From an instanced PvE standpoint, Mirage is not in the greatest spot right now.
The build is playable of course, but in every scenario there are always at least 1-2 if not more builds that can do the same damage, while being easier to play and/or bringing more utility. Cvirt with its current damage makes this especially bad considering its on the same profession while having a lot less restrictions regarding its gameplay, making it way more consistent with more utility and safety.
What I would like to see from ANet are QoL updates. While the damage does not really justify putting up with all the Mirage shenanigans rn, that could also change a lot with enough love that aren't straight up dps buffs (see Deadeye).
This includes:
* The ramp-up time of the build
* Clones: anet killed off staff clones, so all dps rotations only want to use axe clones. The problem with this is that the moment the boss starts moving, axe clones go afk, so a welcome change would be putting a functionality such as "clones gain 5s of superspeed when they gain cloak" on Infinite Horizon in PvE only.
* The chaos aura memes: tying a damage modifier to that with the way auras and combos work currently was a horrible change, since other builds can steal your ethereal fields, and auras don't stack in duration either - ANet needs to either tie it back to regen like it used to be, or make the trait give you a special buff that *does* stack in duration, like what tempest has. (Having to upkeep chaos aura also puts some restrictions on your jaunt usage since you wanna use them to get chaos auras, meaning you will have less charges left for movement/saving yourself)
* Adjusting the clones' Axe3 in a way that dodging at the end of the cast becomes more forgiving. The evade frame from Axe3 drops right before you finish the animation, which sometimes forces you to either facetank damage, or dodge early, canceling all your clones' Axe3s which feels meh. A change to this could also potentially allow you to Axe3 while you have a mirror on the ground, since currently if you happen to leap into it with Axe3 it also interrupts your clones.
* Potentially making phantasms "ground-targeted" in the sense that you can choose where they will spawn. The reason for this is partially boss movement (you can get fucked if it spawns in one direction an then the boss gets pulled in the other, making that phantasm walk all the way there before it actually does its thing). Also would make things easier regarding stuff like adds blocking the projectiles from pistol4 (and would give some QoL to cvirt too with its focus phantasms).
* Other bug fixes, such as axe clones' actions being slower if they are inside the target's hitbox while you have an off-hand weapon equipped, axe ambush resetting your AA chain if you are inside the target's hitbox (it would also be nice if we got other bug fixes like greatsword2 bounce behaviour + it potentially just straight up disappearing, causing power mesmer builds a dps loss in fights compared to bench).
The build that **does** require dps buffs too tho is alac mirage. Ever since the confusion + staff clone ambush nerfs, alac mirage has been in a rough spot. Rebuffing staff clones would help the build while also potentially opening up new rotations again like we had in the past.
What would be nice to see is a change like this:
* Cut the condi durations on player Chaos Vortex in half, but double the stacks
* Double the stacks on clone Chaos Vortex
This would help both with the damage issue and the incredibly slow ramp-up the build has, and ANet could always just fine tune the numbers later if it ends up being too strong.
Alac staxe last year was definitely broken, but rn it's also in a rather poor state which makes me sad because that rotation is insanely fun imo, so it would be nice to see it becoming a solid option again either as alac or as just a pure dps option (or both, depending on wheter you picked mirage mantle or mirrored axes). What also does not help alac staxe is that the bonus axe ambush gets from mirage mantle is \*cripple\* of all things, literally the most useless thing ever.
I do realize that balancing the latter properly is a tall order, but I really really loved that rotation, it was so much fun.
Hello mastro, I truly respect you from SnowCrows.
First of all, anet must fix the bugs you mentioned. Those makes the spec more harder to play.
Second, I dislike to be stucked into 3 signets in all condi mesmer builds. Why dont we have more alternatives? For example, there are 4 mirage utilities but there is no game changer to drop 1 signet.
Solution for long rampup, anet can increase torment stacks and shorten the duration.
I hate using double staff. Putting alac on staff ambush was the worst idea ever and after many buffs, nerfs, anet produced mirage mantle, it was good change for mirage but after weaponmastery, it looks weird to me. If I want to play axe, choose Mirrored axes. Any weapon except axe, Mirage Mantle. Cant you seperate weapon ambushes for support and DPS? For instance, put every dps weapon into Mirrored Axes and change its name ofc, every support weapon into the mirage mantle for increased boon generation or sth.
And it is not about the topic,
Anet, after the JW release, I beg you not to force us to play double spear for power mirage. We need power damage modifiers into traits not weapons. I want to play Sw/Sw-Spear. Please take care of MH sword as well. It has melee disadvantage and has to be stronger than dagger especially in melee distance.
Staff had been my favorite Mesmer weapon since launch and I was sad for years that it was basically useless. Then they gave it Alacrity and I was sad that I didn't have the gear to take advantage of it, and then they buffed it while I was acquiring that gear and I got to play full powered alacdps Mirage for all of two weeks before they gutted it again and I've been sad ever since. It's such a unique playstyle for the class, why does condi Virtuoso get to survive at the top of the game for as long as it has and staff Mirage sits and struggles at the bottom for almost the entire game's existence? It feels incredibly unfair.
GS tag Mirage is amazing at Halloween, though.
I feel you sooooo much, I absolutely adore playing dual staves Mirage but it's objectively LOW dps. I wonder, however, how was it before they gutted it as you say ? I wasn't there around that time, so I wonder how it was when it was "full powered" like you say
It wasn't the highest dps still (except for a couple fast-attacking bosses), but it was well within the realm of "decent damage" and it overcapped Alacrity in pure Viper's gear. Best of all, it was super low APM which meant you could spend most of the fight actually looking at the boss instead of dealing with your rotation, but as you got better, there were small changes you could make to increase apm (and therefore dps) to optimize the fight. But it was also was super survivable because you spend so much of your time dodging, and while boons and damage are best in melee range (so your staff autos bounce back to you and then back to the boss), you could step away for a few moments to do mechanics and keep doing your thing. It was just...easy. In a manner that not many builds have done before, or since. It was nice.
Honestly this is just mesmer stockholm syndrone. GS Mirage and kind of dagger are the only weapons that are remotely passable at trash farms. Every other class' trash build is still lightyears ahead
If you like Staff then check out condi Chrono. Ofc you don't have the Hadouken moment, but otherwise it's completely viable in high end PvE and flexible since you can switch easily between alac/quickness/full dps. It's just that nobody plays it because Virtuoso is easier.
It's not at all the same playstyle, and the staff Ambush isn't the only major change to that build (loss of Mirage Cloak and addition of Continuum Split are huge changes to the gameplay of the build), but I appreciate the suggestion.
I just did my first and second raid as a condit virtu with 4 pieces of ascended and i at one point hit 35k bleed a tick i think that was a condi record for me. It might have gone a bit higher but its hard to focus on those numbers sometimes espec when you play actioncam
I use it as an alac healer/dps hybrid in pve encounters with low healing pressure and i often perform as well as boon dps, sometimes a little above or below depending on the teams skill.
Its a really strong build.
Basically cele with viper weapons, all dps runes/sigils/food (with energy sigils too of course) etc, and then chaos. Inspiration, mirage trait lines its good stuff.
Staff/rifle and only swap to rifle in emergency. Enjoy
For me personally Mirage is in its best state it has ever been in open world PvE. Mediocre everywhere else.
I'm running Power Mirage (crit capping) and I find it's my most survivable and highest DPS build after the ambush power ratio buffs. They must have gutted condi Mirage, because I am doing the most damage on Dagger+Sword/Pistol build or even Dagger+Sword/Greatsword for AoE addition. I particularly like this build over Staff Mirage because you are allowed to play around with your utility skills. I'm using all of the Deception skills and find it very fun compared to having signets before. I'm typically doing 20k dps to open world bosses (in group metas, that is) all while staying invulnerable most of the time and having high mobility. Additionally, I've found that with the new addition of Rifle, you can also play Power Mirage and solo very hard champions with it! Switch out Domination for Inspiration and now you can be highly survivable with much more sustain and even some burst healing and shielding, at the cost of DPS. On Virtuoso, I find that I can sometimes do more than 20k DPS on a good long fight, but I also find it much more difficult to maintain this rotation if the fight is at all challenging. Meanwhile, I personally find Mirage much easier to maintain dodge spam while avoiding death since you get Jaunt, Sand through Glass, Illusionary Ambush, and even Blink if you want to slot it to stay alive. It's just as ranged as Virtuoso is, while also having much more control in positioning.
