Guild Wars 2

As I’ve made Astralaria there’s no going back.

Plan B is Firebrand alt and sticking with Chrono, though I enjoyed Mirage enough that I don’t think I’ll need to resort to plan B.

Have they updated ascended gear to be able to take any infusions yet? That’s one thing that’s bugged me – eg not being able to put offensive infusions in armour or defensive in weapons.

Edit – ah I see they have, nice!

Anyway good to know the current known state of elite specs is available on there.

Linken.6345:

Curunen.8729:

In general as many have said the community is overall friendly, pleasant, welcoming, patient and polite, especially in open world pve.

However you are likely to run into the odd sad kitten, usually in instanced pve (fractals/raids) or pvp – I’ve been sent horrible messages in the vein of cyber bullying, by elitists who think their apparent prowess at a game allows them to demean others. I could understand if it was ranked/tournament pvp for example, but people being rude in hotjoin/unranked makes no sense to me.

Fortunately the block feature exists so it’s easy to not have to suffer further insult after the initial offence.

In wvw at least you don’t see enemy chat so the most abuse you could get is jumping on your corpse or tossing siege on it – easy to ignore.

Not really true they can block you to get account name and then whisper you in wvw.

True but they have to make the effort of doing that which in my experience rarely happens, unlike in pvp or pve.

In general as many have said the community is overall friendly, pleasant, welcoming, patient and polite, especially in open world pve.

However you are likely to run into the odd sad kitten, usually in instanced pve (fractals/raids) or pvp – I’ve been sent horrible messages in the vein of cyber bullying, by elitists who think their apparent prowess at a game allows them to demean others. I could understand if it was ranked/tournament pvp for example, but people being rude in hotjoin/unranked makes no sense to me.

Fortunately the block feature exists so it’s easy to not have to suffer further insult after the initial offence.

In wvw at least you don’t see enemy chat so the most abuse you could get is jumping on your corpse or tossing siege on it – easy to ignore.

While the sound and visual effect of the mirrors are nice, I don’t care for the gameplay of picking up “powerups”.

It’s really gimmicky.

I’d rather mirrors be an optional supplementary mechanic that you can choose to trait for/build into or not. Sure I agree every Deception skill should drop a mirror, and shatters should drop mirrors – but I don’t want mirrors flying out of our kitten every few seconds because for me it’s not elegant gameplay IMO.

I’d rather they focus on the ambushes and sustain of clones through evade sharing (really want IH baseline).

Or…

… you could just disable double tap to dodge and use the dodge key.

Mirage – 5/10

I love a lot of things about it – especially the animations and visual effects (though some of the sound effects could be improved).

The mechanics are fun and a change of pace from spamming shatters with chrono, although it’s not as fluid and well executed given there doesn’t seem to be a clear design goal with it (I don’t mind about the concept being vague, but the playstyle isn’t clear at the moment).

Gah, I hope mesmer gets rifle in the future – there’s so many cool rifle skins in this game that I can’t use on my main.

And this one is awesome.

Abelisk.4527:

Elusive Mind can replace Inspiration.

The rate of condi clear is far too low to be of any practical use, and the stunbreak isn’t really necessary given what we have access to in skills as well as being able to dodge while stunned anyway (just not breaking it).

Restorative Illusions under Alacrity with traited shatter cooldowns is far superior.

I don’t rate Elusive Mind in its current state – Mantra of Resolve and Jaunt with cleansing sigils and prestige should be enough.

Yeah I agree – thematically this is the direction I would like to see them go in next.

Yeah I love the animations on Firebrand axe too.

Managed to get some footage of it on asura this evening – I was late getting back from work and only managed to get in the last 20 mins of the stress test so it’s a bit rough/rushed. Also the lighting in Crystal Oasis is very intense which isn’t a good thing.

Anyway I love all the spinning trails with the asura animations.

I honestly think there should be a trait, maybe even a minor trait that removes movement impairing conditions when you dodge (ie cripple/chill/immobilise), like Daredevil’s Unhindered Combatant trait does.

It would fit thematically too.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Curunen.8729:

Yay!

