Mirage Rework Idea/s (No Band Aid Mods, All Synergy Focused Rework Ideas!)

[Gawizard]

So, After querying why do I still play mirage when there are better frames in the game, I've came across some Frame Friendly ability Reworks for Mirage that arent considered "band aid" fixes.

So main changes are to her second ability (Sleight of Hand). These changes are:

• Booby Trapped objects now have an increased aggro value compared to current values.
• Orbs Placed in the Dark Now give off 100% light (not visually but sets her Eclipse value to 100% of its damage buff value) and orbs placed in the dark grants her 100% of her damage reduction.
  • This would have a range of about 2 times its base blast radius and be scaled with Ability Range.
• The former change would apply to the smaller orbs through with smaller range (75% of the blast radius)
• This applies to allies affected by the Total Eclipse Augment.
• Ability Cost reduced from 50 to 40.

Now for her third ability,(Eclipse), there's less reworking and more fixing.

• Mirage's Damage Bonus and Damage Reduction Buff will not fluctuate based on the current light level in that point of geometry. She shall receive either full buffs or full Damage Reduction.
• This applies to allies affected by the Total Eclipse Augment.

And Finally, Her weakest ability yet, Prism, should receive a rework in how it functions and an augment.

• Prism's Damage per Tick will now be based on how much damage Mirage deals (the actual frame, not her clones) or how much damage she receives and will be amplified by a 2.0x multiplier which scales with ability strength.
• This additional damage is reset on ability expiration, if its dispelled or if energy has expired.
• This Damage caps at 20 Times the Damage multiplier (not affected by ability strength.
• The Damage multiplier accumulated is applied to the final explosion with a base damage of 1500 (affected by ability strength)
• The ability's damage per tick no longer scales with the current light level at where Mirage is located. 

Now for the Augment (Diffraction):

• Orbs casted from mirage's Slight of Hand Abilities will rise a few meters off the ground (Not Scaled with Range) and project up to 4 lasers that target enemy units while Prism is active.
• The limit of orbs that can project light is 4. Subsequent orbs will function as if Prism was not active.
• The range of each daughter beam is limited to 10 meters (scaled with Ability Range)
• Each beam from an orb will deal 25% of Prism's main damage.
• Each beam is limited to 1 target and will not change its target until it leaves its effective range or dies.

Please Leave any Feedback on these proposed changes and if you like it, Increase its reputation. DE only changes stuff if they can see it.

[DrivaMain]

Just let Prism damage scale based on enemy level, no need to add a complicated interaction. Instead when mirage cast prism it will create a very large amount of light in a very large radius, I would say 20 meters. This will add some synergy with her 3. Possibly allow her prism to proc radiation status?

For booby traps, let the damage scale based on enemy level. 

[Birdframe_Prime]

I like your enthusiasm, but you do kind of contradict yourself here;

Why would you need to rework to her 3 to always gives her the full benefits of being in the light or dark, if her 2 granted full Light or Dark zones? The thing about Mirage's 3 is that it varies specifically because the bonus to damage and DR can be so strong. From an ability balance and Synergy point of view, what you would rather do is have players encouraged to cast her abilities together to get the best effects.

However, you don't want to force Synergy, not all the time, bonus effects are good because that means that the two casts would create more than they would alone, you do have to balance that against making the abilities work at base without each other too.

Maybe I can tweak your examples here, give them a little polish? See if you like my take on your thoughts.

You don't want her 1 to change, but you want her 2 to be more functional and you want her 3 to be more reliable, and as a last thought you want her 4 to get some of its damage back after DE nerfed that deliberately... I'll see what I can do.

So her kit would look a little more like this:

Spoiler

Passive: Acrobat. Mirage has 50% faster Maneuver speed, Sliding lasts 85% longer.

1. Hall of Mirrors.

Mirage creates an entourage of Dopplegangers to confuse and distract the enemy (no real change, this one's a really good ability for damage and survivability as is. It lasts a good Duration and it has synergy with some of her kit already).

2. Stage Lights.

Mirage sets the stage with gem-like lights. Tap to create a Light crystal which illuminates the area. All pickups and objects within range become primed as traps for the enemy that will damage and disorient them on contact. Hold to create a Dark crystal which spreads a shadow over the ground. All pickups and objects within range become primed as traps that will put enemies to sleep on contact.