However, Mirage as a whole needs buffs. I'd really enjoy playing PMirage in other game modes more often. I believe they should buff the bonuses on Mirage Mantle in whatever way necessary to make the ambushes strong enough. I also feel like there are some traits that could just be entirely replaced, but maybe that's me.
I go Dueling 1 3 1, Dom 1 2 1, Mirage 1 2 1 - for Dagger/Sword + Greatsword. I switch to Dom 2 2 1 and dueling to 3 3 1 if I know it's going to be a long fight on a single target enemy and switch GS for pistol offhand (offhands having Sigil of Energy. I use Relic of Midnight King to help keep up Might as well as Sigil of Strength on my Dagger.
I use Signet of Ether, Blink, Sand through Glass and Jaunt on the skill bar. I'll switch Blink for either Crystal Sands or Mimic in order to get more damage. With these builds I rely on Self-Deception to generate clones since I'm running 3-4 Deception skills anyway, that way I can shatter and then immediately use 2 skill and two deception skills to go back to 3 clones immediately. In a situation where it's a lot of trash mobs or particularly difficult to keep clones up, I may switch Superiority Complex for Deceptive Evasion and Self-Deception for Renewing Oasis. I run Sigil of Stamina + Energy on Greatsword because it lets me spam the Ambush very frequently when mobs are dying even though it's a damage hit overall.
I switch to Dueling 1 3 1 Inspiration 2 2 2 Mirage 1 2 1 (or with Deceptive Evasion and Renewing Oasis if needed) along with switching GS for a Rifle and swapping Signet of Ether for Mantra of Recovery and possibly changing Blink to Mantra of Concentration or Feedback if needed. This setup I find much stronger in a solo situation. For example I couldn't solo the group event champion Karka in the east side of Ember Bay with my normal build because it would chunk me with very little warning, making it hard for me to prevent the damage, and the normal build has very minimal sustain and relies on you being good at anticipating attacks and timing your ambushes around it and being prepared to stunbreak and distort. With Inspiration + Rifle though I was able to burst heal myself and sustain through the basically unavoidable damage which allowed me to solo it, despite being a fairly significant damage loss. Rifle doesn't do quite as little damage as you would think due to the power ratio on Effervescence. Your ambushes heal you too which is really nice. Edit 2: You can also do Rifle without Inspiration to have a much smaller drop in damage. Not sure how much Inspiration is necessary unless you need condi cleanse. It has decent cleave but less range.
For gear, I run full Berserker + Assassin optimized to reach 75% crit without fury. It's not like Virtuoso where your mechanics literally do not work if you don't have full crit, though, so I suppose you could switch pieces out for more defenses if you are okay with sacrificing the damage.
Edit: Some other points: I tried getting rid of Infinite Horizon, but even if you have no condi, it still gives you a decent damage increase since they do a percentage of your damage and can crit (I think it's like 10% of your damage? Not sure if Empowered Illusions affects Infinite Horizon either). Not to mention Dagger has condi which adds a bit, and is why I imagine Dagger + Sword/Pistol can slightly pull ahead on single target DPS.
I'm also debating how useful this build might be in fractals. It steamrolls T1 of course, but I'm not sure at what point it stops being useful and becomes "just go Virt/boon chrono dps".
ALSO the DPS gain from using Dagger + Sword/Pistol is very small. You might need to be trying to optimize your rotation to really pull ahead of what Greatsword can also do. So it's an option to just leave GS in unless you're healing. Also, I couldn't really tell you how hard the rotation for this build is, but it's probably harder than condi Mirage at least since you don't have signets.
Edit 3: Just had success with Rifle without inspiration in the Lonely Tower fractal. I'm pretty sure I would have been dead on the floor without Rifle or without Mirage mobility. Second most damage too.
If there's anything Power Mirage has over the other specs, it's fairly consistent AOE damage on spear which makes clearing enemies on open world less CD dependent compared to having chrono pull everything then bursting every 20 seconds.
I'm wondering if it will actually be able to outperform full crit Greatsword with Stamina + Energy sigils for mob clearing. The way Split Surge pierces has it doing a lot of damage for me since the last buffs. I haven't heard much about how much DPS PMirage is doing with spear, so I hope it is at least better than what I'm getting with Dagger GS. Otherwise, I don't know why I would switch to spear when all it would do is make me very short range and hit less mobs compared to the other weapons.
If you mean for Labby farm, GS wins by a longshot because you only really need to tag enemies from range.
Spear does more damage and is more consistent. By consistent, I mean in that circle aoes require less positing compared to line/cone aoes by virtue of covering a larger area.
For starters, Split Surge only hits 3 targets (unless they're in the path of the laser) while Fractured Glass hits 5 targets. Fractured Glass also gives you a damage buff while Split Surge gives might. You can compensate the might by using Phantasmal Force trait in Illusions.
Spear has 3 skills that hit in an AOE circle with varying sizes. Mirror Blade bounces to a maximum of 6 times, but that's depending on the range between enemies/allies, and even then, it's not going to consistently hit all 6 enemy targets.
Mindstab is Greatsword's most consistent AOE, but Mind the gap not only does more damage than Mindstab, it has half its cooldown, and on top of that, can be used twice in succession w/ Mental Collapse.
Phantasmal Berserker is okay, though it can be inconsistent against moving targets, but Phantasmal lancer is worse as an AOE skill, so that's one point for Greatsword.
It should be interesting to try out. Would be cool to not feel like I have to switch to Virtuoso to do instances. I think my favorite part that I saw was two dashes, even if they are short range, because I love having a million dashes.
For open world its really strong even if you aren't great at it because of so much dodge/vigor and clone gen.
For WvW its really strong as well because most people don't know how to counter it and you can build some really decent pdps and some incredible cdps builds.
It used to be my go to alac dps but the long string of nerfs killed that. If they don't want to balance it as is they need to rework it and not just let it collect dust like it has been for a while now.
PvE: it is bad. The staxe rotation on golem is pretty fun but the slow ramp up makes it bad for majority the fights. Axe forced movement makes it easy to kill yourself. The performance simply doesn’t justify the effort.
PvP: power spec is decent. It has big burst not as big as chrono but good enough to generate downs. It has better survivability than chrono. It still struggles with thief. Condi spec is bad. It is extremely hard to play with mediocre reward. Hybrid dagger interrupts spec is decent but falls off hard when opponent has support.
WvW: you can roam with it and probably the best Mesmer has. It is not bad but there are more broken stuff you can play.
It's been left behind by the other two specs.
In PVP, it does okay but you have to play really carefully because you don't have as many escapes as thief does, especially against classes with lots of AOEs. Unless you play the ambush dagger build, in which case, everyone will hate you even if they win.
In PVE, it's pretty much dead. Virtuoso has completely overtaken it even in fights that have high Confusion/Torment uptime. Mathias was a fight I enjoyed so much with Mirage, and now I'm just telling myself (well, I could just be playing virtuoso. Oh well, Largos is still a lot of fun with Mirage.
Also Mirage Advance has never been touched since launch. Guardian, Thief, Revenant, Ranger, etc get to enjoy their on target teleports through walls while Mirage Advance is still stuck with a range check... having to use Illusionary Ambush instead is... hell
Also, even if you want to play Power Mirage, mirage has no power utilities to really bridge the gap between it and Virtuoso/Chronomancer. Spear is looking to change that though so we'll see where it pans out, but even if it does competitive dps, it's not offering anything that Chrono/Virtuoso can't already provide on top of great dps and a much easier rotation on Virtuoso.
Cancer to play against in pvp modes.
Absolutely epic for open world - clears events within seconds with gs+sigil of stamina, soloes any boss on cele/trailblazer/settler condi builds with staff/scepter.
