Mirage - Axe Mirage

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

Focused on: Condition damage

Designed for: Open WorldOpen World General and [[|]]

Expansions required: Heart of Thorns builds

Difficulty:
TBD
This build was last updated on April 14, 2022 and is up to date for the November 28, 2023 patch.

Overview

A condition based Mirage open world build that focuses on Confusion Confusion and Torment Torment. This build has relatively high base DPS that can be amplified further if fighting enemies that attack quickly. It is simple to pick up but very hard to master.


Template Code

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Skill Bar

Axe/Torch
X/Pistol
Utility


Weapon Variants

  • Staff - Long range kiting
  • Focus - Utility offhand; allows you to group mobs.


Skill Variants

Healing Skills

  • - additional mirage cloaks


Utility Skills

  • - This skill is critical when chain-farming mobs, such as at the Kourna Battlefield or Bitterfrost Frontier. Use it to prevent your clones from constantly resetting.
  • - Strong damage option
  • - more DPS and mirage cloaks.
  • - if conditions are a problem.
  • - to reflect projectiles.
  • - can be useful, especially when zerging.


Elite Skills

  • - strong option when soloing bosses


Specializations


Equipment

Run this for higher DPS and higher burst.

Head
Viper
Shoulders
Viper
Chest
Viper
Hands
Viper
Legs
Viper
Feet
Viper
Backpiece
Viper
Accessory
Viper
Accessory
Viper
Amulet
Viper
Ring
Viper
Ring
Viper
Axe
Viper
Torch
Viper
Sigil
Sigil
x
Viper
Pistol
Viper
Sigil
Sigil
Rune
x6



Variant Equipment

It is never recommended to replace either of your sigils.

Weapons

  • Staff/Staff - You can run two staves, both with and for better kiting potential. For more information on this, see Build:Mirage_-_Condi_Staff

Gear

  • Trailblazer Trailblazer - trades some damage for a massive amount of defense
  • Celestial Celestial - trades damage for defense, retains some strike-base burst compared to Trailblazer

Runes

  • - use 5 of these + 1 Black Diamond as a budget replacement for Nightmare
  • - higher strike damage, lower peak DPS
  • - fun hybrid option


Consumables

Food
  • Any ascended food is superior to any other food you could use. Steak for power, flatbread for conditions. Budget versions of these foods exist and are acceptable.
  • - farming
  • - DPS
  • - defense
Utility
  • (and variants) - farming
  • , - dps
  • - dps if using gear with high toughness


Usage

Damage

The basic gist of this build is to use your weapon skills while dodging and then using specific shatter combinations when you have the clones to do so.

  • Spam dodge and use mirrors to trigger your Ambush attacks as often as possible. Remember that Ambush has a 1s internal cooldown.
  • Shatter when you have 3 clones that you can -instantly- replace. Axe 2, , can help refresh your clones. Thanks to , dodging will also generate new clones for you. If needed, you can take or to increase clone generation.
  • Your shatters do not all line up. As such, we use a priority system to determine which shatters to use.
  1. - This is your bread-and-butter shatter. Always prioritize shattering this with 3 clones.
  2. - This shatter deals great damage in the Viper Viper setup, so prioritize it second.
  3. - This shatter doesn't do much for us, but it does grant us some Fury Fury. You can use this shatter with 0 clones directly after one of the shatters above.
  4. - This shatter grants is some nice i-frames and also grants us Regeneration Regeneration, which is critical for our DPS. Prioritize this shatter last. It is perfectly fine to shatter this with 0 clones directly after one of the first two shatters.

In short: F2 > F1. After one of those, Shatter either F3 or F4 with 0 clones.


  • Use your phantasms off cooldown.
  • Always have three clones up at all times. This is critical for your DPS.
  • Weapon swap any time you're missing a lot of energy.


Defense

  • Use to cleanse conditions.
  • Abuse your or for frequent dodges.
  • - can provide a strong stunbreak.
  • You dodge often so use that to your advantage. Your dodges are: , , , going through your , and of course your default evade skill.
  • A good alternative to evade attacks is to teleport out of it by using , or .


Crowd Control

  • Interrupts: ,
  • (as a last resort)


Ratings

This build has a rating of 4 stars based on 2 votes.
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5 stars
Devinci gave this build 5 stars • November 2023
Condi Mirage, both staff and axe, is my overall favorite. Pick which to use based on your taste and what you're doing. This is easy since they're identical except for weapons and talent tweaks. Staff, because it's simple, ranged, and has decent group support, is better for people new to the class, against enemies you find challenging, in groups, or for people who just don't like melee. It's the first build I had success with against harder enemies when starting the game. Axe, with much stonger burst, better cleave, and higher overall damage, is better for soloing less challenging enemies and mowing down packs. I also find it more fun--the staff version is so simple it can get boring. The biggest drawback for both is clone management. Clones die when their target dies, are easily killed by stronger enemies, and are used up when you shatter, so you constantly have to make more. Some people don't like this.
3 stars
Warming Hearth gave this build 3 stars • July 2023
Definitely worse than staff-staff mirage. This is the type of build that you mostly play for flavour. Though it can technically outdps staff-staff when playing in groups that provide you with essential boons, axe mirage is considerably harder to play, doesn't offer any support to nearby allies, and is purely melee which can be a problem sometimes. On the upside, it is even more elusive than staff-staff thanks to axe 3, and has more CC. If you're new to mirage, you should probably start with staff-staff to learn the class, and only consider using axe once you become more comfortable. Both builds share armour and trinkets, so it's easy to swap between them. If I could, I'd give it a 3.5 or so.

Comments

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