Rip Alac Mirage

[Salt Mode.3780]

10 hours ago, A Hamster.2580 said:

Hmmm according to Snowcrows website (which I will trust over anyone here), staff mirage still does 3k more damage than alac rifle mechanist, 2k more than alac tempest and alac spectre (and that is not counting the potential bonus damage from confusion). It loses out to alac willbender and alac renegade.

 

To say the build is officially dead is exaggerating.

 

And for those of you that say you cannot maintain alac with full ritualist gears, I'm gonna have to say that is a skill issue. It seems you only need ~14% boon duration + regen or ~30% boon duration without regen.

You do realize that whatever you are looking at is not updated right? 

[A Hamster.2580]

You do realize that there were virtually no changes for the other alac dps because this was a small balance patch right? The snowcrows website updated the staff mirage build yesterday and the rotation video was released 4 days ago, otherwise how would I know the new required boon duration of ~14% + regen or ~30% without regen in my initial post....???

 

No changes for other alac dps (rifle mech, specter, tempest) if you bother to read through the patch notes:

 

 

 

Here is the new staff mirage video with the build in the description released on 5/4/23 if you bother to keep up with the end game community:

 

 

 

So from the above, we have alac tempest still at ~27k, alac specter still at ~27.5k, rifle mech still at ~26.5k. Staff mirage's new number is ~29k and that is without counting the potential bonus damage from the confusion.

 

Still think alac mirage is "officially dead" like the OP stated? Like I said, skill issue.

 

Edited May 8, 2023 by A Hamster.2580

[Mike.7983]

18 minutes ago, A Hamster.2580 said:

You do realize that there were virtually no changes for the other alac dps because this was a small balance patch right? The snowcrows website updated the staff mirage build yesterday and the rotation video was released 4 days ago, otherwise how would I know the new required boon duration of ~14% + regen or ~30% without regen in my initial post....???

 

No changes for other alac dps (rifle mech, specter, tempest) if you bother to read through the patch notes:

 

 

 

Here is the new staff mirage video with the build in the description released on 5/4/23 if you bother to keep up with the end game community:

 

 

 

So from the above, we have alac tempest still at ~27k, alac specter still at ~27.5k, rifle mech still at ~26.5k. Staff mirage's new number is ~29k and that is without counting the potential bonus damage from the confusion.

 

Still think alac mirage is "officially dead" like the OP stated? Like I said, skill issue.

 

Alac mirage has no full alac boon duration since update, damage is low at best and needing 3 clones out to even hit a alac is horrid design, just remove it and add something else. Golem bench all boons up ya lets see SC with no alac perma apply it themself next time.  Using 100% ritualist can't keep it up. Not a l2play issue mirage is my main, hundreds of hours exp and raids using.

[draxynnic.3719]

5 hours ago, Mike.7983 said:

Alac mirage has no full alac boon duration since update, damage is low at best and needing 3 clones out to even hit a alac is horrid design, just remove it and add something else. Golem bench all boons up ya lets see SC with no alac perma apply it themself next time.  Using 100% ritualist can't keep it up. Not a l2play issue mirage is my main, hundreds of hours exp and raids using.

Seems a weird thing for SC to miss - they've probably verified they can get full alacrity uptime. However, getting it on a golem and getting it in a real situation are two very different things.

[Dyllethia.5786]

9 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Seems a weird thing for SC to miss - they've probably verified they can get full alacrity uptime. However, getting it on a golem and getting it in a real situation are two very different things.

Other problem with this is that it's 100% on self with only a maintainable 3 seconds. The point of a boon support is to maintain it around 90%+ of the time on allies. This is not possible now unless you are always stacked within 600 range; which is not going to happen a lot of the time.  Compare this to the classes that can burst stack several seconds of alac while everyone is stacked before you have to separate and Mirage is not viable.  

[Mike.7983]

40 minutes ago, Vyriis.6258 said:

Other problem with this is that it's 100% on self with only a maintainable 3 seconds. The point of a boon support is to maintain it around 90%+ of the time on allies. This is not possible now unless you are always stacked within 600 range; which is not going to happen a lot of the time.  Compare this to the classes that can burst stack several seconds of alac while everyone is stacked before you have to separate and Mirage is not viable.  

Much easier to run alac ren now, pop f4 off cooldown and have over 100% uptime since running slightly higher boon duration to have more leeway on movement based encounters, still calling the golem vids a sham though constant dodge every 3 seconds is not realistic even with food sigils and ritualist gear.  Need least 2-3 seconds base alac off mesmer not this 1 second junk. Now for fractals or misc trash it gets even worse no clones no alac, but wait renegade can hit it regardless.  Had my first 2 kicks this week due to nerf, been raiding past 4 months never been kicked from boon issues. Asked the 2 coms why and my alac was to low they dont want mirage alacs in runs anymore as it's not a approved build and I was trolling by using.  Yeah so here I am 100% legendary full ritualist and can't land a spot to grind rest of the heavy envoy off.

