Are we gonna talk about Mirage?

[DeceiverX.8361]

@Aeolus.3615 said:

@FaboBabo.3581 said:

@Scar.1793 said:

@Aeolus.3615 said:

@"EvilSardine.9635" said:This is insane. I just came back to the game and saw countless mirage builds running around and I swore there had to be some sort of bug or exploit due to how broken it seemed.

I made a mirage and was blown away that this is even in the game. What on earth was Anet thinking? Do they not play their game? The amount of clone spam and condis being thrown around during a fight is crazy. The escapes I had were absurd and I was untouchable. It was honestly silly how effective I was with such minimal effort even being new to the spec/class.

Any word if this is going to get balanced? Don't even get me started on condi mirage either.....that's just some sort of April fools joke that hasn't been patched out yet.

This mainly a game to leech from bad design to farm titles, Anet wont nerf or fix until theres a ton of complains about some design that was ment to carry most players.Gw2 was never a good game to (serious pvp players)pvp, and hardly will be.

That’s true, kinda forced to grind Wvxp for the Warbringer and I met some mirages, it’s funny to see how they just faceroll through enemies. Evades, Iframes, stealth, crazy burst, crazy mobility. For other classes it’s usually 50/50 on my s/s rev. Some of them are actually really fun and interesting.

Once I’m done grinding I don’t think I’ll go back to wvw. It’s the same classes and bs over and over. GW2 pvp just suck compared to skill-based games

Yeah i just use my massive aoe skills i got on Mirrage.Im full power AND condi , but i got 110% evade uptime so i can't be hurt at all.I dont got inspiration traited and i got 0 healing power, cause rngesus sends me 2k HP with every shatter - dont ask me how.

Now on the serious note.As a condi mirage my only "death sentence" is hitting 3 - clone - axe 3 into F2. If my enemy has a brain - he cleans the confusion and the fight could potentially go for ever. I can't kill anyone without a Confu bomb, and they can't kill me unless they get a sneaky +1.

Can i "faceroll" through other groups ?No - If i want to engage a group with at least 2 more people then me , i gotta think seriously.If i engage - will i Win?Hell no i could be happy if i kill one or at least if i survive.

Are people stupid who auto attack the air while havin 20 stacks confu on em ?yes lol

For some reason i still find "Brokensmith" harder to deal than most mesmers :scream: in wvw is worse than spvp tho.Condi mesmers builds are way to lower risk with a decent high reward.

I think any build that is built to improve offensive by damage output, being power or condi/spam need less defense, Anet made condi bunker stats wich m8 be the real culprit for some build to be easier to steamroll than others.

Because they never nerfed Holo like they did in sPvP.

They nerfed holo forge damage by like 40% because it was overperforming hardcore in sPvP. They didn't do so for WvW, so it's faceroll + permaboons + sPvP-banned-stat-combos, and in WvW there's food which increases endurance regen by 40%, and dodge rolls are traited to remove a massive amount of Heat from holo forge, allowing them to stay in the empowered state way longer than they're supposed to.

Mirage has similar problems where it's benefiting from 40% more evasion than it's supposed to have with a baseline 33% longer dodge thanks to the food and many more times more mobility than core, on top of gaining additional damage from the might gain and being able to outright ignore CC.

Sad reality is Mirage is broken on the design level and like current warrior/spellbreaker and soulbeast, there are things about it which simply go against the vision of the core game, which is to allow people to react to what characters are doing rather than what their status bars say they're doing. They can "balance" it by removing MC and might-on-dodge food and allowing a mirage to not be able to dodge while stunned and immobilized like every other profession in the game, but it still leads to problem areas like mobility powercreep (sword Ambush skillchaining currently has the same landspeed as shortbow thief and GS warrior) and lack of tells.

Iunno. I'm increasingly realizing that ANet just simply does not have any interest in good PvP design anymore and would rather design for a nerd power-fantasy than around GW2's manifesto and overall profession design. It's probably likely that a lot of the developers would like to just delete the PvP modes at this point because none of what they've done since HoT has been good for game-health, and they're pretty obviously uninterested in actually making necessary overhauls and listening to PvP feedback where nuanced and "fair" design and matters so much more than tweaking numbers for DPS.

[Dawdler.8521]

@"DeceiverX.8361" said:I'm increasingly realizing that ANet just simply does not have any interest in good PvP design anymore

"Anymore" he said, not realizing that Anet hasnt touched on thief perma-stealth since release which should have been a pretty strong hint.

[EpicTurtle.8571]

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Aeolus.3615 said:

@FaboBabo.3581 said:

@Scar.1793 said:

@Aeolus.3615 said:

@"EvilSardine.9635" said:This is insane. I just came back to the game and saw countless mirage builds running around and I swore there had to be some sort of bug or exploit due to how broken it seemed.

I made a mirage and was blown away that this is even in the game. What on earth was Anet thinking? Do they not play their game? The amount of clone spam and condis being thrown around during a fight is crazy. The escapes I had were absurd and I was untouchable. It was honestly silly how effective I was with such minimal effort even being new to the spec/class.

Any word if this is going to get balanced? Don't even get me started on condi mirage either.....that's just some sort of April fools joke that hasn't been patched out yet.

This mainly a game to leech from bad design to farm titles, Anet wont nerf or fix until theres a ton of complains about some design that was ment to carry most players.Gw2 was never a good game to (serious pvp players)pvp, and hardly will be.

That’s true, kinda forced to grind Wvxp for the Warbringer and I met some mirages, it’s funny to see how they just faceroll through enemies. Evades, Iframes, stealth, crazy burst, crazy mobility. For other classes it’s usually 50/50 on my s/s rev. Some of them are actually really fun and interesting.

Once I’m done grinding I don’t think I’ll go back to wvw. It’s the same classes and bs over and over. GW2 pvp just suck compared to skill-based games

Yeah i just use my massive aoe skills i got on Mirrage.Im full power AND condi , but i got 110% evade uptime so i can't be hurt at all.I dont got inspiration traited and i got 0 healing power, cause rngesus sends me 2k HP with every shatter - dont ask me how.

Now on the serious note.As a condi mirage my only "death sentence" is hitting 3 - clone - axe 3 into F2. If my enemy has a brain - he cleans the confusion and the fight could potentially go for ever. I can't kill anyone without a Confu bomb, and they can't kill me unless they get a sneaky +1.

Can i "faceroll" through other groups ?No - If i want to engage a group with at least 2 more people then me , i gotta think seriously.If i engage - will i Win?Hell no i could be happy if i kill one or at least if i survive.

Are people stupid who auto attack the air while havin 20 stacks confu on em ?yes lol

For some reason i still find "Brokensmith" harder to deal than most mesmers :scream: in wvw is worse than spvp tho.Condi mesmers builds are way to lower risk with a decent high reward.

I think any build that is built to improve offensive by damage output, being power or condi/spam need less defense, Anet made condi bunker stats wich m8 be the real culprit for some build to be easier to steamroll than others.

Because they never nerfed Holo like they did in sPvP.

They nerfed holo forge damage by like 40% because it was overperforming hardcore in sPvP. They didn't do so for WvW, so it's faceroll + permaboons + sPvP-banned-stat-combos, and in WvW there's food which increases endurance regen by 40%, and dodge rolls are traited to remove a massive amount of Heat from holo forge, allowing them to stay in the empowered state way longer than they're supposed to.

Mirage has similar problems where it's benefiting from 40% more evasion than it's supposed to have with a baseline 33% longer dodge thanks to the food and many more times more mobility than core, on top of gaining additional damage from the might gain and being able to outright ignore CC.

Sad reality is Mirage is broken on the design level and like current warrior/spellbreaker and soulbeast, there are things about it which simply go against the vision of the core game, which is to allow people to react to what characters are doing rather than what their status bars say they're doing. They can "balance" it by removing MC and might-on-dodge food and allowing a mirage to not be able to dodge while stunned and immobilized like every other profession in the game, but it still leads to problem areas like mobility powercreep (sword Ambush skillchaining currently has the same landspeed as shortbow thief and GS warrior) and lack of tells.

Iunno. I'm increasingly realizing that ANet just simply does not have any interest in good PvP design anymore and would rather design for a nerd power-fantasy than around GW2's manifesto and overall profession design. It's probably likely that a lot of the developers would like to just delete the PvP modes at this point because none of what they've done since HoT has been good for game-health, and they're pretty obviously uninterested in actually making necessary overhauls and listening to PvP feedback where nuanced and "fair" design and matters so much more than tweaking numbers for DPS.

