Mirage isn't as OP as you think.

First of all I do not mean to make anyone angry nor am I a white knight. I apologize if none of you will agree with me. :) I love all people.But am I the only one who thinks that all these complaints about mirage being OP are a bit biased? You all demand nerfs that would actually render mesmer useless and totally unviable everywhere. Of course, mesmer is powerful and may need a little less here and a little more there, but so do other classes. Balance does not mean not having to try to win a fight and kill someone easily. That's not balance at all. I think some of you may be mistaken by thinking hard fights are unbalanced. I consider myself a good mesmer, I've been playing it for almost 5 years. I use axe with a torch and a staff, I also use Inifnity Horizon over Elusive Mind and Illusionary Ambush over Signet of Midnight. I do sometimes kill people within 2 or 3 seconds, but not always and as much as I am winning, I'm also losing. There is counter and advantage to everything. I've been obliterated by good holosmiths and power guardians. I had a hard time against awesome druids, immortal firebrands, even some good weavers. (Yes, you'd be amazed. They literally oneshot everyone, yet I still recall threads like "Weaver is garbage" here.) Scourge, whenever he successfully sends back my stacks of confusion to me it's like a death sentence. Everything can be deadly and everything can be survived, just not every build counters everything and some builds take advantage of some things. I once inflicted on a warrior 35 stacks of confusion and he still killed me in 1vs1, because I used all my possible skills to do so and I was out of any cooldowns or dodges. He waited few seconds (Most of the confusion is from shatters, so it doesn't last long), he applied resistance to himself and it was almost 0 damage. You can say that I was just bad, but yet, you can still survive such amount of confusion. I'd also like to point out that you can't inflict 35 stacks of confusion with Elusive Mind, you need Inifnite Horizon. You also can't do it with a sword. You need axe or the scepter at least, which is quite unpredictable with the ambush attack. I traded damage over survivability, so yes, I'm able to inflict massive stacks of confusion, but it's not a win button. I can still lose. The meta build on the other hand isn't as deadly. I don't get it why you have so much trouble surviving 18 stacks of confusion with all of your condi cleanses, which are quite effective from what I see by applying even more conditions. Due to all of the power creep that is going on everywhere, Mirage needs its burst, to compete.

I agree. But they will disregard and invalidate our opinions because we play mesmer among other classes. I said the same thing about SB and scourge when people were saying op. I learned how to deal with them and managed to have success at least half the time. I found them difficult but it was possible. Holosmith is quite strong as well. I run into some power rangers that have tremendously easy time ranging you down. heck, everyone has trouble with good thieves since the beginning of the game. Just over time we started learning how to deal with thieves.... some of the time.

So many people complained against power mirage saying one shot stealth burst with evades is op. it's not actually that often you can land a full combo from engage like that. It's like when someone gets hit by one and down they will immediately say op or if they watch those selected compilations on YouTube they will come to a conclusion that it's op. No one actually pulls off combos on engage that easily and people are super used to power mirage now so they predict and evade or invuln half or most of it. Mesmers and its clones have been around for five years and most players have no problem retargeting you properly. I seriously have not come into too many fights where it was completely instant win because of class. Most of the time there is a good fight back and forth and the success is depending on who you encounter

Of course there are things that need to be tuned for all classes but none need a complete 180

Hi, mesmer main here

Mirage has some sore points that desperately need to be addressed.

1 - EM is ridiculously powerful. Assuming no vigor at all, it averages out to 1 stunbreak and 1 condi cleansed every 10 seconds, throughout the entire match. Assuming perm vigor (which is possible with dueling), it gets buffed to 1 stunbreak and condi cleanse every 5 seconds on average, for the entire match. Compare that with an actual stunbreak skills. With the sole exception of sands through glass, every stunbreak skill that mesmer has is at least 30s CD untraited. So, even if we pretend the condi cleanse doesn't exist, EM gives us a minimum of 2.5-3 times as many stunbreaks as an actual stunbreak skill on our bar throughout an entire match. That's beyond absurd in general, even more so for a trait. Honestly, if you can't see how broken this trait is then I doubt how objectively you can look at mesmer

2 - More contentious among mesmers I've talked to in game, but Sword ambush is pure daze spam with IH. Remove clone summon, remove daze from clone's version of the skill and it would be great. But as it is now, its a free daze on opponents whenever you dodge if you are running IH, but you don't even have to interrupt your other attacks to get it off because the clones will apply the daze. That's a problem. To daze someone, especially when you factor in the on interrupt traits mesmer can take if they want to, having a clone be able to daze is stupid. Phantasm would already be pushing it, but a clone is stupid.

