Rifle Mesmers Direct Allies to the Nearest Emergency Exit

[Roadkizzle.2157]

2 hours ago, ShadowKatt.6740 said:

This is not a good anything weapon. I just got done watching it and my knee-jerk thought is Congratulations, you made a swiss army knife. It does EVERYTHING! It's got a knife, a screwdriver, a corkscrew, a compass, it's got the works! And it does all of them to a borderline worthless degree. Does it damage? Yeah, but nto as much as a strike or condi weapon. Does it heal? Yeah, but not as much as their heal, or even a utility heal. Does it buff? Yeah, but not as much as as a utility buff. Does it mobility? Yeah, but only with a portal, and only one person that's not you. This is....a mess. It's like they tried to throw every mechanic into one gun and now you'd really be better off just picking what you wanted to do and taking literally anything else that does it better.

Eh. It likely can heal pretty well. It has the heal on every Auto-attack, every clones Auto-attack and burst healing and Regen on skill 2 and 3.

Shatters may provide more healing but then again they may not if a Cooldown is added onto the Shatter heal like there was on Healing Prism.

Boons seem like they will be very lacking with the Rifle. You'll be able to maintain 12 Might and Fury fairly easily but not much else.

And DPS looks to be very low or require very big tradeoffs.

[Roadkizzle.2157]

Hm...

The rifle doesn't have condis to make use of the Chaos minor traits. And it looks to have good Might and Fury access even without Bountiful Disillusion in Chaos...

 

So maybe there will be room for the weapon without the additional boon access provided by Chaos.

 

Maybe the rifle will work better with a Domination/Duelling or Illusions.

 

I doubt it but I think the rifle is a weird weapon and thinking outside the historical builds may find something that works better for the weapon.

[glenndevis.8327]

Tbh i guess one thing i'm sorta disappointed by as well is that for Chrono a t least you wanna shatter to keep up your  alac/quickness  so the whole clones healing on their auto attack thing becomes a lot less practical.

It sounds cool on paper if u can have ur clones auto attack while maybe doing other things or being on your other weapon but with chrono you're just gnna have to shatter them.

I guess on Mirage it can be nice but I wish they'd buff Mirage's alacrity overall.
But yeah this makes me wish Chrono gave their boons without shattering to make better use of the clone auto attacks.

[draxynnic.3719]

I'm a little concerned about the design for mirage myself. In PvE at least, support mirage probably isn't happening without alacrity on the ambush skill. The damage components also seem to be power-based, so you'd have rifle pushing you to use Harrier's, while staff would want one of the condition-oriented healing sets. Which could all be rendered irrelevant if you go full tank and run with Minstrel's, but a full tank build would probably want to be chrono anyway. The best hope for rifle heal mirage to be a thing would probably be to give the ambush alacrity and fury (at least) with the trait, and aim to make dual rifle alachealmirage a thing.

[ZephidelGRS.9520]

That's quite a pretty strong burst heal potential that Rifle got. Keep in mind that the guy ran 0 Healing Power (he showed his gear around 40:57 of the vid where he switched to Mirage) and Skill 2 already heals ~2000 on 5s cooldown (~3,75s under Alac). I assume with Healing Power and modifiers it could very well heal nearly ~3800 on such a short cooldown. The same goes for Skill 5, with a base of 2470 it could translate to ~4000 barrier with Healing Power depending on what's the skill's own modifier.

The auto and the clones combo is nice, but as the guy mentioned the clones heal for a much smaller amount, like how strike damage works, so I'm not sure if you're that incentivized to want to keep them around.   

All in all, with that design of burst heal, intermittent barrier and portal gimmick it seems to be a complimentary weapon, and not meant to be something for you to camp solely on. Similarly to Druid where you want to camp X/Warhorn for boons and only switch to staff for burst healing, here you're also expected to camp whatever the other set is (Scepter/Shield?) and only switch to Rifle for the "oh sh" and "oh f" moments. You predict a damage spike coming, you pull your Rifle out to place the barrier on your team, then place your burst heal on them.  

The portal gimmick is nice but I'm not sure if it has purpose yet. Right now it just seems to be a hindrance to the barrier skill.

