11/28 Release Mesmer Axe Bug Fix

[FaboBabo.3581]

@Sojourner.4621 said:Well TBH this won't change the small hitbox numbers much since the axes didn't really hit small HB targets twice... so all this will really do is normalize small vs large to about the same 37k

Note: That means mesmer will still prolly be top Condi DPS.

Yes it will. Seems like they were two bugs. The one was axe ambush hitting twice when in front of the target (release + seek)

I could easily go to a choya press dodge + axe 1 and had 8 stacks of confusion.

Then id seems like those axes were hitting large hit boxes a third time for a total of 12 stacks confu.

At least this is what i can imagine , because i 100%tested on choja, which arent large hit boxes.

Second way is ; the bug had nothing to do with large or small hitbox.

[StinVec.3621]

@Irenio CalmonHuang.2048 said:'ey all,

With the Episode 1 release there were a pair of mesmer changes missing from the initial notes as we unable to get them translated in time for all languages; these notes'll be in a bit later:

Imaginary Axes: This skill can no longer hit the same target twice with the same axe.Mirrored Axes - Phantasmal Seeking Axe: This skill can no longer hit the same target twice with the same axe.

Damage from these axes hitting multiple times on individual targets was blowing out mirage damage. These changes should help get Mirage characters from unreasonably high to back to reasonable high damage, but we'll continue to keep an eye on their sustained and spike damage moving forward.

Is this change forced across all game modes?

More directly, was this change in behavior for PvP game modes only, or is the Open World-PvE Mirage 'adjusted' also?

If OW-PvE Mirage is affected by this change, why? It's clear you felt it was functioning improperly in PvP modes, so why not 'adjust' it just for PvP modes as you do for other skills?

If OW-PvE is not affected by this change, thank you for being logical and consistent with your efforts in further balancing skills individually for different game modes.

[FlyingK.9720]

@Avster.1935 said:

@Vella the knight.6072 said:I JUST STARTED GETTING VIPER FOR MIRAGE THE hell

Shh, it's okay...stop gearing it, or actually, you can play the phantasm build...

No point, you'd be better respeccing into Chrono so that at least you bring buffs to the table with mediocre dps. Mirage only brought dps, so without additional changes along with the bug fixes Mirage is now in a bad spot where we bring nothing to the group dynamic.

[Veprovina.4876]

What was the bug again?Mirage main here, i thought everything was working as intended?

[Toeofdoom.6152]

I can't test this until I get home, but reports from elsewhere indicate dps has dropped considerably more than expected (around 10-15k).

There are also unconfirmed reports that axe clones ambushes do not seek correctly, potentially not hitting at all. If so, there may be another thing to fix :)

[Zoser.7245]

Is it hard to accept reality, right? Now go and thanks them again for the fix. It's like if they fixed the bug even without any test or benchmark. Without any care for the result or the consequencies for the Mirage. I only hope that this result could be another bug to fix. For now we have been erased as an alternative for dps, Fractal, Raid. Take it as a dream that never existed.

[Xyonon.3987]

Hey everyone - I'm

and I'll explain what seems to be confusing people here. :)

---

How it was:

The axe ambush used to be able to hit a target 2 times. By casting the axe ambush, 3 axes spawn and fly in 3 directions. While doing that they dealt damage on hit (piercing). After they've reached max range, they started to seek their nearest target and deal the same damage and conditions again. Since those 3 directions were widely spread, the outer 2 axes often miss against small hitboxes. You could work against that by positioning yourself inside the enemy hitbox but then the clones still missed.

Against a large hitbox, even the outer 2 axes hit the target. So what that meant is against large each ambush hit 3 axes times 2 hits times 4 casters (3 clones + you). Against a small hitbox around 33% less. This lead to ~45k large hitbox dps. Against a small hitbox you were only able to get ~40k but only by placing the clones inside the target hitbox aswell and never using axe #3 as this skill repositions the clones. So in raids this barely would have been possible...

---

How it is now:

They simply removed the possibility for axes to hit twice by removing the seeking part if a specific axe hit something. So axes spawn, deal damage, don't seek. Axes spawn, miss, seek. This basically means an up to 50% damage nerf to the axe ambush and clearly it's impact hasn't been tested good enough. So what happened is that the damage difference between large and small hitbox has been completely removed (which is a good thing!), but the damage has been reduced to values no longer viable for raids (which is a very bad and sad thing...).

The damage has been reduced from ~45k large / ~40k small to ~28k any hitbox. 28k is utterly weak for a pure dps spec without any other support. Mirage is essentially the same as a condi thief and should still be able to hit the ~34k on a golem in my opinion. In the current state, the old phantasm mirage is now stronger than the clone build again. So back to boring old "set up 3 illus and wait" again. But even that build has been cut down to nothing more than ~31k dps.