Nice timing for UK too.

Even better, now! We moved it up by two hours, so the test will start at 17:00 or 5:00 PM BST!

Oh no! I’ll have to try and leave work early in order to get home by 5! :o

Mikkel.8427:

Lincolnbeard.1735:

Chronophantasm – now only works when you have three phantasms up.

Chronophantasma- Shattering a phantasm recharges all phantasm abilities by 2 secs. AKA- Original Persistence of Memory.

Oh kitten, that actually reads like it could possibly come from a patch note. :o

Yay!

Nice timing for UK too.

I was being a bit tongue in cheek with that comment – yeah certainly nerfs will be applied in appropriate places to level things out.

For the record I enjoyed playing mirage a lot, enough to finish crafting astralaria and ten stacks of endurance regen food in preparation (I’m making a wholesale shift from chrono, intend to immerse myself fully in mirage) and was reasonably successful testing against other specs in hotjoin – there are some nice synergies with the line and a playstyle that I can really get behind.

Oh no… that’s… well I suppose that’s normal so I’m not surprised. :/

Maybe once we’ve been wiped all over the floor by holosmiths, scourges and so on then there’ll be some fixes/changes/buffs.

JohnnyJHB.7360:

Ivanova (Claudia Christian) voices the female norn.

Woah, seriously?! :o That’s really cool, I had no idea.

I’m wondering if dodging could simply be changed to give 1 second of Mirage Cloak and 1 second of superspeed.

This means each dodge will proc a slightly longer evade duration than a normal dodge, but at the expense of no movement other than running – I think that’s a fair trade off.

I mean it’s not a normal dodge that moves you, so having the 3/4s evade time restriction shouldn’t apply in this case. 1s could make it a lot smoother, also covering the ambush cast window a little and allow a little more survivability when moving out of aoes.

The whole thing about mass killing isn’t really a choice here or in many games given many have competitive aspects – and combat prowess is one of those competitive aspects built into the basic human nature.

GW2 at heart is a fighting game dressed up with a whole lot of fluff. There are no alternate choices beyond fighting – your entire character build revolves around combat and every game mode revolves around combat. I personally think it is ridiculous to try role playing in GW2 because there are no roles to play – you fight, that’s it. It’s a very one dimensional game, made up for by the combat mechanics being really good and fun.

So taking that as standard, I find the most I can do is to want to relate a character with my personality – I don’t care about gender and as I said in a previous post I will avoid playing human unless there is no other option – will always play a beast race, whether a male argonian in TES or female asura in GW2 and so on. I relate to asura humour, quirkiness, science/metaphysics and also love rabbits/hares – asura remind me of hyperintelligent rabbits, and there’s even a norn npc child in one of the pve maps who has really funny dialogue thinking you love bunnies because you have big ears. (see attached images) This kind of dialogue is what I love to see and why I play asura in GW2.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lietta

Yes I’d love to play a game where there are other options than combat – for example when Star Citizen eventually reaches alpha 3.0 and beyond, I intend to immerse myself through role playing as there will be many ways to enjoy the game that don’t go looking for combat (although you’d still have to defend yourself)..

As others have said – pretty much anything is unkillable in open world pve.

A lot of awesome ideas in there, I love it!

Great ideas for future elite specs, particularly engi, mesmer and guardian.

And yeah an underwater overhaul would be great (starting by making all the current disfunctional skills/traits/legends have some use underwater).

Regarding characters in general and particularly species, I like to project my personality onto my main which is why I find it easiest to relate to asura.

It’s nothing to do with making a character look like you – I don’t look like an asura irl but I love and can relate to how the asura player character acts and behaves. It feels right.

Playing as a human makes me feel uneasy.

Seriously – if I try to create a custom male human character I don’t really gel with it and I hate trying to make a character that looks like myself irl. If I try to create a female human character in some games I find that I can make a character that’s more relatable than a male character oddly enough. For example in Mass Effect I played default male Sheploo but custom FemShep. Also it’s sometimes down to the voice acting – eg if I prefer male or female voice for the character (in MEAndromeda I prefered Sara’s voice actor over Scott’s, although going against the grain I actually preferred Mark Meer’s voice for Shepard).