Okay, so what is your proposal for an entirely new gimmick for Mirage then? Upgraded dodge and ambushes is the whole thing. Please give me your fantastical replacement that surely trumps ANets from a design perspective. Go ahead, I'll wait.

[DeceiverX.8361]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@"DeceiverX.8361" said:I'm increasingly realizing that ANet just simply does not have any interest in good PvP design anymore

"Anymore" he said, not realizing that Anet hasnt touched on thief perma-stealth since release which should have been a pretty strong hint.

For one, that's nonsense. Permastealth thief has been touched and nerfed a number of times.

And if you've paid attention to my posts over the past six years, I've advocated for nerfs to SA, D/P, the stacking-stealth system, and no-investment damage since launch.As a thief main. And I do it for all professions. The mechanic of stacked stealth isn't healthy, and ANet's lack of addressing it has disenfranchised me from the thief more than once. I mostly play reaper when I do log in these days.

But as for what I've advocated for, one and a half of those things have been done, with a lot of smaller changes to permastealth and free-damage thief addressed in the past. I still oppose the ideology of stacked stealth, but dare I say permastealth thief hasn't been strong (prior to Deadeye, which I predicted would happen precisely if they went with the sniper concept despite being the original proposer of the Deadeye) since... might stacking in stealth which was removed in what, 2014?

And what is permastealth thief? D/P + SA or D/P + Daredevil with BD (which is just a worse version of D/P SA if you're going the permastealth route due to the poorer maintenance of resources with the endurance-refill changes to CV and SoA in the PvP modes). So the problem is D/P, big surprise. A set I've said is a problem for years. A history I'm notorious for in the thief community, because I'd nerf the entire set the thief has historically hinged on to be viable.But the dynamics of a thief in these cases are much different, especially when considering different modes' needs, too.

SA/camping stealth on thief was only played for combat purposes prior to HoT because it was literally the only way thief could remove conditions outside of burning Shadowstep. It was played by pros in sPvP to avoid being tracked for a +1, but that still makes all nodes a 4v5 and said thief build was out of the meta for a few of the early seasons when the build was at its strongest.

I'd love to see all stealth stacking removed from all professions in the game. We'd be in a much better spot if nobody could do it. I've a lot of notoriety for proposing nerfs and changes to it. No portion of the community wants to part with their own sustained stealth, however. Except us crazy D/D thief players...

Because they never nerfed Holo like they did in sPvP.

They nerfed holo forge damage by like 40% because it was overperforming hardcore in sPvP. They didn't do so for WvW, so it's faceroll + permaboons + sPvP-banned-stat-combos, and in WvW there's food which increases endurance regen by 40%, and dodge rolls are traited to remove a massive amount of Heat from holo forge, allowing them to stay in the empowered state way longer than they're supposed to.

Mirage has similar problems where it's benefiting from 40% more evasion than it's supposed to have with a baseline 33% longer dodge thanks to the food and many more times more mobility than core, on top of gaining additional damage from the might gain and being able to outright ignore CC.

Sad reality is Mirage is broken on the design level and like current warrior/spellbreaker and soulbeast, there are things about it which simply go against the vision of the core game, which is to allow people to react to what characters are doing rather than what their status bars say they're doing. They can "balance" it by removing MC and might-on-dodge food and allowing a mirage to not be able to dodge while stunned and immobilized like every other profession in the game, but it still leads to problem areas like mobility powercreep (sword Ambush skillchaining currently has the same landspeed as shortbow thief and GS warrior) and lack of tells.

Iunno. I'm increasingly realizing that ANet just simply does not have any interest in good PvP design anymore and would rather design for a nerd power-fantasy than around GW2's manifesto and overall profession design. It's probably likely that a lot of the developers would like to just delete the PvP modes at this point because none of what they've done since HoT has been good for game-health, and they're pretty obviously uninterested in actually making necessary overhauls and listening to PvP feedback where nuanced and "fair" design and matters so much more than tweaking numbers for DPS.

Okay, so what is your proposal for an entirely new gimmick for Mirage then? Upgraded dodge and ambushes is the whole thing. Please give me your fantastical replacement that surely trumps ANets from a design perspective. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Could go in any number of directions.

I personally liked the idea of reworking F1-F4 to be active abilities for clones which all clones and the mirage would perform together, which is a much better set of mechanics to fit the name of mirage, as it makes it harder to discern which clone is real, rather than just having a million clones running around with the real mesmer running around very clearly doing its own independent skill actions. This also lets it have nicer mechanics to play with stealth and landspeed without just being a stealth-OHKO-cheese spec, and could enable better DPS/PvE viability for the mesmer, since the shatter system numerically prevents it as-is.

Then you can make the trait line and utilities cover the weaknesses lost from core, like Distortion (maybe even make it a lower cooldown on F4 for clone preservation, too), as necessary, without affecting core's identity, skills, or traits at all. Phantasms still function, and the idea of clone manipulation gets preferential treatment within the explicit confines of the elite spec versus the fire-and-forget playstyle that shattering has.

You're looking at the guy who proposed the original Deadeye concept, who gave the exact warnings of what it would become if ANet did what they did. Unfortunately, ANet did not heed such warnings, and went with the "rule of cool" which was popular demand.

With a remote understanding of the game and its professions, it's not hard to formulate ideas on what constitutes good gameplay.

Especially when originally releasing the game, ANet originally came out and said they wanted to do exactly the opposite of literally everything the mirage does. Those are pretty clear guidelines to follow.

[FaboBabo.3581]

"on top of gaining additional damage from the might gain"

ENDURANCE FOOD IS MIGHT STACKING NOW!!!!

wow

[Curunen.8729]

In practice it's usually only 2 stacks of regular might anyway - maybe occasionally spiking up to 3 from the food if you dodge in quick succession.

Barely anything tbh - most of the might would come from things like staff ambush/auto (also lining up clones to benefit from IH if using that, if the situation allows you to do so), things like BD for F1 might, and things like GS ambush. Or if you want to trait for them things like Phantasmal Force/Illusionary Inspiration... (though I doubt many mirages take Inspiration, or take Phantasmal Force over Master of Fragmentation if traiting Illusions).

Sure nerf the food if necessary, but I don't think the might stacks from it are excessive.

[Aeolus.3615]

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Aeolus.3615 said:

@FaboBabo.3581 said:

@Scar.1793 said:

@Aeolus.3615 said:

@"EvilSardine.9635" said:This is insane. I just came back to the game and saw countless mirage builds running around and I swore there had to be some sort of bug or exploit due to how broken it seemed.

I made a mirage and was blown away that this is even in the game. What on earth was Anet thinking? Do they not play their game? The amount of clone spam and condis being thrown around during a fight is crazy. The escapes I had were absurd and I was untouchable. It was honestly silly how effective I was with such minimal effort even being new to the spec/class.

Any word if this is going to get balanced? Don't even get me started on condi mirage either.....that's just some sort of April fools joke that hasn't been patched out yet.

This mainly a game to leech from bad design to farm titles, Anet wont nerf or fix until theres a ton of complains about some design that was ment to carry most players.Gw2 was never a good game to (serious pvp players)pvp, and hardly will be.

That’s true, kinda forced to grind Wvxp for the Warbringer and I met some mirages, it’s funny to see how they just faceroll through enemies. Evades, Iframes, stealth, crazy burst, crazy mobility. For other classes it’s usually 50/50 on my s/s rev. Some of them are actually really fun and interesting.

Once I’m done grinding I don’t think I’ll go back to wvw. It’s the same classes and bs over and over. GW2 pvp just suck compared to skill-based games

Yeah i just use my massive aoe skills i got on Mirrage.Im full power AND condi , but i got 110% evade uptime so i can't be hurt at all.I dont got inspiration traited and i got 0 healing power, cause rngesus sends me 2k HP with every shatter - dont ask me how.

Now on the serious note.As a condi mirage my only "death sentence" is hitting 3 - clone - axe 3 into F2. If my enemy has a brain - he cleans the confusion and the fight could potentially go for ever. I can't kill anyone without a Confu bomb, and they can't kill me unless they get a sneaky +1.

Can i "faceroll" through other groups ?No - If i want to engage a group with at least 2 more people then me , i gotta think seriously.If i engage - will i Win?Hell no i could be happy if i kill one or at least if i survive.

Are people stupid who auto attack the air while havin 20 stacks confu on em ?yes lol

For some reason i still find "Brokensmith" harder to deal than most mesmers :scream: in wvw is worse than spvp tho.Condi mesmers builds are way to lower risk with a decent high reward.

