Mirage - Celestial Daze Spammer Roamer

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

Focused on: Condition damage and Control

Designed for: WvW Roaming

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Easy

This build was last updated on November 08, 2023 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

A WvW Celestial Mirage roaming build created to kill targets with ambush attacks, spamming them with Daze and various conditions. Dagger Mirage is made possible by Secrets of the Obscure's weaponmaster specialization.

Skill Bar

Dagger/Pistol

Staff

Utility

Skill Variants

Utility

If you don't mind giving up a stun break and Stealth source, Signet of Midnight can be replaced by:

• Mantra of Distraction - instant ranged interrupt with Power Block synergy.

• Arcane Thievery - helpful skill against conditions that could also get rid of Stability on targets, opening them up for interrupts.

Weapons

• Sword/Torch over Staff - Sword's ambush attack also dazes targets, which makes it fit the build perfectly while Torch adds more cleansing and stealth access to the build. Overall Sword/Torch is less defensive than Staff however, so your already mediocre sustain's going to take a hit and you lose all Alacrity access as well as a decent chunk of your sustained damage.

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Equipment

Head
Celestial

Shoulders
Celestial

Chest
Celestial

Hands
Celestial

Legs
Celestial

Feet
Celestial

Backpiece
Celestial

Accessory
Celestial

Accessory
Celestial

Amulet
Celestial

Ring
Celestial

Ring
Celestial

Dagger
Celestial

Pistol
Celestial

Sigil

Sigil

Staff
Celestial

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

Relic

Equipment Variants

Sigils

• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Cleansing over Sigil of Superior Sigil of Absorption - better defense against conditions.

Relics

• Relic of the Demon Queen - adds a high uptime of Poison to the build with strong healing reduction, but it's not as bursty as Akeem.

Consumables

Food

• Optimal:

• Budget:

Utility

• Optimal: or , whichever is cheaper (the difference beween them is negligible, a grand total of 2 condition damage stat in favor of Tuning Icicle).

• Budget: either from Canned Food Crates found in WvW s or purchased from the Permanent Portable Provisioner.

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 Phantom Razor for dagger. 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, but the ambush attack can still put decent pressure on the target.

• 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 entire build was built around Dagger's Phantom Razor - it stacks conditions while making it hard for opponents to get any skill casts off with the Daze spam. While the daze has an extremely short duration all we really care about here are interrupts to proc Power Block and Relic of Akeem. Eventually you'll lock enemies out of most of their important skills with Power Block while spamming them with conditions.

• On Dagger/Pistol open with Phantasmal Duelist and Magic Bullet, interrupts reduce the CD of pistol skills so spamming dagger ambush attacks is going to recharge them in no time.

• Shatter skills remove boons, which is a great way of getting rid of Stability and opening up targets for more Daze spam.

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, Sigil of Superior Sigil of Cleansing 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!