---

TL;DR: Mirage is basically dead for the time being. I'm sorry. I hope we'll get some love again ... in like 3 months or so. I suggest to try other professions for the time being. Currently Holosmith and Renegade are highly wanted for raids. I'm not quite sure what's bis against Matthias tho...

---

Greez o/

[Mitsuko.3162]

This bug fix has made a dramatic difference to my dps for the worse, some others are quoting a 30+% decrease. With the bug we felt on par with other dps specs , maybe just a little over, but certainly not 30% over. I agree with the above posters and almost ever other mesmer mirage mainer. It's just lost it's sparkle, playing tonight I just didn't have fun feeling like santa gave me coal for Christmas. Developers if you are listening to the mesmer community and not the other classes who like to cry nerf, please restore the sparkle to the DPS class. Or at the very minimum reverse the change and tone the dps down slightly. You broke the dps class as it is right now. Shame when I was just starting to enjoy playing.

[Ayumi Spender.1082]

@Veprovina.4876 said:What was the bug again?Mirage main here, i thought everything was working as intended?

The bug was Mirage was good and fun.They made Mesmer something I liked after hating the core and finding nothing good in Chrono for me.

I'll stay on Scourge and Thief until they fix it.

[Veprovina.4876]

@Ayumi Spender.1082 said:

@Veprovina.4876 said:What was the bug again?Mirage main here, i thought everything was working as intended?

The bug was Mirage was good and fun.They made Mesmer something I liked after hating the core and finding nothing good in Chrono for me.

I'll stay on Scourge and Thief until they fix it.

Oh, so they broke the Axe ambush... Now the ambush only hits with 1 axe making it borderline useless...That.... Didn't need to get fixed... :confused:How is that a fix?

[NICENIKESHOE.7128]

The fix is more like something that reveals the obvious issue with mirage: that ambush is pathetic and cannot justify the opportunity cost in dodge/survival/group utility. Now axe ambush is more or less on par with other dedicated weapon ambush builds (scepter and staff etc roughly 24k) and mirage brings nothing to raid group, even dps.

I'd say mirage falls into spellbreaker category, flashy but only useful in pvp.

[OriOri.8724]

@Xyonon.3987 said:Hey everyone - I'm

and I'll explain what seems to be confusing people here. :)

---

How it was:

The axe ambush used to be able to hit a target 2 times. By casting the axe ambush, 3 axes spawn and fly in 3 directions. While doing that they dealt damage on hit (piercing). After they've reached max range, they started to seek their nearest target and deal the same damage and conditions again. Since those 3 directions were widely spread, the outer 2 axes often miss against small hitboxes. You could work against that by positioning yourself inside the enemy hitbox but then the clones still missed.

Against a large hitbox, even the outer 2 axes hit the target. So what that meant is against large each ambush hit 3 axes times 2 hits times 4 casters (3 clones + you). Against a small hitbox around 33% less. This lead to ~45k large hitbox dps. Against a small hitbox you were only able to get ~40k but only by placing the clones inside the target hitbox aswell and never using axe #3 as this skill repositions the clones. So in raids this barely would have been possible...

---

How it is now:

They simply removed the possibility for axes to hit twice by removing the seeking part if a specific axe hit something. So axes spawn, deal damage, don't seek. Axes spawn, miss, seek. This basically means an up to 50% damage nerf to the axe ambush and clearly it's impact hasn't been tested good enough. So what happened is that the damage difference between large and small hitbox has been completely removed (which is a good thing!), but the damage has been reduced to values no longer viable for raids (which is a very bad and sad thing...).

The damage has been reduced from ~45k large / ~40k small to ~28k any hitbox. 28k is utterly weak for a pure dps spec without any other support. Mirage is essentially the same as a condi thief and should still be able to hit the ~34k on a golem in my opinion. In the current state, the old phantasm mirage is now stronger than the clone build again. So back to boring old "set up 3 illus and wait" again. But even that build has been cut down to nothing more than ~31k dps.

---

TL;DR: Mirage is basically dead for the time being. I'm sorry. I hope we'll get some love again ... in like 3 months or so. I suggest to try other professions for the time being. Currently Holosmith and Renegade are highly wanted for raids. I'm not quite sure what's bis against Matthias tho...