Only one area of Stage Lights can be active at any time, Mirage can recast it before the duration is up, and if Mirage changes from Light to Dark she will be refunded 50% of the Energy cost for the new cast.

While Mirage or her allies are within range of her Stage Lights their weapons will receive bonuses. Light Crystals grant an extra 25% Status Chance, Dark Crystals grant an extra 25% Critical Chance (I've done this deliberately to encourage players to use both to work with her 3, so DR with Darkness on Eclipse then comes with Crit, which is better for damage as compensation for losing the damage boost on Eclipse's Light mode, but the damage boost with Light is sufficient that boosting the Status on weapons will benefit more from that base damage increase. See?)

Synergy: While casting, if Hall of Mirrors is active, each clone will cast a smaller Crystal at the point of cast that will grant a further bonus to weapons, but will also act as a Trap for enemies that approach. Each crystal cast by a clone can only be used as a trap once, although the bonus to the Light/Dark buffs will remain.

If Eclipse is active, stepping in range of the cast will grant the maximum buff from Light or Dark, depending on which is active.

Enemies within range of the ability will take multiplied damage from Prism if Light is active, or will slow and receive Radiation status if Dark is active.

3. Eclipse.

Pretty much unchanged, however the base has been raised. Mirage can currently gain a maximum (base, unmodded) damage buff of 200% damage in the light, and 75% damage reduction in the dark. The damage buff has no cap, but the DR has a 95% cap.

To that end, at base, Mirage will always receive a minimum of 100% damage buff in the light, and a minimum of 30% DR in the dark.

What the low value on the base DR does is account for what the current maximum Strength is; in the modding screen your max strength is 259%, which maxes out the minimum DR value at 77.7% (Although with Pax Bolt and Energy Conversion you could actually cap out that 95% DR...) but the actual build for Mirage wouldn't incorporate that because you would need some Efficiency, a bit of Range and plenty of Duration to exploit these buffs anyway.

A more sensible bias towards Strength would mean that you easily get around 60% DR with the cast active, as long as you're in the shadow even a little bit and cap it out with your 2 active, while your damage buff is sitting at around 200% if there's even a slight bit of light on you and goes up to your max the second you cast your 2.

4. Prism.

This was given some hefty nerfs before. It's got the line of sight nerf with the Blind radius, it's got both a Duration and an Energy Drain, and it actively punishes you for using it while you're in the shadows. I don't think you're going to get it to base its damage off the damage that any of your weapons are dealing, that would be very, very powerful, to the point that DE wouldn't even consider it. I'm thinking to tone that down to closer to what we have right now, and give it some perks for active use instead.

So, buffs. Damage is now a base of 400 Radiation per tick, flat. No more up and down for Mirage moving from shadow to light during the cast.

Synergy: If Hall of Mirrors is active at point of cast, the damage is increased by a base of 100 damage, affected by mods.

At 200% Strength, you'd then get 1000 damage per tick (800 + 200). While this is exactly the same as the base damage + Strength for the current cast it's actually a slight nerf in practicality, because at the same Strength, standing in the bright Light, the damage would cap at 3000 (200% damage for being at the very, very brightest you can be). On the other hand that's not easy to achieve and Mirage will most often be moving around meaning that in most general cases it's a buff over current, and definitely a buff if you consider that in shadow the current version can deal as low as 500 damage per tick at 200% Strength.

Synergy: Enemies within Stage Lights radius will either take bonus Damage while in the Light, or in the Dark the Prism gains 100% Status Chance and will slow enemies (meaning a bunch of slowed enemies turning to fight each other that will deal up to... what is it now? 550% bonus damage to each other thanks to the Status).

The bonus for Light? Base of 2.0x, that increases with Strength, meaning that at the 200% Strength build, if Mirrors was active when you cast it, you'll be doing 4000 damage per tick, which is a massive buff over the current at any stage of the game.

Basically, switch the current system of light and shadow standing to instead rely on the enemies being within range of her 2 to dictate whether you have Damage or Crowd Control. The damage is better than the current build if you have Light active, and the CC is a completely new function to encourage and buff the use of Shadow.

So.

