SkylightMoon.2098

Like once every 4 games or so I encounter match manipulation and someone throwing because they were paid to(usually by an EG player). A few of the players in the top 10 and 20 are terrible and are well known to have only got there because of match manipulation.

The only problem I found with running an interrupt build that has double melee like sword/pistol sword is that it is lower on damage than something else thats power like GS and the utility of GS range really helped me at times.

In team fights GS can actually be quite fun because you can sit up on a ledge, summon multiple clones with 2 dodges and a jaunt, and then get at least 1 or 2 gs ambush skills in that hit all players within range of it. The split surge is nice because it hits multiple players so its like you are hitting each person in that fight with 4 split surges. The pressure is nice I guess.

It hits way harder than normal GS 1 is what i'm trying to say.

Finished grinding my way to 120 games and im 1760 elo before the season ended.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAR8fnELDlphNqBGMDMMjlTDzfBGBvglZgmT4gMAsACKA-jJxHAB7s/gyPBAAuIAKVGAA

The only big things I changed that helped were switching the runes and amulet. **Adventurers** will save your ass a lot when you run out of dodges, plus the heal gives you another evade frame when it drops the mirror. The **berserkers** amulet ended up being necessary to do enough damage.** Marauders** didn't have enough damage to really be viable in high elo.

Its not that hard to survive even in this meta, you just need to learn to use your mobility and **mirage mirror** properly. You have pretty ridiculous mobility on this build because of how many **mirage thrusts** you can do in a row. It allows you to travel between points really quickly.

You can use Jaunt to tack on more damage to your shatters, pick up your mirrors, or blink up on ledges when you need to escape without actually having to use your blink.

**Deceptive Evasion** is a must for this build and playstyle. You have an obscene amount of clone generation between that and **self-deception**. You essentially always have up 2-3 clones, and after a while you realize controlling your clones ambush skills is actually really powerful and annoying for the enemy to fight.

**Split Surge** absolutely murders opponents from afar when you have up multiple clones. Its one tactic you will use to end up fighting scourge since they can't move much in the first place.

**Illusionary Ambush** is pretty amazing as well. It has a very short cd, gives you a target break, mirage cloak, stun break, and has a super long range. A lot of times this skill throws you behind and enemy so if they are running towards you away from their point you can use it to blink behind them without them even knowing.

Easy matchups:

**Thief** - Absolutely murders thieves in matchups if played well. Just abuse the hell out of your mirage thrust from yourself and clones and with the amount of dodges you have they will never hit you and always end up getting stunned.

**Necro** - Stay pretty far away from them and use split surge until you get them low enough with enough vuln and then switch to sword and pile on multiple cc's to kill them quickly.

**Ele** - Self-explanatory

Medium matchups:

Revenant, Engi, Ranger

Hard matchups:

**Guardian**(Dragonhunter or Base): Guardian besides firebrand will always be a hard matchup for mesmer.

**Warrior**(Spellbreaker): Impossible to win this fight against a good player. Spellbreaker is a bit overtuned in my opinion, or at least its full counter is, and against a good player this is not really a winnable fight. Its either going to be a stalemate because you never can get in enough damage to match up his ability to heal back up from his signet or the fight will take way too long. On a condi build you could win this but not power.

Some good ideas here guys. Hopefully the devs see them.

I've played around 100 games AT LEAST in ranked, relatively high elo(1700) and haven't seen 1 renegade so far. The few high elo revenant players I talk to have all told me renegade is total garbage, lack of sustain, utility, and just all around inferior to the standard revenant build for pvp which is already somewhat underpowered.

I'd guess part of renegades problems stems from the core problems that still exist with revenant as a class. It needs a bit of a revamp imo.

> @Veprovina.4876 said:

> I don't know about others, but Veilrender (mirage axe) collection has you killing one specific bounty for a drop. It's not like bounties are just thrown out there, there are some achievements and items tied to them.

Yeah thats true I guess.

What I mean though is that bounties were implemented as sort of one of the new features in this expac and it seems like they are underdeveloped as a system. Needs more structure. I heard one person suggest a currency for bounties.

I've wanted bounty like systems in gw2 for a really long time, so I was excited when I heard about it. I just think it needs more work for it to be something people really find incentive to do.

Reward wise and content wise it needs improvement in the future.

I really hope Anet doesn't just leave this behind like they did with other systems like guild missions. They have a bad habit of creating a new type of content and then just giving up on it early on if it doesn't work the way they want it to.