---

Greez o/

Thanks for your in depth explanation to everyone. Its a shame that this fix wasn't tested enough (or maybe it was and this is their idea of a high DPS mesmer build.....). I wonder what the best way to fix this would be? I imagine it is difficult to fix the ambush to work properly without hitting targets multiple times, which is why the current fix has dropped our DPS so heavily

[NICENIKESHOE.7128]

@OriOri.8724 said:Thanks for your in depth explanation to everyone. Its a shame that this fix wasn't tested enough (or maybe it was and this is their idea of a high DPS mesmer build.....). I wonder what the best way to fix this would be? I imagine it is difficult to fix the ambush to work properly without hitting targets multiple times, which is why the current fix has dropped our DPS so heavily

Without letting their worries on PvP/WvW holding them back, they'll have to do a PvE/PvP split and increase existing ambush effect by 1.5-1.75 to bring clone mirage on par with other dps builds. Increase in duration by that amount rather than stacks would probably match their future goals of "condi should not be burst".

[Aylaine.1036]

Can a dev confirm if the clone axes aren't properly hitting/seeking? I feel the damage loss is far too great to be attributed to the double hit bug that was fixed in todays patch. Something definitely doesn't feel right about our current output.

[FaboBabo.3581]

So a new thing is now that clone ambushes sometimes dont hit at all .

Meaning ; i have IH traited. I spawn 3 illus. I use my ambush. My clones will use amsbush too, but they have no intention to hit anything.

IH is now even useless in PvE - great.

Well now since IH is almost only cosmetic now + a little bit of might or vunerability with GS and Staff , or some delayed 0.25 dazes, can we have it baseline now and get a dps trait? And can we rework dune cloak so we dont have 2 dps traits, in which one is NEVER taken , when the other One is better ?

And maybe ...just maybe... Could you Test Things before releasing?

Comminity needed like 1 day maximum to point out all bugs. In beta state ; we pointed out several bugs after 1 day. After Release we pointed out bugs after 1 day. After 28.11 Patch we showed the new axe bug Within houres.

U tell me u spent 2 years designing this spec and u never saw those bugs? - yeah sure...

Like really guys ; Imagine the final test of mirage prerelease.

Anet: lets check staff ambushResult ; never HitsAnet: hm who cares, lets check axe. Axe ambush First.Result ; 10 trys. 10 different resultsAnet: hm who cares. Lets check axe 3Result ; gets teleported backwards, Strikes different target etc.Anet; hm who cares, lets check illusionary ambushResult; gets stucked in walls.Anet: seems like we did great job. Spec is ready for release!

??????

[Xyonon.3987]

@Veprovina.4876 said:Oh, so they broke the Axe ambush... Now the ambush only hits with 1 axe making it borderline useless...No it still hits with all the axes, but only once per axe.

@Aylaine.1036 said:Can a dev confirm if the clone axes aren't properly hitting/seeking? I feel the damage loss is far too great to be attributed to the double hit bug that was fixed in todays patch. Something definitely doesn't feel right about our current output.Well the clones also hit 50% less often, so the bleeding on illusion crit trait got halved too. The ambush was basically all the damage the Mirage had and it has been up to halved. If you have 40k DpS, let's say 75% of that was the Ambush -> 30k/2 + the remaining 10k = 25k. Pretty much this. Just overnerfed is all. :(

@FaboBabo.3581 said:So a new thing is now that clone ambushes sometimes dont hit at all .Meaning ; i have IH traited. I spawn 3 illus. I use my ambush. My clones will use amsbush too, but they have no intention to hit anything.By "no intention to hit anything" do you mean the seeking part? As far as I know it now works like this: If an axe spawns and deals damage before skeeing, it won't seek out and just despawn at max range.

[FaboBabo.3581]

@Xyonon.3987 said:

@Veprovina.4876 said:Oh, so they broke the Axe ambush... Now the ambush only hits with 1 axe making it borderline useless...No it still hits with

all

the axes, but only

once per axe

.

@Aylaine.1036 said:Can a dev confirm if the clone axes aren't properly hitting/seeking? I feel the damage loss is far too great to be attributed to the double hit bug that was fixed in todays patch. Something definitely doesn't feel right about our current output.Well the clones also hit 50% less often, so the bleeding on illusion crit trait got halved too. The ambush was basically all the damage the Mirage had and it has been up to halved. If you have 40k DpS, let's say 75% of that was the Ambush -> 30k/2 + the remaining 10k = 25k. Pretty much this. Just overnerfed is all. :(

@FaboBabo.3581 said:So a new thing is now that clone ambushes sometimes dont hit at all .Meaning ; i have IH traited. I spawn 3 illus. I use my ambush. My clones will use amsbush too, but they have no intention to hit anything.By "no intention to hit anything" do you mean the seeking part? As far as I know it now works like this: If an axe spawns and deals damage before skeeing, it won't seek out and just despawn at max range.

Some people experienced that clone's axes wont do anything. Its a new bug; sometimes Everything is fine and clones axe's hit once each.