I think any build that is built to improve offensive by damage output, being power or condi/spam need less defense, Anet made condi bunker stats wich m8 be the real culprit for some build to be easier to steamroll than others.

Because they never nerfed Holo like they did in sPvP.

They nerfed holo forge damage by like 40% because it was overperforming hardcore in sPvP. They didn't do so for WvW, so it's faceroll + permaboons + sPvP-banned-stat-combos, and in WvW there's food which increases endurance regen by 40%, and dodge rolls are traited to remove a massive amount of Heat from holo forge, allowing them to stay in the empowered state way longer than they're supposed to.

Mirage has similar problems where it's benefiting from 40% more evasion than it's supposed to have with a baseline 33% longer dodge thanks to the food and many more times more mobility than core, on top of gaining additional damage from the might gain and being able to outright ignore CC.

Sad reality is Mirage is broken on the design level and like current warrior/spellbreaker and soulbeast, there are things about it which simply go against the vision of the core game, which is to allow people to react to what characters are doing rather than what their status bars say they're doing. They can "balance" it by removing MC and might-on-dodge food and allowing a mirage to not be able to dodge while stunned and immobilized like every other profession in the game, but it still leads to problem areas like mobility powercreep (sword Ambush skillchaining currently has the same landspeed as shortbow thief and GS warrior) and lack of tells.

Iunno. I'm increasingly realizing that ANet just simply does not have any interest in good PvP design anymore and would rather design for a nerd power-fantasy than around GW2's manifesto and overall profession design. It's probably likely that a lot of the developers would like to just delete the PvP modes at this point because none of what they've done since HoT has been good for game-health, and they're pretty obviously uninterested in actually making necessary overhauls and listening to PvP feedback where nuanced and "fair" design and matters so much more than tweaking numbers for DPS.

Indeed Holo in pvp is a fierce class but manageable., and pretty easy if i have a decent hammer/spellbreaker.

Sadly Anet wants pvp to be easy for most new and very scrubs gamers than dont care about decent pvp... just look as well has the block/absord/reflect... everything is counterable with just the unblock skill type..We have no stance cancelers like we had on gw1 has well....

For some reason gw2 is the one of the most scrubby pvp (good at eye-candy effects but inferior mechanics and knowledge needed).I think Anet is okay with that... has being a bad pvp game.

[DeceiverX.8361]

@Curunen.8729 said:In practice it's usually only 2 stacks of regular might anyway - maybe occasionally spiking up to 3 from the food if you dodge in quick succession.

Barely anything tbh - most of the might would come from things like staff ambush/auto (also lining up clones to benefit from IH if using that, if the situation allows you to do so), things like BD for F1 might, and things like GS ambush. Or if you want to trait for them things like Phantasmal Force/Illusionary Inspiration... (though I doubt many mirages take Inspiration, or take Phantasmal Force over Master of Fragmentation if traiting Illusions).

Sure nerf the food if necessary, but I don't think the might stacks from it are excessive.

3 stacks ends up being the same as a lot of dedicated power foods and is the collective difference in power between full zerk and full marauder armor + weapons.It only seems insigificant because most professions run around with tons of might, but to say it's completely insignificant as far as damage goes is pretty far off.

The real issue is still the endurance regen - even the small gaps not having it makes for a night-and-day difference in a surprising number of encounters. It creates a 20% dodge/superspeed uptime (extended dodge frames on MC) which is even better than Daredevil or the Acrobatics line on thief, even with improved Vigor. In fact, from the extended frames on MC and the food, the mirage has a higher dodge uptime than Acrobatics' improved Vigor + Endurance Regen food on the thief.

The issues created with the food are numerous across multiple professions and really exacerbates issues with Mirage and Holosmith.

[Curunen.8729]

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Curunen.8729 said:In practice it's usually only 2 stacks of regular might anyway - maybe occasionally spiking up to 3 from the food if you dodge in quick succession.

Barely anything tbh - most of the might would come from things like staff ambush/auto (also lining up clones to benefit from IH if using that, if the situation allows you to do so), things like BD for F1 might, and things like GS ambush. Or if you want to trait for them things like Phantasmal Force/Illusionary Inspiration... (though I doubt many mirages take Inspiration, or take Phantasmal Force over Master of Fragmentation if traiting Illusions).

Sure nerf the food if necessary, but I don't think the might stacks from it are excessive.

3 stacks ends up being the same as a lot of dedicated power foods and is the collective difference in power between full zerk and full marauder armor + weapons.It only seems insigificant because most professions run around with tons of might, but to say it's completely insignificant as far as damage goes is pretty far off.

The real issue is still the endurance regen - even the small gaps not having it makes for a night-and-day difference in a surprising number of encounters. It creates a 20% dodge/superspeed uptime (extended dodge frames on MC) which is even better than Daredevil or the Acrobatics line on thief, even with improved Vigor. In fact, from the extended frames on MC and the food, the mirage has a higher dodge uptime than Acrobatics' improved Vigor + Endurance Regen food on the thief.

The issues created with the food are numerous across multiple professions and really exacerbates issues with Mirage and Holosmith.

It's mostly 2 stacks given the 5s duration - unless you dodge 3 times in 5 seconds - which isn't usually the case given mirage's 2 endurance bars and 1s evade frame. I can't speak for daredevil, but for mirage, aside for a combat opener with weapon swap and heal ready (so you proc the energy sigil etc), the 3rd stack usually wears off by the time you need to dodge again.

I'm fine and agree with the endurance regen on the food being nerfed in any case, just like condi duration foods were nerfed, but don't think 60 stat points on average of power and condi from might is tipping the scales of being overpowered.

[DeceiverX.8361]

@Curunen.8729 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Curunen.8729 said:In practice it's usually only 2 stacks of regular might anyway - maybe occasionally spiking up to 3 from the food if you dodge in quick succession.

Barely anything tbh - most of the might would come from things like staff ambush/auto (also lining up clones to benefit from IH if using that, if the situation allows you to do so), things like BD for F1 might, and things like GS ambush. Or if you want to trait for them things like Phantasmal Force/Illusionary Inspiration... (though I doubt many mirages take Inspiration, or take Phantasmal Force over Master of Fragmentation if traiting Illusions).

Sure nerf the food if necessary, but I don't think the might stacks from it are excessive.

3 stacks ends up being the same as a lot of dedicated power foods and is the collective difference in power between full zerk and full marauder armor + weapons.It only seems insigificant because most professions run around with tons of might, but to say it's completely insignificant as far as damage goes is pretty far off.

The real issue is still the endurance regen - even the small gaps not having it makes for a night-and-day difference in a surprising number of encounters. It creates a 20% dodge/superspeed uptime (extended dodge frames on MC) which is even better than Daredevil or the Acrobatics line on thief, even with improved Vigor. In fact, from the extended frames on MC and the food, the mirage has a higher dodge uptime than Acrobatics' improved Vigor + Endurance Regen food on the thief.

The issues created with the food are numerous across multiple professions and really exacerbates issues with Mirage and Holosmith.

It's mostly 2 stacks given the 5s duration - unless you dodge 3 times in 5 seconds - which isn't usually the case given mirage's 2 endurance bars and 1s evade frame. I can't speak for daredevil, but for mirage, aside for a combat opener with weapon swap and heal ready (so you proc the energy sigil etc), the 3rd stack usually wears off by the time you need to dodge again.

I'm fine and agree with the endurance regen on the food being nerfed in any case, just like condi duration foods were nerfed, but don't think 60 stat points on average of power and condi from might is tipping the scales of being overpowered.

Sure. My comment about might has largely been taken out of context, anyways. The sentiment isn't about "mightstacking on food is OP," but rather the losses incurred by the food stat-wise are negligible to standard food and how those gains are not acquired in sPvP, and how the evasion bump simply breaks the spec more than it does most others.

I don't know - do people seriously believe that food + an elite spec on mesmer should have a higher dodge uptime than the dedicated dodge roll trait lines on the class designed to get bolstered dodge rates, even despite also using the food?

[EpicTurtle.8571]

@"DeceiverX.8361" said:

Okay, so what is your proposal for an entirely new gimmick for Mirage then? Upgraded dodge and ambushes is the whole thing. Please give me your fantastical replacement that surely trumps ANets from a design perspective. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Could go in any number of directions.

