Seems not viewable for power builds yet
- Dodging and running forwad seems to be as fast a normal dodge, but moving sidewards or backwards is not :/

Concrete Improvement Suggesion:
- Increase the ambush window to 2-3 seconds
- Decrease all ambush skill attacks to 1/2 second please they are to slow for a real ambush
- GS and Sword Ambush skills deal to less damage, one should be a bursty one. (personally hoped for something backstab like)
- Ambush Attacks for phantasms, when traited

- Increase the range von jaunt to at least 600, maybe even 750
- Please rework the heal.. its just not viable
- Illusionary Ambush is awesome, but should port your phantasms as well and could spawn a clone as well, same goes for axe skill 3
- Mirage Advanced could use ground targeting and a lower cast time, could also leave a clone behind when you port back to origin position
- Sand thorugh glass isn’t as good as the other stun breaks maybe it could stealth us for 2 seconds?

- Self deception: creates a clone when you have 0 or 1 illusion
- mirage mantle: increase protection duration, could also give us swiftness so we have access to speed
- Shards of glass is not realiable and mirrors spawn proabably at bad position, could be replaced by a trait for power builds

- Lingering thoughts is kinda good, but feels strange… dunno what it is it feels somehow pretty slow and like i’m really vulnerable during that attack. Is the displayed 1/2 sec attack time really correct? Maybe it is because of the forward movement.
Could always generate a clone
- Axe Symmetry is a good skill but should also port your non axe clones and phantasms, it could also need an increased range and attack speed, maybe remove the evade frame here and give it to axe skill 2

sword ambush creates a clone…
since now swort is and i guess in future it still will be the direct dps weapon of choice, which considering latest patch changes means, you wan to have phantasms (from offhand sword) and keep them alive to get max dmg boosts
but now you cut down you dmg a lot every time you dodge due to replacing one max stack phantasmn with one clone…

working as intended?

Frankly Phantasms not doing ambushes is just silly. Why?

SuinegTsol.1729:

sword ambush creates a clone…
since now swort is and i guess in future it still will be the direct dps weapon of choice, which considering latest patch changes means, you wan to have phantasms (from offhand sword) and keep them alive to get max dmg boosts
but now you cut down you dmg a lot every time you dodge due to replacing one max stack phantasmn with one clone…

working as intended?

Clones don’t replace phantasms any longer.

But the main point still stands. Sword ambush is worse than worthless in PvE. 1/4 sec daze isn’t even remotely useful for breakbars (hell, just like manstra of disctraction is trash in pve since 1 sec daze does nothing to a breakbar).

Problem as well is that you want the 9% damage modifier from 3 illusions active from compounding power, so you’ll never want to shatter.

Which makes the adept tier trait that applies confusion just bad.

I don’t get why they placed a cd on it when its cooldown is effectively limited by the amount of dodges we have.

Zenith.7301:

Clones don’t replace phantasms any longer.

Except Axe 2’s clone? It might be a bug or isn’t the case at all, but I remember someone being really upset by this.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Zenith.7301:

Clones don’t replace phantasms any longer.

Except Axe 2’s clone? It might be a bug or isn’t the case at all, but I remember someone being really upset by this.

IF you have 3 phantasms up, and then use ANY clone-producing ability, it WILL replace one of your phantasms.

The only time that clones don’t replace Phantasms the Sceptre Auto.

We’re so consistent at being inconsistent .__.

I feel like if Anet wanted to make Mirage perfect they’d have to change a lot in the Mirage spec.

Some suggestions I thought of:

-Make Mirage unable to use phantasms but all phantasm skills would make a clone instead (spawn a clone based on main hand weapon)

-Give Mirage clones more health so they don’t instantly die from a couple of auto attacks or random AoEs.

-Instead of giving us these annoying Mirage Mirror spawns just make the Deception skills give us Mirage Cloak. OR give us an F5 That grants us Mirage Cloak.

-Axe #1 has way too short range. Give it at least a 300 range. What’s the point of having a detarget if the enemy can easily see which one the real memser is by just moving back a bit and notice the movement patterns.

-Axe #2 count recharge should be affected by Illusionist’s Celerity. It’s bugged & doesn’t work.

-Axe #3 should be faster, the confusion attack barely hits on a moving opponent.

