Regarding the Upcoming Mirage Alac Changes

[Passerbye.6291]

 For those of us who haven't read yet, some context;

13 hours ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Mesmer

The main outlier we wanted to address for mesmer is staff/axe mirage. We made an adjustment to Chaos Vortex back in November with the goal of reducing the overall damage output of the build while providing alacrity, but it didn't quite have the impact that we wanted. For this update we've brought down the alacrity duration to require these builds to invest more in boon duration.

13 hours ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Mirage

• Chaos Vortex: Reduced duration of alacrity granted by clones from 1 second to 0.5 seconds in PvE only.

First of all, I'm uncertain as to how big of a nerf this is, while the wording suggests only the alac provided by the clones is reduced, this would suggest a 1 sec base alac duration and 0.5 per clone for a total of 2.5 seconds, making this a 37.5% alac duration nerf, if the nerf is to every instance of alac provided, meaning also the baseline alac from yourself, this would make it 2 seconds in duration, making it a 50% nerf. Now, I'll assume the wording is correct also because it corresponds to the previous alac duration we had and seems like that's what they were going for here.

Now that that's out of the way, let's proceed with some more numbers, the standard alac mirage build gets 16.66% boon duration from regeneration due to its traits and any self respecting alac mirage will ensure high, if not 100% regen uptime by either confirming their subsquad has it provided or by taking renewing oasis at the cost of minimal damage, which puts alac duration at 4.6 sec with 3 clones up. The rotation for staff/staff alac mirage involves dodging about once every 3-3.5 seconds. With this in mind, it is safe to say, staff/staff alac mirage currently overcaps alacrity by a very wide margin, let's go with 33% give or take. What this means is, in fights like cairn or MO, you do not have any trouble whatsoever sustaining alacrity. The problem however is, this assumes 100% 3 clone uptime. So, in any fight with invulnerabilities longer than 4 seconds, phases, targets dying, clones dying involved, alac sustain takes a massive dive, making it imperative to overcap alacrity uptime for most fights. This discrepancy, combined with the fact that staff/staff mirage has one of the slowest ramp ups in damage, as well as with its evident lack of cleave due to it makes staff mirage suboptimal in some fights and outright unviable in some others. For instance trying to play alac mirage as an alac dps in open world events is ill-advised, to put it mildly. The proposed nerf to alac uptime will make said discrepancy even more prominent, pushing staff/staff alac mirage further into its niche, which is overperforming on condi fights/fast-hitting bosses and soloing open world bosses as it will continue to do very well in these circumstances, while making it even worse where it was already bad/suboptimal.

Now, since the reasoning clearly states that it was meant for staff/axe mirage, which is indeed overperforming to high heavens when situation allows it and when played right, it is undeniable that it indeed does deserve a nerf. The problem however is that the currently proposed changes also gut alac mirage for most content.

I've seen quite a few people suggest that some ritualist pieces will alleviate the problem at minimal loss, so I proceeded to check that out on build planner. With a full set of ritualist gear, nightmare runes, sigils of bursting and stamina, as well as regen uptime, mirage reaches a boon duration of 58.87%, which puts alac duration at 3.97175 sec, let's roll it up to 4 seconds because we're nice people and all that. What this means is that even with full ritualist gear, without using boon duration runes/sigils/food, you physically cannot reach the current alac duration. Now, keep in mind that all these changes will also dip your damage, while the loss of power from viper gear may not be too significant since staff mirage's damage mostly consists of condi and it is far from a hybrid, the loss of precision does hurt due to the trait sharper images (illusions inflict bleeding on crit).

If you've made it this far through my ramblings, I congratulate you on your patience ^^, now for the people less interested in reading a wall of text; 

TLDR: Staff mirage is a niche pick which is bad in many fights, almost all of fractals, quite a few raid bosses, most strikes, almost all open world events that aren't boss kills, and very good or blatantly overperforming in some fights like cairn, soulless horror etc.
I'm a humble staff mirage enjoyer who wishes to see it more viable overall and not get shoehorned into becoming this specific pick for very specific encounters, making it gather dust most days.
When deservedly nerfing the damage output of staff/axe mirage, please don't lump staff/staff mirage in along with it.

Edited April 22, 2023 by Passerbye.6291

[Kulvar.1239]

Because clones disappear without a target, an Alac Mirage need to be able to stack Alacrity so it is sustained through the downtimes that almost every fight has. Alac Mirage is a build that require more skill to use the dodges effectively to avoid boss mechanics while keeping up Alacrity.