And please rethink that Ambush skill. Without Alac or Quick access, heal rifle Mirage is never going to be a thing. Mirage already has problem with barely being to upkeep the only Alac access it has with 2 staves, throwing a Rifle in is a disaster. I'll gladly swap them around with Quickness on staff and Alac on Rifle, so that it makes more sense to have qDPS and aHeal Mirage.

3 hours ago, Roadkizzle.2157 said:

Hm...

The rifle doesn't have condis to make use of the Chaos minor traits. And it looks to have good Might and Fury access even without Bountiful Disillusion in Chaos...

So maybe there will be room for the weapon without the additional boon access provided by Chaos.

Maybe the rifle will work better with a Domination/Duelling or Illusions.

Not taking the Chaos line means you give up on Protection/Stability access, which is not ideal for a healer. I'm not sure if Chrono can offset that with the healing output and their own Stability well, but not having Protection access already means it can't compete against most other healers.

Edited November 28, 2023 by ZephidelGRS.9520

[Passerbye.6291]

I don't understand why people are so underwhelmed by rifle after seeing the stream. 5-second cooldown on a ranged heal is very strong by itself with the numbers I've seen, especially factoring in the fact that chrono gets 33% cooldown reduction from alacrity, placing the cooldown at 3.33 seconds, similar skills such as guardian staff 2 or druid staff 2 are on a significantly higher cooldown. The auto attack itself heals, so that's extra sustained healing with no effort. On top of this, you get another skill that gives 12 stacks of might, which is massive btw, as well as fury on cast, which also doubles up as yet another healing skill at a pinch. The portal skill has the potential to either save time on organized groups, or save someone's life in unorganized ones. Granted, this will likely take a lot of time for people to get used to, so initially there will be a lot of disappointment with placing the portal and the other person ignoring it and dying, but that's the life of most healers tbh, facepalming your forehead to the bone. The barrier itself can be used as an extra mitigation tool for big hits that you know are coming, like VG greens or gorseval blacks. I'm not saying the barrier itself will be earth shatteringly good, but this is a healing weapon, that literally has 3 heals and a barrier should you need it. I don't see how this is a bad weapon for a healer.

My only disappointment so far is the fact that rifle ambush trait doesn't give alac or quickness on mirage, as this renders it virtually useless for a mirage. On one hand, I wasn't expecting to have an awesome mirage healer with it, but on the other, slapping fury on it is laughable, are we supposed to generate 3 rifle clones then swap and camp staff to make use of it while providing alacrity? Btw, they said "it is fury for now" with an awkward smile, which makes me hope that they are aware that it is a weird thing to put there and no healer really has a space in any group without bringing alacrity or quickness atm.

Edit: Btw, this weapon clearly isn't supposed to be camped as its clone generation + phantasm isn't sufficient to sustain alac/quick, but couple it with staff, which comes with a 15-second cooldown (10 with chrono alacrity) skill that deploys 2 phantasms by default and you solve the alacrity/quick uptime with a single skill. Assuming you do 100% boon duration like most healers do, staff 3, phantasmal warlock, alone generates 12 seconds of quick/alac per cast. You start combat in staff, use staff 3-4-5, switch to rifle, rifle 3 for might and fury, then 2, once the phantasms turn to clones, you shatter 3 clones, the warlocks themselves alone are enough to cap your boon for the entirety of the 10 seconds you spend in rifle, and the shatter adds yet another 6 seconds to it due to your boon duration. So far you haven't used rifle phantasm at all, and you probably shouldn't seeing how it is a CC skill, I'd rather reserve it for when it's needed. After the initial skills, whenever you go back to staff, staff 3 is your first cast, because the cooldown on it aligns with your weapon swap cooldown, using any other skill would delay the time you can go back into rifle since you want to be casting staff 3 twice per staff switch to generate 24 seconds of alac/quick in 10 seconds from the phantasms alone.