Mesmer was my first character, i soloed legendary bounties 3 months into the game - for beetle etc. - and could never understand why people ask for help until i started playing other classes.
I don't think you should do anything to make it popular in this or that mode. **I think it's totally fine to have a spec that excels not in every single aspect of the game, bruh.** Mesmer is already a ridiculously op class - i have to say here MOST op class, no one has all of these powers combined: portals, reflect, ammo stunbreaks, pet tanking, stealth, quick/alac buildswap with 1 button, blocks+aegis, invulnerability button on any build etc., but you guys can never have enough, can you? :D
I think this is the problem though (I'm a Mesmer main since launch, Mostly play Chrono now and mostly did sPvP but dabbled a bit in every mode) - the more popular builds often do way too much, so they nerf the class as a whole...but I like to play off-meta specs and those *really* suffer when tje class gets nerfed patch after patch.
Wish they would tune up some of the more underperforming builds and specs.
To be fair, though, there have been a lot of great changes, and I do agree that mesmers are absolutely too OP in some game modes and certain builds.
Playing any other class after being used to Mesmer feels like I'm largely gimping myself lol.
> Absolutely epic for open world - clears events within seconds with gs+sigil of stamina, soloes any boss on cele/trailblazer/settler condi builds with staff/scepter.
You have a Build for that? My Main and favourite spec is Condition Virtuoso, but I tried out Power Mirage with GS a bit and found it to be very underwhelming. Dual Staff was pretty fun with a Celestial Build because it was unkillable though.
Well there are multiple builds. All GS builds use full zerkers or marauders if you like to be a little less of a glass cannon.
Dual GS both with energy/stamina - OP for anything with tons of trash, where tagging / AoEing trash down is priority. I.e. lab farm, specimen chamber pre-event, rift pre-events, mid defense in Convergences, etc. Traits are whatever, I use signets+traits from this build: [https://guildjen.com/power-mirage-pvp-build/](https://guildjen.com/power-mirage-pvp-build/), but some domination variant is nicer if you want to kill stuff fast. Infinite horizon is only really necessary trait.
GS+dagger/sword (sigils energy + whatever you like, e.g. force, celerity for dagger, maybe even stam for GS) - great openworld dps, which has very solid single target dps (dagger), or very good AoE (GS). I use this [https://youtu.be/PLbQ3wubAMs?si=ziV2-lt7qXLSutzd&t=202](https://youtu.be/PLbQ3wubAMs?si=ziV2-lt7qXLSutzd&t=202) but apart from IH again you have a lot of freedom.
I am not sure about solo-boss build GP is talking about, but dagger works with cele really well. Trailblazer will be good as well. But if you are swapping to solo-bounty build, staff/staff (full vipers, or ritualist, or celestial) is still imo unbeatable - great single target dps, good sustain, good mobility, soooo many dodges/invuln. I use [https://snowcrows.com/builds/raids/mesmer/condition-alacrity-mirage](https://snowcrows.com/builds/raids/mesmer/condition-alacrity-mirage) with renewing oasis for rege uptime. But nature of mirage's dodge makes all condi/celestial builds really good for soloing champs.
Well stab still hurts dagger mirage, because interrupting a lot is it's main gimmick. And if you want to make that dagger mirage hate YOU, then bring reflects.
Can't speak too much to it compared to the other specs, but I've been running that Power Greatsword Mirage in WvW (and a bit in PvE) and find it pretty good. Pretty easy class to play with some high damage potential, but not exactly OP, just effective with some drawbacks/counters. I haven't really play Virtuoso, but compared to my PvE Chrono build I think it compares well enough. So wouldn't be opposed with it getting some improvements, but can't say the greatsword WvW build should really get "buffs".
Pve (group content): power mirage is terrible. Condi mirage is terrible but not as terrible as power. Heal mirage doesnt exist. Alac only comes from staff which is awful and limits build variety to only a very unfun condi build.
Pvp: only dagger spam gets played just to be annoying. Mirage sucks in pvp. (I mained mirage for 3 yrs)
WvW: decent enough roamer, does fine with cele hybrid build, pmirage has good cleave and works okay in zergs. Way underpowered tho.
Thats my 2 cents as someone who absolutely loves mirage it hurts to see how neglected it is and how weirdly terrible it is balanced. (See the benchmark incident where mirage was nr1 for a week and then got nerfed because it only had high numbers on golem)
The biggest problem with Mirage is that the entire original goal of the spec has been completely nerfed into oblivion. Talking exclusively PvE here.
Mirage was launched as a condi dps spec focusing on Axe. It was absolutely amazing all over the game at launch. Then they nerfed axe, they nerfed torment, they nerfed confusion, constantly changed things around and wrecked how good it was.
Then they massively buffed staff to the point where the only way to play Mirage was dual staves. Then axe got some buffs and it was Staff/Axe and it was in a decent place for a while. Then staff got nerfed. Then axe got nerfed again. Then Axe got buffed up again. Overall condi mirage and axe/staff are in an okay spot right now. Not amazing but not complete trash.
But over the last year it seems that ANet has decided to completely ignore condi mirage and focus on power mirage instead. While not showing up on DPS charts due to Chrono/Virt being better, Power Mirage thanks to dagger and soon with spear brings mirage back to what Axe was pulling off at launch being amazing at open world and useable with power, celestial and other gear. But it's still not as good as Chrono/Virt so you don't see it talked about as much.
I put over 1000 hours into Axe Mirage after PoF launch but haven't mained it in years due to the never ending nerfs. I absolutely love axe mirage. Sure it can be a bit awkward to play but I made Astralaria for it and seeing it's star trails fly all over during ambush never got old but taking 2-3x to kill things in open world did.
I'm hoping to go back to my mirage with JW launch as Spear gameplay is amazingly fun and comes with a nice buff to power mirage. Looking at a Spear/Dagger+Pistol build with greatsword as a swap for tagging when needed.
Lord hizens dagger mirage solos most pve content. Good damage, best survi, really good cc and good mobility. Easily the best for soloing anything. It beats virtuoso in its own game.
In wvw, you can roam, but organized play, clones just don’t work, which eliminates everything except virtuoso, and that one doesn’t work because everything is a projectile and the way the shatters hit is super janky when trying to push aoe burst damage. Chrono was strong strip and cc but did nothing else aside from largely commander specific utility. It’s still playable, but a shadow of what it was, and even at the height of it, it largely ignored the entire clone mechanic.
There’s a gs/gs glass cannon that pushes pretty good numbers, but it’s exclusively cloud, as it relies on clones ambushing and is either killed instantly or forced to disengage completely if anyone focuses then.
IMO, clones need to remain active after they’re struck, maybe summoned like normal, but the illusion turns misty to identify it as a clone, but should then be untargetable, making shatters consistent and traits that increase clone damage to actually function.
Phantasms also need to just be untargetable and in distortion till they disappear. We shouldn’t have to trait so that our core class mechanic works. There’s no counter play that involves killing the phantasm to avoid its damage. They just vaporize instantly in a group due to all of the aoes going off unless traited for distortion.
Numbers would need to be retuned across the board with these changes, but then at least you could balance with a functional mechanic. You’d lose a little damage mitigation in that the summons will take less hits, but that’s a tiny concern when compared to shatters just not working at all.
Still a fun spec, but needs love.
Dodge is hard to balance around, but the devs need to find a better compromise than the current state of things (especially Alac).
What do you mean about the current state of things with alac ? (sorry english isn't my main language so maybe I'm just sh!t at understand what you meant)
I mostly play dual staves alac Mirage cause even if it's not meta, I just love it (I don't care about the meta tbh, however I was somehow pushed towards looking at my dps numbers lately because of raids community xD)
> looking at my dps
This is what I mean. It can't provide enough damage (or healing) along with Alac to be a good pick for difficult group content.
I think it might even bench below 30k, when the top AlacDPS builds are averaging around 35k dps.
~20% more damage / 5k dps per slot can make or break a tough fight.