I personally liked the idea of reworking F1-F4 to be active abilities for clones which all clones and the mirage would perform together, which is a much better set of mechanics to fit the name of mirage, as it makes it harder to discern which clone is real, rather than just having a million clones running around with the real mesmer running around very clearly doing its own independent skill actions. This also lets it have nicer mechanics to play with stealth and landspeed without just being a stealth-OHKO-cheese spec, and could enable better DPS/PvE viability for the mesmer, since the shatter system numerically prevents it as-is.

Then you can make the trait line and utilities cover the weaknesses lost from core, like Distortion (maybe even make it a lower cooldown on F4 for clone preservation, too), as necessary, without affecting core's identity, skills, or traits at all. Phantasms still function, and the idea of clone manipulation gets preferential treatment within the explicit confines of the elite spec versus the fire-and-forget playstyle that shattering has.

You're looking at the guy who proposed the original Deadeye concept, who gave the exact warnings of what it would become if ANet did what they did. Unfortunately, ANet did not heed such warnings, and went with the "rule of cool" which was popular demand.

With a remote understanding of the game and its professions, it's not hard to formulate ideas on what constitutes good gameplay.

Especially when originally releasing the game, ANet originally came out and said they wanted to do exactly the opposite of literally everything the mirage does. Those are pretty clear guidelines to follow.

OH-KO cheese spec is an overgeneralization for a single combo on power Mirage. As well the highest DPS condi Mirage build now actually incorporates shatters and the Illusion line. There are 8 good seconds of stealth on Mesmer, it's not a 'stealth' class it literally has just enough to get the mildest use out of it. Callbacks to what ANet said when they released the game are pointless, it's clear their philosophy has evolved in some way.

[DeceiverX.8361]

@EpicTurtle.8571 said:

@"DeceiverX.8361" said:

Okay, so what is your proposal for an entirely new gimmick for Mirage then? Upgraded dodge and ambushes is the whole thing. Please give me your fantastical replacement that surely trumps ANets from a design perspective. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Could go in any number of directions.

I personally liked the idea of reworking F1-F4 to be active abilities for clones which all clones and the mirage would perform together, which is a much better set of mechanics to fit the name of mirage, as it makes it harder to discern which clone is real, rather than just having a million clones running around with the real mesmer running around very clearly doing its own independent skill actions. This also lets it have nicer mechanics to play with stealth and landspeed without just being a stealth-OHKO-cheese spec, and could enable better DPS/PvE viability for the mesmer, since the shatter system numerically prevents it as-is.

Then you can make the trait line and utilities cover the weaknesses lost from core, like Distortion (maybe even make it a lower cooldown on F4 for clone preservation, too), as necessary, without affecting core's identity, skills, or traits at all. Phantasms still function, and the idea of clone manipulation gets preferential treatment within the explicit confines of the elite spec versus the fire-and-forget playstyle that shattering has.

You're looking at the guy who proposed the original Deadeye concept, who gave the exact warnings of what it would become if ANet did what they did. Unfortunately, ANet did not heed such warnings, and went with the "rule of cool" which was popular demand.

With a remote understanding of the game and its professions, it's not hard to formulate ideas on what constitutes good gameplay.

Especially when originally releasing the game, ANet originally came out and said they wanted to do exactly the opposite of literally everything the mirage does. Those are pretty clear guidelines to follow.

OH-KO cheese spec is an overgeneralization for a single combo on power Mirage. As well the highest DPS condi Mirage build now actually incorporates shatters and the Illusion line. There are 8 good seconds of stealth on Mesmer, it's not a 'stealth' class it literally has just enough to get the mildest use out of it. Callbacks to what ANet said when they released the game are pointless, it's clear their philosophy has evolved in some way.

You seem to have missed the point entirely, and are delusional if you think mirage is much more than a OHKO spec in the PvP formats - the stealth being icing on the cake - and you challenged my ability to suggest something healthier. To which I did.

Currently your statement is "but it's fine in PvE right now and ANet's vision of the game has changed."

To which I say PvE numbers/interactions have zero bearing on good PvP gameplay design in this game, and that if ANet changed their vision fundamentally on how they want to approach their game and that everything they've said previously no longer matters... their profit margins are definitely never going up again.

It also begs the question why you're even here, then. If their vision has changed, nothing I've said will matter and nothing will happen as a result, because they won't care.And if they're knowingly in that mentality, there's no reason to need to state this for them.

On the other hand, if they still are attempting to abide to their manifesto (however poorly they're doing at it), you're simply just wrong in attempting to speak for them.

[EpicTurtle.8571]

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@EpicTurtle.8571 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

Okay, so what is your proposal for an entirely new gimmick for Mirage then? Upgraded dodge and ambushes is the whole thing. Please give me your fantastical replacement that surely trumps ANets from a design perspective. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Could go in any number of directions.

I personally liked the idea of reworking F1-F4 to be active abilities for clones which all clones and the mirage would perform together, which is a much better set of mechanics to fit the name of mirage, as it makes it harder to discern which clone is real, rather than just having a million clones running around with the real mesmer running around very clearly doing its own independent skill actions. This also lets it have nicer mechanics to play with stealth and landspeed without just being a stealth-OHKO-cheese spec, and could enable better DPS/PvE viability for the mesmer, since the shatter system numerically prevents it as-is.

Then you can make the trait line and utilities cover the weaknesses lost from core, like Distortion (maybe even make it a lower cooldown on F4 for clone preservation, too), as necessary, without affecting core's identity, skills, or traits at all. Phantasms still function, and the idea of clone manipulation gets preferential treatment within the explicit confines of the elite spec versus the fire-and-forget playstyle that shattering has.

You're looking at the guy who proposed the original Deadeye concept, who gave the exact warnings of what it would become if ANet did what they did. Unfortunately, ANet did not heed such warnings, and went with the "rule of cool" which was popular demand.

With a remote understanding of the game and its professions, it's not hard to formulate ideas on what constitutes good gameplay.

Especially when originally releasing the game, ANet originally came out and said they wanted to do exactly the opposite of literally everything the mirage does. Those are pretty clear guidelines to follow.

OH-KO cheese spec is an overgeneralization for a single combo on power Mirage. As well the highest DPS condi Mirage build now actually incorporates shatters and the Illusion line. There are 8 good seconds of stealth on Mesmer, it's not a 'stealth' class it literally has just enough to get the mildest use out of it. Callbacks to what ANet said when they released the game are pointless, it's clear their philosophy has evolved in some way.

You seem to have missed the point entirely, and are delusional if you think mirage is much more than a OHKO spec in the PvP formats - the stealth being icing on the cake - and you challenged my ability to suggest something healthier. To which I did.

Currently your statement is "but it's fine in PvE right now and ANet's vision of the game has changed."

To which I say PvE numbers/interactions have zero bearing on good PvP gameplay design in this game, and that if ANet changed their vision fundamentally on how they want to approach their game and that everything they've said previously no longer matters... their profit margins are definitely never going up again.

It also begs the question why you're even here, then. If their vision has changed, nothing I've said will matter and nothing will happen as a result, because they won't care.And if they're knowingly in that mentality, there's no reason to need to state this for them.

On the other hand, if they still are attempting to abide to their manifesto (however poorly they're doing at it), you're simply just wrong in attempting to speak for them.

Your interpretation of my statement is a little off but the rest seems spot on aside from your assumption that Mirage itself is just OHKO spec since the OHKO comes from core mesmer itself the only extra thing it gives is extra mobility and evasion. Clearly the function of Mirage is to be a damage spec which is almost certainly moving away from their original design of Mesmer being about evasion, crowd control, and misdirection. Your suggestion could be just as unhealthy if not more unhealthy than you consider Mirage, seeing as it'd essentially replace shatters which cost a resource into something that costs nothing for an effect assumably equal if not greater than shatters. If PvE wasn't vastly larger and more frequented than PvP I'd say you had a leg to stand on, but then again the evidence speaks for itself.

[DeceiverX.8361]

@EpicTurtle.8571 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@EpicTurtle.8571 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

Okay, so what is your proposal for an entirely new gimmick for Mirage then? Upgraded dodge and ambushes is the whole thing. Please give me your fantastical replacement that surely trumps ANets from a design perspective. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Could go in any number of directions.

I personally liked the idea of reworking F1-F4 to be active abilities for clones which all clones and the mirage would perform together, which is a much better set of mechanics to fit the name of mirage, as it makes it harder to discern which clone is real, rather than just having a million clones running around with the real mesmer running around very clearly doing its own independent skill actions. This also lets it have nicer mechanics to play with stealth and landspeed without just being a stealth-OHKO-cheese spec, and could enable better DPS/PvE viability for the mesmer, since the shatter system numerically prevents it as-is.