Edited November 28, 2023 by Passerbye.6291

[Roadkizzle.2157]

22 minutes ago, Passerbye.6291 said:

I don't understand why people are so underwhelmed by rifle after seeing the stream. 5-second cooldown on a ranged heal is very strong by itself with the numbers I've seen, especially factoring in the fact that chrono gets 33% cooldown reduction from alacrity, placing the cooldown at 3.33 seconds, similar skills such as guardian staff 2 or druid staff 2 are on a significantly higher cooldown. The auto attack itself heals, so that's extra sustained healing with no effort. On top of this, you get another skill that gives 12 stacks of might, which is massive btw, as well as fury on cast, which also doubles up as yet another healing skill at a pinch. The portal skill has the potential to either save time on organized groups, or save someone's life in unorganized ones. Granted, this will likely take a lot of time for people to get used to, so initially there will be a lot of disappointment with placing the portal and the other person ignoring it and dying, but that's the life of most healers tbh, facepalming your forehead to the bone. The barrier itself can be used as an extra mitigation tool for big hits that you know are coming, like VG greens or gorseval blacks. I'm not saying the barrier itself will be earth shatteringly good, but this is a healing weapon, that literally has 3 heals and a barrier should you need it. I don't see how this is a bad weapon for a healer.

My only disappointment so far is the fact that rifle ambush trait doesn't give alac or quickness on mirage, as this renders it virtually useless for a mirage. On one hand, I wasn't expecting to have an awesome mirage healer with it, but on the other, slapping fury on it is laughable, are we supposed to generate 3 rifle clones then swap and camp staff 2 to make use of it while providing alacrity? Btw, they said "it is fury for now" with an awkward smile, which makes me hope that they are aware that it is a weird thing to put there and no healer really has a space in any group without bringing alacrity or quickness atm.

As I said.

I think the healing output seems like it should be good.

But to be a good healer you have to provide more than just healing.

You have to provide Alac or Quick and other boons.

Mirage will struggle a lot to provide Alac having to swap between Staff and rifle without Alac on the rifle.

Chrono depends on spamming phantasms and shattering clones for providing quick or alac... But the clone generation on this looks bad with the 20 second single phantasm and the ground target single clone.

Protection on Mesmer is dependent on shattering of clones, which as I said looks difficult on the rifle.

 

So the rifle looks like it would be a great healing weapon for any other class but due to how the developers designed the Mesmer's boon generation the rifle seems like it will struggle.

[Passerbye.6291]

2 hours ago, Roadkizzle.2157 said:

As I said.

I think the healing output seems like it should be good.

But to be a good healer you have to provide more than just healing.

You have to provide Alac or Quick and other boons.

Mirage will struggle a lot to provide Alac having to swap between Staff and rifle without Alac on the rifle.

Chrono depends on spamming phantasms and shattering clones for providing quick or alac... But the clone generation on this looks bad with the 20 second single phantasm and the ground target single clone.

Protection on Mesmer is dependent on shattering of clones, which as I said looks difficult on the rifle.

 

So the rifle looks like it would be a great healing weapon for any other class but due to how the developers designed the Mesmer's boon generation the rifle seems like it will struggle.

Essentially responded to this above with an edit to keep it tidy, but yeah rifle clearly isn't meant to be camped, but with phantasmal warlock and 1 shatter per phantasmal warlock + staff 2 or rifle 2 is 18 seconds of alacrity or quickness with 100% boon duration, something you can do every 10 seconds. So as Zephidel suggested, we'll likely stay on staff, or scepter sword shield or whatever you choose to use for clone/phantasm generation, and swap to rifle as needed or alternately, depending on your skill choices, if you want to use the boon support of the rifle for fury and might (as 12 stacks of might and long duration fury makes you want to go into rifle even without needing the heals) you'd need to do a sort of rotation where you go into rifle off of cooldown and switch back off of cooldown. The latter, I'd rather not do mainly because I hate the idea of having my heals inaccessible when they are needed as me and my friends mess up fairly frequently and healing may be needed out of sync with your "rotation". This is one of the reasons why I don't enjoy healing on druid for instance, I hate having to go into CA for alac, to me it should be a mechanic that you solely use reactively, as needed. So I'll probably dip into rifle as needed for heals, and solve boon uptime problems with the relic of the midnight king should they arise. With either setup though, going into staff for 10 seconds gives you 36 seconds of alacrity/quickness generation (staff 3 + 1 clone generation twice as the first and last skills you cast in staff) over the course of those 10-11 seconds, leaving you with ample time to stay in rifle for prolonged use if need be. Keep in mind that you have 3.33 seconds cooldown on your clone generation on rifle as well, allowing you a full shatter every 10 seconds from that as well, so you only lose 4 seconds of alac/quick uptime on the group every 10 seconds you spend in rifle, so you would have 26 seconds of buff uptime going into rifle after 10 seconds of staff and it would take you over 50 seconds to run out of said buffs in a stationary situation by merely spamming rifle 2 and using shatter 1 with full clones. (The uptime numbers would be lower for yourself since your own alacrity duration is lower due to the trait but it seems to be really forgiving to me still.)

