Mirage - Chaotic Condition Roamer

The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great

Focused on: Condition damage, Mobility and Sustain

Designed for: WvW Roaming

Difficulty:

Easy

This build was last updated on September 14, 2023 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

A WvW Condition Mirage roaming build focusing on constant condition pressure, mobility, and survival.

Skill Bar

Staff

Axe/Pistol

Utility

Skill Variants

Utility

Every utility except Blink can be replaced by the following skills:

• Signet of Midnight - adds stealth to the build and has a nice passive.

• Mantra of Resolve - if you're having trouble dealing with incoming conditions.

• Signet of Illusions - more shatter spam and the passive has some nice synergy with the build.

Weapons

• Scepter over Axe is also a viable option. Drop the current rune and take Rune of Superior Rune of Perplexity or any of the other runes listed under the equipment variants.

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Specializations

Variants

• Auspicious Anguish improves your sustain against condition builds but it's going to cost you some Staff CD reductions and condition damage.

Equipment

Head
Trailblazer

Shoulders
Trailblazer

Chest
Trailblazer

Hands
Trailblazer

Legs
Trailblazer

Feet
Trailblazer

Backpiece
Trailblazer

Accessory
Trailblazer

Accessory
Trailblazer

Amulet
Trailblazer

Ring
Trailblazer

Ring
Trailblazer

Axe
Trailblazer

Pistol
Trailblazer

Sigil

Sigil

Staff
Trailblazer

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

Relic

Celestial gear is just as good if not arguably better. It has lower burst damage but higher uptime of important boons such as Alacrity and Vigor.

Note: Trailblazer can be rather expensive to get, Dire gear is much easier to collect and should do the trick until you finish your Trailblazer set.

Equipment Variants

Relics

• Relic of Evasion - permanent uptime on our most important boon. Unnecessary with Celestial gear however.

• Relic of Antitoxin - improved cleansing.

Sigils

Staff

• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Corruption over Sigil of Superior Sigil of Cleansing - if you can afford to give up some condition removal for a stacking damage buff.

Runes

• Rune of Superior Rune of Perplexity - better than Rune of Tormenting when playing with Scepter.

• Rune of Superior Rune of the Trapper - higher burst damage option.

Consumables

Food

• Optimal:

• Budget:

Utility

• Optimal:

• Budget: (found in Canned Food Crates looted from WvW Skirmish Chests)

Note: the budget options are perfectly fine, not going for the optimal consumables won't really make too much of a difference.

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 the duration: Chaos Vortex for staff and Imaginary Axes for axe. Ambush skills replace the autoattack of the weapons for 1.5 seconds.

• Pressing dodge grants Superspeed 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, denying your opponent various bonuses.

• You can dodge while casting skills or stomping/rezing, but you can't dodge while CC'd.

General

• 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 Stability or stealing Vigor for Nomad's Endurance synergy.

• Staff is your defensive set used for ranged poking, mobility, and sustained damage while Axe/Pistol is there for burst damage.

• The basic game plan is simple: dodge rolling summons a clone and makes all of your clones unload ambush attacks. Your goal is to build up your clone count and spam ambushes on enemies. the Staff ambush also supplies you with a good amount of Alacrity.

Sustain

• Staff is your primary defensive weapon.

• Chaos Armor may not look that amazing at first glance, but it's an instant cast skill which applies Protection to the caster and AoE Weakness to nearby foes, effectively filtering their damage through two layers of mitigation. It's an excellent skill for surviving direct damage burst and it's usable even while CC'd.

• 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). The first hit of Chaos Storm always Dazes enemies, making it a reliable AoE interrupt.

• 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.
  • If 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.

• The build has rather poor access to condition cleansing by default, limited only to Jaunt and Arcane Thievery. Try to play it safe against condition specs: outrange them with staff, chain block / evade frames in melee, etc. Your strongest option against damage in general is Distortion, granting you immunity to any form of pressure including CC and conditions that are already on you.

Mobility

• Use Phase Retreat for mobility while roaming or chasing after targets. 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 with Infinite Horizon. Building up a clone army and making them perform ambush attacks is more important here than using shatter skills. That said shatters still add some burst damage, especially when used right after ambush attacks with 3 clones.

• Phantasmal Warlock periodically stacks Vulnerability on your target, which is useful for setting up burst. After the attack it'll turn into a clone, potentially fueling shatters.

Example of an Axe/Pistol burst combo:

1. Phantasmal Duelist
2. Magic Bullet
3. Lingering Thoughts, dodge in the middle of it
4. Imaginary Axes
5. Axes of Symmetry
6. Jaunt
7. Cry of Frustration