This change is insulting. It's sabotaging Alac Mirage without assuming it.

[godfat.2604]

I don’t understand why we need to go through this again, nerfing unpopular Mirage only because it’s strong in only a few PvE raid encounters. Or benchmarks. I thought we had already convinced them they should not balance around that, and I guess I was wrong, they’ll never change.

At this point I think I am giving up. Why bother… It’s ok, I am playing some other games now. Of course they also conveniently forgot about Mirage having only a single dodge in competitive modes.

[Incurve Giidis.7829]

i cant wait for my pug uptimes to drop from 70 to 50 on mo

[Virtuality.8351]

EDIT: Refined my idea and started a new thread here.

For me this entire fiasco boils down to two things:

1. If Staff Mirage is problematic in certain raid encounters, fix those freaking encounters.
2. Mirage needs its own unique clone mechanism.
   For Mirage, you get punished for defeating your enemy. This is complete wrong.
   Yes, there are means for you to redirect your clones before their target is defeated, but those means are limited either with cooldown and specific choice of weapon or slot skill.
   The micromanagement involved to do so is also a huge no right in the face to whoever wishes to try out Mirage.

Here I will propose a radical solution...

• Change how Infinite Horizon works. The trait now instead applies the following effect.
• Whenever Mirage generates a clone, they gain one stack of Infiinite Horizon (special effect) for 10 seconds.
• Boons, conditions and crowd control of all ambush skills scale with how many stacks of Infiinite Horizon (special effect) Mirage has.

This way...

• Players are redirected toward better clone generation instead of tedious and frustrating clone management.
• Players are more encouraged to shatter their clones instead of only shattering at some extremely specific timing.
• Clones go back to their intended function: distraction for enemies and ammo for Shatter skills, instead of source of DPS/Boon/Condition that one has to micromanage to mantain.
• Players now risk revealing to their enemies (in PvP/WvW) that they are not a clone when they cast an Ambush skill. (This disadvantage should then be offset by giving us the god damned second dodge back.)

Edited April 23, 2023 by Virtuality.8351

[Kulvar.1239]

41 minutes ago, Virtuality.8351 said:

Here I will propose a radical solution...

 

• Change how Infinite Horizon works. The trait now instead applies the following effect instead.
• Whenever Mirage generates a clone, they gain one stack of Infiinite Horizon (special effect) for 10 seconds.
• Boons, conditions and crowd control of all ambush skills scales with how many stacks of Infiinite Horizon (special effect) Mirage has.

Very solid idea. But maybe add that ambush skills consumes the stacks too?

[Virtuality.8351]

19 minutes ago, Kulvar.1239 said:

Very solid idea. But maybe add that ambush skills consumes the stacks too?

Glad you like it! Though I am a bit worry that consuming all 3 stacks would force Mirage players to take Deceptive Evasion to keep up with the need of clone generation.

If a balancing factor is really required here, I'd suggest that 1 stack (instead of all 3) is consumed every time Mirage casts an Ambush skill.

But then that would also complicate the rotation by demanding Mirage players to create a clone before their next dodge. As @Passerbye.6291 stated, a regular Staff/Staff Mirage dodges every 3 to 3.5 s, I'd worry no clone generation could keep up with such dodge rate.

[A Hamster.2580]

I agree with OP but it is very tricky to nerf the staff/axe without touching the staff/staff or the axe/axe builds. And if you try to "fix" the encounters with high attack speed, surely it will break something else balance wise with all the other professions. I believe this nerf will just cause more players to stack staff/axe at those encounters.

 

My proposal would be to remove the torment, confusion, and bleeding from Chaos Vortex. Add a buff that can be gained when using Chaos Vortex to the trait Chaotic Potency (or maybe add it to a different trait to not force this trait line). This should affect the clones as well. The maximum duration of this buff is 4 seconds. This buff will make Chaos Vortex apply the conditions that we removed from the weapon (torment, confusion, bleeding). Since mirages dodge roll every 3-3.5 seconds and weapon swapping takes 10 seconds, the staff/staff user should deal the same amount of damage while the staff/axe user will lose out on dps when swapping to axe. The duration of the buff can be adjusted to fine tune the damage of the staff/axe.

