Guild Wars 2

The farming, the smurfing, the deliberately heavily unbalanced matches to win-streak favored players… Long seasons of match throwing by alts. All of these things have been condoned as “competitive.”

These and other problems have made pvp an environment with just a very few people willing to play. At this point.. I don’t even honestly think Legendary armor is enough of an inducement to bring people back.

On one of my placement matches last night, I watched with a feeling of impending doom as our DH and Rev ran for home together out of the gate, leaving the 3 light armors to try for mid. We were crushed by something over 300 points if memory serves.

A strict SOLO ranked queue and carefully even matchmaking might patch things in the long run. For the short term, I think we’re stuck with the matches.

Necro has a ridiculously strong condi burst.. a near one-shot kill. I’ll target a necro before almost anything else. ( Though, p/p thieves are really annoying too . )

I’d like to see HoT and PoF specs on par with core classes. That would make things work much more smoothly with balance.

I dare not suggest any reduction of Mesmer power though. Such changes have historically been very heavy handed. Mesmer has spent, literally, years at times being underpowered.

First, Chrono didn’t ruin Season 1. It got monster nerfs.. ANET even went so far as to “emergency nerf” in direct contravention of stated policy.

Second, Season 1 isn’t a good comparison for much of anything. It was ruled by smurfing and “less than optimum” matchmaking.

I think the new victory screen is trollish and cruel. It pleases quite a few players though. Perhaps that’s a reflection we ought to be thinking about.

I think this is a suggestion that we could fly low and move about, think Margonite caster. running but in a flying pose.

I have very little confidence that Mirage will be fixed. In fact, I fully expect anet to nerf the specialization.

Bella Kim.4061:

Archer.4362:

You have not used the mesmer if you say they are just as balanced.

Chrono is 100% better

I say Mirage and Chronomancer are almost equal to each other

because

Mirage has better mobility (Mirage can close gap and leap away very often)

Mirage has more CC

Mirage has more evades

Mirage dodge duration is 1 second (Chronomancer dodge is 0.75 seconds)
(Mirage is the only class that has 1 second dodge
every other class has 0.75 second dodge)

Mirage dodge breaks stun and removes conditions
(This means Mirage can remove Stuns and Immobs every 10 seconds)

I think that you are looking at numbers on paper. From experience, Mirage is in no way equivalent to Chronomancer and is a little inferior to core Mesmer.

Bad matches so far. The outlook seems pretty bleak. That’s especially true with new specializations dropping into the mix mid – season.

WereDragon.6083:

Aren’t Elites supposed to be side-grades, not upgrades? Pretty sure that’s what the devs said. “Alternate ways” to play the class.

True enough, I’d like to see it work out that way.

Frostball.9108:

By this i do not want to imply that the design of the spec is good. They kittened up with the design of some traits and skills, some of them blow. Thats a fair argument and something that probably should be addressed when some of the traits are just flat out unplayable.

What i want to put forward is that mirage is far from underpowered and something id argue to be at least one of the best specializations for now. Mirage definitely doesnt need an all around buff but rather a new look at some of the skills and traits that are underpowered and flawed.

Im not going to go into how some traits like stunbreak on dodge should not exist. They will always come up anyways but to give some perspective, its like daredevil dodge on steroids.

I honestly wonder if this is a provocation post. Are you serious?

I’m deeply disappointed in Mirage. The teleports do not follow there targets. So, you end up in the wrong place most of the time. The projectile Ambushes miss most of the time. Axe has very little useful defensive value.

Mirror is supposed to be a fixed weakness bomb, I get that.. but it simply doesn’t work.

Mirage is dependent on clones, a resource that is very hard to preserve, especially with Axe. We need clone death traits back if ANET is going to tie most of our power to clones.

MLGKorno.5419:

Zelulose.8695:

Chronomancer right now has an insane defense rotation and condition clear.

I almost didn’t buy the expansion because the new elite spec was not strong enough defensively or offensively compared to chrono.

(I think the issue was the protection and regeneration in the new elite spec which mesmer already has plenty of)

It may take a while for mesmer to break from chrono at this rate. But props the Elite specs look awesome and have awesome original mechanics.

2 years ago we had people instantly QQ like crazy because HoT specs were uniformly stronger than pre HoT counterparts which meant everyone was playing HoT specs.

Now POF comes out… you QQ about POF specs not being OP enough to warrant a switch?
Why does it have to make you switch?
If POF specs were overall stronger than HoT specs and forced everyone to go on POF specs, I bet another wave of people will begin to QQ that POF is imbalanced and that HoT should be up to par.

so which is it that you forum warriors want?

I want all three sets, core, HoT and PoF to be roughly equal in “power.” They should be different and not superior. I’m not honestly sure the dev team can accomplish that.

Still, that would be the ideal.

Correct, Clone death traits proc when the clone is killed, not shattered.

QoL suggestion on axe 2: Make a short delay to prevent double taps.

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.

Here’s where this idea comes from: See screenie below. The cutscene states that The Dream contains the memories of the Sylvari. It also states that new Sylvari gain awareness within the dream before awakening.