Then you can make the trait line and utilities cover the weaknesses lost from core, like Distortion (maybe even make it a lower cooldown on F4 for clone preservation, too), as necessary, without affecting core's identity, skills, or traits at all. Phantasms still function, and the idea of clone manipulation gets preferential treatment within the explicit confines of the elite spec versus the fire-and-forget playstyle that shattering has.

You're looking at the guy who proposed the original Deadeye concept, who gave the exact warnings of what it would become if ANet did what they did. Unfortunately, ANet did not heed such warnings, and went with the "rule of cool" which was popular demand.

With a remote understanding of the game and its professions, it's not hard to formulate ideas on what constitutes good gameplay.

Especially when originally releasing the game, ANet originally came out and said they wanted to do exactly the opposite of literally everything the mirage does. Those are pretty clear guidelines to follow.

OH-KO cheese spec is an overgeneralization for a single combo on power Mirage. As well the highest DPS condi Mirage build now actually incorporates shatters and the Illusion line. There are 8 good seconds of stealth on Mesmer, it's not a 'stealth' class it literally has just enough to get the mildest use out of it. Callbacks to what ANet said when they released the game are pointless, it's clear their philosophy has evolved in some way.

You seem to have missed the point entirely, and are delusional if you think mirage is much more than a OHKO spec in the PvP formats - the stealth being icing on the cake - and you challenged my ability to suggest something healthier. To which I did.

Currently your statement is "but it's fine in PvE right now and ANet's vision of the game has changed."

To which I say PvE numbers/interactions have zero bearing on good PvP gameplay design in this game, and that if ANet changed their vision fundamentally on how they want to approach their game and that everything they've said previously no longer matters... their profit margins are definitely never going up again.

It also begs the question why you're even here, then. If their vision has changed, nothing I've said will matter and nothing will happen as a result, because they won't care.And if they're knowingly in that mentality, there's no reason to need to state this for them.

On the other hand, if they still are attempting to abide to their manifesto (however poorly they're doing at it), you're simply just wrong in attempting to speak for them.

Your interpretation of my statement is a little off but the rest seems spot on aside from your assumption that Mirage itself is just OHKO spec since the OHKO comes from core mesmer itself the only extra thing it gives is extra mobility and evasion. Clearly the function of Mirage is to be a damage spec which is almost certainly moving away from their original design of Mesmer being about evasion, crowd control, and misdirection. Your suggestion could be just as unhealthy if not more unhealthy than you consider Mirage, seeing as it'd essentially replace shatters which cost a resource into something that costs nothing for an effect assumably equal if not greater than shatters. If PvE wasn't vastly larger and more frequented than PvP I'd say you had a leg to stand on, but then again the evidence speaks for itself.

The raiding population, which cares about the DPS metrics and PvE "balance" is the smallest community in the game. As of before PoF, there was a post somewhere from ANet stating only 11% of the active base partakes or has partaken in raid content. The PvP + WvW numbers are simply larger. When I talk about PvE numbers, I talk about raids, because nobody gives a damn in open world and fractals have a way different meta.

What mirage does is allows the mesmer to basically carry all its core strengths and play as a safer version of the thief. Burning evasion for Ambush sword skills and Jaunt to disengage and blink paired with OOC/ranged stealth to open is almost resource-for-resource the same as how signet D/P thief with shadowstep plays. And signet thief is absolutely a gimmick. And that's coming from the mouth of the most prolific/long-term signet thief player in GW2. It's just a high-skill build on D/D to make work consistently, because the combination of D/D + signets is and always has been horribly weak (and nerfed repeatedly). It's not at all the case with Mirage, where it's a gimmick but is super strong rather than being innately and harshly disadvantaged into virtually all skilled matchups like D/D signet thief is.

As for balancing the concept of active skills and it being stronger than current mirage and them being stronger than shatters, I'm going to have to disagree. Shatters are pretty much what carries mesmer efficacy in the PvP modes. It's why they can't just innately make mesmer's weapon-skill DPS high; it'd be too oppressive when combined with such massive innate burst and utility access from shatters. With lower cooldowns but lower potency per activation paired with the need to animation lock the mirage itself for casting the abilities in sync with clones, such a concept would require active play to keep clones alive with more sustained damage coming from multiple sources versus the pretty one-dimensional style that's currently just "summon and suicide" on phantasms after their opening strike. This also opens up counterplay in the PvP modes; a foe could opt to prioritize killing clones as they're summoned to suppress the mirage's damage, but with clever positioning, this would keep the mirage safe from said attacks, and permit it to be justified in its mobility and evasion, as then it'd otherwise be too easily shut down. And since the core mesmer's weapon skill damage is pretty low on its own, if a mirage does opt out of using its clone activations for other things, this would enable both it and its opponent to activate skills to sustain.

The overarching idea ticks all the boxes for a good elite spec:

• Changes style of play without dependence on changing existing core gameplay balance or mechanics
• Enables new strengths and weaknesses to a class depending on the context of a fight in a self-contained package
• Abides to core GW2 design principles and suits multiple game modes to be fun to play as and against

[EpicTurtle.8571]

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@EpicTurtle.8571 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@EpicTurtle.8571 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

Okay, so what is your proposal for an entirely new gimmick for Mirage then? Upgraded dodge and ambushes is the whole thing. Please give me your fantastical replacement that surely trumps ANets from a design perspective. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Could go in any number of directions.

I personally liked the idea of reworking F1-F4 to be active abilities for clones which all clones and the mirage would perform together, which is a much better set of mechanics to fit the name of mirage, as it makes it harder to discern which clone is real, rather than just having a million clones running around with the real mesmer running around very clearly doing its own independent skill actions. This also lets it have nicer mechanics to play with stealth and landspeed without just being a stealth-OHKO-cheese spec, and could enable better DPS/PvE viability for the mesmer, since the shatter system numerically prevents it as-is.

Then you can make the trait line and utilities cover the weaknesses lost from core, like Distortion (maybe even make it a lower cooldown on F4 for clone preservation, too), as necessary, without affecting core's identity, skills, or traits at all. Phantasms still function, and the idea of clone manipulation gets preferential treatment within the explicit confines of the elite spec versus the fire-and-forget playstyle that shattering has.

You're looking at the guy who proposed the original Deadeye concept, who gave the exact warnings of what it would become if ANet did what they did. Unfortunately, ANet did not heed such warnings, and went with the "rule of cool" which was popular demand.

With a remote understanding of the game and its professions, it's not hard to formulate ideas on what constitutes good gameplay.

Especially when originally releasing the game, ANet originally came out and said they wanted to do exactly the opposite of literally everything the mirage does. Those are pretty clear guidelines to follow.

OH-KO cheese spec is an overgeneralization for a single combo on power Mirage. As well the highest DPS condi Mirage build now actually incorporates shatters and the Illusion line. There are 8 good seconds of stealth on Mesmer, it's not a 'stealth' class it literally has just enough to get the mildest use out of it. Callbacks to what ANet said when they released the game are pointless, it's clear their philosophy has evolved in some way.

You seem to have missed the point entirely, and are delusional if you think mirage is much more than a OHKO spec in the PvP formats - the stealth being icing on the cake - and you challenged my ability to suggest something healthier. To which I did.

Currently your statement is "but it's fine in PvE right now and ANet's vision of the game has changed."

To which I say PvE numbers/interactions have zero bearing on good PvP gameplay design in this game, and that if ANet changed their vision fundamentally on how they want to approach their game and that everything they've said previously no longer matters... their profit margins are definitely never going up again.

It also begs the question why you're even here, then. If their vision has changed, nothing I've said will matter and nothing will happen as a result, because they won't care.And if they're knowingly in that mentality, there's no reason to need to state this for them.

On the other hand, if they still are attempting to abide to their manifesto (however poorly they're doing at it), you're simply just wrong in attempting to speak for them.

Your interpretation of my statement is a little off but the rest seems spot on aside from your assumption that Mirage itself is just OHKO spec since the OHKO comes from core mesmer itself the only extra thing it gives is extra mobility and evasion. Clearly the function of Mirage is to be a damage spec which is almost certainly moving away from their original design of Mesmer being about evasion, crowd control, and misdirection. Your suggestion could be just as unhealthy if not more unhealthy than you consider Mirage, seeing as it'd essentially replace shatters which cost a resource into something that costs nothing for an effect assumably equal if not greater than shatters. If PvE wasn't vastly larger and more frequented than PvP I'd say you had a leg to stand on, but then again the evidence speaks for itself.

