Opinions on Mirage Now?

Now that we've had Mirage for some time now how's your opinion on the expansion spec now?

I preached wait and see & it looks like I've been right again!

Awesome in all aspects of the game & once Anet beats Spellbreaker & Scourge with that Nerf Bat it'll only get 10x better.

lol funny - earlier today I was wondering where you vanished.

Been waiting for the right time to pounce?

Edit: I suppose I'd better give an opinion - yes we're brokenly overpowered, kittening out 50 stacks of torment/confusion/poison/bleeding/burning/chill/cripple..., perma evade, perma stealth, perma alacrity (wait, what?), perma shatterspam, perma clones, perma phantasms, perma ambush, perma porting, perma stunbreak, perma condi cleanse, perma protection, perma...

My opinion is the same as from the first beta weekend where we could test the elite specs. Mirage is a spec that lacks a cohesive design. Mirrors still feel like they were thrown in at the last minute (because they were, as admitted by Anet themselves, they were put in because of the artwork, not any cohesive design reason). Axe 2 needs to have its latency issues fixed. Ambush attacks will never be balanced fully until IH is removed from the game, but as long as it stays it needs to go baseline, because they are clearly designed around having a multi-clone ambush. Speaking of ambush attacks, several of them have problems of their own. Notably Staff ambush, especially with evasive mirror. The spec itself isn't sure if it wants to buff clone damage output or rely on phantasms.

No matter how overpowered it may or may not be, that won't fix a weak design for the spec. Sadly.

Im loving my mirage. It is the most fun i have had on a class in ages. It is also the first class i genuinely want to use in multiple game modes, leapfrogging a lot of others I was laying through in priority.

Ive never been able to gel with mesmer or chrono. Mirage has clicked for me

Nothing's changed, really. The crux of complaints have been around the mirage's viability in group content, and the answer is still about as much as core mesmer. I'm not sure how waiting was supposed to change many of the complaints here - maybe now people have a spec to feel worse about? Poor scourges, fo sho.

Mirage has trouble fitting into group and raid comps, which is especially problematic because it's a couple of button clicks away from a spec that is incredible in virtually EVERY group comp. You have two fights that it can perform well in on raids, and one that it does okay on due to benefit of having a simple rotation and accessibility for less skilled players. But the rotation is dumb and boring and has severe limitations that no other class has to deal with. Unless every fight going forward is a high pressure movement battle with 0 phase transitions and enough health to last longer than 3 minutes, mirage finds itself at a competitive disadvantage.

They've gotta fix how damage works on mesmers. Theres a shatter rotation floating near this post that boasts 31k damage. That's great! Not as much ramp up, great AoE, and still relatively accessible while looking awesome doing it! And yet phantasm continues to dominate, even on a spec that wants us to shift away from phantasms. If they sort that out, I'll be happy to consider swapping it for chrono every now and again. Till then, there ain't much mirage is offering that I can't get better by swapping to virtually any other class or spec.

you mean trash in all game mode .hahahyou are already proved wrong so many times.

My opinion hasn't changed. I'm still a big fan of dual sword mirage. And I'm still a big critic of it. it's so much fun, but mirage has no viable power build for high end pve content. I hope this upcoming patch fixes that.

I'm confused by this topic. Nothing has changed... so why would anyone's opinion change?

Create a thread after the upcoming balance patch if you want to hear something new.

@Mikkel.8427 said:I'm confused by this topic. Nothing has changed... so why would anyone's opinion change?

The mirage is a high skill specialization. It took me literal days to truly get the hang of it.