 

You can even make this buff stackable and maybe only at 2-3 stacks, the conditions will be added to Chaos Vortex (perhaps increasing in intensity with more stacks?). Then just slightly increase the damage of some staff skills to compensate the staff/staff user for having to ramp up to 2-3 stacks in the very beginning. The staff/axe user will lose all stacks of this whenever they swap to axe. This should not affect the axe/axe user at all.

 

For reference:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chaos_Vortex

Edited April 22, 2023 by A Hamster.2580

[Infusion.7149]

Honestly I would rather the alacrity be outright removed from staff and then relocated onto a trait (think Dune Cloak which is mutually exclusive with Infinite Horizon or Mirage Mantle which is mutually exclusive with Mirrored Axes). Having to use staff in PvE forces you to be relevant in maybe two or three encounters (most notably SH and TL) while being subpar everywhere else and useless underwater.

[ventress.4879]

Meh it probably won't impact the over all use of Mirage. If anything it might make Chronomancer Alacrity Wells more attractive. 

[draxynnic.3719]

5 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Honestly I would rather the alacrity be outright removed from staff and then relocated onto a trait (think Dune Cloak which is mutually exclusive with Infinite Horizon or Mirage Mantle which is mutually exclusive with Mirrored Axes). Having to use staff in PvE forces you to be relevant in maybe two or three encounters (most notably SH and TL) while being subpar everywhere else and useless underwater.

Putting alacrity on Dune Cloak is what I've been proposing since alacmirage was first created. It creates an inherent tradeoff through competing with IH, while giving you freedom to choose the weapons of your choice rather than being locked to double staff.

[Xaylin.1860]

8 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Honestly I would rather the alacrity be outright removed from staff and then relocated onto a trait (think Dune Cloak which is mutually exclusive with Infinite Horizon or Mirage Mantle which is mutually exclusive with Mirrored Axes). Having to use staff in PvE forces you to be relevant in maybe two or three encounters (most notably SH and TL) while being subpar everywhere else and useless underwater.

This anytime. But for some reason they don't seem to like the idea to open up weapon choice for the Alacrity build. Regarding Mirage Mantle... maybe I'm biased. I really dislike it. It just feels underhwelming. I'd love for Mirage Mantle becoming Dune Cloak and Dune Cloak applying boons on Ambush attacks.

2 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Putting alacrity on Dune Cloak is what I've been proposing since alacmirage was first created. It creates an inherent tradeoff through competing with IH, while giving you freedom to choose the weapons of your choice rather than being locked to double staff.

Yes. Which is why I'm so confused they never tried this route.

[Jimbru.6014]

1. Alac shouldn't be tied to clones.
2. Once again, because one particular build is over-performing in a minority of content, ANet is overreacting and nerfing a whole class play style. There are other games coming out later this year, and believe me, I'm looking for somewhere else to take my money if this crap continues.

[apharma.3741]

Meanwhile in engineer land: https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/engineer/power-alacrity-mechanist/

I think everyone agrees that staff alacrity mirage is just dumb and probably shouldn't be a thing but we know the balance lead doesn't have his head shoved....somewhere, so he's well aware of how strong other dps/supports are.
https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/mesmer/condition-alacrity-mirage/
VS
https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/warrior/condition-quickness-berserker/
https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/revenant/power-quickness-herald/
https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/elementalist/condition-alacrity-tempest/
https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/engineer/power-quickness-scrapper/
https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/warrior/power-quickness-bladesworn/
https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/revenant/condition-alacrity-renegade/
https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/guardian/condition-quickness-firebrand/
https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/necromancer/condition-quickness-harbinger/
https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/thief/condition-alacrity-specter/
https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/ranger/power-alacrity-untamed/

Now mirage is ranked as 2 for difficulty and some are ranked 3 here but most have a similar level (shout out to untamed for being hard) of difficulty. Mirage needs perma vigor, regen (from another party member) and in return it does decent to good damage, gives 25 might and alacrity. This is better than some like untamed, harbinger and some other builds are a little more limited but they also provide other nice to haves like rez, heals, barrier, extra boons, certain life saving boons like stab and other mechanics like reflect baked into the build.
Then there's the elephant taking up all the space in the room....chrono. It has 2 support traits to let it give either alacrity or quickness to it's group and yet it remains benched because ANet keeps trying to please everyone and not force specs into certain roles (though it's OK for tempest I guess) so ends up with a complete mess. Make chrono support already and give it the ability to actually compete with other pure support options like tempest and druid.

