To shatter or not to shatter, that is the question.

I tried Mirage and have to say it's very different than both core and Chrono. I think that's a good thing, and furthermore believe that there's potential, but I will wait after I put in a good amount of time into various kinds of builds to get to a builds I think both fits how I like to play and builds that are viable within each respected game mode. Playing Chrono and core for so long has locked in certain expectations, and in my opinion that will some take time for me to break out of so that Mirage can stand on its own merits. Anyway, I am not decided on many things concerning Mirage but I am leaning toward a condition build, but even that is yet to be determined.

My question is how people are leaning with respect to the shattering mechanic and Mirage - will you be relying on shatter or not shattering clones/phantasms? Thanks in advance for any meaningful discussion!

I'm not leaning towards any direction till PoF drops and I see what changes, if any, they made to mirage. No point in theorycrafting about a class when we have been flat out told that lots of changes are coming to the 2nd gen elite specs in general, along with the fact that we know the pre-PoF balance patch wasn't complete (WP and other streamers showed core Ele getting barrier before that patch dropped, and it never gave barrier to core ele, among other discrepancies).

I will say that I'm hoping that the Mirage will be a worthy "no shatters" build. I'm hoping that's the point of it, build Clones and keep them out," because that's what some of the skills seem to lean toward, allowing you to shift clones from one target to another. I'm not confident that the balance will be there for that play style though. They really do need to make sure that the clones can deal enough damage to be worth not shattering them.

From my experience with the build I preferred to play in the demo and stress tests, it seemed beneficial to play one or two ambushes into shatter.

Simply leaving illusions up lost out on the potential for burst application (which is necessary if wanting to burst down an opponent), and on the other hand spamming shatters for damage is far worse than chrono.

Therefore to me it seems a middle ground is ideal - if traiting IH, use illusions for ambush a couple of times then F1 or F2 to spike damage and immediately resummon new illusions (DE, etc) into fresh ambush.

I think I will be shattering more after an ambush or two as well, because you can stick to the opponent in melee range, cast and chain more shatters while evading. Unless they buff clone ambush damage. The whole point of the mirage to me is more evasion while attacking/casting, putting on pressure and staying in melee. Otherwise it doesn't really offer anything new....

@takatsu.9416 said:I think I will be shattering more after an ambush or two as well, because you can stick to the opponent in melee range, cast and chain more shatters while evading. Unless they buff clone ambush damage. The whole point of the mirage to me is more evasion while attacking/casting, putting on pressure and staying in melee. Otherwise it doesn't really offer anything new....

Yeah for example look at axe - a good combo is teleport in range, axe 2 dodge (DE) ambush into shatter. Should be easy to make that a full clone ambush+shatter providing summoning an initial clone (through DE, other weapon etc).

To be honest, when i'm 'shattering' or should I say 'spam shattering' - I don't even think about having my illusions up because everything is happening so fast and I simply don't have time to keep illusions up to attack once every 3 or 5 seconds. I also feel as if us spam shattering is probably not something they wanted us to do but that's what you get when you base an entire class around having illusions up that die when sneezed on and aren't fluid enough when attacking as fast as their owners.

Don't get me wrong, in PvE I don't really shatter and keep my phantasms/clones up. But in WvW/PvP they don't exist to me. They aren't deceptive enough and damage is too low to even bother so. Maybe they'll change the classes mechanic and hopefully revisit hexes too. (Hexes could easily be translated in Guild Wars 2 as a backwards barriers by the way...just saying)

xo :3

If nothing much change when PoF release, I will shatter as normal. Thats from a WvW perspectiv! Wont bw using infinite Horizon when i can turn my dodge into a stunbreaking condi removal

I used in the stress test a mirage with a sword, dualist for clone creation. Then with the mirage skill that you have a chance shatters become a mirage mirror i could keep up insane shatter presure since the sword ambush creates a clone for you. So for me in PvE I think shattering is a viable strategy, and i am going to be honest it was a lot of fun just spamming out clones with mirrors to shatter them for more mirrors.

Depends on your build.

If you're going for the Duelist line, which most builds will, your clone generation will be through the roof, you will have to shatter simply to avoid overlapping illusions.