3 - IH itself. First off, it makes balancing ambush attacks impossible. But more importantly, it leads to massive condi spam when you are running a condi build and IH. It definitely needs to be addressed.

Mirage is easily one of the top, if not the best, duelist in the game right now when played well. It has a few things that need to be toned down. It has some things that ARE overpowered.

Mirage is a dueling spec built on top of a class that was designed around dueling. It will always be one of the top dueling specs if played well. That doesn't mean there is nothing overpowered about it.

If Quaggan would have to judge Mirage by his own performance on Mirage, then he would consider Mirage weak... but Quaggan knows reality, it's nothing but his fishy hands that make Mirage weak.

You're comparing mirage to all pof specs, which are almost all ridiculous and have powercreeped out basically everything besides druid and dragonhunter (and herald i guess, but only because renegade is trash incarnate). Mirage will be fine if nerfed... so long as the rest of the op shit gets nerfed too.

@Flauvious.6195 said:You're comparing mirage to all pof specs, which are almost all ridiculous and have powercreeped out basically everything besides druid and dragonhunter (and herald i guess, but only because renegade is trash incarnate). Mirage will be fine if nerfed... so long as the rest of the op kitten gets nerfed too.

Oh that's true. I wish all Hot elite specializations would be on par with the PoF ones. I felt nostalgic and played few matches with chrono few days ago. Regret it.

@Caro.2730 said:

@Jinks.2057 said:IDC what you said. I'm telling you how it is. You are losing b/c you aren't good enough. A mirage has the advantage vs everything. It's not even close.

So for you to lose on a mirage is about how well you play not your opponent. Your opponent can play lights out vs you and still lose if you are semi-competent.

That's the reality of mirage atm.

No I read you wrote and had to tell you the truth of it.

That's the truth. You don't have to like it, but it's the truth.

@OriOri :Ok it has some mecanics who need to be toned down but if it is as good as you describe, why we didn't we see more mesmer on top PvP then ?If it was really the best duellist in combinaison with portal we should see it everywhere, particulary on top tiers.

@viquing.8254 said:@OriOri :Ok it has some mecanics who need to be toned down but if it is as good as you describe, why we didn't we see more mesmer on top PvP then ?If it was really the best duellist in combinaison with portal we should see it everywhere, particulary on top tiers.

are you for real?

basically every team in UGO runs it

I mean in solo ranked Q.If it's the best duelist in combinaison with his mobility and portal the first 20 top player should be mesmers.

Condi Mirage is the strongest 1v1 build after SB nerf hands down. Has it the most impact in sPvP ? no, both Scourge and FB has a bigger impact. But a Condi Mirage is completely broken atm and your post/title is just false. How Anet could not adress Confusion in last patch when they adressed all othe dmg Condition is auch a mistake I sometimes wonder if they forgot it. Condi Mirage is as OP as Scourge and FB, less AoE at say point-cover but to a ST its even worse.

I stopped reading at Infinity Horizon over Elusive Mind.

@Falan.1839 said:I stopped reading at Infinity Horizon over Elusive Mind.

IKR, like really???? LEL

@viquing.8254 said:I mean in solo ranked Q.If it's the best duelist in combinaison with his mobility and portal the first 20 top player should be mesmers.

team fight builds carry better than duelists dude....

mirage is not a far point troll 3 people build like druid, and it's not a teamfighter. it's a duelist. sure that means it's not the best carry, but that doesn't mean it's not broken.

@OP is QQing because they are bad, plain and simple.mirage wins all 1v1s (FB and druid can stall, but that's not a win or a loss, that's just a mesmer who can't rotate) at equal skill, and should even win when the skill level is skewed slightly in favour of the mirage's opponent. you only lose on mirage if you're running a whack build, or you're playing badly- or some combination thereof.

The biggest misconception ppl have is to call mirage a top duelist. But it is actually not.

It can 1v1 most of specs but not necessarily having the advantage. It is pretty fair fight against warrior, guardian, chronomancer, druid and scourge. Weaver can also sustain your damage if specced to do so. It also loses to SD thief(both power and condition). This is actually similar to DP thief who can 1v1 but not excels in it.

The build is best in skirmish. The power of the build is to land those unexpected huge bursts when diving in and out of the fight.

Mirage isn’t OP in a team fight where team fighting and support skills are superior to individual 1v1 ability.

As commonly accepted, Mirage is stronger in a 1v1 context where it’s stun break and evasion spam are less likely to be overwhelmed.

To me, there is a disconnect between a burst condition (confusion) and the amount of consistent application that is possible with Mirage/Mesmer while staying tanky 1v1. If Mirage weren’t so difficult to lock down then consistently strong burst would be fine. There are gaps in their defenses but there aren’t enough opportunities to counter them before the confusion builds up to unmanageable levels.