[Infusion.7149]

If you want alacrity underwater you cannot run mechanist though as there still is no underwater mech. The ideal pick underwater is alacrity renegade or maybe tempest; druid spirit positioning is a hassle if you need to move while specter wells do not work underwater. I am unsure of underwater willbender but I am almost certain it is janky underwater due to positioning. Chrono cannot use wells underwater either so alacrity mirage not working underwater whatsoever is not a good thing.

The only thing I could see possibly happening in the future as far as other specs is support alacrity scourge (Sand Savant instead of Demonic Lore possibly), with warrior left out since it has baseline (core) quickness on banners and the tactics traitline. That is the only foreseeable outcome due to the existing guardian (meme willbender), revenant (alac ren), warrior (no alac), engineer (mech), ranger (core alac), thief (specter alac), ele (tempest alac).
 

[draxynnic.3719]

1 hour ago, apharma.3741 said:

Meanwhile in engineer land: https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/engineer/power-alacrity-mechanist/

I think everyone agrees that staff alacrity mirage is just dumb and probably shouldn't be a thing but we know the balance lead doesn't have his head shoved....somewhere, so he's well aware of how strong other dps/supports are.
https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/mesmer/condition-alacrity-mirage/
VS
https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/warrior/condition-quickness-berserker/
https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/revenant/power-quickness-herald/
https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/elementalist/condition-alacrity-tempest/
https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/engineer/power-quickness-scrapper/
https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/warrior/power-quickness-bladesworn/
https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/revenant/condition-alacrity-renegade/
https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/guardian/condition-quickness-firebrand/
https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/necromancer/condition-quickness-harbinger/
https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/thief/condition-alacrity-specter/
https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/ranger/power-alacrity-untamed/

Now mirage is ranked as 2 for difficulty and some are ranked 3 here but most have a similar level (shout out to untamed for being hard) of difficulty. Mirage needs perma vigor, regen (from another party member) and in return it does decent to good damage, gives 25 might and alacrity. This is better than some like untamed, harbinger and some other builds are a little more limited but they also provide other nice to haves like rez, heals, barrier, extra boons, certain life saving boons like stab and other mechanics like reflect baked into the build.
Then there's the elephant taking up all the space in the room....chrono. It has 2 support traits to let it give either alacrity or quickness to it's group and yet it remains benched because ANet keeps trying to please everyone and not force specs into certain roles (though it's OK for tempest I guess) so ends up with a complete mess. Make chrono support already and give it the ability to actually compete with other pure support options like tempest and druid.

I don't think being able to perform other roles is incompatible with being a good support. Chronomancer doesn't have (and is unlikely to get) a mechanic like Celestial Avatar that feels wasted if you're not a healer, so it really only needs one line of traits that complement a DPS build in order to have that option. Currently, all of the major adept traits do that, so chrono can probably afford for one of those to be reworked into a more support-oriented trait.

[zeyeti.8347]

Staff/staff is really strong only on a couple of bosses , and just horrible on non confusion friendly targets , i bet anet want every offensiv support in the game to run either diviner or ritualist stats , will it really affect the dps that much , don't know if mirage staff/staff is pretty reliant on strike damage , but it will loose sharper images bleed proc on crits 

[apharma.3741]

@Infusion.7149 Not sure why you're talking about underwater, that is a dead content area and even then mesmer basically loses almost all ability to provide alacrity too...so why mention this?

@draxynnic.3719 For chrono to be a pure support it needs to offer other things on top of alacrity and ideally have a utility slot free for situational utility like stab, reflects, boon strip etc. It really also needs to heal better, all's well that ends well is bad for this as people have moved out of the heals on moderately mobile fights and even with inspiration you just don't heal or give out boons like regen, vigor, protection or fury at the same level something like a support tempest or druid can.

Pivoting to offensive support chrono, we had this and it suffered from being a self multiplier, they had really good dps, could get 25 might, fury, alacrity and quickness either self or contribute to party and had CC and decent sustain for an experienced group. I believe this is mostly dead but it's a fear of the balance team to return to 10 chrono group being the fastest clear and for some reason they want chrono to be dps....not the duellist spec or the ranged fighter. Which goes back to ANet being too afraid to say chrono shouldn't be good dps and just focus on making it a good support option.
 

[Curunen.8729]

I don't see why after removing boons from clone ambushes to the player - encouraging the player to cast and land their attack, that it was decided to go backwards and spread it onto clones again (making more inconvenient for multiple weaker targets) and now nerfing that too.