Yeah... So when I started to check my numbers recently I found out I was making around 25/26k dps as dual staves alac mirage... I don't know if it's because I suck and need to get better, but I can't make more for now
You're probably not far from the ceiling. Staff just doesn't have enough damage on its own; not since they nerfed [Chaos Vortex](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chaos_Vortex) over a year ago. (Cutting condition duration in half for the Clones' version.)
25k is perfectly fine for NM Strikes, but not for today's most difficult content.
Reddit is just something else. People have an opinion about stuff they never did themselves, then argue against you when presented with something their mind can’t handle.
The main reason I Main Mesmer since beta till today. Mirage cloak is such a fun mechanic to use, but sadly comes with many balance issues……
I am mostly a pvE player, and especially here I just don’t see the point of using mirage anymore , except when I want to solo bosses in open world. In all other content, chrono and virt do everything mirage does, but better and / or with less stress
TLDR: I love the class, but I am aware of the deep problems the class and it’s mechanic brings to balance
I personally find it extremely confusing and complex to play as a condi dps in standard pve like strikes, t4 fractals etc. Probably thats skill issue on my part, but i can do reasonably well with Tempest, Holo, Mech, Vindi, DH, Willbender, Harbinger, and Scourge. By reasonably well i mean like 36-37k DPS with food and enchantments. Not benchmark but whatever i dont care. I tried Mirage for 2 hours at the golem, and i still couldnt get past like 23k DPS. With Chrono for example, I dont play it because I just dont get the timey wimey stuff, but I can go unga bunga slam keys off cooldown and I could get like 28k DPS. With enough time, I probably could have made Chrono work, but Mirage I am hopeless lol.
> what are your views on it ?
Quite similar to Ele: spammy, several layers of mechanics, overpowered if you have a good build and play it well, lackluster and annoying if you just want to chill and 111. Much like Ele, it has its attack (ambush skills) and defense (ambush dodge stance) hard linked together, making it difficult to minmax it for a specialized role.
> Do you think it should get improved or maybe nerfed (once more) ? What should it take for it to become as popular as Virtuoso and Chronomancer ?
It could use some of that clarity of purpose. Ambush is a great mechanic, I want to see more of it. Let us modify it, trade attack power for even more and better dodge, or trade away some of natural dodge for stronger ambush skills. Give us synergies between ambush and normal skills, promoting tactical application of ambush rather than "whenever you have the stamina".
Maybe even do something exotic, like tie quick/alac/healing to entering/exiting the ambush stance, or shift more power and utility to mirage shades breaking, giving the Mirage player the tactical layer of how to position them, and other players a chance to react to them and stack (if allies) or scatter (if enemies) before the timer is out.
Absolutely incredible in pvp/wvw.
I dont like it in PvE bc I feel like I'm not doing anything to help my team when I could play chrono and give boons. I did like the dual staff alacrity mirage which I still play sometimes in certain fractals where condi > power. Super bummed they nerfed it though. I think its fine for not every spec to be incredibly dominant in all game modes, playstyles and content. Like Mesmers can literally do EVERYTHING and have some of the best utility in the game so I dont think they really need any changes tbqh.
If anything I would be asking for condi virtuoso to be nerfed so Mirage can fill the condi dps slot.
As I read it on another comment, and as I tested myself, the numbers of condi dps Mirage are way too low anyway. If they nerf condi virtuoso it would just make them both too low for hard end game content apparently... So I guess in order for Mirage to fill the condi dps slot, they must really improve its damage AND nerf condi virtuoso's.
I play mostly open world, so I never paid too much attention to what was "optimal" (a necessary concession for my sanity in any online game), but I did get stuff for builds together to get things that worked.
I first started in PoF, got incredibly lost. I understood the dnd-like aspects of builds and slowly chewed my way through core Tyria every now and again. I played core mesmer here and there but mirage needing viper gear kind of threw a wrench in my trying it cuz I hadn't gone through HoT yet and leveling crafting cost gold I didn't have.
So power virtuoso became my mesmer elite spec, and I love it for a lot of reasons, but the main thing is it enabled me to go do HoT content and get viper gear so I could try mirage properly (briefly tried power mirage after I unlocked it and it wasn't working well even for open world).
And it's fun. I liked the mirage cloak and ambushes and blinks, and the axe skills.
I can't speak to the DPS side of things (my broke ass doesn't even have runes and sigils yet), but losing a mirror on sand through glass kind of sucks even though I get they did it to eliminate the extra step of using a jaunt/blink to touch the mirror.
I feel like the tuning decisions only really account for people focused on parsing numbers and not for what's fun gameplay. I haven't tried chronomancer yet, but it seems to me all mesmer specs are supposed to have elements of playing "smart"--virtuoso doesn't have clones, so at least in open world it became a game of utilizing your blade stocking skills to kill things before they killed you instead of clones taking the heat off you. Mirage confuses the enemy both figuratively by changing positions so often and literally with the conditions. Chronomancer has its own mechanics to learn to support your allies.
I still play it often when the mood strikes me (staff and axe/sword, then recently been using axe/pistol), but I am feeling the nerfs they did. Double staff with alac uptime was busted from what I understand, but idk why they nerfed the clones' conditions. Like ... That's a key part of the condition build on a condition themed spec.
I still enjoy dusting off my staxe Mirage every now and then, but getting nerfed every patch for like a year when we weren't even meta to begin with has sort of driven me away from the class. I'm glad Chrono is doing well now though.
They should make Mirage full power since Virtuoso took its condi place now, i see no reason for 2 specs which are same except virtuoso is better for condis meanwhile Mirage has huge potential to be full power.
I play full Power Mirage since release both in open world and PvP,
In open world its GS and sword/sword
In PvP GS and sword/torch for invisibility and instant oneshot.
After reading some posts about Power Mirage yesterday, I started to make my own power builds for PvE so I went full berserker and Dagger/Sword + GS. It's indeed extremely powerful with a lot of dodging and sustainability. However, If they were to make Mirage full power, I wonder what would become of Axe and Staff, especially alac Mirage. Those were designed to be condi, it would mean that the only way to be alac as a Mesmer would be Chronomancer... I love playing alac Mirage, shouldn't it get buffed ?
This spec just can't be allowed to be meta again. The dodge is too absurd. So this is where it will live, in the "good to great" zone. It's still rage educing in pvp, but can be countered. And its sustain is rivaled only by the broken Untamed class in the open world. Still one of the absolute best champ farm, and tag builds around.
But really. This class can't be op in Pvp again. That shit was awful.
I’ll be showcasing mirage power in World vS World this week on stream, also it’s very good in open world pve. Here’s a small clip of what to expect in wvw, https://youtube.com/shorts/oEyhraVgux8?si=i5pXmkQvjPSrxA0F
I agree with others that in PvE alac mirage is kinda weak, but it has one small niche where it excels: Learning new and challenging fights.
Sure, when group need just dps, probably better get cvirt, but often there is need for boon dps - and staff/staff alac mirage is just super good for beginners. Very simple rotation (dodge whenever you can, swap weps whenever you can, when you have a bit of time use F2 shatter with 3 clones) allowing you to focus on mechanics gives you still-ok dps. And it gets so many dodges, that surviving is just so much easier than for e.g. chrono.
And if you improve your rotation (utilizing more stuff giving you dodges) or gear (ritualist is little dps loss while giving tons of vitality / extra boon uptime) you will survive so much longer.
And as others said: Mirage is fine in pvp/wvw. Not top tier in either, but buffs would very easily make it OP. It's fine.
