Axe 3, at least in raids, will allow mesmer to have reasonable dps in quite a few more of the fights where they now have issues with getting phantasms set up on new targets. It won’t be a magic bullet that makes mesmer excellent dps, but it’ll enable you to actually do dps on many more fights. This should work on VG, gorse, sabetha, potentially samarog, and potentially deimos.
But won’t you be chrono for every group encounter that matters? I feel like mirage is, by default, doomed to be an open world or solo spec.