However in any game that allows it I will always make a beast race or alien, never a human unless its the only option.

I like asura because they remind me of rabbits with the long ears, and I like rabbits.

I play a female asura simply because its not my first character – my first character was a male asura thief which I was able to project my character on and relate to much more than any other race in gw2 – the quirkiness, the science/metaphysics, the attitude and so on. However I got bored of thief very quickly (like a week after launch) so made a female asura mesmer, just for a difference – and I’ve stuck with it ever since.

Actually the female asura’s voice has to be my favourite PCs voice out of all of them that I’ve heard. Only Taimi’s is better.

So this boosts concentration by 3% of power and 6% of condi damage.

Is it affected and increased by Might modifying power and condi damage?

I would love all shatters to be reworked into contextual ambush style attacks so none of them destroyed illusions but instead triggered them to cast something that dealt similar effects to normal shatters.

^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).

Ohoni.6057:

But I’d rather they give axe the tools necessary to survive in melee range – like 3/4s evade on axe 2. I can understand if they’re reluctant to do that because the cooldowns are very low (compared with Blurred Frenzy),

Given that the Mirage dodge is designed so that you can continue fighting with it (and in this case dodge while using the axe 2 ability), what if instead of providing a short evade, it just provided like 1/4 Endurance or something, a slight speed boost on how often you can use dodge. This would be in some ways better in terms of flexibility, and others worse in that you wouldn’t get as much dodge out of each proc, but it could be nice.

That would work if we had other sources of endurance regen – because currently there’s just not enough endurance to be able to do everything they want us to do with it – avoid damage, cover casts, trigger ambush and move.

However I’m not sure I’d enjoy further incentivising spamming dodge for the simple reason of thumb strain (I have dodge on spacebar) from repetitive pressing.

I mean yeah I definitely want to see axe auto and axe 2 be able to restore endurance on hit, though having built in evade om axe 2 would feel a lot smoother for gameplay.

Esplen.3940:

Shadu.3701:

The teleporting from axe 3 and Illusionary Ambush felt horrible. Especially Illusionary Ambush, this skill did activate the ambush buuuut… it would constantly teleport me too far away from an enemy so the ambush from the axe wouldn’t be able to hit. Axe 3 often also teleported me too far away which resulted into me having to run to the enemy to hit him afterwards.

I think this is an issue with the teleportation. It tries to place you around the target, but it also places you within 600 range of the target, which means you’re not necessarily in range to do what you need to do. Sometimes it’s a clone that gets put that far away, but they instantly move towards the target to do the leap attack, while you as a player sometimes don’t end up leaping (thus missing the 5 Confusion burst).

Additionally, I had one instance where I ended up facing the wrong direction and it completely shut down my auto rotation while I had to figure out where to face. It didn’t take me a long time, but it wasn’t fluid by any means. The problems with the Axe3 skill and IAmbush are the same as they are functionally the same effect just with different riders.

Yeah Illusionary Ambush certainly needs fixing because every time I used it it faced me away from the target making it impossible to ambush.

Axe 3 was better (although still needs improvement) in that it at least faced towards the target.

Vitali.5039:

1) Be Ranger
2) Pick a Dragon
3) While the Dragonhunter its about to chase your pet go decap. EZ.

:D

Ok that got me. xD

Melpomene.2367:

Just one thing I noticed with Mirage’s skill “Illusionary Ambush.”

Frequently when using the skill, it ports you to a random spot with you NOT facing your target. The time to use the Ambush skill often ran out and if in PvP, the target might easily notice which one is not you.

Other than that, didn’t notice any bugs. Thanks for letting us test. o/

Yeah this is a very annoying bug. Illusionary Ambush needs to be fixed so that the player will always face towards the target immediately on teleport, so you can cast the ambush.