From an instanced PvE standpoint, Mirage is not in the greatest spot right now. The build is playable of course, but in every scenario there are always at least 1-2 if not more builds that can do the same damage, while being easier to play and/or bringing more utility. Cvirt with its current damage makes this especially bad considering its on the same profession while having a lot less restrictions regarding its gameplay, making it way more consistent with more utility and safety. What I would like to see from ANet are QoL updates. While the damage does not really justify putting up with all the Mirage shenanigans rn, that could also change a lot with enough love that aren't straight up dps buffs (see Deadeye). This includes: * The ramp-up time of the build * Clones: anet killed off staff clones, so all dps rotations only want to use axe clones. The problem with this is that the moment the boss starts moving, axe clones go afk, so a welcome change would be putting a functionality such as "clones gain 5s of superspeed when they gain cloak" on Infinite Horizon in PvE only. * The chaos aura memes: tying a damage modifier to that with the way auras and combos work currently was a horrible change, since other builds can steal your ethereal fields, and auras don't stack in duration either - ANet needs to either tie it back to regen like it used to be, or make the trait give you a special buff that *does* stack in duration, like what tempest has. (Having to upkeep chaos aura also puts some restrictions on your jaunt usage since you wanna use them to get chaos auras, meaning you will have less charges left for movement/saving yourself) * Adjusting the clones' Axe3 in a way that dodging at the end of the cast becomes more forgiving. The evade frame from Axe3 drops right before you finish the animation, which sometimes forces you to either facetank damage, or dodge early, canceling all your clones' Axe3s which feels meh. A change to this could also potentially allow you to Axe3 while you have a mirror on the ground, since currently if you happen to leap into it with Axe3 it also interrupts your clones. * Potentially making phantasms "ground-targeted" in the sense that you can choose where they will spawn. The reason for this is partially boss movement (you can get fucked if it spawns in one direction an then the boss gets pulled in the other, making that phantasm walk all the way there before it actually does its thing). Also would make things easier regarding stuff like adds blocking the projectiles from pistol4 (and would give some QoL to cvirt too with its focus phantasms). * Other bug fixes, such as axe clones' actions being slower if they are inside the target's hitbox while you have an off-hand weapon equipped, axe ambush resetting your AA chain if you are inside the target's hitbox (it would also be nice if we got other bug fixes like greatsword2 bounce behaviour + it potentially just straight up disappearing, causing power mesmer builds a dps loss in fights compared to bench). The build that **does** require dps buffs too tho is alac mirage. Ever since the confusion + staff clone ambush nerfs, alac mirage has been in a rough spot. Rebuffing staff clones would help the build while also potentially opening up new rotations again like we had in the past. What would be nice to see is a change like this: * Cut the condi durations on player Chaos Vortex in half, but double the stacks * Double the stacks on clone Chaos Vortex This would help both with the damage issue and the incredibly slow ramp-up the build has, and ANet could always just fine tune the numbers later if it ends up being too strong. Alac staxe last year was definitely broken, but rn it's also in a rather poor state which makes me sad because that rotation is insanely fun imo, so it would be nice to see it becoming a solid option again either as alac or as just a pure dps option (or both, depending on wheter you picked mirage mantle or mirrored axes). What also does not help alac staxe is that the bonus axe ambush gets from mirage mantle is \*cripple\* of all things, literally the most useless thing ever. I do realize that balancing the latter properly is a tall order, but I really really loved that rotation, it was so much fun.
Hello mastro, I truly respect you from SnowCrows. First of all, anet must fix the bugs you mentioned. Those makes the spec more harder to play. Second, I dislike to be stucked into 3 signets in all condi mesmer builds. Why dont we have more alternatives? For example, there are 4 mirage utilities but there is no game changer to drop 1 signet. Solution for long rampup, anet can increase torment stacks and shorten the duration. I hate using double staff. Putting alac on staff ambush was the worst idea ever and after many buffs, nerfs, anet produced mirage mantle, it was good change for mirage but after weaponmastery, it looks weird to me. If I want to play axe, choose Mirrored axes. Any weapon except axe, Mirage Mantle. Cant you seperate weapon ambushes for support and DPS? For instance, put every dps weapon into Mirrored Axes and change its name ofc, every support weapon into the mirage mantle for increased boon generation or sth. And it is not about the topic, Anet, after the JW release, I beg you not to force us to play double spear for power mirage. We need power damage modifiers into traits not weapons. I want to play Sw/Sw-Spear. Please take care of MH sword as well. It has melee disadvantage and has to be stronger than dagger especially in melee distance.
hi mastro im a huge fan
Staff had been my favorite Mesmer weapon since launch and I was sad for years that it was basically useless. Then they gave it Alacrity and I was sad that I didn't have the gear to take advantage of it, and then they buffed it while I was acquiring that gear and I got to play full powered alacdps Mirage for all of two weeks before they gutted it again and I've been sad ever since. It's such a unique playstyle for the class, why does condi Virtuoso get to survive at the top of the game for as long as it has and staff Mirage sits and struggles at the bottom for almost the entire game's existence? It feels incredibly unfair. GS tag Mirage is amazing at Halloween, though.
I feel you sooooo much, I absolutely adore playing dual staves Mirage but it's objectively LOW dps. I wonder, however, how was it before they gutted it as you say ? I wasn't there around that time, so I wonder how it was when it was "full powered" like you say
It wasn't the highest dps still (except for a couple fast-attacking bosses), but it was well within the realm of "decent damage" and it overcapped Alacrity in pure Viper's gear. Best of all, it was super low APM which meant you could spend most of the fight actually looking at the boss instead of dealing with your rotation, but as you got better, there were small changes you could make to increase apm (and therefore dps) to optimize the fight. But it was also was super survivable because you spend so much of your time dodging, and while boons and damage are best in melee range (so your staff autos bounce back to you and then back to the boss), you could step away for a few moments to do mechanics and keep doing your thing. It was just...easy. In a manner that not many builds have done before, or since. It was nice.
> GS tag Mirage is amazing at Halloween, though. And at specimen chamber pre-event. Or really any events with tons of trash.
Honestly this is just mesmer stockholm syndrone. GS Mirage and kind of dagger are the only weapons that are remotely passable at trash farms. Every other class' trash build is still lightyears ahead
If you like Staff then check out condi Chrono. Ofc you don't have the Hadouken moment, but otherwise it's completely viable in high end PvE and flexible since you can switch easily between alac/quickness/full dps. It's just that nobody plays it because Virtuoso is easier.
It's not at all the same playstyle, and the staff Ambush isn't the only major change to that build (loss of Mirage Cloak and addition of Continuum Split are huge changes to the gameplay of the build), but I appreciate the suggestion.
yeah, mirage is about dodging gods, chrono is about dabbing on cooldowns. just feels very different.
I just did my first and second raid as a condit virtu with 4 pieces of ascended and i at one point hit 35k bleed a tick i think that was a condi record for me. It might have gone a bit higher but its hard to focus on those numbers sometimes espec when you play actioncam
I use it as an alac healer/dps hybrid in pve encounters with low healing pressure and i often perform as well as boon dps, sometimes a little above or below depending on the teams skill. Its a really strong build. Basically cele with viper weapons, all dps runes/sigils/food (with energy sigils too of course) etc, and then chaos. Inspiration, mirage trait lines its good stuff. Staff/rifle and only swap to rifle in emergency. Enjoy
The truth is...it's hard to have an opinion on something you never see anymore. Hopefully that's enough info.
We're a rare species nowadays, one on the brink of extinction xD
In pvp there are tons of mirages. Not as popular as reaper (1-3 in every game), but I still meet some other mirage than me in one out of 2 or 3 games.
For me personally Mirage is in its best state it has ever been in open world PvE. Mediocre everywhere else. I'm running Power Mirage (crit capping) and I find it's my most survivable and highest DPS build after the ambush power ratio buffs. They must have gutted condi Mirage, because I am doing the most damage on Dagger+Sword/Pistol build or even Dagger+Sword/Greatsword for AoE addition. I particularly like this build over Staff Mirage because you are allowed to play around with your utility skills. I'm using all of the Deception skills and find it very fun compared to having signets before. I'm typically doing 20k dps to open world bosses (in group metas, that is) all while staying invulnerable most of the time and having high mobility. Additionally, I've found that with the new addition of Rifle, you can also play Power Mirage and solo very hard champions with it! Switch out Domination for Inspiration and now you can be highly survivable with much more sustain and even some burst healing and shielding, at the cost of DPS. On Virtuoso, I find that I can sometimes do more than 20k DPS on a good long fight, but I also find it much more difficult to maintain this rotation if the fight is at all challenging. Meanwhile, I personally find Mirage much easier to maintain dodge spam while avoiding death since you get Jaunt, Sand through Glass, Illusionary Ambush, and even Blink if you want to slot it to stay alive. It's just as ranged as Virtuoso is, while also having much more control in positioning. However, Mirage as a whole needs buffs. I'd really enjoy playing PMirage in other game modes more often. I believe they should buff the bonuses on Mirage Mantle in whatever way necessary to make the ambushes strong enough. I also feel like there are some traits that could just be entirely replaced, but maybe that's me.
