I’m sure Anet will fix issues & balance somes tuff by the time the expansion comes. Balance changes can easily happen after the expansion launches.
However, i’m afraid they won’t fix Mirage’s biggest issue, Mirage Mirrors.
Making them an actual FUN and USEFUL mechanic that supplements what Mirage is supposed to be (Deceptive) is going to take a major rework or even a complete replacement of the Mirrors.
Even if they make them more useful, without major changes to the Mirrors they’ll still contradict Mirage’s design, deception. (Having to run to a place to get an effect on a class where you’re supposed to be confusing & deceiving is something Anet really didn’t think of when designing Mirage.)
The Mirror part i’m really concerned about. It needs more than just a buff or a small fix.
Something I think Anet won’t do anymore at this point.
It’s sad since I really like what Mirage is to be or do but the Mirage Mirrors ruin it all.
It’s good if you know enemy skills & attacks, if you see a certain skill coming and you have a quick blind available that will make that one attack miss.
In general it’s kinda hard to use well though. But just know hat the next attack they do will miss.
But yeah, it’s rather useless against moves with multiple hits.
I understand therer is no way of telling whether someone intentionally left/dced or just disconnected by accident.
It is really annoying but I agree that if you have a crappy connection you shouldn’t be playing ranked. I know it can happen to anyone, it happened to me once too. But if your connection is decent it shouldn’t happen that often. And shouldn’t frustrate you that much.
If anything I think the punishments for afking, trolling, flaming, disconnecting/quitting or any reason you got righteously reported for should be way harder.
People flame, quit, afk, troll as if theres no real punishment just because they’ll only be locked out for 3 minutes. maybe 15. or 30 Minutes. Even if it would be a few hours it wouldn’t be en ough for those who flame, troll, afk or quit a lot.
Punishment should be harder to demotivate people for doing those kind of things.
I have no idea of how far the dishonour system can go but i’ve seen one for 30 minutes I think and I think i heard of one of over 1h but can’t confirm that.
After thinking more about it I think the Mirrors could actually become a really interesting mechanic if they would be tied with shatters.
Shatters wouldn’t shatter our clones but instead shatter our mirrors granting us Mirage Cloak + apply a diffirent effects similar to our current shatters in a radius around the mirrors instead.
That way shatters wouldn’t kill our clones & make Mirrors more useful.
F1: Power damage to enemies near the mirror
F2: Confusion & Torment to enemies near the mirror
F3: Daze enemies near the mirror
F4: Distort to allies near the mirror. (would probably be broken. Maybe changed it to blur or Mirage Cloak to allies.)
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)
Mirrors should be removed.
All utilities that spawn Mirrors should just give us Mirage Cloak OR should be buffed in other ways since the Mirrors would be gone.
Give us an F5 skill that gives us Mirage Cloak (or if they REALLY want to keep the Mirrors it could let us spawn a Mirror wherever we want & it stays for 15 seconds or until we touch it.)
The trait that gives us random Mirrors when we shatter should be changed into a trait that when we (or a clone with Mirage Cloak) successfully dodge an attack the cooldown on our F5 gets reduced by a few seconds, applies blindness, confusion & torment to the enemy we just dodged. (few sec cooldown.)
(edited by glenndevis.8327)
Tbh I’d have loved Dagger for Mirage. Its’ my first choice weapon if I had to choose.
Im more or less happy with Axe though. But mostly since I love Astralaria and didn’t play any class that uses axe properly. I finally have a reason to craft it.
But honestly I’d have loved to get an offhand axe as well. Especially since Warriors got both main & offhand daggers and Mesmer really lacks a good 2nd offhand condi weapon in case you want to use Scepter & Axe.
Would have been nice to be able to run Scepter/torch & Axe/Axe.
When I give feedback I always add a possible way to fix, tweak or rework something.
But yeah on forums in general its always the more people who cry about it the more they’ll get to know what’s wrong.
First of all… core mesmer traits lack a lot of synergy just because of the large amount of shatter & phantasm traits. 2 mechanics that don’t go well with Mirage at all.
Now about the Mirage traits:
Minor Adept:
Mirage Cloak: Merge this with Speed of Sand. This trait technically takes away the mobility we get from dodging. Might as well get it back in the same trait and not make us waste a minor on something that was initially taken away from us by another trait.