Power (Major), Condition Damage (Major), Precision (Minor), Concentration (Minor)

Zenith.7301:

Curunen.8729:

Maybe I’m seeing things weirdly, but personally found Mirage to be a breeze in open world, much easier and faster than condi chrono – unless they’ve deliberately undertuned the pve mobs’ health in Crystal Oasis compared to similar veterans in say LW3 maps.

Yes it’s still clunky, still needs a lot of fixing and buffs, but the core playstyle flow and damage application felt solid.

From the IH thread:
“Ok this stress test has just confirmed how much I LOVE infinite horizon.

Sod all the other traits, this trait is so much fun to use and synergises really well with burst for my build – ie get some clones out, axe 3, or utility blink then ambush into shatter.

The point is not leaving clones up indefinitely casting ambush – it’s having them all cast one (or two) ambush and straight into F1 or F2. In the case of staff if you position yourself right and with deceptive evasion you can stack a good bit of might.
On axe it’s better to ambush in close range after axe 3 then shatter.

Cooldowns are such you can get a good cadence going in terms of ambush into shatter into melee with things like axe 2, back into staff and repeat.

Either way it’s chewing through the large pve mobs like butter, better than chrono because both axe and staff cleave everything and I don’t even have the right stats to make use of things like sharper images or precision for more direct damage crit (I want to go viper for hybrid but the demo gear was carrion).

Also I find it surprising how much the evade sharing keeps illusions alive in order to shatter.

There’s a lot of issues to be fixed, but infinite horizon must be in game – either basline for the class or as it is now, because it is so much fun to use. I think if it didn’t exist I’d rather play chrono."

The mobs are undertuned. They also nerfed the hounds in the story step from the last build.

More importantly, mesmer has never had issues in open world because illusions often take aggro, drawing the burst skills/cc from mobs onto them instead of you.

Fair enough, I thought the mobs were all a bit weak.

Regarding aggro though – I was playing aggressively in melee such that it didn’t make much difference – either illusions were shattered or I’d be focused anyway.

Samug.6512:

Don’t you need to stress the servers for an hour longer maybe? Or a day?…

I think they should stress them for the next three weeks to guarantee the servers will be stable by launch.

;) (Pretty please?)

radioAspen.6829:

I didn’t realize how bad the root on the scepter ambush was until the stress test. It needs to go, full stop. It makes no sense with how ambush skills actually work.

Scepter is overestimated tbh.

Maybe I’m seeing things weirdly, but personally found Mirage to be a breeze in open world, much easier and faster than condi chrono – unless they’ve deliberately undertuned the pve mobs’ health in Crystal Oasis compared to similar veterans in say LW3 maps.

Yes it’s still clunky, still needs a lot of fixing and buffs, but the core playstyle flow and damage application felt solid.

From the IH thread:
“Ok this stress test has just confirmed how much I LOVE infinite horizon.

Sod all the other traits, this trait is so much fun to use and synergises really well with burst for my build – ie get some clones out, axe 3, or utility blink then ambush into shatter.

The point is not leaving clones up indefinitely casting ambush – it’s having them all cast one (or two) ambush and straight into F1 or F2. In the case of staff if you position yourself right and with deceptive evasion you can stack a good bit of might.
On axe it’s better to ambush in close range after axe 3 then shatter.

Cooldowns are such you can get a good cadence going in terms of ambush into shatter into melee with things like axe 2, back into staff and repeat.

Either way it’s chewing through the large pve mobs like butter, better than chrono because both axe and staff cleave everything and I don’t even have the right stats to make use of things like sharper images or precision for more direct damage crit (I want to go viper for hybrid but the demo gear was carrion).

Also I find it surprising how much the evade sharing keeps illusions alive in order to shatter.

There’s a lot of issues to be fixed, but infinite horizon must be in game – either basline for the class or as it is now, because it is so much fun to use. I think if it didn’t exist I’d rather play chrono."

While I would love axe ambush to be faster and have longer range (and not fly into the ground…), I’m kind of happy with axe being a melee cleave weapon.

I mean I wouldn’t say no to greater range on axe 3, or slightly larger radius on axe auto swings for wider cleave.