-False Oasis: Should be 2 Heal pulses & give us Mirage Cloak & restores some endurance on the 3rd pulse

-Illusionary Ambush: I like this but I wish it would detarget like Axe #3 so that the detarget mechanic isn’t only bound to the axe.

-Mirage Advance: Double the timeframe of being able to return, make it a stunbreak. Would still be diffirent enough from a Thieves Shadowstep.

- Crystal Sands: looks like a decent PvE skill, but it should hit all targets 6×.

-Sand through Glass: I actually like this skill because it’s a stunbreak, dodge & allows you to get Mirage Cloak. However, the Mirage Mirror portion is more annoying than it does good. Just give us Mirage cloak when “dodging” backwards instead.

-Jaunt: I can see good use from this but the range is way too low. This needs AT LEAST 600 range. Maybe up to 900.

-Self Deception: Give us a clone as long as we have a clone up already.

-Riddle of Sand: Give us the extra confusion regardless of shattering or entering combat.

-Nomad’s Endurance should trigger on Mirage Cloak, not shatters. Why give us a trait that makes us use something that lowers our dps?

-Shards of Glass should be replaced with a trait that resummons our clones the first time they are killed & gives them Mirage Cloak when they are resummoned. If clones get more health coz of Mirage then people wouldn’t accidentally kill them all the time either I suppose.

-Mirage Mantle: Give us 2,5 sec of protection.

-Mirrored Axes: Should generate 2 additional axes instead of 1.

-Elusive Mind: should remove 2 conditions.

-Speed of Sand should be in the first Mirage trait. And replace the current Speed of Sand. Make it a trait that increases clone health by a lot. (100% maybe even more. Not sure what clone health is currently.)

-Axe ambush: Should be more accurate & consistent to hit.

-Staff ambush: should just do more conditions. I feel like it’s supposed to be an AoE version of scepter, but it barely does any damage with more target. Remove the buff part because bouncing boons are kinda useless. Also make it hit more consistently.

-Sword ambush: I really like the idea of this but it’s just not that useful. A short daze is only useful to interrupt skills but it’s way too slow to interrupt something. Make it a 1 sec stun baseline. Make clones trigger traits. Increase damage a bit.

- Greatsword ambush: I don’t even know where to start with this one. I’d have liked it if it would be 1 huge laser that did a lot of AoE damage.

It’s strange, they said they developped Mirage first but why does it look like it’s the spec that has the least amount of (good) changes to their core mechanic. Looks like they didn’t put as much effort in it as expected.

With all of these problems I still managed to find “some” fun in the class. Mirage Cloak is a lot of fun & very useful. Dodging while CC’ed, dodging while stomping, dodging while casting. Great stuff.
Also scepter ambush is amazing.

However with how much stuff that’s just weak, useless or broken there isn’t much else to it that actually works.

Refia Montes.3205:

The only time that clones don’t replace Phantasms the Sceptre Auto.

I wish they’d change ALL clone-producing abilities to work like the scepter auto. That would be a massive QoL change.

I like the idea of giving us clone-death traits in Mirage. You can simply make it not apply unless the clone is killed instead of replaced if they’re that worried about it. However, the whole reason they didn’t like it was because they didn’t like the way clones were being used. Well, with a clone-centric elite spec, I think it would make sense for enemies to want to think twice before killing the clones. This would increase their survivability or our DPS, either way makes sense.

Dondagora.9645:

I like the idea of giving us clone-death traits in Mirage. You can simply make it not apply unless the clone is killed instead of replaced if they’re that worried about it. However, the whole reason they didn’t like it was because they didn’t like the way clones were being used. Well, with a clone-centric elite spec, I think it would make sense for enemies to want to think twice before killing the clones. This would increase their survivability or our DPS, either way makes sense.

Yeah I agree with this. I think they’d need to buff clone health with Mirage for this though. Since a lot of things cleave people would end up accidentally killing something they don’t want to kill & get punished for doing that.

Phantasms should just be retooled.

Make them a one strike summon, despawning after their strike. Lower the cooldown on them to 8-10 seconds cd and buff the damage of their attacks to compensate.

We then just have clones for the illusion counter and can use shatters freely in PvE without such crippling loss.

Buff cry of frustration to apply 3 stacks of torment,confusion, and weakness per illusion shattered (now it’s our condi shatter). Buff mindwrack damage in PvE only by a further 25-30%.