Minor Master:
Nomad’s Endurance: A Minor… A trait we can’t even choose that requires us to shatter. Bad idea. This trait should trigger off Mirage Cloak. Also increase power by 150 as well.
Minor Grandmaster:
Speed of Sand: This trait should be merged into Mirage Cloak and be replaced with Infinite Horizon.
Major Adept:
Self Deception: Nobody would want to use a deception to get an extra clone out. Or at lest nobody would pick this trait for that…
Add a 20% cooldown reduction to deception skills and any deception skill spawns a clone. No silly requirements.
Renewing Oasis: I like this trait for he condi duration reduction part. The regen isn’t very useful but it’s alright. I’d like to see a “lose a condition whenever you gain Mirage Cloak” effect to this.
Riddle of Sand: I like this trait. Would just prefer it if it wasn’t bound to shatters but just stayed active all the time.
Major Master:
Shards of Glass: This trait needs to be replaced. Having annoying mirrors spawn at random with a cooldown on it… yeah no thanks. Even if it wasn’t rng and didn’t have a cooldown it would still be enough because of the Mirage Mirrors.
In one of my other posts I thought of a diffirent trait in case Mirage gets a F5 ability on a 15-20 sec cooldown that grants us Mirage Cloak.
I thought of a Trait that whenever the Mirage or a clone/phantasm dodges an attack we get a few second cooldown reduced of the F5 skill & blinds, torments & confuses the enemy we dodged. This trait would have a 2-5 second cooldown.
Mirage Mantle: Nice trait. Just needs a little duration increase imo. 2,5-3 seconds sounds good.
Mirrored Axes: Seems solid. Would be nice if it granted 2 stacks of torment instead with that 1 extra axe.
Major Grandmaster:
Infinite Horizon: Amazing trait. So amazing that playing without it makes Mirage weak. This trait should replace Speed of Sand as our Minor Grandmaster trait and be replaced with a trait that has a clone death effect applying cripple, torment & confusion.
Elusive Mind: Feels underwhelming. It sounds overpowered on paper but it really isn’t. Increase the condi cleanse from this trait by 2 (up to 3) but give it a 10 second cooldown.
Dune Cloak:
Nice trait but feels a bit underwhelming too. Add another bleed stack to it and increase its radius to 240.
Mirage is a spec that is not based around shatters. Having traits in the Mirage line that boosts shatters is just contradictory.
Playing a shatter based Mirage should still be possible but then you would have to spec into shatters in one of the base mesmer trait lines. There’s already plenty of shatter traits available. The last thing mesmer needs are more shatter traits.
Mirrors are a nuissance too.
Axe:
As the axe stands right now it doesn’t seem to belong anywhere. The auto attack and #2 skills seem designed with PvE in mind while the #3 skill seems to be mostly made for PvP. I think the following suggestions might help with that.
Axe #1: Axe auto attack chain is alright I guess. I’d like it to have a bit more range though. (it’s supposed to be a close & mid ranged spec according to the trailer.) Maybe 200-300 range sounds ok.
Axe #2: Give this skill an evasion frame. Maybe not too long but still… Enemies needing to be near the mirage to spawn clones is pointless. Please just make it so this spawns a clone at the Mirage’s location/starting position at the end of the cast regardles of an enemy being near or not.
Also a bug with this is that this skill isn’t classified as a clone skill. So it doesn’t benifit from Illusionist’s Celerity. This really needs a fix.
If this skills problems get fixed then this could really become a very good clone generating skill. (if the ambush skill would actually be buffed this would be great too.)
Axe #3: To be fair I REALLY love the concept of the detargetting. I want it added to Illusionary Ambush as well.
However for the axe skill it just needs to be faster & more accurate. Enemies can run away from the actual attack way too easily. It misses a lot of the time. It’s way too inconsistent.
Ambush Skills
I absolutely LOVE the idea of making clones more useful. And while the Scepter ambush is pretty good (other than being forced to stand still) the others are very lackluster.
One thing I have to note before I get into the actual attacks: To make clones useful in PvP (and WvW) they NEED to have their healt AT LEAST doubled. Clones die instantly.