Anyway, my criticisms for mirage are pretty much the same as they were prior:

Weapon: Axe is hard to control. The lag on axes of symmetry gets me killed, and linger thoughts is hard to aim and kills phantasms. The damage is good, though.Utilities: Mostly useless in PVE, as they are a bunch of movement skills. It is obvious that when Anet made all the new elite specs they had a baseline 30 second cooldown, and didn't deviate much from this formula. I suppose in PVP they might be alright but in PVE they are distinctly sub-par.Traits: Mostly terrible. The only good trait at the adept tier is self deception, but it breaks phantasms. At the master tier the only good trait is the axe buff and the others are nigh unusable. At the grandmaster tier there is actually two good traits, but Infinite Horizon is weaker than Dune Cloak in the vast majority of circumstances.Ambushes: Very clunky. They snag unnecessarily, making their use inconsistent. A lot of the ambushes skills are pretty bad, though, and the good ones are barely better than just auto attacking.Mirrors: largely telegraphed and hard to use, but they can be used tactically against certain boss fights.Target switching: this is highly impractical as you want to swap targets when the enemy dies, but then so does the phantasms. It is useful if you have to swap targets between living enemies, so at least it can do that.Overall, my biggest complaint is how hard it is to play this spec. You have to keep track of jaunt, dodges, weapon swap, and weapon cooldowns all at once. Maintaining all of these things simultaneously is a lot on the mind, and it makes the initial fight with the mirage hard to manage. On the other hand, the movement and aggression in the spec is fun, and for a condi spec it does respectable damage.

Their kit is better than thief's stealth.

Constant de-targeting and evading; a pain in the ass to re-target while enemies eat constant stream of damage and condis; and high mobility...at this rate, they will replace thief at the only thing thieves are decent at.

Oh, and to top it off, they innately have higher sustainability and hp than thieves.

My opinion about Mirage has not changed (was there a reason it should???) anyway to repeat myself:

• Mirage is fun. As with all Mesmer iterations it is fun to use the kit. It is fun to play. Also Mirage has competitive dps - which is new for Mesmers
• When compared to other classes I have to work extra hard to get same (or lower) result. Broken/dysfunctional mechanics (mirrors/ambushes/dodge) are annoying.

I hope balancing patch will change a lot of things - but when looking on what happened to Scourge I am not sure if AN knows what they are actually doing :(

Strictly talking about spvp:

In the first few games I just felt so useless with it after condi chrono, especially because of the lack of F5, condi clears and survivability, but it changed very fast; it's a really fun and effective spec with a few minor bugs.

I really do think most of the things people complained about in this forum were based on mere assumptions without actually trying to test traits and getting used to it (like IH trait, mirrors etc.)

I think Mirage is one of the balanced professions in PvP at the moment (both condi and power, but especially condi). I would love to see some bug fixes and minor tweaks to the spec (especially to power based mirage), but I will just wait until the balance patch hits in, then I will reevaluate. As soon as SB is nerfed it will be even better.

It's more fun than I expected for open world stuff.

I'm not a huge spvp player, but from what I've gathered Mirage is quite strong in 1v1 (to no suprise since mesmer core and chrono were too).

Mirage remains exactly where I had placed it at PoF launch:

• spvp = strong 1v1, not sure if it beats a DD as +1 role
• wvw = strong 1v1 and small scale, useless in zergs
• pve = not viable for fractals, very niche in raids

GW2 raidar basically summs it up https://www.gw2raidar.com/global_stats/3

We are in the middle to bottom tier of dps with a very selfish spec. I'm not the guy to go:"I told you so", but man some people were vehement about defending our pve raid viability. Not to mention pre PoF last minute change the class was utter trash.

The biggest issues are the conflicting design, the outdated class skills are a huge drawback. Scourges got a complete redo of their class mechanic. Mirage would have required something similar.

I think the spec is exactly where arenanet wants it to be. Chrono is very strong and getting another top tier elite would have been unrealistic. The upside is, if arenanet do decide to reduce the top tier dps benchmakrs down to 35k or below, we shouldn't get hit to hard with the rebalance (aka nerf) bat. The downside, if chrono should get nerfed it leaves us with no accross the board viable raid spec.

Persoanlly I play it in open world and will use viper and trailblazer mix (depending on how I feel) as gear. I usually raid on my cPS or minstrel mesmer and will switch my main to commander/berserker gear if required. The entire process is tedious though with traits, legendarys, runes and trinkets having to get swaped it can easily take 2-3 minutes to switch from one setup to the other. So I will usually roll chrono early in the week, then switch to mirage towards middle of the week when I've complete raiding on mondays.