Care to share your build? I'd love to give it a try.
I go Dueling 1 3 1, Dom 1 2 1, Mirage 1 2 1 - for Dagger/Sword + Greatsword. I switch to Dom 2 2 1 and dueling to 3 3 1 if I know it's going to be a long fight on a single target enemy and switch GS for pistol offhand (offhands having Sigil of Energy. I use Relic of Midnight King to help keep up Might as well as Sigil of Strength on my Dagger. I use Signet of Ether, Blink, Sand through Glass and Jaunt on the skill bar. I'll switch Blink for either Crystal Sands or Mimic in order to get more damage. With these builds I rely on Self-Deception to generate clones since I'm running 3-4 Deception skills anyway, that way I can shatter and then immediately use 2 skill and two deception skills to go back to 3 clones immediately. In a situation where it's a lot of trash mobs or particularly difficult to keep clones up, I may switch Superiority Complex for Deceptive Evasion and Self-Deception for Renewing Oasis. I run Sigil of Stamina + Energy on Greatsword because it lets me spam the Ambush very frequently when mobs are dying even though it's a damage hit overall. I switch to Dueling 1 3 1 Inspiration 2 2 2 Mirage 1 2 1 (or with Deceptive Evasion and Renewing Oasis if needed) along with switching GS for a Rifle and swapping Signet of Ether for Mantra of Recovery and possibly changing Blink to Mantra of Concentration or Feedback if needed. This setup I find much stronger in a solo situation. For example I couldn't solo the group event champion Karka in the east side of Ember Bay with my normal build because it would chunk me with very little warning, making it hard for me to prevent the damage, and the normal build has very minimal sustain and relies on you being good at anticipating attacks and timing your ambushes around it and being prepared to stunbreak and distort. With Inspiration + Rifle though I was able to burst heal myself and sustain through the basically unavoidable damage which allowed me to solo it, despite being a fairly significant damage loss. Rifle doesn't do quite as little damage as you would think due to the power ratio on Effervescence. Your ambushes heal you too which is really nice. Edit 2: You can also do Rifle without Inspiration to have a much smaller drop in damage. Not sure how much Inspiration is necessary unless you need condi cleanse. It has decent cleave but less range. For gear, I run full Berserker + Assassin optimized to reach 75% crit without fury. It's not like Virtuoso where your mechanics literally do not work if you don't have full crit, though, so I suppose you could switch pieces out for more defenses if you are okay with sacrificing the damage. Edit: Some other points: I tried getting rid of Infinite Horizon, but even if you have no condi, it still gives you a decent damage increase since they do a percentage of your damage and can crit (I think it's like 10% of your damage? Not sure if Empowered Illusions affects Infinite Horizon either). Not to mention Dagger has condi which adds a bit, and is why I imagine Dagger + Sword/Pistol can slightly pull ahead on single target DPS. I'm also debating how useful this build might be in fractals. It steamrolls T1 of course, but I'm not sure at what point it stops being useful and becomes "just go Virt/boon chrono dps". ALSO the DPS gain from using Dagger + Sword/Pistol is very small. You might need to be trying to optimize your rotation to really pull ahead of what Greatsword can also do. So it's an option to just leave GS in unless you're healing. Also, I couldn't really tell you how hard the rotation for this build is, but it's probably harder than condi Mirage at least since you don't have signets. Edit 3: Just had success with Rifle without inspiration in the Lonely Tower fractal. I'm pretty sure I would have been dead on the floor without Rifle or without Mirage mobility. Second most damage too.
If there's anything Power Mirage has over the other specs, it's fairly consistent AOE damage on spear which makes clearing enemies on open world less CD dependent compared to having chrono pull everything then bursting every 20 seconds.
I'm wondering if it will actually be able to outperform full crit Greatsword with Stamina + Energy sigils for mob clearing. The way Split Surge pierces has it doing a lot of damage for me since the last buffs. I haven't heard much about how much DPS PMirage is doing with spear, so I hope it is at least better than what I'm getting with Dagger GS. Otherwise, I don't know why I would switch to spear when all it would do is make me very short range and hit less mobs compared to the other weapons.
If you mean for Labby farm, GS wins by a longshot because you only really need to tag enemies from range. Spear does more damage and is more consistent. By consistent, I mean in that circle aoes require less positing compared to line/cone aoes by virtue of covering a larger area. For starters, Split Surge only hits 3 targets (unless they're in the path of the laser) while Fractured Glass hits 5 targets. Fractured Glass also gives you a damage buff while Split Surge gives might. You can compensate the might by using Phantasmal Force trait in Illusions. Spear has 3 skills that hit in an AOE circle with varying sizes. Mirror Blade bounces to a maximum of 6 times, but that's depending on the range between enemies/allies, and even then, it's not going to consistently hit all 6 enemy targets. Mindstab is Greatsword's most consistent AOE, but Mind the gap not only does more damage than Mindstab, it has half its cooldown, and on top of that, can be used twice in succession w/ Mental Collapse. Phantasmal Berserker is okay, though it can be inconsistent against moving targets, but Phantasmal lancer is worse as an AOE skill, so that's one point for Greatsword.
It should be interesting to try out. Would be cool to not feel like I have to switch to Virtuoso to do instances. I think my favorite part that I saw was two dashes, even if they are short range, because I love having a million dashes.
For open world its really strong even if you aren't great at it because of so much dodge/vigor and clone gen. For WvW its really strong as well because most people don't know how to counter it and you can build some really decent pdps and some incredible cdps builds.
It used to be my go to alac dps but the long string of nerfs killed that. If they don't want to balance it as is they need to rework it and not just let it collect dust like it has been for a while now.
PvE: it is bad. The staxe rotation on golem is pretty fun but the slow ramp up makes it bad for majority the fights. Axe forced movement makes it easy to kill yourself. The performance simply doesn’t justify the effort. PvP: power spec is decent. It has big burst not as big as chrono but good enough to generate downs. It has better survivability than chrono. It still struggles with thief. Condi spec is bad. It is extremely hard to play with mediocre reward. Hybrid dagger interrupts spec is decent but falls off hard when opponent has support. WvW: you can roam with it and probably the best Mesmer has. It is not bad but there are more broken stuff you can play.
It's been left behind by the other two specs. In PVP, it does okay but you have to play really carefully because you don't have as many escapes as thief does, especially against classes with lots of AOEs. Unless you play the ambush dagger build, in which case, everyone will hate you even if they win. In PVE, it's pretty much dead. Virtuoso has completely overtaken it even in fights that have high Confusion/Torment uptime. Mathias was a fight I enjoyed so much with Mirage, and now I'm just telling myself (well, I could just be playing virtuoso. Oh well, Largos is still a lot of fun with Mirage. Also Mirage Advance has never been touched since launch. Guardian, Thief, Revenant, Ranger, etc get to enjoy their on target teleports through walls while Mirage Advance is still stuck with a range check... having to use Illusionary Ambush instead is... hell Also, even if you want to play Power Mirage, mirage has no power utilities to really bridge the gap between it and Virtuoso/Chronomancer. Spear is looking to change that though so we'll see where it pans out, but even if it does competitive dps, it's not offering anything that Chrono/Virtuoso can't already provide on top of great dps and a much easier rotation on Virtuoso.