Now to get into the actual ambush skills:
Scepter Ambush:
I love this attack. It’s strong, blinks you & clones backwards to avoid getting instantly cleaved down. However it is annoying that you have to stand still for the duration of it. Remove the immobility and this will be great.
Staff Ambush:
This skill does TONS of damage on tightly stacked enemies & enemies that don’t move. However, on anything that moves this skill is useless. it doesn’t track well at all.
I wouldn’t mind losing the “boon” part of it if it means it will hit my target(s) consistently. The boons are nice though but its just a very unpractical & random way to apply them to the point where its not very useful.
Axe Ambush:
This ambush should be stronger than scepter ambush. Even if its just for the fact that it’s a melee skill. This should do 2 stacks of confusion and 2 stacks of torment.
It should also be a lot faster in travel speed.
Sword Ambush:
I have no idea with this one. I feel like this could be pretty good for a power shatter build. However, clones need to trigger interrupt traits & COnfounding Suggestions.
I’d like a bit more power damage from it as well.
Greatsword Ambush:
Just needs a lot more power. Right now it’s useless.
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.)
This was meant to be a beta weekend. By not telling anyone the specifics of your build and why you think its a good spec people are missing, you are both making your opinion a strawman and defeating the purpose of the beta by denying anet the data from the playerbase they are looking for. Its a pretty assinine road to take to be honest…
This isn’t a beta, this is a demo. If they were beta testing now PoF wouldn’t be releasing in a month.
Tbh it might be a demo but i’m sure Anet will take some of our feedback and buff & fix some things by the time the expansion launches.
But I highly doubt they’re gnna do any major changes to elite specs though.
I really wish they would rework the Mirage Mirrors (not just buff them, a complete rework or even better, a diffirent mechanic that gives us more Mirage Cloak.)
It would be stupid of Anet to not make any changes at all by the time PoF releases.
That being said I do wish they had done a beta earlier on though. They might have been able to do more with that feedback because Mirage really isn’t “extremely good”.
They should add stealth to at least ONE of the deceptions… Sand Through Glass is a good candidate.
Also they should make ambush skills available from stealth, not just mirage mirror.
While they’re at it they could also make Sands Through Glass a bit faster, it has no cast time buty it feels realy slow sometimes.
And I agree with the ambushes in stealth part. Would be amazing.
Yeah I’d have preferred it if we just kept Mirage Cloak as a unique way of dodging but make our ambushes trigger when stealthed like thief. And give Mirage an easier time to access short time stealth instead of Mirage Mirrors.
Punishing people for killing your clones is a great way to go about it.
If you fall for their deception you get punished, if you AoE recklessly to avoid mind games you get punished. Something like confusion on clone death would work. It even discourages shatter spam for a more clone-oriented playstyle, it’s perfect.
I agree with this.
Would be better if they could give us a less passive way of clone death traits because I think that’s the reason why they took it out in the first place.
But I think that in this case it would really help the class & the theme more than having random shatter traits in the Mirage line.
I agree so much. Mirage is also he perfect spec for a clone death sort of trait.
Maybe not 100% the same as the old trait but something similar.
I still dislike clone death traits. I’d much rather have an elite spec mechanic something along the lines of…
Your illusion skills no longer summon illusions but provide a temporary boost or effect depending on their original function. iLeap becomes a on-target teleport, phantasms become skills that the mesmer actually uses i.e. spinning through mobs with GS, leaping attack with sword, etc. Skills that summon illusions would fill up the illusion counter for a short time (3-10 seconds? Idk) and you could then use modified shatters with an amped effect depending on the current illusion counter.
I love the feel and idea of mesmer but I hate the extreme limitations of the illusion mechanic.
Sounds like a great idea for maybe a next elite spec.
However I love the whole concept of clone death traits. It suits the Mirage more than anything else.
However, i do think that the old version of the trait is boring & uninteresting.
Would be nice if Mirage could get something that punishes people for mindlessly killing clones though.
Mirage is suppose to be decieving so you should be rewarded for decieving people to kill your clones. (even though good players will prob still be able to identify the real mesmer.)