@Curunen.8729 said:lol funny - earlier today I was wondering where you vanished.

Been waiting for the right time to pounce?

Edit: I suppose I'd better give an opinion - yes we're brokenly overpowered, kittening out 50 stacks of torment/confusion/poison/bleeding/burning/chill/cripple..., perma evade, perma stealth, perma alacrity (wait, what?), perma shatterspam, perma clones, perma phantasms, perma ambush, perma porting, perma stunbreak, perma condi cleanse, perma protection, perma...

Honestly have lost interest in GW2. Been playing Divinity 2 co-op & other single player games.

To answer the rest of you:

Yes this elite seems to require higher amounts of skill. I applaud Anet for making Mirage have a high skill floor/ceiling.

To the people who are very negative in their statements I believe you should keep plugging away. Once you get past the skill floor you really start to appreciate the spec for what it is. Playing this elite I truly feel i can overcome all obstacles if I'm skilled enough.

@Azukas.1426 said:To answer the rest of you:

Yes this elite seems to require higher amounts of skill. I applaud Anet for making Mirage have a high skill floor/ceiling.

To the people who are very negative in their statements I believe you should keep plugging away. Once you get past the skill floor you really start to appreciate the spec for what it is. Playing this elite I truly feel i can overcome all obstacles if I'm skilled enough.

Well at least you admit it requires skill and don't seem to be looking for nerf calls this time.

Also no RI so less or no sustained healing depending if taking regen or not.

If you want a serious answer then I'll say - overall it's much better than what the negative criticism portrays on here, it's also got a fair number of bugs that need fixing (eg illusionary ambush facing you in wrong direction), and some mechanics that need tweaking (mirrors...), and some things that would be beneficial to deal with for consistency (eg IH as minor trait).

Overall I love it :blush:

I already loved the dodge mechanic in the beta and i still think it is one of the greatest things. Also won't miss the leap on sword ambush anymore :heart:

But the ambush skills on axe and staff needs to be improved, they are way to slow and feel kinda weak for an ambush. Also the GS Ambush doesnt feel like an real ambush attack. Also i'm not a real fan of the mirror mechanic. Running or porting to that mirror to gain an instant dodge doesn't feel right. Maybe it would be cool if we could pick it up which gives a charge to a new F5 then, so we can use it later. Further I think the mirage mantle trait is a joke for a master tier trait.

@NeroBoron.7285 said:Overall I love it :blush:

I already loved the dodge mechanic in the beta and i still think it is one of the greatest things. Also won't miss the leap on sword ambush anymore :heart:

But the ambush skills on axe and staff needs to be improved, they are way to slow and feel kinda weak for an ambush. Also the GS Ambush doesnt feel like an real ambush attack. Also i'm not a real fan of the mirror mechanic. Running or porting to that mirror to gain an instant dodge doesn't feel right. Maybe it would be cool if we could pick it up which gives a charge to a new F5 then, so we can use it later. Further I think the mirage mantle trait is a joke for a master tier trait.

Reminds me of "The product doesn't really work, but looks cool. 5/5 stars".

My opinion hasn't changed, as I haven't really touched Mirage anymore and I probably won't unless at least the obvious bugs get tackled.

@Azukas.1426 said:To answer the rest of you:

Yes this elite seems to require higher amounts of skill. I applaud Anet for making Mirage have a high skill floor/ceiling.

To the people who are very negative in their statements I believe you should keep plugging away. Once you get past the skill floor you really start to appreciate the spec for what it is. Playing this elite I truly feel i can overcome all obstacles if I'm skilled enough.

You seem to be talking past what most are saying here. That perception is fine in PvP and WvW, and in solo PvE it's irrelevant so sure, tell people to git gud if it makes you feel better. But high skill and perception on the spec in group content isn't really gonna help when every other class is able to outperform you. You might earn a few anecdotes in a group of poor performers, but then even if you did you'd be better suited to carry your team as virtually any other class/spec.