What this does is gives Mirage multiple bonuses for having her 1, 2 and 3 active. It encourages switching between the light and shadow modes on her 2, it gives her the flexibility to choose her buffs at any given time. It keeps the little gimmick tricks like booby traps, while replacing the base function of her 2 with that exact thing you want; making her 3 reliable. I've also added in functions that Mirage can really, really benefit from, like the Status/Crit chance bonus for being in range and the CC/Damage function on her 4.

Being able to stack on an extra 25-50% Status to a weapon that's already got good Crit, or adding Crit to a weapon that has good Status is always good. Plus stacking Status on Status, and Crit on Crit isn't all that bad of a thing in the current damage setup either.

There's reasons to throw out Prism beyond the damage and the blind it has. Heck, you could actively defend a Defense Pod or something with a wide-range Shadow Mirage, since her DR can affect Allies, including the Defense targets, while you use Prism to provide CC along with its more reliable base damage.

You have your higher-damage Prism that you wanted too, if combined with her 2, you just have to make sure that her 1 and 2 are active to get it, which DE can't object to as a function since Vauban already does this for himself too.

Against normal enemies, with regular weapons, this could make Mirage the de-facto self/ally buff frame over Chroma (now that Chroma's self-damage means he has to take longer to wind up his Vexx).

Do you like it?

[FaridRLz]

Also I've been thinking in some improvements to Mirage's kit, in a post I made yesterday I suggested that Eclipse would be either a scrolling ability, just like Titania's tribute, and you can activate it whenever you want, or a 2 sided ability, every time you activate it, it would give you the other buff (ex. you first used it and got light eclipse, then when you use it again you would get dark eclipse)

Also, Mirage lacks of tool for truly survive to high end content from about enemies lvl 200-300 and above she has a rough time.

It may be quite good to add to their clones the capability of actually being bullet sponges

Also her 3 must provide some kind of "get away" plus, like

Whenever you activate dark eclipse, enemies around her lose track of her for a period of time (scale with Duration, and the range must NOT scale with ability Range)

Whenever you activate light eclipse, enemies round her will be blinded for a brief period of time (not as long as losing track, but also scalable with Duration, and the range must NOT scale with ability Range)

I have not digged enough on her 2 and 4 ability

I think her 3 it's in a "ok" state but also needs improvements

And her 4 is a total waste of energy in high level missions 

 

Totally out of topic, since Arcane Guardian now has a cooldown many squishier warframes like her actually have some trouble to survive, shield gating is not enough to survive to high level missions, we need to make this ideas arrive to [DE] hands so they can actually approach this problem

I mean, many players like me are bored of the 1-100 lvl content and like to go beyond our own possibilities 

Edited April 8, 2020 by FaridRLz

[Gawizard]

6 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

I like your enthusiasm, but you do kind of contradict yourself here;

Why would you need to rework to her 3 to always gives her the full benefits of being in the light or dark, if her 2 granted full Light or Dark zones? The thing about Mirage's 3 is that it varies specifically because the bonus to damage and DR can be so strong. From an ability balance and Synergy point of view, what you would rather do is have players encouraged to cast her abilities together to get the best effects.

However, you don't want to force Synergy, not all the time, bonus effects are good because that means that the two casts would create more than they would alone, you do have to balance that against making the abilities work at base without each other too.

Maybe I can tweak your examples here, give them a little polish? See if you like my take on your thoughts.

You don't want her 1 to change, but you want her 2 to be more functional and you want her 3 to be more reliable, and as a last thought you want her 4 to get some of its damage back after DE nerfed that deliberately... I'll see what I can do.

So her kit would look a little more like this:

  Hide contents

Passive: Acrobat. Mirage has 50% faster Maneuver speed, Sliding lasts 85% longer.

1. Hall of Mirrors.

Mirage creates an entourage of Dopplegangers to confuse and distract the enemy (no real change, this one's a really good ability for damage and survivability as is. It lasts a good Duration and it has synergy with some of her kit already).

2. Stage Lights.

Mirage sets the stage with gem-like lights. Tap to create a Light crystal which illuminates the area. All pickups and objects within range become primed as traps for the enemy that will damage and disorient them on contact. Hold to create a Dark crystal which spreads a shadow over the ground. All pickups and objects within range become primed as traps that will put enemies to sleep on contact.

