some questions about mirage

i'm fairly new to mesmer here, just finished levelling mine to 80 and am considering maining that instead of thief (condi thief gets kinda boring after a while of spamming 3 and dodges). so to all you mesmer or more specifically, mirage experts out there:

1. what's a good rotation to use? i've just been playing it how i feel without knowing anything about numbers of efficiency. i'm mostly interested in pve, by the way
2. all the videos i've seen of condi mirage show it not shattering the clones with cry of frustration - does mirage shatter at all?
3. any general tips about mirage would be greatly appreciated. can't wait to dive more into this specialisation !

thank you for taking the time to read this :D

I recommend you head to Youtube, check out some of Yumi’s guides. He/She’s good at explaining things in laments terms. Also WoodenPotatoes for general understanding of game mechanics. Mesmer is a rather confusing profession when you first start. It looks like it does nothing, yet stuff die around you.

The rotation you use depends on the build you use. In high end pve there are 2 main variations on the condi mirage build. The first uses 3 axe clones, the other uses 3 illusionary duelists. Each build has a slightly different rotation, so I'd recommend looking up the build rotations here: https://snowcrows.com/raids/mesmer

In pve you generally don't use your shatter skills at all, since the illusions make up a good portion of our dps and it takes too long to resummon 3 fresh illusions after shattering them.

The best tip I can give for mirage is learn when to use your dodges for dps and when to save them for avoiding damage. Just like the thief rotation, the mirage rotation uses dodges to increase dps (dodging allows you to use your ambush skill) but if you do this at the wrong time you could easily get caught out and die with no dodges available.

@"Wandering Mist.2973" said:

2. In pve you generally don't use your shatter skills at all, since the illusions make up a good portion of our dps and it takes too long to resummon 3 fresh illusions after shattering them.

That's true ONLY in long (very long) boss fights, shattering is key to bursting whether you are power or condi build and resummoning 3 fresh illusions is really easy and will only take 2 to 3 seconds with the right traits.

@MikeL.8260 said:

@"Wandering Mist.2973" said:

2. In pve you generally don't use your shatter skills at all, since the illusions make up a good portion of our dps and it takes too long to resummon 3 fresh illusions after shattering them.

I assumed since the OP was talking only about PvE and the fact that they mention the thief dodge dps rotation that they were planning on doing grouped instanced PvE, like raids and fractals. Some raid encounters can last up to 15 minutes and it's in those fights that I wouldn't bother using shatter skills unless I absolutely had to. Obviously this is different if you are facing packs of trash mobs that die quite quickly. Since our illusions don't stick around after the target is dead (unless you use Illusionary Ambush which changes the target of your illusions), you might as well shatter them to kill the mobs quicker.

wow, i got a lot more responses than i thought...i'm really glad for this, i think i have a better idea of how mirage dps works now!

just one last question, i see that in all those rotations and videos that people don't use lingering thoughts much...does it take away from dps after you use it to initially summon clones?

@cclbclc.1398 said:just one last question, i see that in all those rotations and videos that people don't use lingering thoughts much...does it take away from dps after you use it to initially summon clones?

You don't see it used in benchmark videos because it summons clones which potentially replace your active phantasms. It's good as a filler clone summoning though in case you don't have a phantasm cooldown at the ready.

A good chunk of DPS comes from your axe clones using the ambush skill when you dodge (the grandmaster mirage trait infinite horizon gives your clones mirage cloak when you get it, thus giving them ambush skills).

Generally we don't shatter unless we really need to breakbar with f3 or need f4 to survive a big hit. You can shatter to finish off trash mobs but it's not worth it for DPS to shatter during long fights.

It's better to give a few rules for doing your rotation than to give an actual complete repeatable rotation. It would be too hard to follow because endurance and dodges are part of your DPS rotation.

1. Try to weaponswap on cooldown to proc sigil of energy to gain 50% endurance (so try to also be below 50% endurance). By the way, you can equip just the mainhand in your first weaponset and just the offhand in your second weapon set. This allows you to weaponswap even though you only have an axe and a torch equipped.
2. Dodge and ambush as much as possible. Don't let any endurance go to waste if possible at all.
3. Try to finish your autoattack chains. It's hard to time this exactly so just try to autoattack for a few seconds at a time to at least get a few chains off.
4. The ambush skill has a short cooldown which stops you from ambushing twice in a row, it would cost some DPS to do this. Ideally you would autoattack for a few seconds until your endurance is full, dodge, ambush, axe 3, dodge, ambush and do a few seconds of autoattacking again.

@cclbclc.1398 said:wow, i got a lot more responses than i thought...i'm really glad for this, i think i have a better idea of how mirage dps works now!

just one last question, i see that in all those rotations and videos that people don't use lingering thoughts much...does it take away from dps after you use it to initially summon clones?

Yes, lingering thoughts is a dps loss after summoning clones if you're fighting a single target like a boss. What the other guy said about it replacing active phantasms is completely false because the normal Mirage build doesn't use phantasms; it maintains 3 clones instead.

ignore me if you only look for pve rotations and condimesmer, but for wvw/ pvp power Mirage you can check my guides. the first is about the class in general (showing all skills and traits etc, also a build compilation but nothing meta because im looking more for tryhard challenge stuff) and some tips/gameplay and the second guide is a specific gameplay guide with burstcombos, duelling tips etc.Basic mirage guide:

Gameplay guide: