Since you killed dagger for condi builds, can we make the ambush useful for power builds?

[Jeyzer.1605]

Title ^

Losing on the daze means losing on Duelist Disciple synergy for more frequent bleeds and magic bullets, and more importantly, on Ineptitude for a strong source of confusion. 

On Mirage builds, dagger #2 and #3 are close to worthless in terms of damage. They have no condi damage (0) and the power damage is mediocre at best. Unstable Bladestorm and Bladecall blades do less than 100 damage tooltip each, on a full power build (!!). 

Can you at least commit to make the ambush a decent power option in that case? 

Losing on the daze on power builds means losing on Power Block (intended I assume), but it also means losing on up to 4 dazzling procs per ambush, and possibly up to 4 illusion of fragility. That means losing on an instant 25 stacks of Vulnerability from 1 ambush, resulting 37.5% increased damage due to Fragility. Dagger mirage has no good way of stacking Vulne this quickly without the daze. 

I suggest removing the worthless torment, bleed and cripple (lmao who even thought of adding cripple to the ambush, most worthless condition), and replacing it with a new mechanic: If 5 or more daggers from the ambush hit the same target, they take a burst of damage and are immobilized for 2s. Meaning that it won't proc from just the user ambush, but needs at least 2 projectiles from the clones to connect for the immob + burst to happen.

Adding a bit of power damage through the burst is to make it more in line with Split Surge and make up for the torment + bleed damage loss. Phantom Razor is after all, a projectile on a straight line with a travel time. It should do at least as much damage as Split Surge.

Also, Mirage Mantle's Vulnerability needs to be increased to 2 or 3 per dagger (so 6-9 per ambush per clone) to make up for the loss of dazzling procs. 

[bq pd.2148]

14 hours ago, Jeyzer.1605 said:

Losing on the daze on power builds means losing on Power Block (intended I assume), but it also means losing on up to 4 dazzling procs per ambush, and possibly up to 4 illusion of fragility.

at least in PvE the clones ambush with IH still dazes so you only lose 1 dazzling proc.
while it could be a bug, it might also be intentional as a means for some more counterplay as you can avoid the dazes by killing the clones now and in return the mirage at least gets a covercondition.

14 hours ago, Jeyzer.1605 said:

 If 5 or more daggers from the ambush hit the same target, they take a burst of damage and are immobilized for 2s. Meaning that it won't proc from just the user ambush, but needs at least 2 projectiles from the clones to connect for the immob + burst to happen.

problem with this IMO is that IH is not baseline. so essentially anyone running a different GM gets nothing.

14 hours ago, Jeyzer.1605 said:

Adding a bit of power damage through the burst is to make it more in line with Split Surge and make up for the torment + bleed damage loss. Phantom Razor is after all, a projectile on a straight line with a travel time. It should do at least as much damage as Split Surge.

i thought at least against players the difference in damage comes from

• the might on split surge vs 0 might on dagger. both can spamm vuln
• when there are multiple targets, you create 3 beams, each hitting up to 3 targets, 3 times so up to 27 hits vs daggers 15.
  if a target gets hit only 3 times by a beam/dagger the damage should not be higher on GS, however a target can get hit by even all 3 beams for up to 9 hits from a single ambush at which point it does far more damage than the dagger.

a beam is often preferable to a reflectable projectile, but there are some minor advantages to projectiles:

• you can hit things without a target for example stealthed opponents
• (more niche) you can hit a targets hitbox off center with an action cam toggle to bypass some obstructions

14 hours ago, Jeyzer.1605 said:

Also, Mirage Mantle's Vulnerability needs to be increased to 2 or 3 per dagger (so 6-9 per ambush per clone) to make up for the loss of dazzling procs. 

given the clones still daze at the moment at least, i would rather have the vuln entirely replaced with might, optimally with the clones giving their might to the user.

Edited September 6 by bq pd.2148

[Jeyzer.1605]

4 hours ago, bq pd.2148 said:

at least in PvE the clones ambush with IH still dazes so you only lose 1 dazzling proc.

That's just a bug that'll get fixed next patch if they don't forget about it because they're too busy buffing Necro and Guardian.

4 hours ago, bq pd.2148 said:

problem with this IMO is that IH is not baseline. so essentially anyone running a different GM gets nothing.

That's a good point, IH being the only useful grandmaster trait atm, I forgot for a sec that it was not baseline. 

4 hours ago, bq pd.2148 said:

the might on split surge vs 0 might on dagger. both can spamm vuln

I wouldn't call the dagger's Mirage Mantle a "spamm vuln". Especially not compared to GS, PR barely even adds a few stacks of vulne to the target. 

4 hours ago, bq pd.2148 said:

if a target gets hit only 3 times by a beam/dagger the damage should not be higher on GS, however a target can get hit by even all 3 beams for up to 9 hits from a single ambush at which point it does far more damage than the dagger.