1. Better liquid rewards(gold, xp, karma maybe).

2. Maybe a bounty specific currency that would apply game wide with future bounties

3. Unique rewards per bounty. Like I said, skins(armor, weapons), infusions, lots of possibilities.

4. Tie more of them to collections. A few already exist.

5. Change them content wise a bit maybe. Maybe they could have pre-events attached to you take the contract to start and then one or two short events lead to the correct location of the bounty.

Bounties were one of the new and few features they advertised with the expansion and they seem to be completely lackluster. The primary reason I see people not wanting to do them is the complete lack of reward incentive.

Mechanically I think the bounties are fine, but they give you drops that are so poor you'd be better off killing random npcs in the meantime. The only unique thing they give you is a treasure hunting kit that leads you to buried treasure that once again rarely gives you anything good. The best thing it gives you is a sunspear skin which is incredibly rare to obtain from it and you can easily get it off the tp.

I think adding a series of achievements or collections to the bounties along with implementing some unique drops to them would make people more interested.

1. Unique items being skins(Weapons/armor), mini's, perhaps a rare drop infusion on some of the legendary ones, or a guild hall decoration.

2. Achievements that are structured around killing certain bounties.

3. Collections.

The main problem is that it's aoe.

There isn't a ton of incentive to actually go and pick up mirage mirrors in my opinion. I felt like I was picking them up just for the sake of picking them up at some points.

One thing I guess you can do is distortion shatter when u have 3 clones, then have 3 mirage mirrors and slowly use them over the period of the 15 seconds they are up. It works kinda ok I guess, but I feel like there needs to be something else added for them. There is one buff that currently helps you a bit by giving you boons when you have the mirage effect, but I think something needs to be added to them skill wise or trait wise.

Perhaps the mirage mirror itself gives some type of buff or damage boost whenever you pick up them up. Otherwise it just feels incomplete.

Also infinite horizon is too good not to take, so just make it default in my opinion. This reminds me of back when illusions had that grandmaster that applied the shatter effect to yourself, and it was so good that no one ever took it. It would help the mirage traitline a lot if they just made it default then redid the other grandmasters since they arn't that good.

I'd say its in combat mobility is pretty close to daredevil though and I say that mainly because it can stick on targets so well. I guess it depends what you take, I think you could honestly sacrifice decoy if you felt like it and take the 2nd mirage shadowstep like skill if you want, and then you have sword 1, blink, mirage advance, illusionary ambush, axe 3, jaunt, and sword 3, all that can allow you to lock onto people.

Between axe 3, mirage advance, and illusionary ambush, you have 3 skills that basically allow you to shadow step onto a target. If you rotate them well enough you stick on even a daredevil like glue.

Necro in its current state makes it significantly more difficult to fight for many classes, including mesmer. My approach is usually just not to fight them but if I have to, I just let the scourge blow all its AOE's, move out, then go back in when I can.

Even on a pure power build, you can still do quite high condi damage. You get lots of confusion and torment for free on this build. Couple that with constant high vuln stacks and it can do decent damage.

I'm currently in Plat right now and i'm able to do quite well with Mirage. Most of the Mirage's i've encountered are condi but I play power(marauders).

After a few dozens matches I really feel used to Mirage by now and it honestly makes mesmer feel like a thief.

I run domination, dueling, mirage with sword/torch and axe. For traits, the important things I use are all the top traits for Mirage, Powerblock in domination, and deceptive evasion in dueling. I think Power Block works really well because a lot of how I play is basically abusing the hell out of the sword ambush skill and having high access to daze. It goes really well with the 5 second cd stun on daze as well.

I use the combo because it allows me to stick to the enemy really well. For utilities I use the deception heal, blink, decoy, and Mirage advance, then the Mirage Elite.

This combination of weapons/utilities makes it extremely easy for you to stay on any target, no matter where they go. In fights, once you get your rotations down, you can comfortably cycle through your mirage cloaks and mirrors that you lay on the ground after using distortion on your clones and through your heal skill.

It is much stronger against thief than normal mesmer is, largely because its nearly just as mobile and flashy around in combat as a thief is. The hard matchups are usually classes that fight on point well like Guard and Necro because you have very little ability to keep up your clones.

I think you could probably drop decoy for portal on this build if you wanted.

Mirage feels like its in a fairly good spot right now, or at least better than before. The only problem is the fact that what makes this build so viable is its dependence on the sword ambush skill which is exceptionally good becasue it gives you a ton of extra cc and a lot more mobility. I've survived so much because of this skill. I think one specs dependence being on one skill is a bit worrisome in my opinion. The other ambush skills need to be buffed.