So, clearly:

A. The Pale Tree , who can see into the dream, has access to the memories of the Sylvari, generally.

B. Some of that Knowledge is transferred to new Sylvari. It’s also clear that Sylvari remain connected to the dream to some extent. The Soundless are a faction that wishes to silence that connection. Ergo, the connection exists.

So, ancestral knowledge of the Sylvari is stored and is accessible. To what extent? We don’t know. One NPC Sylvari in The Grove explains that she can sense the emotions of plants, not thoughts, but emotions.

I find Mirage somewhere beneath core Mesmer. It’s mechanics are slow.

The main hand Axe has short range and little defensive value.

“Ambush” is suicidal because of casting time. On top of that, it does little damage and misses often because of the slow projectile speed.

Oh and the teleport/confuse skills fail a fair percentage of the time.

Actually.. the Ritualist just returned to GW2 It’s called The Scourge now.

I was excited for Elona and the Mirage. So far, the Mirage has been a huge disappointment.

I main Thief in PvE, though not in PvP. In PvP I play a core Mesmer because I dislike Chronomancer.

1v1, the Deadeye sucks. In any kind of group situation it’s nastily OP. You can mark, walk out of sight, wait to build malice, stealth and nail somebody. That’s lame and it’s gonna kitten people off big time.

The mark tracks for a long time through stealth.

tldr: This playstyle combined with the very heavy damage is going to result in the nerf chorus. Thief may well find itself where chronomancer did when the screaming began. That is to say; in the dumpster.

Levetty.1279:

I don’t understand why people have already bought PoF. Even if Mirage didn’t look terrible from the reveal, it did, you shouldn’t really throw your money away at products you don’t know much about. Should have waited for the demo weekends.

What can I say? You’re right. Caveat Emptor.

Carighan.6758:

Ithilwen.1529:

Mirage needs a clone death trait.

Wrong fix IMO. Make Clones flat out invulnerable for Mirages. They seemingly take damage, but their HP bar never drops (numbers show up). All damage dealt to them is 100% wasted.

Oddly enough, that might actually help. Clones are invulnerable for 15 seconds after creation…

Still I’d prefer to have clone death traits back.

Now if we stealthed as the video for the specialization implies.. like a short stealth with mirage cloak.

We need clone death traits back. We need Axe to have better range, like the necro mainhand axe maybe.

This spec is allegedly for close combat, but it really isn’t going to survive close to anyone.

ANET, I regret having bought PoF. Fortunately I didn’t buy it on my alt account.

Put them in your personal bank in the HoTM lobby. Then pick them up with another toon.

If the current trend continues; The next Mesmer elite will be Ghost Mesmer. You’re invulnerable and can’t contribute to point capture. You also are not allowed to do any damage, but you are a cool looking misty ghost.

I’d like to see clone death traits return. If I have to depend on clones, then give me something back when they are instantly destroyed.

Mirage needs a clone death trait.

There is no power Mesmer build. Mirage will be lucky to be playable by release time.

We need the return of on-death clone traits.

Mirage makes phantasms more-or-less a liability since they don’t Ambush.

Clones are insta wiped by aoe. The Mirage is dependant on clones.

The natural answer is to give clone death traits back.

I just tried this in the PvP lobby. The heal happens if you move away from the spot. The pulses still happen.

The Deadeye Mark does not respect Line-of-sight and diminishes extremely slowly when the target is stealthed.

ANET, you have invalidated kiting and stealth. OH and the Deadeye gets to keep building malice while you’re LOS’ing to survive. This design is simply not good.

Cyninja.2954:

Fay.2357:

Overall Feel

The overall feel of Mirage is….okish. 4/10 at best. It has a lot of clunky mechanics, a lot of really bad traits, and overall just doesn’t really feel smooth to play. The mechanics don’t combo well with any other classes and overall seem more like gimmicks than actual usable mechanics.

This summs up how I felt about Mirage myself.

It’s getting annoying that mesmer need to play against their own class mechanic in so many forms.

Chrono put bandaid fixes on some issues. Mirage was the possibility to remedie some of the others or straight up fix some of the issues but instead feels like a step in the wrong direction. Instead of less convoluted, prohibitiv and unfun mechanics we get more.

This is how I feel the design process for Mirage went:

Idea A: Let’s give the mesmer some thief like ambush abilities to up their personal damage and move away from their main damage coming from phantasms.
Amendment A: Great Idea, but let’s have clones do the damage, I’m sure their 0.5 second survival won’t be an issue. Also let’s not let the ambush skill last to long, wouldn’t want to have any type of strategic play be required.

Idea B: Mesmer love being all over the place (no we don’t), let’s give them a new class mechanic where they have to run through crystals in order to use their offensive ability.
Amendment B: Love it, but let’s make sure the crystals first have to spawn and only remain active for 4 seconds. Let’s also f-up their dodge skill to make movement more of a hassle.