The raiding population, which cares about the DPS metrics and PvE "balance" is the smallest community in the game. As of before PoF, there was a post somewhere from ANet stating only 11% of the active base partakes or has partaken in raid content. The PvP + WvW numbers are simply larger. When I talk about PvE numbers, I talk about raids, because nobody gives a kitten in open world and fractals have a way different meta.

What mirage does is allows the mesmer to basically carry all its core strengths and play as a safer version of the thief. Burning evasion for Ambush sword skills and Jaunt to disengage and blink paired with OOC/ranged stealth to open is almost resource-for-resource the same as how signet D/P thief with shadowstep plays. And signet thief is absolutely a gimmick. And that's coming from the mouth of the most prolific/long-term signet thief player in GW2. It's just a high-skill build on D/D to make work consistently, because the combination of D/D + signets is and always has been horribly weak (and nerfed repeatedly). It's not at all the case with Mirage, where it's a gimmick but is super strong rather than being innately and harshly disadvantaged into virtually all skilled matchups like D/D signet thief is.

As for balancing the concept of active skills and it being stronger than current mirage and them being stronger than shatters, I'm going to have to disagree. Shatters are pretty much what carries mesmer efficacy in the PvP modes. It's why they can't just innately make mesmer's weapon-skill DPS high; it'd be too oppressive when combined with such massive innate burst and utility access from shatters. With lower cooldowns but lower potency per activation paired with the need to animation lock the mirage itself for casting the abilities in sync with clones, such a concept would require active play to keep clones alive with more sustained damage coming from multiple sources versus the pretty one-dimensional style that's currently just "summon and suicide" on phantasms after their opening strike. This also opens up counterplay in the PvP modes; a foe could opt to prioritize killing clones as they're summoned to suppress the mirage's damage, but with clever positioning, this would keep the mirage safe from said attacks, and permit it to be justified in its mobility and evasion, as then it'd otherwise be too easily shut down. And since the core mesmer's weapon skill damage is pretty low on its own, if a mirage does opt out of using its clone activations for other things, this would enable both it and its opponent to activate skills to sustain.

The overarching idea ticks all the boxes for a good elite spec:

• Changes style of play without dependence on changing existing core gameplay balance or mechanics
• Enables new strengths and weaknesses to a class depending on the context of a fight in a self-contained package
• Abides to core GW2 design principles and suits multiple game modes to be fun to play as and against

PvE encompasses all of open world, fractals, and raids. Your asinine assumption that the raid community is the only one that cares about PvE balance is absurd. Then you use the excuse that fractals have a way different meta than raids so clearly that excludes every upper tier fractal player. And now suddenly the sPvP and WvW community is 'larger'. It's not, it's pitifully small by comparison and good balancing there shouldn't even be the top of the priority list as to making a spec feel good and fun to use in PvE which is by far where a spec will be used more often.

You also forgot the part where they balance your active skill idea solely on consistently having 3 clones out all the time and so any version of it with 3 clones is middling and everything underneath that is underwhelming. It would get phantasm syndrome easily. Just look at the condition based ambushes when used with Infinite Horizon, repeatedly nerfed (Imaginary Axes) or garbage from inception (Ether Barrage) because it's far too good to use them with 3 clones up.

Your overarching idea doesn't even meet the arbitrary bullet points you pulled out of your ass as your own interpretation of what elite specs should be. Your idea completely changes the existing class mechanic and makes the class about micro managing clones (micro management is generally considered unfun, there's the second half of the third bullet point) so there's your first bullet point not ticked. The second one doesn't enable any new strengths or weaknesses since instead of Mirage Cloak and instant on demand pressure, CC, or Distortion from shatters you now have interruptible, animation locking clone activation skills, which since as you said are for sustained damage, are not particularly useful in a pinch and as you said weapon damage itself on Mesmer is subpar. As for weaknesses, Mesmer loses out on a decent amount of potential damage you focus on killing clones and interrupting or killing phantasms, all this idea would do is make that more punishing. The only thing this touches on about Mesmers original concept is misdirection, so missing the crowd control and unique utility aspects of Mesmer. There's all three bullet points unticked.

[Master Ketsu.4569]

For PvP, Anet really just needs to do what almost every single top player has been unanimously telling them: Elusive mind needs a smiters boon, mirage cloak should be disabled during CC. There is simply no version of those abilities that can exist and be balanced. Giving a class that has high mobility, burst, and utility what effectively amounts to permanent CC immunity was a terrible idea that should never have made it past the design document stage of PoFs development.

Tenacity is supposed to be for tanks and supports, not teleporting stealth assassins.

Once that is gone THEN they can figure out how to properly balance the class.

[Curunen.8729]

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Curunen.8729 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Curunen.8729 said:In practice it's usually only 2 stacks of regular might anyway - maybe occasionally spiking up to 3 from the food if you dodge in quick succession.

Barely anything tbh - most of the might would come from things like staff ambush/auto (also lining up clones to benefit from IH if using that, if the situation allows you to do so), things like BD for F1 might, and things like GS ambush. Or if you want to trait for them things like Phantasmal Force/Illusionary Inspiration... (though I doubt many mirages take Inspiration, or take Phantasmal Force over Master of Fragmentation if traiting Illusions).

Sure nerf the food if necessary, but I don't think the might stacks from it are excessive.

3 stacks ends up being the same as a lot of dedicated power foods and is the collective difference in power between full zerk and full marauder armor + weapons.It only seems insigificant because most professions run around with tons of might, but to say it's completely insignificant as far as damage goes is pretty far off.

The real issue is still the endurance regen - even the small gaps not having it makes for a night-and-day difference in a surprising number of encounters. It creates a 20% dodge/superspeed uptime (extended dodge frames on MC) which is even better than Daredevil or the Acrobatics line on thief, even with improved Vigor. In fact, from the extended frames on MC and the food, the mirage has a higher dodge uptime than Acrobatics' improved Vigor + Endurance Regen food on the thief.

The issues created with the food are numerous across multiple professions and really exacerbates issues with Mirage and Holosmith.

It's mostly 2 stacks given the 5s duration - unless you dodge 3 times in 5 seconds - which isn't usually the case given mirage's 2 endurance bars and 1s evade frame. I can't speak for daredevil, but for mirage, aside for a combat opener with weapon swap and heal ready (so you proc the energy sigil etc), the 3rd stack usually wears off by the time you need to dodge again.

I'm fine and agree with the endurance regen on the food being nerfed in any case, just like condi duration foods were nerfed, but don't think 60 stat points on average of power and condi from might is tipping the scales of being overpowered.

Sure. My comment about might has largely been taken out of context, anyways. The sentiment isn't about "mightstacking on food is OP," but rather the losses incurred by the food stat-wise are negligible to standard food and how those gains are not acquired in sPvP, and how the evasion bump simply breaks the spec more than it does most others.

I don't know - do people seriously believe that food + an elite spec on mesmer should have a higher dodge uptime than the dedicated dodge roll trait lines on the class designed to get bolstered dodge rates, even despite also using the food?

I'm curious about this - and here you'll have to help me with numbers for daredevil because I don't know the class well enough so will largely be going by the wiki - surely DD can evade more often than Mirage if built to max out dodges/evades, even if mirage cloak is 1s, given all its endurance regain mechanics? It seems to me that thief has more shorter duration evades compared to mirage with slightly less but longer duration evades.

Edit: on re-reading your post I'm assuming you're talking about dodging only rather than evades in general? Though personally an evade is an evade so they should all be taken into account, either from dodge, weapon, utility skills or traits.

Mirage gets high uptime of vigour - which is only maximised if you take both Duelling for Critical Infusion (5s on crit with 10s ICD), Bountiful Disillusionment (8s on F2) and of course with Nomad's Endurance (3s on shatter), and False Oasis (5s on 25s cd) for those who take it (but they gain less from adventurer rune). But if taking Illusions that means only 5s on Crit with 10s ICD or 3s on shatter, so there are gaps between vigour.

Aside from the passive regen from vigour (50%) of which the gaps between vary by build, and food (40%), there's only Energy sigils and Adventurer runes. Mirage has no other endurance regain mechanics.

For other sources of Mirage Cloak, people who take False Oasis get the delayed Mirror spawn. Many take Illusionary Ambush in wvw which provides another Mirage Cloak. And power builds tend to take Desert Distortion for the Mirror per clone on F4. So that's two Mirage Cloaks from skills - unless the person takes a different heal - but then you can argue traited mirror heal provides one Mirage cloak with adventurer rune every 12s whereas False Oasis provides two every 25s (one from the rune bonus, one from the Mirror) - so it's roughly even, just the distribution of evades is different. Overall it's one, maybe two mirage cloaks from utilities/heal and possibly a long cooldown mirror set drop from F4 depending on clones - though you have to then run around and pick them up to benefit, which from many players I see don't do this and maybe just collect one mirror.