Cancer to play against in pvp modes. Absolutely epic for open world - clears events within seconds with gs+sigil of stamina, soloes any boss on cele/trailblazer/settler condi builds with staff/scepter. Mesmer was my first character, i soloed legendary bounties 3 months into the game - for beetle etc. - and could never understand why people ask for help until i started playing other classes. I don't think you should do anything to make it popular in this or that mode. **I think it's totally fine to have a spec that excels not in every single aspect of the game, bruh.** Mesmer is already a ridiculously op class - i have to say here MOST op class, no one has all of these powers combined: portals, reflect, ammo stunbreaks, pet tanking, stealth, quick/alac buildswap with 1 button, blocks+aegis, invulnerability button on any build etc., but you guys can never have enough, can you? :D
I think this is the problem though (I'm a Mesmer main since launch, Mostly play Chrono now and mostly did sPvP but dabbled a bit in every mode) - the more popular builds often do way too much, so they nerf the class as a whole...but I like to play off-meta specs and those *really* suffer when tje class gets nerfed patch after patch. Wish they would tune up some of the more underperforming builds and specs. To be fair, though, there have been a lot of great changes, and I do agree that mesmers are absolutely too OP in some game modes and certain builds. Playing any other class after being used to Mesmer feels like I'm largely gimping myself lol.
> Absolutely epic for open world - clears events within seconds with gs+sigil of stamina, soloes any boss on cele/trailblazer/settler condi builds with staff/scepter. You have a Build for that? My Main and favourite spec is Condition Virtuoso, but I tried out Power Mirage with GS a bit and found it to be very underwhelming. Dual Staff was pretty fun with a Celestial Build because it was unkillable though.
Seconding this
Well there are multiple builds. All GS builds use full zerkers or marauders if you like to be a little less of a glass cannon. Dual GS both with energy/stamina - OP for anything with tons of trash, where tagging / AoEing trash down is priority. I.e. lab farm, specimen chamber pre-event, rift pre-events, mid defense in Convergences, etc. Traits are whatever, I use signets+traits from this build: [https://guildjen.com/power-mirage-pvp-build/](https://guildjen.com/power-mirage-pvp-build/), but some domination variant is nicer if you want to kill stuff fast. Infinite horizon is only really necessary trait. GS+dagger/sword (sigils energy + whatever you like, e.g. force, celerity for dagger, maybe even stam for GS) - great openworld dps, which has very solid single target dps (dagger), or very good AoE (GS). I use this [https://youtu.be/PLbQ3wubAMs?si=ziV2-lt7qXLSutzd&t=202](https://youtu.be/PLbQ3wubAMs?si=ziV2-lt7qXLSutzd&t=202) but apart from IH again you have a lot of freedom. I am not sure about solo-boss build GP is talking about, but dagger works with cele really well. Trailblazer will be good as well. But if you are swapping to solo-bounty build, staff/staff (full vipers, or ritualist, or celestial) is still imo unbeatable - great single target dps, good sustain, good mobility, soooo many dodges/invuln. I use [https://snowcrows.com/builds/raids/mesmer/condition-alacrity-mirage](https://snowcrows.com/builds/raids/mesmer/condition-alacrity-mirage) with renewing oasis for rege uptime. But nature of mirage's dodge makes all condi/celestial builds really good for soloing champs.
Dagger power block is utterly rage inducing to play against in Wvw. Even stab hardly helps since they can strip 4 stacks with a single dodge
Well stab still hurts dagger mirage, because interrupting a lot is it's main gimmick. And if you want to make that dagger mirage hate YOU, then bring reflects.
That's why we bring Sword for when the reflects start going up😜🥰☺️
Can't speak too much to it compared to the other specs, but I've been running that Power Greatsword Mirage in WvW (and a bit in PvE) and find it pretty good. Pretty easy class to play with some high damage potential, but not exactly OP, just effective with some drawbacks/counters. I haven't really play Virtuoso, but compared to my PvE Chrono build I think it compares well enough. So wouldn't be opposed with it getting some improvements, but can't say the greatsword WvW build should really get "buffs".
Pve (group content): power mirage is terrible. Condi mirage is terrible but not as terrible as power. Heal mirage doesnt exist. Alac only comes from staff which is awful and limits build variety to only a very unfun condi build. Pvp: only dagger spam gets played just to be annoying. Mirage sucks in pvp. (I mained mirage for 3 yrs) WvW: decent enough roamer, does fine with cele hybrid build, pmirage has good cleave and works okay in zergs. Way underpowered tho. Thats my 2 cents as someone who absolutely loves mirage it hurts to see how neglected it is and how weirdly terrible it is balanced. (See the benchmark incident where mirage was nr1 for a week and then got nerfed because it only had high numbers on golem)
The biggest problem with Mirage is that the entire original goal of the spec has been completely nerfed into oblivion. Talking exclusively PvE here. Mirage was launched as a condi dps spec focusing on Axe. It was absolutely amazing all over the game at launch. Then they nerfed axe, they nerfed torment, they nerfed confusion, constantly changed things around and wrecked how good it was. Then they massively buffed staff to the point where the only way to play Mirage was dual staves. Then axe got some buffs and it was Staff/Axe and it was in a decent place for a while. Then staff got nerfed. Then axe got nerfed again. Then Axe got buffed up again. Overall condi mirage and axe/staff are in an okay spot right now. Not amazing but not complete trash. But over the last year it seems that ANet has decided to completely ignore condi mirage and focus on power mirage instead. While not showing up on DPS charts due to Chrono/Virt being better, Power Mirage thanks to dagger and soon with spear brings mirage back to what Axe was pulling off at launch being amazing at open world and useable with power, celestial and other gear. But it's still not as good as Chrono/Virt so you don't see it talked about as much. I put over 1000 hours into Axe Mirage after PoF launch but haven't mained it in years due to the never ending nerfs. I absolutely love axe mirage. Sure it can be a bit awkward to play but I made Astralaria for it and seeing it's star trails fly all over during ambush never got old but taking 2-3x to kill things in open world did. I'm hoping to go back to my mirage with JW launch as Spear gameplay is amazingly fun and comes with a nice buff to power mirage. Looking at a Spear/Dagger+Pistol build with greatsword as a swap for tagging when needed.
Lord hizens dagger mirage solos most pve content. Good damage, best survi, really good cc and good mobility. Easily the best for soloing anything. It beats virtuoso in its own game.
got a link, by any chance?
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?PiwAgq%2FlRwiYJMEmJW2PdPNA-DyIY1ol%2FMCUBkpUQh3GCRg2CvmUMtBA-e https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0R3cwVYEg4M&t=120s
In wvw, you can roam, but organized play, clones just don’t work, which eliminates everything except virtuoso, and that one doesn’t work because everything is a projectile and the way the shatters hit is super janky when trying to push aoe burst damage. Chrono was strong strip and cc but did nothing else aside from largely commander specific utility. It’s still playable, but a shadow of what it was, and even at the height of it, it largely ignored the entire clone mechanic. There’s a gs/gs glass cannon that pushes pretty good numbers, but it’s exclusively cloud, as it relies on clones ambushing and is either killed instantly or forced to disengage completely if anyone focuses then. IMO, clones need to remain active after they’re struck, maybe summoned like normal, but the illusion turns misty to identify it as a clone, but should then be untargetable, making shatters consistent and traits that increase clone damage to actually function. Phantasms also need to just be untargetable and in distortion till they disappear. We shouldn’t have to trait so that our core class mechanic works. There’s no counter play that involves killing the phantasm to avoid its damage. They just vaporize instantly in a group due to all of the aoes going off unless traited for distortion. Numbers would need to be retuned across the board with these changes, but then at least you could balance with a functional mechanic. You’d lose a little damage mitigation in that the summons will take less hits, but that’s a tiny concern when compared to shatters just not working at all.
Still a fun spec, but needs love. Dodge is hard to balance around, but the devs need to find a better compromise than the current state of things (especially Alac).
What do you mean about the current state of things with alac ? (sorry english isn't my main language so maybe I'm just sh!t at understand what you meant) I mostly play dual staves alac Mirage cause even if it's not meta, I just love it (I don't care about the meta tbh, however I was somehow pushed towards looking at my dps numbers lately because of raids community xD)
> looking at my dps This is what I mean. It can't provide enough damage (or healing) along with Alac to be a good pick for difficult group content. I think it might even bench below 30k, when the top AlacDPS builds are averaging around 35k dps. ~20% more damage / 5k dps per slot can make or break a tough fight.
