Mirage - Chaotic Condition

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Focused on: Condition damage and Sustain

Designed for: PvP Conquest

Difficulty:

Easy

Overview

An easy to play duelist Mirage spec for sPvP focusing on clone generation and ambush attacks.

Skill Bar

Scepter/Pistol

Staff

Utility

Slot Changes

Utility

• Signet of Midnight or Illusionary Ambush over Arcane Thievery

Template Code

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Specializations

Variants

• Auspicious Anguish - better defense against conditions.
• Chaotic Transference - better Regeneration access and causes all your illusions to gain Chaos Aura too.

Equipment

Scepter

Pistol

Sigil

Sigil

Staff

Sigil

Sigil

Rune

Amulet

Relic

Equipment Changes

Runes

If you don't need the passive mobility boost of Lynx, there are other viable options too:

• Rune of Orr - better sustain against condition builds.

• Rune of Necromancer - higher damage and HP.

Relics

• Relic of Leadership - adds more condition removal to Jaunt, worth considering when you're only playing with 1 Cleansing sigil (less Antitoxin value).
• Relic of the Fractal - adds Burning and Torment to your Phantasmal Duelist bursts.

Sigils

• Sigil of Cleansing over Sigil of Confusion - helps you out a lot in condition matchups but makes your Scepter bursts slightly worse. Also has Antitoxin synergy.

Usage

Elite specialization basics

• Dodge rolling is replaced by Mirage Cloak, which is more or less the same thing but allows you to cast skills and grants access to ambush attacks for its duration: Chaos Vortex for staff and Ether Barrage for scepter. Ambush skills replace the autoattack of the weapons for 1.5 seconds.

• Pressing dodge grants +66% movement speed and Regeneration (which reduces incoming condition duration while it lasts thanks to Renewing Oasis). Infinite Horizon makes it so that whenever you gain Mirage Cloak, your clones are also going to receive it with all benefits including access to ambush attacks - it can even make your clones evade skills such as Full Counter or "Chilled to the Bone!", denying your opponent various bonuses.

General

• Playstyle: the basic gameplan is simple, dodging spawns clones via Deceptive Evasion while also granting you and your clones Mirage Cloak for ambush skill access.
  • The spawned clone will immediately do its ambush attack.
  • Creating 1-2 clones before dodging increases your burst damage on both sets and improves Alacrity acces when using Staff.
  • Dodging with 3 active clones is a bit of a waste because one of your fresh clones will just override an old one, but it's still worth doing because a 3 clone ambush is quite strong. You could also use Illusionary Ambush in this situation, not wasting any dodges while still making all of your clones do their ambush attack.

• The build has very poor access to condition cleansing, limited only to Jaunt, Sigil of Cleansing and Arcane Thievery. Try to play it safe against condition specs: outrange them with staff, chain block / evade frames in melee, use your interupts to prevent them from casting while there are gaps in your defense, etc.

• Use Distortion to prevent conditions from overwhelming you if other sources no longer suffice. You may even consider using Signet of Illusions just to get a second Distortion if things are looking grim.

• The Scepter auto attack chain progresses if you keep attacking even while out of combat with no target selected. By using the first 2 skills of the chain you can start combat with Ether Clone for a free clone.

• Besides cleansing conditions while at the same time pressuring your opponent with them, Arcane Thievery is also useful for boon removal/stacking in general, for example getting rid of their Resistance or stealing Vigor for Nomad's Endurance synergy.

Staff

• Staff is what you use for sustain, ranged poking, mobility, boon stacking and sustained damage.
• Chaos Armor is a great defensive tool against direct damage, it inflicts AoE Blind nearby targets and Confusion. The Weakness and Protection are also worth noting.
  • Note: This skill can be used while stunned!

• Chaos Storm is the strongest skill on this weapon. Standing in it supplies allies with defensive boons including Aegis while inflicting several conditions that can mitigate damage like Weakness or Chill (Chill makes it harder to reach you while slowing down their skill recharge rate). It even interrupts enemies with Daze when first placed. Excellent skill to use when you need area denial for downed cleave, sustain and other such scenarios.

• Phase Retreat is good for building some distance between you and your target, and can even be used while stunned, potentially allowing you to save dodges for later.
  • When used in Chaos Storm PR grants Chaos Armor. Keep in mind that this doesn't stack in duration, so try not to overlap Chaos Armors from different sources.

• Phantasmal Warlock summons a Phantasm that's stacking Torment on your target which is great for additional pressure.

Mobility

• Use Phase Retreat for mobility while traveling between capture points. Phase Retreat teleports you in the opposite direction of where you're facing, so to teleport "forward" turn around to use it and then turn back. We recommend that you set up a bind for about face to do this in a fluid manner (Options ⇒ Control Options ⇒ Movement).
  • Make sure that you don't have an enemy targeted when doing this!

Damage

• The build heavily relies on keeping pressure up constantly by spawning clones through Deceptive Evasion and making them unload ambush attacks via Infinite Horizon.

• As for burst damage a multi-clone Cry of Frustration is your best skill.

• Illusionary Counter should be used as often as possible, it's excellent for setting up burst or even avoiding attacks. Not only does dodging after a successful block immediately generate a total of 2 clones, but also makes them all (including you) unload their ambush attacks.
  • If you have 2-3 active clones before using Illusionary Counter you should probably shatter them before the new ones spawn, as otherwise some of the previous clones will just go to waste.
  • Note: there's a small evade frame after the block which can proc Evasive Mirror too.

• Sharper Images synergy plays a big part in this build and significant part of the build's pressure comes from this trait.
  • With a little luck Phantasmal Duelist could stack nearly ~15 stacks of bleeding on its own.

Example #1 of a scepter/pistol burst

1. Phantasmal Duelist
2. Magic Bullet
3. Dodge
4. Cry of Frustration
5. Confusing Images

Example #2 of a scepter/pistol burst

1. Illusionary Counter
2. Dodge + ambush
3. Cry of Frustration

Related Builds

• Mirage - Chaotic Condition Roamer - WvW version.