Edited November 28, 2023 by Passerbye.6291
I keep editing this as my thoughts are fairly fragmented, sorry for that.

[Terrorhuz.4695]

PVP SCUM POSTING FROM A PVP BIASED PERSPECTIVE

Most skills feel like some reskinned guardian skill, and it's not what I'd love about mesmer. The portal is some very unique mechanic -which I really love- and I'd dig further into that. Give us some way to break targeting + summon a clone of our allies (to peel off with misdirection), give us a bouncy AA with short cripple + swiftness (again, to peel for our allies), give us a skill to switch place with one of our allies and look like them for some seconds so the opponents will focus us instead of them (and also allow some selfish survivability; shoot at your own clone somewhere else and get out of any sticky situation), give us a bullet to stealth one of our allies... dammit, mesmer is about unique mechanics, not just raw numbers!

Yeah, our fellow PvE enjoyers might find these skills questionably useful when clearing the same raid for 45 weeks in a row, but honestly if you want to play support just take some alac chrono spam with a tiny bit of boon duration and overcap on alacrity or whatever, it works just fine or so I hear.

Edited November 28, 2023 by Terrorhuz.4695

[Passerbye.6291]

18 minutes ago, Terrorhuz.4695 said:

PVP SCUM POSTING FROM A PVP BIASED PERSPECTIVE

A very fitting profile picture good sir.

[Terrorhuz.4695]

Just now, Passerbye.6291 said:

A very fitting profile picture good sir.

I have no idea what it represents but that smiling thing cracks me up

[Passerbye.6291]

Just now, Terrorhuz.4695 said:

I have no idea what it represents but that smiling thing cracks me up

The aggressive entrance with that face made it look amazing to me :)

[Varis.5467]

47 minutes ago, Terrorhuz.4695 said:

PVP SCUM POSTING FROM A PVP BIASED PERSPECTIVE

Most skills feel like some reskinned guardian skill, and it's not what I'd love about mesmer. The portal is some very unique mechanic -which I really love- and I'd dig further into that. Give us some way to break targeting + summon a clone of our allies (to peel off with misdirection), give us a bouncy AA with short cripple + swiftness (again, to peel for our allies), give us a skill to switch place with one of our allies and look like them for some seconds so the opponents will focus us instead of them (and also allow some selfish survivability; shoot at your own clone somewhere else and get out of any sticky situation), give us a bullet to stealth one of our allies... dammit, mesmer is about unique mechanics, not just raw numbers!

I was really hoping for these kind of unconventional support when they announced the support-centric identity of the rifle. 

It could have flipped the core focus over to create clones of our targeted ally while giving them stealth for a brief moment; it would have fit the 'emergency escape' gimmik too. 

Edited November 28, 2023 by Varis.5467

[glenndevis.8327]

1 hour ago, Terrorhuz.4695 said:

PVP SCUM POSTING FROM A PVP BIASED PERSPECTIVE

Most skills feel like some reskinned guardian skill, and it's not what I'd love about mesmer. The portal is some very unique mechanic -which I really love- and I'd dig further into that. Give us some way to break targeting + summon a clone of our allies (to peel off with misdirection), give us a bouncy AA with short cripple + swiftness (again, to peel for our allies), give us a skill to switch place with one of our allies and look like them for some seconds so the opponents will focus us instead of them (and also allow some selfish survivability; shoot at your own clone somewhere else and get out of any sticky situation), give us a bullet to stealth one of our allies... dammit, mesmer is about unique mechanics, not just raw numbers!