Clones should scale up the players own ambush by the number of them that also ambush, with the clone attacks themselves being mostly visual red herrings.

Wonder how many circles this will go round and round in before some kind of conclusion is reached...

[draxynnic.3719]

7 hours ago, apharma.3741 said:

@Infusion.7149 Not sure why you're talking about underwater, that is a dead content area and even then mesmer basically loses almost all ability to provide alacrity too...so why mention this?

@draxynnic.3719 For chrono to be a pure support it needs to offer other things on top of alacrity and ideally have a utility slot free for situational utility like stab, reflects, boon strip etc. It really also needs to heal better, all's well that ends well is bad for this as people have moved out of the heals on moderately mobile fights and even with inspiration you just don't heal or give out boons like regen, vigor, protection or fury at the same level something like a support tempest or druid can.

Sure, but they can address this without effectively slapping a big "only bring this for support, don't even think of playing this solo" label on the entire chronomancer specialisation. They can improve how ends well works, improve traits elsewhere such as in Inspiration, add a support trait or two in the master column, and that's just off the top of my head.

7 hours ago, apharma.3741 said:

Pivoting to offensive support chrono, we had this and it suffered from being a self multiplier, they had really good dps, could get 25 might, fury, alacrity and quickness either self or contribute to party and had CC and decent sustain for an experienced group. I believe this is mostly dead but it's a fear of the balance team to return to 10 chrono group being the fastest clear and for some reason they want chrono to be dps....not the duellist spec or the ranged fighter. Which goes back to ANet being too afraid to say chrono shouldn't be good dps and just focus on making it a good support option.
 

I think the changes to how quickness and alacrity are generated already cover this. You pretty much can't generate any more quickness than a core mesmer can without the trait any more. Maybe you can get alacrity (it's been a while since I've looked at how much alacrity a DPSchrono can self-generate), so perhaps you could have five chronos with one quickheal and four DPS because they're all self-generating alacrity. Cool. Alacdps builds typically do somewhere around 32k, while regular DPS generally sit around 40k. Balance it so that the DPS build is doing about 2-3k less, and it would still be competitive for most groups, while not so good that you can stack four of them and drop the alac source. Or have the best DPS build require Improved Alacrity, and calibrate it so that it needs an external alacrity source to keep Alacrity up with Improved Alacrity. It's doable without sacrificing solo chronomancer on the altar of "specialisations must have fixed roles!"

[Gesbo.6420]

On 4/25/2023 at 12:52 AM, Infusion.7149 said:

Honestly I would rather the alacrity be outright removed from staff and then relocated onto a trait (think Dune Cloak which is mutually exclusive with Infinite Horizon or Mirage Mantle which is mutually exclusive with Mirrored Axes). Having to use staff in PvE forces you to be relevant in maybe two or three encounters (most notably SH and TL) while being subpar everywhere else and useless underwater.

Or removed all together. Give quickness to scepter ambush and have a wild rapid fire build.

[Jimbru.6014]

On 4/27/2023 at 12:47 PM, Gesbo.6420 said:

Or removed all together. Give quickness to scepter ambush and have a wild rapid fire build.

Mesmer scepter has needed a rework for years. I can't immediately think of any Mesmer build that uses scepter once you're past core leveling, and even then there are much better weapons for that purpose. Giving Mesmer scepter a makeover to provide quickness or alac with a trait based on its attack cycle, like Mechanist mace does, would be a strong step in the right direction.

[phokus.8934]

Reading their spring update, it seems like they're going to remove certain restrictions in the next expansion in lieu of elite specializations.

[Roadkizzle.2157]

On 4/29/2023 at 12:06 PM, Jimbru.6014 said:

Mesmer scepter has needed a rework for years. I can't immediately think of any Mesmer build that uses scepter once you're past core leveling, and even then there are much better weapons for that purpose. Giving Mesmer scepter a makeover to provide quickness or alac with a trait based on its attack cycle, like Mechanist mace does, would be a strong step in the right direction.

 

I was playing Chrono trying to do well with Sword and Greatsword. But I just could never figure it out. I just died so quickly always that I couldn't clear any content.

 

I've switched to Scepter and Torch and I'm so much tougher I've been able to solo Hero Points where I died again and again trying as a Power build.

 

I agree that it's not as fast but for solo it actually lets me clear content.

[Salt Mode.3780]

no mentions of mirage getting 2nd dodge lol, tell me that you hate Mesmer profession without saying you hate Mesmer profession