The only thing they should rework frm scratch is the Mirage Mirror mechanic. I don’t like it at all. It’s more annoying rather than a useful mechanic to give us more Mirage Cloaks.
Everything else is fine.
I love the Mirage playstyle & I love what it is supposed to be. I really love deception & confusion/torment. I love being able to play with my opponents mind and I love the Mirage Cloak/ambush mechanic.
Sure there are a lot of things that need fixing & balancing/buffing but those are minor things they eventually will do.
I’m running something similar but I prefer more stealth so i’m using PU. (in WvW at least.)
I really enjoy Mirage’s playstyle a lot more myself. i’ve never been much of a fan of the shatter mechanic but I always really loved the clone & phantasm mechanic, so i’m very happy that Mriage got a spec that doesn’t shatter as much.
I really hope Anet does well in the next month to fix the things that are wrong with Mirage and that they give us something nice & polished.
I think my biggest worry is the Mirage Mirror mechanic. It doesn’t need buffs, it needs a complete rework or just be replaced.
After observing for a while in HoTM lobby;
The teleport skills fail a high percentage of the time. I think the reason is that they don’t track a moving target. You land where the target was at the time of the cast.
It’s also possible they are affected by de targeting/taunt skills.
If these skills moved you to where the target actually is, they’d be much better.
I’m not seeing mirrors used at all.
Ambush would be a lot better with faster and guided projectiles. I have seen a target simply sidestep my staff Ambush easily quite a few times now.
Mirrors are near useless & should be replaced with a useful mechanic that gives us extra Mirage Cloaks.
Axe #3 indeed fails to land its damage/confusion because it’s way too slow. The attack happens like 1 sec after getting teleported and by that time any decent opponent will have just walked away.
Same with Axe #2 the requirement of someone needing to be close to the Mirage is stupid. People just move away from it easily. It should spawn a clone regardless. (and it should be affected by Illusionist’s Celerity.)
I agree on the staff ambush. Honestly the ambush itself is quite good damage wise on an opponent who barely moves but on anything that moves it misses a LOT.
I think the reason for that is because it’s a line AoE. It can hit multiple people so it goes more or less in a straight line.
However i’d still prefer it to properly track someone though. It can still damage whoever it passes through.
I’d prefer the mirrors to be replaced by something else.
Something that doesn’t make us run towards specific places to get dodges.
Something that’s less annoying to get Mirage Cloak.
The 12 second duration is due to a new shatter I’m trying to balance for mirage. It would shatter all mirrors on the field, but if they only lasted for 4 seconds it would make it stupidly difficult to ever have more than 1 or 2 in a real scenario when you shatter. Plus, I don’t like passive gameplay like that, I like the aspect that you have to go shatter the mirror to get mirage cloak, it gives real counterplay to them, but your suggestion removes all counterplay to mirrors.
It’s like saying you want counterplay to Daredevil’s 3rd endurance bar.
I do agree that having random Mirage Cloaks happen when the time runs out is a bit too passive though. There’s not even a point of there being a mirror in the first place.
I just feel like Mirage needs a mechanic or ability that gives us access to more Mirage Cloaks that doesn’t make us go fetch them or anything. It’s a VERY clunky way of getting more Mirage Cloaks.
What if Jaunt granted Mirage Cloak instead of having the Mirage Mirrors.
Or an F5 skill that grants Mirage cloak with a count charge.
The Mirage Mirrors don’t work in a game like GW2.
Wouldn’t it be cool if Mirage got a skill that allowed us to swap positions with a clone?
If the enemy figures out who the real one us you can quickly swap with a clone.
I thought that’s what Jaunt was supposed to be at first.
I guess something like that would be rather difficult to implement.
The number of people thinking that Mirage Cloak has worse mobility than a normal dodge is way too high. Remember you can still move during cloak, and having superspeed allows you to cover more distance than normal.
The number of people forgetting that superspeed doesn’t work with backpedalling or strafing is way too high.
Being able to dodge while casting, being cc’ed & stomping outclasses the backwards dodge mobility though in my opinion.
Plus it doesn’t take much to just turn around when dodging. You’re not locked into an animation or anything.