Idea C: Guys, we’ve trolled mesmer hard enough. Let’s give them the ability to retarget their clones midfight. It’s been an issue for so long, they’ll love it.
Amendment C: Okay, but put it on the new weapon so they are forced to use the new elite spec and this issue isn’t resolved longterm meaning we can take it away next elite specialisation. Also don’t forget to take away any type of defensive skill for the new weapon, make them use the new dodge mechanic.

Idea D: What about mesmer elites, now without chrono they are left with their 180 second Timewarp and Moa, we’ve given other classes similar yet way more powerful abilities on shorter base cooldowns. Let’s give mesmer some type of movement ability to compensate for some of our earlier design decisions.
Amendment D: Fine, but make it 400 range and keep the damage low. It’s a mesmer elite after all, expectations aren’t to high.

Random Person overhearing the design team: Guys, are you sure this is fun. Has anyone actually playtested the class in this state?
Design team: Playtested? Are you nuts? No one here plays mesmer.

Very well said.

Try out Mirage. It has clunky, nearly unplayable mechanics and is easy prey to Deadeye.

Do you actually play Mesmer?

I honestly think that you didn’t play the specs.

Mirage is clunky to play. The ambushes have casting times so long that they are suicidal to use.

The spec is dependant on swapping with clones. Sadly, the clones die so fast that the rest is meaningless.

The mirrors are extremely short lived and grant ambush, but then the casting times on ambush make that useless.

This spec, as it stands, is pretty much useless in PvP.

Xegrilt.9426:

I bought the whole package for $50, $30 for Trilogy and $20 for Eye of the North. It was all for Fiery Dragon Sword, i think i got the 10 HoM points needed within 10 days.

For me, GW1 really worth it even at that price because the quality of the game is real. Only bad thing from playing GW1 is that when u get back on GW2 u unconsciously tap space to attack for the first 10 minutes

LOL at that, I did the same thing coming back to GW2.

Daharahj.1325:

Mirage is in a pretty decent spot tbh, just a couple of rough edges, you’re all overreacting.

Utilities need a buff that’s for sure, sword#1 ambush might get nerfed down the road.

A pretty decent spot? Please tell us why you think so. I vehemently disagree.

I left in disgust.

Among other problems;

The de targeting skills do not remove deadeye mark, so they are invalid. Same for stealth.

The mirror mechanic is clumsy and ineffective.

Jaunt and now blink have major pathing issues again.

Jumping to a random position is meaningless since the clones die on arrival. Oh and you end up facing the wrong way and unable to attack 1/2 the time.

The casting times on the ambush skills are so long that they are suicidal to use in most cases.

TLDR: This spec is not useful for PvP. I am once again disappointed that I spent money on an expac.

Obviously you don’t play Mesmer. Mirage is terrible.

nothelseth.4621:

’’Helseth, arguably a very good spvp player, barely managed to put a dent into a core thief."

this made me laugh. Are the forums really this disconnected from how the competitive players are like?

Chronomancer is still top tier and will be used in pvp so mesmer is gucci

Helseth, I think you are an excellent example of “how the competitive players are like.”

To your comments; If you, a leading Mesmer player, can’t make Mirage work well, it is seriously under tuned.

Now I’m sorry I bought PoF.

First impression: Wow.. Mesmer really didn’t get much this time. Hope it gets better.

…[Illusionary Ambush] , [Axes of Symmetry] and [Jaunt] all failed to remove Deadeye’s Mark. This renders deception basically useless against a Deadeye. Once again, Mesmers are being set out as thief food.

Worthless? to triple stack signet effects? That could easily win a mid fight. I had wondered about the seemingly unkillable trap gurads.

The Pod racing on Raptors went beyond cool! More please.

You’d do it in the cage prior to the match. As long as you didn’t use the signet on active, it would presumably stay up.

I wondered why some guards seem to be able to soak unreal damage, like 4v1 and still not going down.

Admittedly, I assumed it was deliberate on ANET’s part.

The Zephyrites are taking advantage ( rather cynically ) of Glint’s power that was infused into the Crystal Desert when she was destroyed.

Our new dragon friend Aurene may become a significant factor in Elona. She is Glint’s scion.

Balthazar maintained his disguise using a mirror. According to Kasmeer, the mirror was made by Lyssa. Lady Wi refers to Lyssa as “The Lady of the Mirror” in an early story episode.

It’s an open question whether he stole it or she gave it to him. It’s also an open question what Lyssa’s motivations are in the whole thing.

She is the Goddess of beauty AND deception. She could even have given the mirror to Balthazar for the ultimate purpose of sabotaging him.

At the end of Nightfall, we become the God’s proxies to resolve the issue of Abaddon. I predict that we will learn eventually that we are acting on behalf of Lyssa et al. This will answer Kasmeer’s statement about the Gods’ “giving up on us.”

I would like to attend

Holy KITTEN! I understand the fiery dragon sword skin, ( an elite reward for playing gw1, ) is going to be made easily available in gw2!

That makes me pretty angry. I spent a good deal of time , energy and money ( buying the gw1 franchise,) to earn that and other rewards.

ANET needs to respect boundaries better, whether it be in terms of profession mechanics or elite rewards.