Stunbreak on evade is too strong. Often a stun is followed by a damage burst. So, a stun break and dodge/block to follow up damage is the needed response. Hard to Catch is a stun break and endurance restore (I.e a free two dodges) on a 45 second pvp cooldown. So a comparable trait based stunbreak (no condi clear but endurance regen) has a sizable cooldown and this does not.

I understand why a cooldown doesn’t make sense. It is core to dodge but no timer is readily visible to indicate when it can be relied on. Same thing for Unhindered Combatant which was recently nerfed to reduce endurance regen if it removed hindering conditions.

So I’d suggest a similar debuff here. You can remove stun on dodge, but afterwards you can dodge less.

It's ok if one build in the game is "in general the best 1v1 build" but no build should beat everything. Also as it is right now (and someone who's more in touch with the current competitive scene correct me if I'm wrong), mirage played well is the best +1 and makes thief not necessary for the second time ever in 5 years. Playing thief against a good mirage player, especially if you're not winning, is really annoying and negates a lot of your potential impact.

@eksn.7264 said:mirage played well is the best +1 and makes thief not necessary for the second time ever in 5 years

And there it is. Now with the nerf to leap skills it's easier to track a thief trying to stealth to gtfo to decap.

@Jinks.2057 said:1v1 vs a mirage isn't about how skilled both opponents are but how competent the mirage player is. The non mirage players skill is irrelevant in this situation

Thanks.One of the most retard class ever.

@Caro.2730 said:I don't get it why you have so much trouble surviving 18 stacks of confusion with all of your condi cleanses

I'm so bad at this game that I kill myself when I try to cleanse 18 stacks of confusion, I always cleanse the 1 stack of burning or cripple instead. I tried taking the advice of others and stop attacking for 15 seconds but by the time 3 seconds is up, I'm dead from every other condition. I take the advice even further, I have 18 stacks of confusion and 11 stacks of torment, I let go of my mouse and keyboard and wait to die because that's counter play.(assuming I don't have a build involving Melandru/hoelbrak/soldier runes, cleansing and purging sigils, stacked vitality and a 3 trait lines dedicated to condi removal)

run Skillbreaker/druid/Firebrand/Weaver on builds that can stalemate/forceoff point

@Jinks.2057 said:you are losing b/c you aren't good enough to win

the people beating you aren't winning because they are good it's because you are not good enough

1v1 vs a mirage isn't about how skilled both opponents are but how competent the mirage player is. The non mirage players skill is irrelevant in this situation

Just so you know the guy is running infinite horizon not elusive mind so no stunbreak and condi clear on dodge. He’s also running some deception skill instead of stunbreak and stealth so if blink and portal are being used he has 1 stunbreak and only jaunt for condition clear.

Don’t get me wrong it’s his fault for playing something with risk and so losing because of it however not all of mirage is OP just a few aspects and his skill level could be a lot higher but his idea to run a wonky build is what’s making him lose. I guess he could have made appropriate use of paragraphs instead of a wall of text to convey the message better. I don’t agree with his last statement about the meta build though.

I came up against a mirage on my holosmith in wvw. Me and another guy (firebrand I think) vs a mirage and spellbreaker. Anyway, the other guy got unlucky and hit with a burst while I killed the spellbreaker. With him gone it was 1v1 with me and the mirage. It was a total stalemate, but I was constantly evading and trying to get bursts in rather than against every other prof apart from thief, sustain damage. I felt the mirage players skill or his inability to predict my movements (and my stealth) was the reason it was a stalemate, he messed up a few times, but it was forgiving thanks to mistakes. When I messed up I had rocket boots and elixir, but neither are as good as what they had, especially as both leave you vulnerable, rocket boots especially against ranged...

How it ended, the SB came back as their spawn was a couple of minutes run away, and that broke my resistance. I don't feel mirage is OP as such, but a skilled player can make it very OP. Your average player makes it good. I do feel its risk vs reward is a bit off, little risk, a lot of damage!

@choovanski.5462 said:

@"viquing.8254" said:I mean in solo ranked Q.If it's the best duelist in combinaison with his mobility and portal the first 20 top player should be mesmers.

I have to disagree.If it has it's role, but does not dominate the actual game type or solo carry the game to victory then it's fine. By that example Druid would be a lot more "broken"

I have been vocal about my dislike of conquest, and this type of balance philosophy in the past for this exact reason. However it has been made abundantly clear that the game has no intention to 1v1 balance, and that conquest is all that really matters for PvP.

So if we are staying with conquest and never evolving away from it, then no. Mirage and every strong 1v1 spec of past seasons, or metas (prior to HoTs) are not broken.