Edited May 9, 2023 by Mike.7983

[Kulvar.1239]

On 5/6/2023 at 3:39 PM, Markus.6415 said:

I mean... 2.5 seconds of alac was the same amount we had for a long time before they divided the alac output on the player and the clones. You didn't need 100% boon duration for the alac back then. But the good thing was you could keep up the alac without a target or clones by just spamming the ambush attack, wich isn't possible anymore.

The 4s of base alac output before the recent nerf was arguably a bit high. You could go for full vipers and maintain 100% alac uptime quite easily, but on the other hand you also had to stack it up high for boss phasing or mechanics and so on.  And an alacdps that can only give it's boon during combat phases is quite bad, since you want alac all the time so you're cd's are ready for burn phases.

Then again... barely anyone played alacmirage and Anet had to jump to a "problem" that only really existed in the imaginary room of potential. It's the same nerf and buff cycle the catalyst is in right now, because they seem unable to find the sweet spot.

The difference was that you could give Alacrity anytime without needing clones. Now you need clones, but whenever you can't have clones you're immediately punished by a destroyed ability to sustain Alacrity. When it was 4s, you could pre-stack Alacrity for these times you couldn't provide it.

[Dyllethia.5786]

4 hours ago, Mike.7983 said:

Much easier to run alac ren now, pop f4 off cooldown and have over 100% uptime since running slightly higher boon duration to have more leeway on movement based encounters, still calling the golem vids a sham though constant dodge every 3 seconds is not realistic even with food sigils and ritualist gear.  Need least 2-3 seconds base alac off mesmer not this 1 second junk. Now for fractals or misc trash it gets even worse no clones no alac, but wait renegade can hit it regardless.  Had my first 2 kicks this week due to nerf, been raiding past 4 months never been kicked from boon issues. Asked the 2 coms why and my alac was to low they dont want mirage alacs in runs anymore as it's not a approved build and I was trolling by using.  Yeah so here I am 100% legendary full ritualist and can't land a spot to grind rest of the heavy envoy off.

Yeah.  Been playing Alac Mirage for my group in Fracts for a while now and had to swap back to Rev after this nerf.  Would watch the Alac on myself fall off every couple second and whenever I looked up to see how the party was doing there'd be no alac on any of them, and if there was it'd be gone before I could apply more. Trying to chase people down to give them 1s of alac just doesn't work.  Tried Alac Chrono, and the Alac uptime is definitely there, but it just doesn't have the space for utility, boon, and a reasonable dps compared to most other Alac classes (Or Mirage before the nerf).  And forget trying to run the short lived, wonderful, Heal Alac Mirage... Can't keep up Alac while constantly dodging; forget trying to throw a mantra cast in there.... 

[A Hamster.2580]

On 5/8/2023 at 4:38 PM, Mike.7983 said:

Alac mirage has no full alac boon duration since update, damage is low at best and needing 3 clones out to even hit a alac is horrid design, just remove it and add something else. Golem bench all boons up ya lets see SC with no alac perma apply it themself next time.  Using 100% ritualist can't keep it up. Not a l2play issue mirage is my main, hundreds of hours exp and raids using.

 

Just curious, how much boon duration did you have before this nerf for raiding to keep up alac?

[Mike.7983]

2 hours ago, A Hamster.2580 said:

 

Just curious, how much boon duration did you have before this nerf for raiding to keep up alac?

Forget exact amount but viper armor with ritualist staff believe was used.  Add on regen concentration buff. Used to be able to cap 30 seconds alac easily was great for running out of aoe, rezzing downs or doing some sort of encounter mechanic.  Now it is stack and put out alac in low amounts or group crys low uptime.  Think what miss the most was able to overcap enough duration that if I ran out to far they would have enough on themself to not care for a few.  As of right now my alac spec is perma shelved pending Junes update in favor for a alac ren which can hit f4 off cooldown for max alac with no clone requirements and can have 100% uptime easier.  The whole point of the build personaly was low intensive raids with it, put out decent damage without killing hands but that ship has sailed. 5-6 more weeks of raids to go then prob wont care what happens to mirage.

[Markus.6415]

17 hours ago, Kulvar.1239 said:

The difference was that you could give Alacrity anytime without needing clones. Now you need clones, but whenever you can't have clones you're immediately punished by a destroyed ability to sustain Alacrity. When it was 4s, you could pre-stack Alacrity for these times you couldn't provide it.

Yeah that's exactly what i just wrote. 😂

[Markus.6415]

On 5/9/2023 at 1:18 AM, A Hamster.2580 said:

You do realize that there were virtually no changes for the other alac dps because this was a small balance patch right? The snowcrows website updated the staff mirage build yesterday and the rotation video was released 4 days ago, otherwise how would I know the new required boon duration of ~14% + regen or ~30% without regen in my initial post....???