But I’d rather they give axe the tools necessary to survive in melee range – like 3/4s evade on axe 2. I can understand if they’re reluctant to do that because the cooldowns are very low (compared with Blurred Frenzy), but I think given Sword is more of a mobility/utility weapon in pve (even moreso for mirage due to the ambush leap) I think it’s fair that axe ought to have some evades in melee to make up for not having disengage without burning utility skills. Especially seeing as mirage lacks mobility in dodges, so when equipping axe you are pretty much bound to your opponent so it should enable further evades to survive.

I mean if a daredevil can get away spamming evades in melee range, and mirage is meant to be a mesmer/thief, then I don’t see why axe shouldn’t get a semi spammable evade on axe 2 with the low cooldown.

Ok this stress test has just confirmed how much I LOVE infinite horizon.

Sod all the other traits, this trait is so much fun to use and synergises really well with burst for my build – ie get some clones out, axe 3, or utility blink then ambush into shatter.

The point is not leaving clones up indefinitely casting ambush – it’s having them all cast one ambush and straight into F1 or F2. In the case of staff if you position yourself right and with deceptive evasion you can stack a good bit of might.
On axe it’s better to ambush in close range after axe 3 then shatter.

Cooldowns are such you can get a good cadence going in terms of ambush into shatter into melee with things like axe 2, back into staff and repeat.

Either way it’s chewing through the large pve mobs like butter, better than chrono because both axe and staff cleave everything and I don’t even have the right stats to make use of things like sharper images or precision for more direct damage crit (I want to go viper for hybrid but the demo gear was carrion).

Also I find it surprising how much the evade sharing keeps illusions alive in order to shatter.

There’s a lot of issues to be fixed, but infinite horizon must be in game – either basline for the class or as it is now, because it is so much fun to use. I think if it didn’t exist I’d rather play chrono.

Allarius.5670:

I think “deception” is a misnomer because of all the potential interpretive baggage that comes with it. It would be more clear if the developers ceased using the word, or similarly ambiguous phrases, to describe what they are talking about and instead used specific mechanics and context. “Detarget and reposition alongside illusions to provide localised target saturation” is more meaningful and less open to ambiguity than “deceive your opponent” or “maintain the illusion you are a clone”. It wouldn’t sound as cool , but it would certainly clear up some of the issues the playerbase has with respect to Mesmer and accurate in-game functionality.

If Holosmith is a customizable weapon and Deadeye is a sniper, Mirage is its namesake: something that appears to be there but isn’t. Mirage is the opponent that is there but doesn’t seem to be there because attacks move through them, they were actually a clone, or they are suddenly elsewhere.

Look no further than Mirage’s primary asset, Mirage Cloak. It enables the Mesmer to continue performing its actions while avoiding attacks. Other aspects enable more Mirage Cloak (endurance gain and Mirage Mirrors) and/or provide specialized mobility and trickery to obtain similar functionality.

This is the same sort of thing as using Distortion to avoid damage while casting and attacking or using Phase Retreat to suddenly reposition while performing another action or gain some positional advantage. The idea is to enable more of this. It doesn’t necessarily mean more damage, but rather a playstyle shift to allow for more aggressive and/or more elusive play independent of any specific weapon selection because of increased access to avoidance.

Mesmer is already really good at defending itself while assaulting because of the de-centralised mechanics of illusions and shatters on top of various instant cast skills. Thief through the eyes of Mesmer is even more of this with arguably more flexibility because of greater potential access and not being locked into a singular attack type (Daredevil).

Mirage specializes in avoiding incoming negative effects while continuing to perform its actions unhindered. This isn’t as obvious or in your face as laser swords or high range high pressure assaults. How useful this is and whether or not it enables new or improved roles is going to depend on interpretation, usage, and final numbers adjustments. Thematically, for a profession with the identity of “utility caster” it seems pretty appropriate.

Very well said.

I would like them to go further in enabling this theme and type of gameplay, because personally I’m bored and fed up with shatter bombing everything – it’s so monotonous. Power and condi shatter are both stale at this point – one revolves around blowing stuff up with GS2 and F1, the other involves mashing every shatter to condi burst. I don’t want to have another elite spec that just enables that type of gameplay in a different way – I’d like an entirely different type of gameplay.