-I don’t even know why Anet thought Mirage Mirrors was a good idea. I wonder what Daredevils would think if their skills made bits of endurance drop around them so they’d have to go & fetch them.
To be honest, Mirage Mirrors could have been cool.
At first when I read about them I was like “Awesome”.
And then I realized my allies couldn’t utilize them, and you couldn’t create tons of them all over the field.
In my mind when I first read about mirage mirrors, I imagined almost spamming them all over the field, supporting my allies.
Maybe even having the ability to jump from mirror to mirror myself, damaging enemies along the path.
This would all be balanced out by the short life of the mirrors & their single use nature.
But no. We got an incredibly boring, uninspired elite spec, lacking in any of the tools I’ve desired as a mesmer.
And I, with my simple mind, probably just created a spec more interesting than any of the devs because it has a stroke of imagination. A little bit of inspiration should any of the devs ever come across this and think “How can we make this lame mechanic not lame”.
It could have been cool but yeah I don’t think the devs make a skill with a certain purpose. They just make random things that “seem” cool & interesting, but ultimately are very pointless & annoying.
The whole Mirage Mirror mechanic seems slapped onto random stills just to give us extra Mirage Cloaks.
The worst of them all, the Shards of Glass trait.
1) It promotes shattering on a spec with a mechanic that’s designed around keeping clones up.
2) It spawns those annoying Mirage Mirrors.
Would have been cool if we got a F5 skill that
I’d have rather have that trait be something that respawns our clones the first time they die & grant them Mirage Cloak. Some sort of Clone on Death that sorta fits the Mirage theme. Thinking something’s there, but when you get there (or in this case attack/kill it) it was all an illusion & it confuses & torments you…
I also want to put in my 2 cents. Besides the very valid points above here I want to adress the fact that the grand master is a no brainer. Everybody will always pick the supercharged clones. Lets be honest that trait is way better then the rest and should probably be roled into base Mirage.
It should be our grandmaster minor.
Speed of Sand should be in base Mirage since that’s the trait that initally takes the mobility away as well.
Axe #2 Lingering Thoughts doesn’t get it’s recharge reduced by Illusionist’s Celerity.
It’s not categorized as a Clone skill.
Axe #3 Axe of Symmetry misses it’s damage & confusion portion of the skill often against moving targets.
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!
Mirage Cloak dodge is amazing though
Sure you lose the mobility when dodging sidways or backwards but you gain a lot more in the process. Ambush attacks, being able to dodge while casting, being able to dodge while stomping and being able to get Mirage Cloak while being CCed.
Other than that I agree with everything you say.
-low Synergy with core mesmer due to the huge amount of shatter related traits. (hell there’s even some in the Mirage line itself? Anet???
-1/5 weapon skills are useless coz phantasms. (maybe something that replaces phantasms with clones?)
-Clones really do die way too fast. Giving them double the health would help.
-I don’t even know why Anet thought Mirage Mirrors was a good idea. I wonder what Daredevils would think if their skills made bits of endurance drop around them so they’d have to go & fetch them.
-Mirage also lacks clone generation. And the only way to give us more is Deceptive Evasion… Which also needs our dodges.
They could fix Axe #2 so it doesn’t need an enemy to be near it to spawn a clone. And reduce Axe #2 recharge with Illusionist’s Celerity. That should bring it to 1 clone every 4-5 seconds which is great.
Honestly, Mirage would be the perfect time to bring something along the lines of a clone on death trait. Maybe something that requires more than just spawning clones & sitting in the back with lots of stealth. But at least something that punishes players for mindlessly hacking all of the clones down. This would actually make people think.
The only thing that’s worse than normal dodge is that u can’t dodge backwards. U can turn around and dodge while moving forward though since superspeed ignores cripple and such.
I think in general Anet was thinking more about the design part of the elite specs rather than their practical application in he game.
They had 2 years to do that but they for some reason didn’t think about doing it properly for Mirage.
I hope they’ll be able to fix a lot of the broken things with Mirage. Maybe change a trait or 2.
I wouldn’t mind keeping our current shatters as long as Mirages aren’t forced to use them. An F5 woulda been nice tho.
Yeah I noticed that as well when they revealed the skills/traits.
Quite funny.