On that note I think Desert Distortion is a gimmick and ought to be redesigned again.

That is all just about the Mirage Cloak. If including any evade access, Axe/Staff builds have axe 3 0.75s evade on traited 8s cd similar to Sword/Staff builds (though I'd say almost nobody traits sword over things like Blinding Dissipation or Evasive Mirror) so that would be 1s evade with 10s cd, Axe/x Sword/x builds have two evades (BF and axe 3), and GS/Sword power builds have one 1s evade on the 10s cd. Sure there are other combinations, but these are the most common which means largely a single on demand evade across both weapon sets, either 0.75 or 1s - unless they run the Axe/x Sword/x duelling combo (but this would be nerfed by nerfing mirage thrust so it gives up mobility).

Now I can't add all these up in terms of combos, chaining etc because gameplay is just too flexible. And it's not taking into account Elusive Mind exhaustion for those who take it (honestly if it wasn't for the condi cleanse, IH is flat out superior), which can be a huge problem in some situations especially in wvw.

Taking into account Acro/Daredevil also using 40% food, double energy sigils, Adventurer runes with a low cd heal like Withdraw or traited Channeled Vigour, it seems to me there are many more sources of endurance regain - such as Brawler's Tenacity, traited Staff (seems to have synergy with other traits that refund initiative), successful Steal refunding 25 endurance, and it looks like Dagger auto chain 2 has endurance regain? It also seems like a decent amount of vigour uptime from things like Feline Grace, Vigorous Recovery, and maybe Bountiful Theft if taking Trickery (and on this note the initiative benefits with traited staff) - because I'll assume maximising for evasion given comparing with Mirage that does the same can only do this through Duelling/Chaos as outlined above - because swapping either of these lowers vigour uptime.

And then it seems staff has two evade skills on 3 and 5, both Sw/D and Sw/P have evade on 3, and even shortbow has evade on 3 - and these are all fairly spammable.

Overall, while not adding up numbers it does look to me that thief has more and spammable evade access if they choose to build for it (just like mirage has to choose to build for it). The only thing perhaps with mirage is that the "meta" builds don't have to choose as it's in their interest to build for the gear and relevant traits/utilities, although sacrificing some amount of evade access for damage output (ie taking different trait lines or using different runes). The only thing guaranteed in most mirage builds now are double energy sigils and the food.

Perhaps it's just the case that "meta" thief builds have to sacrifice more in terms of building for evade in order to be effective, compared with mirage? I don't know so you can answer this. But it looks to me if someone really wanted to they could build a Sw/x + Staff Trickery/Acro/DD troll build that trumps mirage evade access.Hell on a related note I know that melee soulbeast (ie Sw/D + GS) can build for enough evades to neuter any mesmer.

The one thing I can say is that Unhindered Combatant was excessively nerfed and ought to be looked at.

[Solori.6025]

I thought we were letting this meme thread die

[Curunen.8729]

@Solori.6025 said:I thought we were letting this meme thread die

Heh, guilty as charged. xD

[DeceiverX.8361]

@Curunen.8729

I skipped over Staff Mastery and MH Dagger AA chain because they're exclusive to specific builds and conditions being met. I also ignored weapon skill use as again it's conditional and depends on a few factors as far as the thief's effective cooldowns based on initiative recovery and the weapon skills it's using, as well as whether or not FF is traited for a mirage running dueling. Thief weapon skill dodges outside of S/D also generally have some vulnerability frames as part of their casts so it becomes hard to qualify (and even quantify) evasion. The base dodge gives a full set of evade frames and outside of prior counterplay like immob or stun, can't really be negated.

Endurance Regeneration effects, especially on steal, are shaky; if steal is used as an engage tool, the endurance is effectively never received.

In the case of Mirage with the food:Endurance Regen from vigor and food -> +90% = one new dodge every 5.26s at 1s duration dodge = 1/5.26 = 19.0% uptime

With Daredevil with food:40% regen rate, or 7.15s between dodges at .75s = 10.5% uptime+1 dodge from CV cast @20s cd = 3.75% uptime+1 dodge from SoA @30s = 2.5% uptime= 16.25% uptime.

So if we totally max out evasion without accounting for spamming skills on staff, Daredevil does pull slightly ahead mandating two traitlines and no steal-on-engage assuming BT and Trickery traited and no-engage steal use for CV and PS:10.5 +CV: .75/16 = 4.7 % uptime + 22% from +10 Endurance = 5.7% uptimeSoA: .75/30 = 2.5% uptimePS: .75/20 = 3.75% uptime= 22.45%

PS really becomes the deciding factor. If steal is used for an engage (which is almost always is), mirage has more dodge uptime than Daredevil, even when traited for it and while burning utilities and heals.

[FaboBabo.3581]

@DeceiverX.8361 said:@Curunen.8729

I skipped over Staff Mastery and MH Dagger AA chain because they're exclusive to specific builds and conditions being met. I also ignored weapon skill use as again it's conditional and depends on a few factors as far as the thief's effective cooldowns based on initiative recovery and the weapon skills it's using, as well as whether or not FF is traited for a mirage running dueling. Thief weapon skill dodges outside of S/D also generally have some vulnerability frames as part of their casts so it becomes hard to qualify (and even quantify) evasion. The base dodge gives a full set of evade frames and outside of prior counterplay like immob or stun, can't really be negated.

Endurance Regeneration effects, especially on steal, are shaky; if steal is used as an engage tool, the endurance is effectively never received.

In the case of Mirage with the food:Endurance Regen from vigor and food -> +90% = one new dodge every 5.26s at 1s duration dodge = 1/5.26 = 19.0% uptime

With Daredevil with food:40% regen rate, or 7.15s between dodges at .75s = 10.5% uptime+1 dodge from CV cast @20s cd = 3.75% uptime+1 dodge from SoA @30s = 2.5% uptime= 16.25% uptime.

So if we totally max out evasion without accounting for spamming skills on staff, Daredevil does pull slightly ahead mandating two traitlines and no steal-on-engage assuming BT and Trickery traited and no-engage steal use for CV and PS:10.5 +CV: .75/16 = 4.7 % uptime + 22% from +10 Endurance = 5.7% uptimeSoA: .75/30 = 2.5% uptimePS: .75/20 = 3.75% uptime= 22.45%

PS really becomes the deciding factor. If steal is used for an engage (which is almost always is), mirage has more dodge uptime than Daredevil, even when traited for it and while burning utilities and heals.

so DD has no Vigor?

[Curunen.8729]

@"DeceiverX.8361"Thanks for the numbers especially for daredevil.

One thing though - if Mirage doesn't take both Duelling and Chaos it isn't perma vigour. Eg if they play Domination or Illusions (plus Duelling) there is downtime - although it's difficult to quantify as it depends on shatter usage (ie several in quick succession or not touching certain shatters while kiting) and landing crits every 10s in order to proc critical infusion. So I think that does have a bearing in that it isn't actually perma 90% for some meta builds like power mirage or even condi mirage that takes Illusions, even if they have False Oasis.

In any case if I had to pinpoint potential nerf it would be Bountiful Disillusionment F2 - simply reduce the vigour duration maybe to 5 or 6s (down from 8s), as F2 is a fairly long cooldown anyway. But otherwise it is pretty much vigour and food. The latter should be nerfed as it is (ie down to 30% or even 20% on the food, which would also affect the frequency of might gain). The former does require mandatory use of two traitlines to maximise (regarding your thief point of mandatory trait lines). Of course if the mirage takes neither Chaos or Duelling then we have very large gaps in vigour, as it's pretty much only Nomad's Endurance and possibly False Oasis - and then it would only be the 40% from food with occasional spikes up to 90% when vigour procs.

I think in general it's important not to see any of this as a flat playing field - ie vigour can be stripped/corrupted/stolen, and I personally can't not consider all the other possibilities of endurance regain on thief in addition to vigour access from things like feline grace and vigorous recovery. Epecially when mirage only has passive regain. And also when mirage cloak isn't an exclusive mechanic to dodge - it's an effect which procs off mirrors and illusionary ambush - so that adds to mirage evade access. Yes I see your point of some thief weapon evade skill animations having vulnerable frames, though I do contest that in actual gameplay that it isn't always easy to capitalise on this given the relative spammability of these skills due to initiative, compared with mesmer evades.