Yes, more damage is good to have in order to be effective, but the method in producing that damage ought to be unique and fun – I want more mind games, more trickery and deception with more sustained damage (which looks to be in the form of conditions) at the expense of support and maybe frequency of burst application (ie no alacrity or F5).

I hope they do manage to get them in there tomorrow – I need to test a few things in order to prepare correct purchases on the tp in time in case of price changes.

Depending on if any changes have been made I’m still oscillating between two major build possibilities which require different consumables.

OriOri.8724:

Levetty.1279:

The problems with all these ideas for Mirage Mirror is it require more effort on Anets part then sticking this art asset in the game and then moving on to design 100 new skills for Weaver.

Honestly its a surprise that Mirrors do anything in the first place instead of the spec being designed to create diamonds for the other classes to look at as they actually get to play the game.

Yea….. You’re pretty salty but you have a great point. Weaver got a metric kittenton of new skills, it had to have eaten up a huge portion of time relevant to what other specs were getting, and that’s not even mentioning the new tech they had to work on to get dual attunements to work correctly. Meanwhile, mirage can’t even be bothered to get a new kittening shatter. Aren’t we the only second gen elite spec to not get either revamped or just more F skills other than weaver (but even then he can at least use 2 attunements at once now….)

I dunno, Renegade might be in a worse spot having no underwater legend and fixed utilities.

Levetty.1279:

The problems with all these ideas for Mirage Mirror is it require more effort on Anets part then sticking this art asset in the game and then moving on to design 100 new skills for Weaver.

Honestly its a surprise that Mirrors do anything in the first place instead of the spec being designed to create diamonds for the other classes to look at as they actually get to play the game.

lol, so harsh but so true. xD

DirtyDan.4759:

Alin.2468:

Let’s see if I get this right… Guild Wars 2 players are wanted to get into game on 31 August 2017 and use demo accounts, spend hours in Path of Fire, just tot test PoF product.

Will I get payed? Will I get any rewards? Will I get anything for my time spent on testing your product or content?

From what I understand I get nothing from testing other virtual content. The demo account will be erased, and I won’t get any reward or attention from my time spent there, in that expansion. Why should I do that?! There is no fun in wasting valuable time that will be erased and forgotten later. Every second of life counts.

I am sorry, but like Benjamin Franklin said: “Time is money”. I shall not help you with my time unless you pay me.

I am speechless…………..

lol, it’s like “having fun with new stuff is a waste of time because I don’t get… payed”? xD

Gaile Gray.6029:

Here’s some additional information for you:

The developers intend for the test to run a couple of hours and they hope to enable the elite specs. One of the advantages of our release system is it has a great deal of flexibility so it depends exactly on how our internal ‘pre-testing’ goes as to what will be enabled.

As far as whether you keep progress during the stress test, the answer is “No.” All demo characters will head into a well-deserved retirement, and you will join Path of Fire at launch with an existing or newly-created character on your game account.

Yay, elite specs!

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Tbh, I disagree with everyone here.

(Contrarian position for the win).

Mirage is neither supposed to be a shatter spec, nor an illusion manipulation spec.

It’s supposed to be a completely useless spec that accomplishes nothing, fixes nothing, and is just there to fill a check box.

[X] – Mesmer got an elite spec

That’s it.

“It’s meant to deceive with clones” – Literally what Mesmer was described as doing since launch.
“It’s meant to shatter” – Literally what Mesmer has been doing since launch, outside of the old tanky retaliation build.
“It’s meant to use the ambushes” – All of the ambuses except for sword are downgrades from the auto attacks, and sword is mostly for movement.

Honestly, if Mirage was meant to do anything, it was meant to be a thief with loads of mobility and dodges. Look at the absolute insanity in movement abilities. Sword 1, 3 utilities, our elite is literally 3 short range jumps.

I don’t know why everyone isn’t seeing the obvious. It’s just a high mobility mesmer spec. That’s it. That’s all it has.