Only one area of Stage Lights can be active at any time, Mirage can recast it before the duration is up, and if Mirage changes from Light to Dark she will be refunded 50% of the Energy cost for the new cast.

While Mirage or her allies are within range of her Stage Lights their weapons will receive bonuses. Light Crystals grant an extra 25% Status Chance, Dark Crystals grant an extra 25% Critical Chance (I've done this deliberately to encourage players to use both to work with her 3, so DR with Darkness on Eclipse then comes with Crit, which is better for damage as compensation for losing the damage boost on Eclipse's Light mode, but the damage boost with Light is sufficient that boosting the Status on weapons will benefit more from that base damage increase. See?)

Synergy: While casting, if Hall of Mirrors is active, each clone will cast a smaller Crystal at the point of cast that will grant a further bonus to weapons, but will also act as a Trap for enemies that approach. Each crystal cast by a clone can only be used as a trap once, although the bonus to the Light/Dark buffs will remain.

If Eclipse is active, stepping in range of the cast will grant the maximum buff from Light or Dark, depending on which is active.

Enemies within range of the ability will take multiplied damage from Prism if Light is active, or will slow and receive Radiation status if Dark is active.

3. Eclipse.

Pretty much unchanged, however the base has been raised. Mirage can currently gain a maximum (base, unmodded) damage buff of 200% damage in the light, and 75% damage reduction in the dark. The damage buff has no cap, but the DR has a 95% cap.

To that end, at base, Mirage will always receive a minimum of 100% damage buff in the light, and a minimum of 30% DR in the dark.

What the low value on the base DR does is account for what the current maximum Strength is; in the modding screen your max strength is 259%, which maxes out the minimum DR value at 77.7% (Although with Pax Bolt and Energy Conversion you could actually cap out that 95% DR...) but the actual build for Mirage wouldn't incorporate that because you would need some Efficiency, a bit of Range and plenty of Duration to exploit these buffs anyway.

A more sensible bias towards Strength would mean that you easily get around 60% DR with the cast active, as long as you're in the shadow even a little bit and cap it out with your 2 active, while your damage buff is sitting at around 200% if there's even a slight bit of light on you and goes up to your max the second you cast your 2.

4. Prism.

This was given some hefty nerfs before. It's got the line of sight nerf with the Blind radius, it's got both a Duration and an Energy Drain, and it actively punishes you for using it while you're in the shadows. I don't think you're going to get it to base its damage off the damage that any of your weapons are dealing, that would be very, very powerful, to the point that DE wouldn't even consider it. I'm thinking to tone that down to closer to what we have right now, and give it some perks for active use instead.

So, buffs. Damage is now a base of 400 Radiation per tick, flat. No more up and down for Mirage moving from shadow to light during the cast.

Synergy: If Hall of Mirrors is active at point of cast, the damage is increased by a base of 100 damage, affected by mods.

At 200% Strength, you'd then get 1000 damage per tick (800 + 200). While this is exactly the same as the base damage + Strength for the current cast it's actually a slight nerf in practicality, because at the same Strength, standing in the bright Light, the damage would cap at 3000 (200% damage for being at the very, very brightest you can be). On the other hand that's not easy to achieve and Mirage will most often be moving around meaning that in most general cases it's a buff over current, and definitely a buff if you consider that in shadow the current version can deal as low as 500 damage per tick at 200% Strength.

Synergy: Enemies within Stage Lights radius will either take bonus Damage while in the Light, or in the Dark the Prism gains 100% Status Chance and will slow enemies (meaning a bunch of slowed enemies turning to fight each other that will deal up to... what is it now? 550% bonus damage to each other thanks to the Status).

The bonus for Light? Base of 2.0x, that increases with Strength, meaning that at the 200% Strength build, if Mirrors was active when you cast it, you'll be doing 4000 damage per tick, which is a massive buff over the current at any stage of the game.

Basically, switch the current system of light and shadow standing to instead rely on the enemies being within range of her 2 to dictate whether you have Damage or Crowd Control. The damage is better than the current build if you have Light active, and the CC is a completely new function to encourage and buff the use of Shadow.

So.