The one thing this has affirmed in my opinion is that mirage doesn't have to sacrifice much in terms of build variety to access this, whereas thief does - and in that way thief can range from lower dodge access than meta mirage to potentially a lot more dodge and evade access than mirage if they choose to build for it and depending on the combat situation (ie requirements of landing attacks, evading attacks etc), but at the same time risk being "non-meta" in terms of pvp.

Mirage is more uniform in that the meta builds - even those not taking either Chaos or Duelling - are fairly similar in their dodge frequency aside from variation in vigour uptime, as there are few conditional requirements for endurance - mainly landing crits for critical infusion (assuming shatter use isn't conditional because it's standard gameplay so BountifulD and NE proc naturally) - it's all passive regain (again ignoring sigils/runes as these can also be used by thief).

Maybe thief should have less conditional requirements for endurance regain; maybe mirage should have more. Bottom line is nerfing the food surely must happen, and if absolutely necessary then potentially vigour duration shaves on mirage, though I don't think the latter is necessary outside of maybe BD F2, given the mandatory trait requirements in order to maximise it.

[DeceiverX.8361]

@FaboBabo.3581 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:@Curunen.8729

I skipped over Staff Mastery and MH Dagger AA chain because they're exclusive to specific builds and conditions being met. I also ignored weapon skill use as again it's conditional and depends on a few factors as far as the thief's effective cooldowns based on initiative recovery and the weapon skills it's using, as well as whether or not FF is traited for a mirage running dueling. Thief weapon skill dodges outside of S/D also generally have some vulnerability frames as part of their casts so it becomes hard to qualify (and even quantify) evasion. The base dodge gives a full set of evade frames and outside of prior counterplay like immob or stun, can't really be negated.

Endurance Regeneration effects, especially on steal, are shaky; if steal is used as an engage tool, the endurance is effectively never received.

In the case of Mirage with the food:Endurance Regen from vigor and food -> +90% = one new dodge every 5.26s at 1s duration dodge = 1/5.26 = 19.0% uptime

With Daredevil with food:40% regen rate, or 7.15s between dodges at .75s = 10.5% uptime+1 dodge from CV cast @20s cd = 3.75% uptime+1 dodge from SoA @30s = 2.5% uptime= 16.25% uptime.

So if we totally max out evasion without accounting for spamming skills on staff, Daredevil does pull slightly ahead mandating two traitlines and no steal-on-engage assuming BT and Trickery traited and no-engage steal use for CV and PS:10.5 +CV: .75/16 = 4.7 % uptime + 22% from +10 Endurance = 5.7% uptimeSoA: .75/30 = 2.5% uptimePS: .75/20 = 3.75% uptime= 22.45%

PS really becomes the deciding factor. If steal is used for an engage (which is almost always is), mirage has more dodge uptime than Daredevil, even when traited for it and while burning utilities and heals.

so DD has no Vigor?

Nope. Thief's only source of vigor is acquired in Acrobatics. And Acro + DrD is horrible because it then has no damage. Thief's coefficients are generally low (now that its AA has been brought in line and ID nerfed properly); it gains all its damage by stacking % damage modifiers, which is why the recent DA change screwed over a lot of thieves in PvP/WvW and why people opt for Havoc Mastery in Daredevil over BT.

@Curunen.8729Yeah. AFAIK most meta mirage builds play with Dueling or chaos. I parallel either of them to being like Trickery in that there aren't many builds out there which run neither.

I think it's hard to value weapon-skill evasion on thief and things liked Blurred Frenzy and Distortion. Like D/P gets no extra evasion and staff isn't considered that good on thief right now. Kind of like trying to compare OH pistol thief to OH sword on mesmer.

Generally, though, I think you're seeing the picture; the problem is more or less that mirage sacrifices nothing to perform on the levels that entire elite specs are designed to do, if not simply out-perform them.

[Curunen.8729]

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@FaboBabo.3581 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:@Curunen.8729

I skipped over Staff Mastery and MH Dagger AA chain because they're exclusive to specific builds and conditions being met. I also ignored weapon skill use as again it's conditional and depends on a few factors as far as the thief's effective cooldowns based on initiative recovery and the weapon skills it's using, as well as whether or not FF is traited for a mirage running dueling. Thief weapon skill dodges outside of S/D also generally have some vulnerability frames as part of their casts so it becomes hard to qualify (and even quantify) evasion. The base dodge gives a full set of evade frames and outside of prior counterplay like immob or stun, can't really be negated.

Endurance Regeneration effects, especially on steal, are shaky; if steal is used as an engage tool, the endurance is effectively never received.

In the case of Mirage with the food:Endurance Regen from vigor and food -> +90% = one new dodge every 5.26s at 1s duration dodge = 1/5.26 = 19.0% uptime

With Daredevil with food:40% regen rate, or 7.15s between dodges at .75s = 10.5% uptime+1 dodge from CV cast @20s cd = 3.75% uptime+1 dodge from SoA @30s = 2.5% uptime= 16.25% uptime.

So if we totally max out evasion without accounting for spamming skills on staff, Daredevil does pull slightly ahead mandating two traitlines and no steal-on-engage assuming BT and Trickery traited and no-engage steal use for CV and PS:10.5 +CV: .75/16 = 4.7 % uptime + 22% from +10 Endurance = 5.7% uptimeSoA: .75/30 = 2.5% uptimePS: .75/20 = 3.75% uptime= 22.45%

PS really becomes the deciding factor. If steal is used for an engage (which is almost always is), mirage has more dodge uptime than Daredevil, even when traited for it and while burning utilities and heals.

so DD has no Vigor?

Nope. Thief's only source of vigor is acquired in Acrobatics. And Acro + DrD is horrible because it then has no damage. Thief's coefficients are generally low (now that its AA has been brought in line and ID nerfed properly); it gains all its damage by stacking % damage modifiers, which is why the recent DA change screwed over a lot of thieves in PvP/WvW and why people opt for Havoc Mastery in Daredevil over BT.

@Curunen.8729Yeah. AFAIK most meta mirage builds play with Dueling or chaos. I parallel either of them to being like Trickery in that there aren't many builds out there which run neither.

I think it's hard to value weapon-skill evasion on thief and things liked Blurred Frenzy and Distortion. Like D/P gets no extra evasion and staff isn't considered that good on thief right now. Kind of like trying to compare OH pistol thief to OH sword on mesmer.

Generally, though, I think you're seeing the picture; the problem is more or less that

mirage sacrifices nothing to perform on the levels that entire elite specs are designed to do, if not simply out-perform them.

I think in general we agree on the overall issues, though I don't entirely agree on this part - the sacrifices might be comparatively less, but there are still sacrifices depending on trait lines and weapons/utility skills (ie condi cleanse, burst damage output, boon uptime, mobility etc). The only thing mirage doesn't sacrifice between builds is the function of mirage cloak - it's either IH or EM, but otherwise all mirage builds get the same benefits of the dodge funciton - which to be honest is how it should be, regardless of the level of performance of mirage cloak (I think that's a separate discussion). There isn't a "bad" choice of trait lines for mirage as such, which is great because it allows a lot of build variety.

Personally in building to maximise vigour and in combat teleports, I do suffer from lower burst damage output and less potent sustained damage unless choosing to go full glass (which also through running only one stealth kind of makes life tough) as well as telegraphed burst attacks (in my experience axe 3 is very easy for good players to dodge unless baiting them, especially compared with GS2 F1 power burst).

So I'd say daredevil build variety ought to then be improved if it's the case of not being able to make use of many of the conditional endurance regain mechanics or other endurance boosts such as traits that proc vigour, and allow for use of more trait line combinations.

[Dawdler.8521]

@DeceiverX.8361 said:I think it's hard to value weapon-skill evasion on thief and things liked Blurred Frenzy and Distortion. Like D/P gets no extra evasion and staff isn't considered that good on thief right now. Kind of like trying to compare OH pistol thief to OH sword on mesmer.

I dont really think its hard to value them at all. Mesmer has a little more pure endurance perhaps, but then again I've seen thieves fight effectivly using only one weapon skill and one trait and be incredibly hard to hit due to constantly stealthing and dodging. Just steal in, hit once, smoke field, dodge. Thief is gone. Then they will backstab once, smokefield, dodge. Thief is gone. Backstab once, smokefield, dodge. Repeat for like 80% stealth uptime in the fight.

A mesmer cant even come close to that kind of evasion.