Was tempted to change my asura warrior’s name to Meliodas & change his hair blond.
Lul
Yeah I’d have preferred it to be some resource too. Or jus a new F skill with a count charge sysem that grants us Mirage Cloak. (Maybe with a Mirage Mirror shattering animation to it.)
I was thinking of a way to change shatters as well like whenever you shatter instead of destroying the clones the mesmer & clones get Mirage Cloak/Ambush, but each F skill adds something to the ambush.
F1: More power damage (for sword & greatsword ambushes.)
F2: More condis. (2 stacks of confusion)
F3: dazes on first hit of the ambush.
F4: Gives you & clones Mirage Cloak with a count charge on a low ish cooldown.
The new F skills should have increased cooldown though other than the F4 otherwise mesmer would have way too much Mirage Cloak uptime.
Old shatter traits would still be able to affect our new skills
I’ve actually been warming up to sword ambush. With Domination line having an easy access stun from just doge has been kinda cool. and the untargeted mobility has been really handy. Even off confounding suggestions the daze has been more reliable than I initially thought. I’m clearly not running infinite horizon though. Elusive mind with Jaunt and inspiration line is tons condi clear and easy access stunbreaker/sudo stunbreakers
I hated how sword ambush looked on paper, but in practice the 3/4 cast feels about normal, even tho I do wish it was faster.
Mirrors are a pain I agree 100% they should last for at least double their duration.
and yeah Axe does feel like a bit of a mess in PvP.
I felt the opposite. It looked interesting on paper but in practice it doesn’t seem as satisfying or useful.
Daze/Interrupt traits not working with clones really sucks.
The mobility is great, the stun is alright (if it would work with clones as well that would be great.)
If you use it yourself with maybe other clones. it seems pretty decent but not worth taking sword over anything else. Maybe in a power shatter build.
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.
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.
(edited by glenndevis.8327)
Mirage Mirrors are annoying either way.
Almost to the point where I’d almost rather main another class for PvP. (alongside all the other problems that Mirage brings.)
False Oasis should have 3 pulses. Pulse 1 heals, Pulse 2 heals and Pulse 3 gives us Mirage Cloak & restores some endurance.
Im somewhat pleased too. I really like the idea of Mirage and the scepter ambush feels great. The Mirage Cloak mechanic is quite nice.
Casting while dodging, Dodging while stomping,… quite nice.
But yeah it has a lot of problems.
-All ambush skills other than scepter suck.
-Mirage Mirrors are a bad idea and they’re annoying.
-Traits are a mess (mostly that all of the shatter traits, which mesmer has a LOT of, contradict what Mirage is supposed to do. They do nothing for the spec.
-Some of the utilities aren’t useful at all.
-Axe skills are a mess. #1 & #2 are good for PvE but aren’t useful at all for PvP while #3 is good for PvP. (or it’s supposed to be but it’s not coz the confusion never lands because people run out of it before it lands.)
-Nothing changed for our shatters/no new F skill that works witht our Mirage Cloak/Ambush mechanics.
In the end I do find some fun in playing with scepter though.
Clone on death trait please.
Edit, I agree with most tptoints people mentioned in here.
And Mirage Mirrors are a bad idea. I wonder what Daredevils would think if they’d have to run after their 3rd dodge all the time.
(edited by glenndevis.8327)
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.
I don’t see the point of the Mirage Mirror mechanic at all.
Just give us the free Mirage Cloak after using said abilities.
I don’t get how Anet can kitten up such a wonderful idea of an elite spec with the most random kitten.
I’d have preferred something that replaces shatters as well.
I like the whole idea of Mirage but it’s just a big mess right now.
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.
I would have preferred it if our ambushes triggered off something else rather than our dodges.
Maybe… an F5 button with charges on a short cooldown.
Or replace shatters with clone attacks to make our clones do more than 1 thing.
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.
Imo they should just add the superspeed of that trait to the first Mirage trait and give us something else there.
Maybe put Infinite Horizon as our minor or something.
I think the Mirage Mirrors are a bit of an annoying mechanic rather than something that feels fun.
Axe 3 detargetting is pointless when the enemy can just cleave everything down in 2 auto attacks anyway
I think it would be nice if there was a way of consistently getting our clones back up really fast after a shatter so we still have a lot of use for the Mirage mechanics while integrating shatters in our gameplay.