 

No changes for other alac dps (rifle mech, specter, tempest) if you bother to read through the patch notes:

 

 

 

Here is the new staff mirage video with the build in the description released on 5/4/23 if you bother to keep up with the end game community:

 

 

 

So from the above, we have alac tempest still at ~27k, alac specter still at ~27.5k, rifle mech still at ~26.5k. Staff mirage's new number is ~29k and that is without counting the potential bonus damage from the confusion.

 

Still think alac mirage is "officially dead" like the OP stated? Like I said, skill issue.

 

Snowcrows is always running builds on the minimal boon duration possible and the highest dps possible. This requires a perfect rotation and will only work so well on boss encounters with the same circumstances the training golem has. An immobile boss without mechanics to do, without phasing, without times of invulnerability, without adds to kill and basically just the squad standing there and hitting on it.

Is it possible? Yes, but only usable on a very few encounters with that exact build. The average player will never be able to achieve that alac output on all bosses and therefor alacmirage will continue to be a rarely played spec, even lower now.

And also, that build used the Riddle of Sands trait. As an alacdps, you'll most likely be paired with a hfb, because healquickherald isn't too popular right now either, and a hfb means very bad regeneration output. But you need regeneration since it gives an extra 10% condition damage and 250 expertise and 250 concentration. For that reason you most of times end up not taking Riddle of Sands (the dps trait) and taking Renewing Oasis for self regeneration instead.

Edited May 10, 2023 by Markus.6415

[Waffles.5632]

For real anyone wanting to play Alac Mirage now is just making themselves do way harder work for barely any noticeable gain compared to one button renegade, who even without slotting any concentration stats, can still provide alac to 10 people for 30-50% uptime. (I forget exactly forgive me)

 

I don't even see a reason as to why groups would need mirage now aside from chill/fun, which is always okay, but mechanically speaking, we really are talking like an extra 90% effort here to play Mirage Alac, between the clone management of 3 staff clones, plus the position management to snag all your allies, why even bother anymore.

 

 

[Kulvar.1239]

58 minutes ago, Waffles.5632 said:

For real anyone wanting to play Alac Mirage now is just making themselves do way harder work for barely any noticeable gain compared to one button renegade, who even without slotting any concentration stats, can still provide alac to 10 people for 30-50% uptime. (I forget exactly forgive me)

It's 5 people though, not 10.
At 0% boon duration, their Alacrity uptime is

• 44% (untraited)
• 71% (traited)
• 75% (traited, if someone else provide the missing 25%)

[Waffles.5632]

@Kulvar.1239 thank you for the concise info, and yeah I forgot it's only 5.

 

I can see some situations now where you'd want to bring Alac Mirage but still, not enough to my liking. I feel Renegade is the superior Alac atm when looking at everything. It's mostly tied to their Alac skill being instant cast. For some reason that really bothers me the most about it all.

[Kulvar.1239]

5 minutes ago, Waffles.5632 said:

@Kulvar.1239 thank you for the concise info, and yeah I forgot it's only 5.

 

I can see some situations now where you'd want to bring Alac Mirage but still, not enough to my liking. I feel Renegade is the superior Alac atm when looking at everything. It's mostly tied to their Alac skill being instant cast. For some reason that really bothers me the most about it all.

For exactitude, their ability is not instant as it pulses 6 times over 6s to give Alacrity. And it cost them 20 energy to use (8~10% of their energy budget).

But it's vastly superior indeed.

[ventress.4879]

I am having a break but I think it is still possible to do Alacrity Mirage but you will have to run the traited Signet of Inspiration. 

The other thing that people forget is that you need the clones to complete the animation for you to get alacrity so if you interrupt it in any way it won't work. 

[Jimbru.6014]

Mirage is still viable as a full CDPS build, but not as Alac. Follow the bouncing ball.

- Maximum base Alac duration with 3 clones is now 2.5 seconds.
- It's not mathematically possible to get 100% boon duration, or at least not possible without making major sacrifices. I've tried.
- Which means Alac Mirage is now down to something less than 5 sec total duration, depending on how much you've committed to boon duration.
- Add in cooldowns, the limits of lag and human reflexes and so on.
- All that means Alac can no longer be kept up permanently, and any extra duration you do get is at the expense of already middling DPS. Which means Alac Mirage is effectively dead compared to other Alac givers like Mechanist.

It was too much of a nerf. I hope they undo it and find another way to make it more balanced.

[Jimbru.6014]

On 5/9/2023 at 10:13 PM, A Hamster.2580 said:

 

Just curious, how much boon duration did you have before this nerf for raiding to keep up alac?