I agree that the total damage possible by Split Surge should be higher than Phantom Razor, because of the number of targets hit. However, on single targets, Phantom Razor should do more damage due to its shortcomings:

• It hits less targets
• Deflectable projectile
• Travel time vs instant beam
• No might stacking
• No vuln stacking by default, a little bit of vuln stacking with Mantle

Given all that, it makes NO sense that Phantom Razor would have less single target damage than Split Surge. It was the case because of the daze, but there's no daze anymore so they ought to buff the damage. 

4 hours ago, bq pd.2148 said:

a beam is often preferable to a reflectable projectile, but there are some minor advantages to projectiles:

• you can hit things without a target for example stealthed opponents
• (more niche) you can hit a targets hitbox off center with an action cam toggle to bypass some obstructions

Yeah let's be real, neither of those are actual benefits in a fight. You're not hitting that invisible thief with an action cam'd Phantom Razor unless you're lucky. Sure, they can happen randomly at times, but it shouldn't be balanced around those extremely niche cases.

 

[bq pd.2148]

1 hour ago, Jeyzer.1605 said:

I wouldn't call the dagger's Mirage Mantle a "spamm vuln". Especially not compared to GS, PR barely even adds a few stacks of vulne to the target. 

I agree that the total damage possible by Split Surge should be higher than Phantom Razor, because of the number of targets hit. However, on single targets, Phantom Razor should do more damage due to its shortcomings:

• It hits less targets
• Deflectable projectile
• Travel time vs instant beam
• No might stacking
• No vuln stacking by default, a little bit of vuln stacking with Mantle

Given all that, it makes NO sense that Phantom Razor would have less single target damage than Split Surge. It was the case because of the daze, but there's no daze anymore so they ought to buff the damage.

at equal might/vuln stacks the power damage of a single target split surge vs single target phantom razor is far as i can tell about the same, is what i tried to state above.

i think the issue here is one that can be observed among all classes with a lot of options:
self boons or important conditions like vuln are very important when you run solo, be it solo PvE or in many situations in competitive modes outside of WvW groups. so options that cannot access those will be often be worse than those that can do so with little investment. but as soon as you have allies helping each other with boons/conditions, other effects become more valuable as those self boons/conditions become redundant.

in PvE content if people were to run power mirage in groups with GS before, that would almost certainly be replaced by a spear now if the range is not needed. in WvW groups however you would still not run dagger simply because it is a projectile weapon, even if the double the damage (maybe against pugs then).
 

1 hour ago, Jeyzer.1605 said:

Yeah let's be real, neither of those are actual benefits in a fight. You're not hitting that invisible thief with an action cam'd Phantom Razor unless you're lucky. Sure, they can happen randomly at times, but it shouldn't be balanced around those extremely niche cases.

no those are 2 different points, but sure you could also try to hit a stealthed thief with action cam. as you can use projectile skills without a target, you can still queue them into a stealthing opponent to track the damage better in stealth.
the action cam i mostly use to kill npc/players on walls in WvW where if i just target them i get obstructed from projectiles/beams. originally made that keybind for piloting omega golems, they can hit to interesting positions with action cam while the rockets otherwise easily get stuck.

[Mell.4873]

Were people really using Dagger Mirage for condition damage. When I tested it, the Ambush reset cooldown synergy was so slow compared to Virtuoso. 

[Geronmy.3298]

3 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

Were people really using Dagger Mirage for condition damage. When I tested it, the Ambush reset cooldown synergy was so slow compared to Virtuoso. 

For Mirage yes. Specially for open world it outshined staff by a mile, being a bit burstier and still getting to cap might thanks to the relic of the midnight king.

For wvw you ran celestials with it so it was condi too and it worked thanks to the relic of the demon queen stacking poison with improved heal cut. Stuff that is basically dead now.

[ZephidelGRS.9520]

6 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

Were people really using Dagger Mirage for condition damage. When I tested it, the Ambush reset cooldown synergy was so slow compared to Virtuoso. 

In PvP at least, it's mainly used to spread improved Poison (Demon Queen relic), in addition to spamming Power Block to nullify opponent skills.

And the Chaos line does have a Grandmaster that also cuts cooldown when you CC something, so it pushes Dagger towards condi in PvE/WvW. It doesn't help that Dagger builds often use Celestial. And I've found that with that Grandmaster trait, the Bleeding stacks were comparable to Virtuoso, but they lacked damage due to not having the 25% damage bonus from Virtuoso trait.

[Nemhy.5230]

They'll be too busy buffing guardian 😞

[Triptaminas.4789]

On 9/9/2024 at 1:45 AM, Nemhy.5230 said:

They'll be too busy buffing guardian 😞

Guardian must be buffed, it's too weak, not enough boons, mobility, sustain, and damage. 

 

[Mangoyami.2418]

It's still on the clones