Just thinking about deceptive evasion & sword ambush.
Dodge with sword → spawns sword clone → ambush with sword → both you & the clone leap & daze & spawn clones → 3 clones.
Too bad that Sand through Glass doesn’t trigger Mirage Cloak, probably won’t trigger deceptive evasion either.
I don’t know why do they even bother making ambushes for Sword and GS if they’re not gonna interact well with Mirage trait line. Seems really kitten to me.
Tbh I’m more or less fine with the sword & gs ambushes for now: They seem to be useful situationally.
The GS one maybe for power builds though, but then again, which power build uses gs? Maybe in WvW?
The Sword ambush can be used in multiple ways. Clone generating, leap, daze (or stun when traited.) Could be very interesting.
I’m a little dissapointed there are some shatter based traits in the Mirage line when the spec as a whole doesn’t revolve around shattering at all.
The fact that it focuses on clones rather than phantasms kind of suggests that you should be shattering in general.
The main thing that I want to try is a scepter build (the only one with a worthwhile ambish) that summons 3 clones, spams mirage cloak + ambush over and over, then shatter, and works on rebuilding the clones while the mirage cloak granting abilities refresh, before doing it again.
Yeah I mean im sure Anet doesn’t want us to “never shatter” and i’m fine with shattering sometimes when the situation is right.
However shattering isn’t the focus of our elite spec. I think if we want to use shatters with Mirage there are more than enough other spec lines that improve our shatters.
I’m just a bit afraid that if they give us too many shatter traits in Mirage everyone is just going to shatter because it’s better rather than using the clone deception & mirage cloak mechanic.
I don’t know why do they even bother making ambushes for Sword and GS if they’re not gonna interact well with Mirage trait line. Seems really kitten to me.
Tbh I’m more or less fine with the sword & gs ambushes for now: They seem to be useful situationally.
The GS one maybe for power builds though, but then again, which power build uses gs? Maybe in WvW?
The Sword ambush can be used in multiple ways. Clone generating, leap, daze (or stun when traited.) Could be very interesting.
I’m a little dissapointed there are some shatter based traits in the Mirage line when the spec as a whole doesn’t revolve around shattering at all.
The point I was trying to make is how the Infinite Horizon trait barely does anything for this ambush.
Ah, yeah, fair enough.
I do think there’s some merit to your multiple-clone idea though, and in fact that may be the point. It’s not just the mesmer who can use the daze; you throw a sword clone out, swap weapons, and as long as that clone is out you potentially have access to an extra interrupt no matter what weapon you’re using.
In fact, I can see both sword and staff clones as intended as a supporting ambush rather than intended to be fully stocked up and utilized; in this manner, maybe I can see why that one leak said clones are supposed to be used like phantasms(or however it went…). They become a utility rather than mere ammunition, so mesmer gameplay becomes a little less linear. This makes sense, given that it’s unreasonable to expect to have three of any single clone out for an ambush.
I like the idea of clones actually being useful. Mesmers will require to keep an eye on their clones, be aware of which clones you have, which ones you want for your next move, where your clones are while still trying to be decieving & setting up everything fast enough so your clones don’t get cleaved down before you do something.
I never liked the shatter playstyle because it kinda takes away a lot of that.
I think there are a LOT of small details about how Mirage works that might change things completely and enable a lot of combos.
Honestly I don’t think they really tried to “dps” during that stream. It looked more like showing off skills & things they could do.
The weapons they used weren’t the best, didn’t have 3 clones up most of the time, the traits they used didn’t seem great either…
That being said, I do think that other classes look a bit crazy so far. Deadeye doing a 11k hit with rifle #4, Firebrand doing insane burning, Scourge having very wide spread damage.
Either way I don’t think Mirage will be a good DPS spec other than “maybe” single target encounters. And now maybe encounters that require target swapping.
Got a question though, does Elusive Mind trigger from getting Mirage Cloak from utility skills?
Edit: I’m assuming it doesn’t. Would make Deceptive Evasion even more op on Mirage. Also it specifies “dodging.”
(edited by glenndevis.8327)