Understanding ambush
According to this post at least the staff and Axe ambush attacks ahve a 1 second recharge so at most we will only be able to use it twice with one dodge. Still it will be interesting to see how it works.
The way I’m thinking of it (and this is especially because the elite feels like shortbow 5 on thief and mirage is getting deceptions) is that the new ambush is basically like stealth attack but different. Each Thief mh weapon has an auto attack which changes when they are stealthed. The stealth attack is different for each weapon. Press 1 to activate stealth attack.
Likewise, the mirage has a unique kind of ambush attack for each main-hand weapon (7 total including underwater ones). These can only be accessed while under mirage cloak (this is not a stealth, there is like no extra stealth from what I can tell on this elite spec). So you have 1.5 seconds to press #1 to activate the ambush. However… Illusions (both clones and phantasms) can be traited to have mirage cloak
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/163637673
2:10:21
Those clones aren’t waiting for the auto and replacing the auto with the ambush. They are COMPELLED to. Like instantly, all 3 clones do the same attack as soon as he pressed dodge despite not all of them auto attacking at the same rate. He also isn’t auto attacking after pressing dodge. So those clones are using the ambush regardless of whether or not the Mirage presses 1. So I don’t buy the idea that only clones can use ambushes because “clones can auto attack but phantasms can’t.” If phantasms didn’t get the ambush, why does the GM trait say illusions? 3/4 second evade on phantasms and that’s it? I don’t buy it.
I think the reason WP is focusing on clones is because he somehow thinks that clones doing dmg is OP but not fully understanding the extent to which phantasms will also benefit. Also I think he just likes the idea of clones acting more like the mesmer because of “trickery.”
Thx Duck. My understanding of how this works is similar to what you’re saying.
So how do you see the ambush window working? If pressing dodge compels all illusions to instantly do the ambush attack (and the ambush attack has it’s own cooldown), what’s the function of the window? The only thing I can guess is that the window duration stacks. So if you can somehow trigger four Mirage Cloaks in rapid succession, the illusions will do 5 ambush attacks (because your 4 windows of 1.25 seconds each will stack up to 5 total seconds of window).
It’s not clear how soon we will get to try this all out. It would be really cool to have some short posts by the devs on how some of these new mechanics actually work.
From what I saw in the video. There’s a second mechanic with the weird crystal thing. You conjure the crystal and that empowers using the Ambush mechanic.
From what I saw in the video. There’s a second mechanic with the weird crystal thing. You conjure the crystal and that empowers using the Ambush mechanic.
It appears that hitting the crystal causes the same effect that dodging does.