Tbh while i'm generally happy with the rifle, i agree that Mesmers are usually quite unconventional and besides the portal the rifle is just raw numbers output.

Edited November 28, 2023 by glenndevis.8327

[Vennyhedgie.5369]

5 hours ago, Roadkizzle.2157 said:

Mirage will struggle a lot to provide Alac having to swap between Staff and rifle without Alac on the rifle.

It's almost as if Alacrity on Mirage was incredibly poorly conceived from the get go. It's the only boon support that is REQUIRED to bring a specific weapon. No other quickness / alacrity provider is hard-stuck with a weapon choice. Even those that come from interactions like Mechanist's alacrity proccing off of barrier application on mace, for example. More so since it was moved to mace 2 instead of the auto attack. And even then you had the excuse that "it was the elite spec's weapon". Alacrity on staff feels like such a dardboard decision.

It honestly bugs me to no end because I find mesmer's staff a horrible weapon to play to begin with. 

For comparison's sake:

Warrior provides quickness through burst skills (class mechanic) and alacrity through dragon slash (class mechanic)

Guardian provides quickness through... everything really, and alacrity through Resolve (class mechanic. Granted, fast striking weapons benefit this one more, but they are not mandatory)

Rev provides quickness through upkeep skills (class mechanic) and alacrity through Order's from Above (class mechanic)

Ranger provides quickness through ambush skills and weapon swap (ALL weapons), and quickness through celestial avatar (class mechanic)

Thief provides quickness through stolen time (class mechanic) and alacrity through Shroud (class mechanic)

Engineer provides quickness through combos (any sources) and alacrity through barrier application (any sources)

Ele provides Quickness through jade sphere (class mechanic) and Alacrity through overloads (class mechanic)

Necro provides Quickness through shroud (class mechanic) and Alacrity through barrier application (mainly shades, class mechanic)

Finally Mesmer provides quickness and alacrity from shatters and phantasms if playing chrono (both class mechanics, since every weapon combination has phantasms)

Then the outlier: Mirage can ONLY provide alacrity with the staff ambush (hard weapon requirement)

[draxynnic.3719]

32 minutes ago, Vennyhedgie.5369 said:

It's almost as if Alacrity on Mirage was incredibly poorly conceived from the get go. It's the only boon support that is REQUIRED to bring a specific weapon. No other quickness / alacrity provider is hard-stuck with a weapon choice. Even those that come from interactions like Mechanist's alacrity proccing off of barrier application on mace, for example. More so since it was moved to mace 2 instead of the auto attack. And even then you had the excuse that "it was the elite spec's weapon". Alacrity on staff feels like such a dardboard decision.

It honestly bugs me to no end because I find mesmer's staff a horrible weapon to play to begin with. 

For comparison's sake:

Warrior provides quickness through burst skills (class mechanic) and alacrity through dragon slash (class mechanic)

Guardian provides quickness through... everything really, and alacrity through Resolve (class mechanic. Granted, fast striking weapons benefit this one more, but they are not mandatory)

Rev provides quickness through upkeep skills (class mechanic) and alacrity through Order's from Above (class mechanic)

Ranger provides quickness through ambush skills and weapon swap (ALL weapons), and quickness through celestial avatar (class mechanic)

Thief provides quickness through stolen time (class mechanic) and alacrity through Shroud (class mechanic)

Engineer provides quickness through combos (any sources) and alacrity through barrier application (any sources)

Ele provides Quickness through jade sphere (class mechanic) and Alacrity through overloads (class mechanic)

Necro provides Quickness through shroud (class mechanic) and Alacrity through barrier application (mainly shades, class mechanic)

Finally Mesmer provides quickness and alacrity from shatters and phantasms if playing chrono (both class mechanics, since every weapon combination has phantasms)

Then the outlier: Mirage can ONLY provide alacrity with the staff ambush (hard weapon requirement)

I've always thought that the alacrity on ambush for all weapons should be a trait rather than locking alacrity to staff. Maybe on a GM trait so it can't be taken with Infinite Horizon, therefore naturally providing a means to keep its damage within the proper bounds for a boondps without hurting the full dps builds.