Before this patch, I ran a standard Viper staff/staff CDPS build. When I was on Alac duty, I swapped my food and utility buffs from DPS stuff to Concentration stuff (Soul Pastries and Toxic Maintenance Oil) and that was comfortably enough for perm Alac. So I was giving up at least a little DPS to do the Alac role, and most importantly to me, it was a simple and enjoyable style to play.

Now, I'm not sure what to do. Every build site I know now recommends something different in terms of gear and amount of Concentration. Some recommend full or almost full Ritualist; others are some mix of Ritualist and Viper. Some are using Concentration food/utility buffs like I used to (which are hecka lot cheaper than changing gear) and others aren't. So confusing...

Edited May 18, 2023 by Jimbru.6014

[Micah.3789]

3 hours ago, Jimbru.6014 said:

Before this patch, I ran a standard Viper staff/staff CDPS build. When I was on Alac duty, I swapped my food and utility buffs from DPS stuff to Concentration stuff (Soul Pastries and Toxic Maintenance Oil) and that was comfortably enough for perm Alac. So I was giving up at least a little DPS to do the Alac role, and most importantly to me, it was a simple and enjoyable style to play.

Now, I'm not sure what to do. Every build site I know now recommends something different in terms of gear and amount of Concentration. Some recommend full or almost full Ritualist; others are some mix of Ritualist and Viper. Some are using Concentration food/utility buffs like I used to (which are hecka lot cheaper than changing gear) and others aren't. So confusing...

As long as you have regen, your soul pastry + toxic maintenance oil set up should give you 34% boon duration even in full viper. That's just enough for straight forward tank and spank content. If you're trying to do other content where clones and stacking are not reliable, you'll likely find that no amount of boon duration can compensate for the losses.

But rather than just give unsubstantiated advice, here's the breakdown (assuming the standard build): *WARNING* Math Ahead:

• With 3 clones, each Chaos Vortex will give 2.5sec of alacrity. With your 34% boon duration, this increases to 3.35sec.
• Endurance regenerates at a rate of 5 per sec. So 2 Mirage Cloaks every 20sec (20sec is the standard loop)
• Vigor will increase regeneration by 50%, giving another MC every 20sec. 
• Sigil of Energy on each weapon will generate 50 endurance on weapon swap. If you swap every 10sec, that's 2 more MCs every 20sec.
• False Oasis (heal) generates one mirage mirror on a 20sec CD with alacrity. So 1 more MC every 20sec.
• Crystal Sands (utility) generates one mirage mirror on a 16sec CD with alacrity. ~1 more MC every 20sec.
• *The last source is tricky and unreliable. So I will include it, but separately. Desert Distortion grants 1 MC with no clones, plus 3 mirage mirrors on effectively a 40sec CD with alacrity. 

Not including Desert Distortion, that's ~7 MCs every 20sec. At 3.35sec each, that's 23.45sec of alacrity every 20sec. That alone is 117.25% uptime. But in reality, the rotation is very tight and loses large chunks of uptime to any loss of clones or separation.

When you add in Desert Distortion, you get 1.34sec off the initial MC. If you can get 3 clones back up to use the mirrors in time, you can get as much as another 3x3.35sec=10.05sec. This is very tricky to do because of the positional requirements, and rushed nature of the rotation. If you manage it, you could get as much as 11.39sec every 40sec (5.695sec every 20sec). If we add this to the original 23.45, that's a whopping 29.145sec of alacrity every 20sec (assuming flawless rotation in optimal conditions).

The problem is, conditions are rarely optimal and it's impossible to perform the rotation flawlessly even when they are; the snowcrows build video shows weapon swap and utilities regularly being left off CD without even attempting DD. And that's an expert(?) performing on a golem! Just missing weapon swap by 5 sec (which they consistently do), is a loss of 2.23sec of alacrity per 20sec. Start throwing in mechs that separate the group, phases that deny targets for clones, clone death/CC, plus general user stress/fumble: the alacrity uptime can get pretty abysmal. 

*TL;DR: Both sides are technically right. The numbers do check out on paper and in optimal conditions the alacrity is fine, possibly even good. But more importantly, in the majority of the game where conditions are not optimal, the alacrity is sketchy to completely unreliable. No amount of boon duration or git gud can compensate for how badly this build design is punished circumstantially, which is why people are complaining. Maybe people wanted to play alacmirage on something other than a golem?

[draxynnic.3719]

6 hours ago, Micah.3789 said:

 

*TL;DR: Both sides are technically right. The numbers do check out on paper and in optimal conditions the alacrity is fine, possibly even good. But more importantly, in the majority of the game where conditions are not optimal, the alacrity is sketchy to completely unreliable. No amount of boon duration or git gud can compensate for how badly this build design is punished circumstantially, which is why people are complaining. Maybe people wanted to play alacmirage on something other than a golem?

Or to put it another way: Both sides are technically right, but in practice...