Diversion aoe dazes baseline and daze duration stacks per illusion used, for a total of 3 seconds daze.

Greatsword autoattack damage normalized to the highest value for all ranges in PvE.

GS ambush skill does triple its autoattack damage and provides 7 might for 8 seconds.

Sword ambush damage quadrupled, instead of daze give 3 seconds of quickness and 5 stacks of might for 8 seconds.

Axe ambush needs projectiles sped up significantly. The axes shouldn’t take longer than a gravedigger to strike. Buff condi application.

I don’t know who started this rumor but False Oasis does not require to be stood on

It is currently the most healing skill in the game for Mesmers (with Sage’s you get around 10k) and with Dune Cloak is works nicely in duels.

For movement speed take Rune of the Traveler.

Abelisk.4527:

I don’t know who started this rumor but False Oasis does not require to be stood on

It is currently the most healing skill in the game and with Dune Cloak is works nicely in duels.

You don’t need to stay in it for the heal, but you need to stay near it for the mirror. Otherwise, it defeats the whole purpose of using it.

Yea but if you’re dancing around a point dueling someone the mirror is really close to you.

With dune cloak you can at least feel rewarded for gaining the mirrors.

Is this thread mature enough yet that we can compare the fact that leather classes can out damage us by twice our DPS by simply spamming a single button?

I feel like False Oasis is trash compared to Ether Feast. I wish some one would show me how it has merit.

Jaunt’s distance is the same as a dodge roll. Please put dodge back where it was.

Also Axes… The next most blatant weapon after a club. I know you wanted to give everyone another weapon, I just think this wasn’t the best option. But we would have complained about anything I’m sure. We already have sword/staff/shield… But Mirror shields could have been a thing!

Riddle of Sand – Your next ambush attack will apply confusion. They do that already.

The more time I spend with axe the worse it feels. The auto-attack really is too slow for a melee range condi weapon, axe 2 locking you into an animation is just a death sentence for Mesmer and massive interrupt bait. But it’s Axe 3 which really causes problems for me as it just doesn’t work. I’m not sure where I read it earlier but it really is like the old Illusionary Leap where it feels almost non-functional in a competitive non-flat environment.

Compare Mesmer axe to something like D/D on Spellbreaker and it feels like we’re playing entirely different games. I really hope improvements are made before release because I’m really gutted that Mirage plays like this

Just my two pence as a pve-player only playing mesmer/chrono.

When i was playing mirage for a short bit, i got a lot of gw1-assassin feeling.
Leaping, shadow stepping, and back. I saw the link with the torch to go invisible and all that stuff. I got a lot of mobility and a hit-and-run feeling which i liked a lot. I liked the idea, the utilities, the way it wanted to go.

there where two things:

i really got the feeling it’s pvp-based mainly. The “getting rid of player-target” for instance is something very pvp-y. As is the "shadow step to a random location togheter with your clones. I don’t see me using those in pve.

And secondly and more important.
What the hell are we doing with another condiweapon?
If all utilities are about mobility and fast hitting, how is the weapon that is linked to it based on slow sustained dmg? It would be way more logical to make it a hit-and run thing, hit hard, go invisible, hit hard again. Together with our low health pool and light amor that would be in balance and would make perfect sense.

The forward leap i hated as well. Since it has no direction (forward), and you don’t know where you gonna end up. How’s that useful in a game based on positioning yourself tactically? We just leap forward, not even to our foe, but randomly in a direction. Seriously annoying. and that while there are skills in game (guardian sword leap ex.) that do the same but more epic.

Kudo’s on the animation though, they are awesome.
So in short. Can we have also a good pve-idea about Mirage?
and can Utilities and weaponskills be linked? Keep the mobility-idea, get rid of the condi idea. ex: have a hit-and-run weapon in combination with the mobility.
Can we just try to make a mesmer/mirage-whatever as epic as we always make the elementalists? They are like the uber-mages. Can we plz be too, in a time-based-deceptive idea?

just my two cents

I completely agree with you! I was so hyped for the mirage but this elite spec is just a mess.

• 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.

• Mirages are required to keep up clones, yet clones die like flies in pvp and wvw. There is simply not enough clone generation available.

• As already mentioned, mirage cloak is a weaker dodge because of it’s reduced mobility.

• 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!