[Vennyhedgie.5369]

7 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

I've always thought that the alacrity on ambush for all weapons should be a trait rather than locking alacrity to staff. Maybe on a GM trait so it can't be taken with Infinite Horizon, therefore naturally providing a means to keep its damage within the proper bounds for a boondps without hurting the full dps builds.

It really baffles me that it's not the case already when Untamed has literally the same mechanic but for quickness.

[phokus.8934]

Pretty boring skills except for 5 which is kind of useless other than in pvp.  Overall, underwhelming but it'll do what it's meant and that's healing.

[Gesbo.6420]

1 hour ago, Vennyhedgie.5369 said:

It's almost as if Alacrity on Mirage was incredibly poorly conceived from the get go. It's the only boon support that is REQUIRED to bring a specific weapon. No other quickness / alacrity provider is hard-stuck with a weapon choice. Even those that come from interactions like Mechanist's alacrity proccing off of barrier application on mace, for example. More so since it was moved to mace 2 instead of the auto attack. And even then you had the excuse that "it was the elite spec's weapon". Alacrity on staff feels like such a dardboard decision.

It honestly bugs me to no end because I find mesmer's staff a horrible weapon to play to begin with. 

For comparison's sake:

Warrior provides quickness through burst skills (class mechanic) and alacrity through dragon slash (class mechanic)

Guardian provides quickness through... everything really, and alacrity through Resolve (class mechanic. Granted, fast striking weapons benefit this one more, but they are not mandatory)

Rev provides quickness through upkeep skills (class mechanic) and alacrity through Order's from Above (class mechanic)

Ranger provides quickness through ambush skills and weapon swap (ALL weapons), and quickness through celestial avatar (class mechanic)

Thief provides quickness through stolen time (class mechanic) and alacrity through Shroud (class mechanic)

Engineer provides quickness through combos (any sources) and alacrity through barrier application (any sources)

Ele provides Quickness through jade sphere (class mechanic) and Alacrity through overloads (class mechanic)

Necro provides Quickness through shroud (class mechanic) and Alacrity through barrier application (mainly shades, class mechanic)

Finally Mesmer provides quickness and alacrity from shatters and phantasms if playing chrono (both class mechanics, since every weapon combination has phantasms)

Then the outlier: Mirage can ONLY provide alacrity with the staff ambush (hard weapon requirement)

The only hole of your logic is that the optimal way to do the majority of those things is with certain weapons. Guardian as you said benefits more from quick hitting weapons so you don't run hammer for example. Chrono would look to generate clones and phantasms as quickly as possible, so weapons that have high clone and phantasm generation. And mirage is still using their ambilush (class mechanic).

 

I don't particularly agree with the homogonising every single class into the same direction as in the end of the day you will be doing the same thing in different colours. I like that mirage has a unique way of providing alacrity and depending on your stats you can branch off. Full support mirage with 100% boon duration can pop out almost 7 seconds of alacrity with a single ambush (with all the clones up and all) leaving your room to jump into another weapon and do all the funky things you'd do. I am dying to see the patch notes for the exact numbers later today so I can start playing around with support builds to be fair. 

[Vennyhedgie.5369]

54 minutes ago, Gesbo.6420 said:

The only hole of your logic is that the optimal way to do the majority of those things is with certain weapons. Guardian as you said benefits more from quick hitting weapons so you don't run hammer for example. Chrono would look to generate clones and phantasms as quickly as possible, so weapons that have high clone and phantasm generation. And mirage is still using their ambilush (class mechanic).

 

I don't particularly agree with the homogonising every single class into the same direction as in the end of the day you will be doing the same thing in different colours. I like that mirage has a unique way of providing alacrity and depending on your stats you can branch off. Full support mirage with 100% boon duration can pop out almost 7 seconds of alacrity with a single ambush (with all the clones up and all) leaving your room to jump into another weapon and do all the funky things you'd do. I am dying to see the patch notes for the exact numbers later today so I can start playing around with support builds to be fair. 