They didn’t even try to make it do better damage with illusions. They didn’t even try to make it better at shattering than Chrono. They didn’t even try to make it do better damage solo.

They just thought “Hey, lets give it mobility skills & evades, and tack on some other stuff too”.

lol I get it – we’re meant to be the new decap/+1 thief that isn’t supposed to fight anyone. xD

Dondagora.9645:

But core mesmer is a shatter spec, we don’t want more shatter!

We want our clones to matter beyond shatter fodder. We like the idea of a clone-based spec. We just really, really, really don’t want it to be this kitten thing called Mirage we’ve been handed.

I agree.

More shatter is kind of boring – not really giving us a different way to play the class. Rather than Mirage being just another type of shatter spec, I’d rather see them go all the way in making it an illusion manipulation spec.

I’d have loved to see them replace shatter skills on Mirage for ranger style pet command mechanics and beefed up clone/phantasm survival and mind game mechanics. Make it an active version of old phantasm style play – but where you have to initiate commands for illusions to attack. F1 could have been ambush – as in a targeted burst from all your illusions, which could still proc shatter traits on hit.

Brutaly.6257:

will elites be available??

Pretty please?

mortrialus.3062:

Mirage is weak because it’s a build that is supposed to spam dodge like a daredevil but doesn’t have the endurance regeneration to make that possible. Also the skills you get for using dodge are all terrible. It’s as simple as that.

Nail on head.

Durzlla.6295:

Justine.6351:

Refia Montes.3205:

Godtier? So let’s see…. Focus has Temporal Curtain which grants swiftness and cripple to anyone who passes through it, pretty weak condition and boons. Then you can shatter it for to pull which is pretty strong if people don’t have Stability yeah it would be pretty effective to combo it with AoE bombs. (lol only bad zergs have no stability). Yeah Temporal Curtain is a pretty good skill.

Then we have Phantasmal Warden. We all know how kittenty illusions are in WvW and obviously Warden is one of the weakest Phantasms alive in PvP/WvW scenarios. In PvE it has it’s use because bosses can be controlled to be stationary and they’ll be able to apply their full skill. In PvP/WvW it doesn’t really do anything other than being Shatter fodder. It doesn’t do anything. People will just walk away from the poor guy in duels. In PvP/WvW it gets easily destroyed lol.

Comparing it to Shield, Shield has a double block that’s invaluable. It also summons 2 Phantasms when you time it right! And these Phantasms aren’t useless either as they provide Alacrity and Slow opponents hit. They do decent damage instantly too!

Then we also have Tides of Time. It’s a god-tier skill. Double stun, doesn’t have a target limit, provides 1.5 secs of Quickness to everyone that passes through it. Sure it has a long ass cooldown but it’s all worth it for it’s power. It also destroys Projectiles?! What?

Ya I do like shield. I end up using focus and shield cause both are so good.

Not everyone is aware but iwarden casts an axe that immobilizes now. Iwarden is probably best used on backliners and downed players. I generally do just pop it and pray though. Maybe I could focus (harhar bad joke) on utilizing iwarden more strategically for part 2. I’ve been experimenting with the whirling cleanse thing. It doesn’t seem too reliable at, will have to learn how to control.

I’ve been running Focus in PvP a lot myself, that axe has a 1200 range, and the projectile itself is borderline impossible to see, so unless they see you lifting up the focus to throw the axe they probably are gonna get hit by the axe and be rooted for 2s and are sitting ducks for you to set up.

Pair that with Sig of Midnight and you can guarantee a nice little immob chain.

Most of the time I’ve used it that immob is either immediately actively or passively cleansed, or it falls off too fast for iWarden or an additional weapon skill to stack some damage, so unless it’s followed up with quick burst (iWarden becomes shatter fodder only saved by Chronophantasma) it’s effect is negligible.

I get the devs reasoning for putting the immob on there and although I like the idea personally don’t find it that useful or efficient.

I suppose in the confusion of a team fight on point the immob could catch people off guard enough for your team to focus them down (used to have similar fun with Chaotic Interruption and focus pull – people didn’t expect the immob there and got caught out. Ah that was fun).