Sometimes clone axes will not hit even once.Clone Releases axe ; hits nothingAxe then "seek" enemy ; disappear without hitting.

Again; this is what other people experienced. I cant play right now, because since Halloween every patch results in a crash and i need to redownload the game.

Edit ; pre Patch yesterday i had one situation in wvw vs a warg. I produced 2 clones and then i used illusionary ambush with self deception traited.

3 illusion ambush resulted in ~8 stacks confusion. At first i thaught i just missed/lagg/fps etc - but this is probably the bug and it was there prepatch, but overlayed though cause sometimes those axes will hit (even twice)

Really axe ambush is a mess right now, can a Dev Please tell us the exact Plan ?

[Xyonon.3987]

@FaboBabo.3581 said:Some people experienced that clone's axes wont do anything. Its a new bug; sometimes Everything is fine and clones axe's hit once each.

Sometimes clone axes will not hit even once.Clone Releases axe ; hits nothingAxe then "seek" enemy ; disappear without hitting.

Again; this is what other people experienced. I cant play right now, because since Halloween every patch results in a crash and i need to redownload the game.

Edit ; pre Patch yesterday i had one situation in wvw vs a warg. I produced 2 clones and then i used illusionary ambush with self deception traited.

3 illusion ambush resulted in ~8 stacks confusion. At first i thaught i just missed/lagg/fps etc - but this is probably the bug and it was there prepatch, but overlayed though cause sometimes those axes will hit (even twice)

Really axe ambush is a mess right now, can a Dev Please tell us the exact Plan ?

Ah I see thanks. Will test this too then. Thx!

---

My current numbers now: Clone 29k (no energy / endurance food), Phantasm 31k. So two Phant Mirages for Matthias are still wanted for Feedback but that's about it. :/

[Mitsuko.3162]

Good point ---

Developers --- What is your plan to fix our DPS class now that you totally screwed it up. Are you listening to the Mesmer community and patching this awful "bug fix" so that Clones / Ambush Axe work and are viable, it appears we know the mechanics better than your own internal QA / Test.
Took an hour or so of play to figure out how broken we are now.

Did you actually test these changes?
Did you notice how the DPS has reduced to stupidly low levels now?Did you notice that Mirage brings nothing viable or worthwhile to a raid / group now vs other higher performing classes?Did you type out the works of Shakespeare yet?Can we get a response from a developer please?

How are you going to fix this mess?

[FaboBabo.3581]

Tbh i dont really Play pvE, but i want all Players to be happy, and i thaught we are going in the right direction. 40-45k was obviously too much and we all thaught the fix would bring us down to 36-38 k which would probably be fine when looking at the (nonexisting) group support mirage has.

25k ?

Imagine anet would be a pharmacy companyAnet : Our pills have 500mg of element "a"

• consumer dies because the pill had 700mg

Anet : whops, we fixed it, pills have 500mg now.

• consumer dies because pills only had 300mg.

Anet: who would have thaught that?

In every other buisness Anet would have been isolvent 2 months after creating.

Adept to the year 2017(2018 soon)

Guys i have THE idea !

Illusions are stationary now ; shatters dont destroy them.

IH is reworked into "infinite Memes"

• whenever u use a shatter skill grant barrier for u and allies.

Barrier : - 100 ( will take 100 hp from every ally)

This way we basically have a high Support spec with mirage. The idea is very Creative in my opinion...

Hmm

[Xyonon.3987]

Stay constructive please. :|

[FaboBabo.3581]

@Xyonon.3987 said:Stay constructive please. :|

German saying

"wie man in den wald hineinruft so schallt es hinaus"

"U are treated the way you treat others"

Expextations in 2 months patch ; mirage is a little bit over the top now in PVP therefore we Reduce it's damage Output in PVE.

Axe ambush now hurts yourself when Casting instead of your enemie.

This should help mirage to be useless in every Game mode, but if there is still a Working build we will delete it with Next patch 3 months.

Im mad

[Nilson.9865]

Ha! I knew it! You did something to mirage. That's why i feel that something wrong with my dmg. Funny but i yesterday changed stats from zerker's armor to viper's, for mirage. Oh what a waste, back to ele then)

[FaboBabo.3581]

@Nilson.9865 said:Ha! I knew it! You did something to mirage. That's why i feel that something wrong with my dmg. Funny but i yesterday changed stats from zerker's armor to viper's, for mirage. Oh what a waste, back to ele then)

Thing is ; you just lost "x" gold for at least "x" ammount of Time (if mirage gets buffed again),

But Hey ; who cares?

In memory of the good old harry

MERRY XMAS TOUGH BUY NEW MOUNT SKIN PLIZ

[serialkicker.5274]

I knew mesmers dealing damage could not be allowed for long.