Well as you pointed out, yes there is always going to be an optimal way for everything, but as I was trying to highlight, mirage is the only class that forces a mandatory weapon choice for a role. It doesn't give you options. Either you use staff or you can't play alac mirage, which is an odd outlier. There's no reason to not make it available to all ambushes. If you like staff, you can still use it, and if you don't you have the other weapons. Everybody wins. They also have to keep rebalancing it to have separate alacrity from you and your clones. It'd be much cleaner if you just granted a fixed amount around the mesmer on ambush, and ignore the clones altogether. That way it's tied to the mirage's dodge mechanic more cleanly.

[ZephidelGRS.9520]

Mirage having Alac tacked on staff and not anywhere else is specifically because of a dev's favoritism. Staff Mirage was his main, and he specifically said he disliked any other weapons on Mirage including the spec's signature weapon. And so it came an update where Mirage suddenly could Alac on staff out of nowhere, and he also buffed staff damage to high heaven (look at Chaos Vortex changes history on wiki, it's quite a wild ride). Staff Mirage then became one of the laziest builds in the game where you just press a key and you're buffed to the brim while everything else is dead.

But apparently he's not in Anet anymore. So staff Mirage started to suffer to pay for the sin of that dev. Weird boon nerf and then waves of random damage nerf has left the build unbelievably janky to play like it currently is. 

[Vennyhedgie.5369]

3 minutes ago, ZephidelGRS.9520 said:

Mirage having Alac tacked on staff and not anywhere else is specifically because of a dev's favoritism. Staff Mirage was his main, and he specifically said he disliked any other weapons on Mirage including the spec's signature weapon. And so it came an update where Mirage suddenly could Alac on staff out of nowhere, and he also buffed staff damage to high heaven (look at Chaos Vortex changes history on wiki, it's quite a wild ride). Staff Mirage then became one of the laziest builds in the game where you just press a key and you're buffed to the brim while everything else is dead.

But apparently he's not in Anet anymore. So staff Mirage started to suffer to pay for the sin of that dev. Weird boon nerf and then waves of random damage nerf has left the build unbelievably janky to play like it currently is. 

Ah yes, the name escapes me. Starts with an S... Soo Won? Wait no...

[Doam.8305]

Each way I cut it the thought of optimizing this weapon feels lacking as its a power weapon with limited clone generation. Our other support weapons are condition based and also not healing oriented. Our support traits are primarily condition as well and the healing that isn't is locked to wells and mantras which don't pair well with keeping so many clones auto attacking for heals. In addition that auto attack makes our support oriented shattering questionable as well. Take all that and keeping those clones alive in the first place on difficult bosses and replacing them in a timely manner. The lean to mirage is apparent but mirage itself is a selfish elite that leans into conditions. The usage of this weapon just seems so limited and narrow on paper no existing weapon seems to pair well so you'd think to camp it but when you look at it even that's a questionable choice.

[Loules.8601]

2 hours ago, Vennyhedgie.5369 said:

Well as you pointed out, yes there is always going to be an optimal way for everything, but as I was trying to highlight, mirage is the only class that forces a mandatory weapon choice for a role. It doesn't give you options. Either you use staff or you can't play alac mirage, which is an odd outlier. There's no reason to not make it available to all ambushes. If you like staff, you can still use it, and if you don't you have the other weapons. Everybody wins. They also have to keep rebalancing it to have separate alacrity from you and your clones. It'd be much cleaner if you just granted a fixed amount around the mesmer on ambush, and ignore the clones altogether. That way it's tied to the mirage's dodge mechanic more cleanly.

Alacrity - Chrono speciality, I don’t like the idea that Mirage will get easier access to it. And it’s not the only effect of talent - it’s a dps talent too.

And if anything - it should get you quickness on Mirage, not alacrity. As a possible solution quickness can be removed from Chrono too, to make Mirage more unique in this regard.  
 

But I’m hardly against such Alacrity buffs to Mirage - it shouldn’t be a spec with more annd easier Alacrity than Chrono. 

[Passerbye.6291]

So, from the looks of it, the "useless" mesmer rifle will do about 1.5k to 2k heal per second with auto attacks alone, the 2nd skill with 3.3 second cooldown with alacrity will heal over 4k, the might and fury one does double that if you sacrifice the buffs, the barrier will be over 4k with ascended gear.