Doesn't stop it being fun, but relatively speaking you're dead weight. No support, low damage. That's something ANet needs to fix, and until they do the complaints will keep coming, especially if they start nerfing chrono.

@Azukas.1426 said:To answer the rest of you:

Yes this elite seems to require higher amounts of skill. I applaud Anet for making Mirage have a high skill floor/ceiling.

To the people who are very negative in their statements I believe you should keep plugging away. Once you get past the skill floor you really start to appreciate the spec for what it is. Playing this elite I truly feel i can overcome all obstacles if I'm skilled enough.

I'll say this again since you managed to ignore it last time. No matter how strong the spec may be, that doesn't make up for a weak overall design for me and a lot of other players. And that is where mirage falls short.

My opinion hasn't really changed since the demo tests as there have been no serious patches so far:I've hoped for some crazy changes to our mechanics with 2nd elite spec, and let's be honest: Mirage doesn't really accomplish this.

I'm still disappointed, but I must admit that Mirage has a few positives to it.I really enjoy the theme, sounds and visuals. Mirage Cloak is very nice as well. Despite its bugs and some clunkiness, Axe is loads of fun + visuals feast. I'm also in love with Elusive Mind and Renewing Oasis traits.But other stuff Mirage has is just meh. One of its main features, the ambushes, are just bad. Sword's one is good in pvp but close to useless in pve. Staff and axe ambushes are okayish, but they are either clunky (staff) or have very little impact (axe). GS one is very boring, it's just AoE auto with some vulnerability and might. Scepter one is annoying to use and provides nothing new to the weapon.Mirrors are just ?????. So sad.

I've probably said it for like 343436 times now: Mirage is definitely enjoyable, but it lacks cohesive design. It has some potential, but it doesn't feel like an elite spec.Hopefully we'll see some tweaks. :smirk:

how you outcome rng how you outcome bug that will certainly fail your skill .how you outcome weaker mobility than thief even you max everything .high skill ceil yeah , misha playing gamebreaker . really high skill ceil to notice mirage doesnt really work now .

@Azukas.1426 said:

@Curunen.8729 said:lol funny - earlier today I was wondering where you vanished.

Been waiting for the right time to pounce?

Edit: I suppose I'd better give an opinion - yes we're brokenly overpowered, kittening out 50 stacks of torment/confusion/poison/bleeding/burning/chill/cripple..., perma evade, perma stealth, perma alacrity (wait, what?), perma shatterspam, perma clones, perma phantasms, perma ambush, perma porting, perma stunbreak, perma condi cleanse, perma protection, perma...

There is 22 mins between these posts

Mirage is no doubt strong, and annoying to play against. However, my opinion stands that its synergy with the rest of the Mesmer is hard to find, except in the case of DE+IH. It does not center itself around a more niche style of Mesmer, such as Boonshare, Punishment, etc., but rather makes us more thief-y than we already are in terms of jumping in, bursting hard, and avoiding damage. All that is, fine, but it doesn't add much in the way of something new. We've had teleports, bursts, and Distortion before. This spec does nothing to expand or add depth to these mechanics already in our arsenal. No traits which modify blinks, no new range or technique to bursting, and essentially nothing which effects our shatters significantly.

Again, this is not to say that Mirage is bad... but I find it mechanically boring.

for people who think mirage is strong in pvp .go check most pvp stream .most of top pvp players agree on a meta team comp would be locked with spellbreaker + scourge + firebrand . and for rest two slot , DD is still better than mesmer at its role . last slot is filled with holo or rev , many prefer holo anyway .it is strong 1v1 spec , yes . bu it offers little to team except portal . then again in current meta when spellbreaker and firebrand could live really long under heavy pressure . the usage of portal is very limited .also chrono is not really meta anymore .

and remember , people hasn't really understood mirage cloak yet . they think it's evade spam .mirage will look tougher than it is . it's hard to tell mirage power atm .tho higher burst for sure.it has potential if spellbreaker ,scourge and firebrand get nerfed in pvp and if you want to bet money on balance team go ahead.

i dont think we need to discuss pve and wvw again,