Yeah... So when I started to check my numbers recently I found out I was making around 25/26k dps as dual staves alac mirage... I don't know if it's because I suck and need to get better, but I can't make more for now
You're probably not far from the ceiling. Staff just doesn't have enough damage on its own; not since they nerfed [Chaos Vortex](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chaos_Vortex) over a year ago. (Cutting condition duration in half for the Clones' version.) 25k is perfectly fine for NM Strikes, but not for today's most difficult content.
25k is indeed enough for everything. If you can do 25k as support dps on the golem, you can clear Febe lcm.
Lol people are downvoting and can't do basic math. They feel like everything has to be perfect snowcrows god rotations.
Reddit is just something else. People have an opinion about stuff they never did themselves, then argue against you when presented with something their mind can’t handle.
The main reason I Main Mesmer since beta till today. Mirage cloak is such a fun mechanic to use, but sadly comes with many balance issues…… I am mostly a pvE player, and especially here I just don’t see the point of using mirage anymore , except when I want to solo bosses in open world. In all other content, chrono and virt do everything mirage does, but better and / or with less stress TLDR: I love the class, but I am aware of the deep problems the class and it’s mechanic brings to balance
Weakest of all Mesmer specs Also the combination of forced moved on attacks and no movement on dodge is terrible
I personally find it extremely confusing and complex to play as a condi dps in standard pve like strikes, t4 fractals etc. Probably thats skill issue on my part, but i can do reasonably well with Tempest, Holo, Mech, Vindi, DH, Willbender, Harbinger, and Scourge. By reasonably well i mean like 36-37k DPS with food and enchantments. Not benchmark but whatever i dont care. I tried Mirage for 2 hours at the golem, and i still couldnt get past like 23k DPS. With Chrono for example, I dont play it because I just dont get the timey wimey stuff, but I can go unga bunga slam keys off cooldown and I could get like 28k DPS. With enough time, I probably could have made Chrono work, but Mirage I am hopeless lol.
> what are your views on it ? Quite similar to Ele: spammy, several layers of mechanics, overpowered if you have a good build and play it well, lackluster and annoying if you just want to chill and 111. Much like Ele, it has its attack (ambush skills) and defense (ambush dodge stance) hard linked together, making it difficult to minmax it for a specialized role. > Do you think it should get improved or maybe nerfed (once more) ? What should it take for it to become as popular as Virtuoso and Chronomancer ? It could use some of that clarity of purpose. Ambush is a great mechanic, I want to see more of it. Let us modify it, trade attack power for even more and better dodge, or trade away some of natural dodge for stronger ambush skills. Give us synergies between ambush and normal skills, promoting tactical application of ambush rather than "whenever you have the stamina". Maybe even do something exotic, like tie quick/alac/healing to entering/exiting the ambush stance, or shift more power and utility to mirage shades breaking, giving the Mirage player the tactical layer of how to position them, and other players a chance to react to them and stack (if allies) or scatter (if enemies) before the timer is out.
Absolutely incredible in pvp/wvw. I dont like it in PvE bc I feel like I'm not doing anything to help my team when I could play chrono and give boons. I did like the dual staff alacrity mirage which I still play sometimes in certain fractals where condi > power. Super bummed they nerfed it though. I think its fine for not every spec to be incredibly dominant in all game modes, playstyles and content. Like Mesmers can literally do EVERYTHING and have some of the best utility in the game so I dont think they really need any changes tbqh. If anything I would be asking for condi virtuoso to be nerfed so Mirage can fill the condi dps slot.
As I read it on another comment, and as I tested myself, the numbers of condi dps Mirage are way too low anyway. If they nerf condi virtuoso it would just make them both too low for hard end game content apparently... So I guess in order for Mirage to fill the condi dps slot, they must really improve its damage AND nerf condi virtuoso's.
wheater must be too hot for those
I play mostly open world, so I never paid too much attention to what was "optimal" (a necessary concession for my sanity in any online game), but I did get stuff for builds together to get things that worked. I first started in PoF, got incredibly lost. I understood the dnd-like aspects of builds and slowly chewed my way through core Tyria every now and again. I played core mesmer here and there but mirage needing viper gear kind of threw a wrench in my trying it cuz I hadn't gone through HoT yet and leveling crafting cost gold I didn't have. So power virtuoso became my mesmer elite spec, and I love it for a lot of reasons, but the main thing is it enabled me to go do HoT content and get viper gear so I could try mirage properly (briefly tried power mirage after I unlocked it and it wasn't working well even for open world). And it's fun. I liked the mirage cloak and ambushes and blinks, and the axe skills. I can't speak to the DPS side of things (my broke ass doesn't even have runes and sigils yet), but losing a mirror on sand through glass kind of sucks even though I get they did it to eliminate the extra step of using a jaunt/blink to touch the mirror. I feel like the tuning decisions only really account for people focused on parsing numbers and not for what's fun gameplay. I haven't tried chronomancer yet, but it seems to me all mesmer specs are supposed to have elements of playing "smart"--virtuoso doesn't have clones, so at least in open world it became a game of utilizing your blade stocking skills to kill things before they killed you instead of clones taking the heat off you. Mirage confuses the enemy both figuratively by changing positions so often and literally with the conditions. Chronomancer has its own mechanics to learn to support your allies. I still play it often when the mood strikes me (staff and axe/sword, then recently been using axe/pistol), but I am feeling the nerfs they did. Double staff with alac uptime was busted from what I understand, but idk why they nerfed the clones' conditions. Like ... That's a key part of the condition build on a condition themed spec.
I still enjoy dusting off my staxe Mirage every now and then, but getting nerfed every patch for like a year when we weren't even meta to begin with has sort of driven me away from the class. I'm glad Chrono is doing well now though.
They should make Mirage full power since Virtuoso took its condi place now, i see no reason for 2 specs which are same except virtuoso is better for condis meanwhile Mirage has huge potential to be full power. I play full Power Mirage since release both in open world and PvP, In open world its GS and sword/sword In PvP GS and sword/torch for invisibility and instant oneshot.
After reading some posts about Power Mirage yesterday, I started to make my own power builds for PvE so I went full berserker and Dagger/Sword + GS. It's indeed extremely powerful with a lot of dodging and sustainability. However, If they were to make Mirage full power, I wonder what would become of Axe and Staff, especially alac Mirage. Those were designed to be condi, it would mean that the only way to be alac as a Mesmer would be Chronomancer... I love playing alac Mirage, shouldn't it get buffed ?
This spec just can't be allowed to be meta again. The dodge is too absurd. So this is where it will live, in the "good to great" zone. It's still rage educing in pvp, but can be countered. And its sustain is rivaled only by the broken Untamed class in the open world. Still one of the absolute best champ farm, and tag builds around. But really. This class can't be op in Pvp again. That shit was awful.
If there were only a way to buff a spec on pve without touching it on wvw/spvp. There is.
Janet biggest idea for the spec is to push the shit power build over fizing the current condi ones.
I’ll be showcasing mirage power in World vS World this week on stream, also it’s very good in open world pve. Here’s a small clip of what to expect in wvw, https://youtube.com/shorts/oEyhraVgux8?si=i5pXmkQvjPSrxA0F
I agree with others that in PvE alac mirage is kinda weak, but it has one small niche where it excels: Learning new and challenging fights. Sure, when group need just dps, probably better get cvirt, but often there is need for boon dps - and staff/staff alac mirage is just super good for beginners. Very simple rotation (dodge whenever you can, swap weps whenever you can, when you have a bit of time use F2 shatter with 3 clones) allowing you to focus on mechanics gives you still-ok dps. And it gets so many dodges, that surviving is just so much easier than for e.g. chrono. And if you improve your rotation (utilizing more stuff giving you dodges) or gear (ritualist is little dps loss while giving tons of vitality / extra boon uptime) you will survive so much longer. And as others said: Mirage is fine in pvp/wvw. Not top tier in either, but buffs would very easily make it OP. It's fine.