Baaltor.5462

As negative as my post might seem. I still think that Staff/staff Alac Mirage is really good---- situationally. After the update they doubled down on this spec's weaknessess and strenghts. So in single phase boss fights(especially bosses who don't move much and attack often) alac "support" mirage will probably be able to give pure dps specs a run for their money. On encounters with a lot of weak/trash enemies, alac mirage will not be able to fullfill its role, which is my main complaint about those changes. If anet changed clones to stick around after the original target has died, this patch would be an insane buff to alac mirage. With the current known changes , it just feels really weird....

But Mirage went from being supbar (not doing a lot of dmg but still being able to provide full alac coverage) in trash mob situations to literally not being able to fullfill the role anymore If they reworked the clones so that they are not tied to the lives of our enemies, but keep attacking your target, the rework/change would probably be rly good

Help me out here. Alacrity generation got split from main character to clones. With the boon-duration being reduced to compensate. Boon duration got even buffed from 2,5 sec baselines to (with 3 clones) 4 sec baseline. Which sounds really nice at first. But then you realize it's tied to clones. The mechanic of Mesmers that don't work well in fights involving trash mobs. The way I see it we will be able to provide permanent Alacrity in single boss encounters quite easily, but for fights with trash mobs (looking at cold war for example), where all your clones die when the enemy dies and your team will kill the enemies incredibly fast even with pugs, you won't have enough clones up to generate Alacrity. Am I missing sth. or are these changes pushing Mirage out of Boon-support role?

they have a 75sec recharge for one ccBreak whereas signet 25sec -> comes down to preference, I prefer the glyph myself. 8-9 are simply preference based, and i just listed a couple of alternatives, you'll just have to play around with them to see which ones fit your playstyle -> highest dmg combination would be Signet of Fire and Glyph of Elemental Power And yes the damage number for Signet of Fire sounds insane.

Fire Trait Line: Burning Fire has a 60sec cd in pvp and is therefore most of the time useless -> I'd go with Burning Precision, which gives a 15% percent burning duration and the burning on crit is nice when it happens every once in a while. As some have already mentioned Smothering Auras is usually the pick -> if you feel that condis aren't that much of a problem skip it Pyromancer Puissance adds more Might and an explosion when leaving fire attunement, which also applies burning. I personally prefer Arcane Trait Line over Water. The reduced Attunment cd alone is enough to prefer this trait in my opinion. I personally run Arcane Restoration, Elemental Lockdown and Evasive Arcana(condi cleanse for water dodge). Once you play with the reduced attunement recharge you can't go back. Also if you swap between Air and any other attunement you have perma swiftness. Weaver Trait Line I run the exact same. Some prefer Superior Elements though. Utilities 8-9 are in my opinion purely based in preference, other options would be Stone Resonance(Stab and Barrier), Glyph of Elemental Power(CC-Break and additional condis depending on attunement), Lightning Flash(sometimes played with dagger offhand for earth5->port on ppl) and Signet of Air(shortest CC-Break cd). I play Sage amulet and haven't played with Carrion amulet so no idea if it's viable. Runes are also mostly preference based some alternatives I've seen or used would be Rune of the Forge, Rune of the Weaver(sth I didn't really like, although it sounds nice in theory).