What this does is gives Mirage multiple bonuses for having her 1, 2 and 3 active. It encourages switching between the light and shadow modes on her 2, it gives her the flexibility to choose her buffs at any given time. It keeps the little gimmick tricks like booby traps, while replacing the base function of her 2 with that exact thing you want; making her 3 reliable. I've also added in functions that Mirage can really, really benefit from, like the Status/Crit chance bonus for being in range and the CC/Damage function on her 4.

Being able to stack on an extra 25-50% Status to a weapon that's already got good Crit, or adding Crit to a weapon that has good Status is always good. Plus stacking Status on Status, and Crit on Crit isn't all that bad of a thing in the current damage setup either.

There's reasons to throw out Prism beyond the damage and the blind it has. Heck, you could actively defend a Defense Pod or something with a wide-range Shadow Mirage, since her DR can affect Allies, including the Defense targets, while you use Prism to provide CC along with its more reliable base damage.

You have your higher-damage Prism that you wanted too, if combined with her 2, you just have to make sure that her 1 and 2 are active to get it, which DE can't object to as a function since Vauban already does this for himself too.

Against normal enemies, with regular weapons, this could make Mirage the de-facto self/ally buff frame over Chroma (now that Chroma's self-damage means he has to take longer to wind up his Vexx).

Do you like it?

This is Pretty interesting. I can say i agree with most if not all points made here. I'd certainly enjoy playing this mirage in game if it were to reach the actual game.

[Gawizard]

5 hours ago, FaridRLz said:

Also I've been thinking in some improvements to Mirage's kit, in a post I made yesterday I suggested that Eclipse would be either a scrolling ability, just like Titania's tribute, and you can activate it whenever you want, or a 2 sided ability, every time you activate it, it would give you the other buff (ex. you first used it and got light eclipse, then when you use it again you would get dark eclipse)

Also, Mirage lacks of tool for truly survive to high end content from about enemies lvl 200-300 and above she has a rough time.

It may be quite good to add to their clones the capability of actually being bullet sponges

Also her 3 must provide some kind of "get away" plus, like

Whenever you activate dark eclipse, enemies around her lose track of her for a period of time (scale with Duration, and the range must NOT scale with ability Range)

Whenever you activate light eclipse, enemies round her will be blinded for a brief period of time (not as long as losing track, but also scalable with Duration, and the range must NOT scale with ability Range)

I have not digged enough on her 2 and 4 ability

I think her 3 it's in a "ok" state but also needs improvements

And her 4 is a total waste of energy in high level missions 

 

Totally out of topic, since Arcane Guardian now has a cooldown many squishier warframes like her actually have some trouble to survive, shield gating is not enough to survive to high level missions, we need to make this ideas arrive to [DE] hands so they can actually approach this problem

I mean, many players like me are bored of the 1-100 lvl content and like to go beyond our own possibilities 

These are also interesting changes for her. I do like the part where you can recast her eclipse to gain the buff you want, Sacrificing Energy for the desired buff. I also like the "get out of jail" stun or invis on her 3 cast. Keep the interesting Ideas coming in.

[TehGrief]

On 2020-04-08 at 2:07 AM, Gawizard said:

So main changes are to her second ability (Sleight of Hand). These changes are:

• Booby Trapped objects now have an increased aggro value compared to current values.
• Orbs Placed in the Dark Now give off 100% light (not visually but sets her Eclipse value to 100% of its damage buff value) and orbs placed in the dark grants her 100% of her damage reduction.
  • This would have a range of about 2 times its base blast radius and be scaled with Ability Range.
• The former change would apply to the smaller orbs through with smaller range (75% of the blast radius)
• This applies to allies affected by the Total Eclipse Augment.
• Ability Cost reduced from 50 to 40.

Now for her third ability,(Eclipse), there's less reworking and more fixing.

• Mirage's Damage Bonus and Damage Reduction Buff will not fluctuate based on the current light level in that point of geometry. She shall receive either full buffs or full Damage Reduction.
• This applies to allies affected by the Total Eclipse Augment.

 

Now for the Augment (Diffraction):

• Orbs casted from mirage's Slight of Hand Abilities will rise a few meters off the ground (Not Scaled with Range) and project up to 4 lasers that target enemy units while Prism is active.
• The limit of orbs that can project light is 4. Subsequent orbs will function as if Prism was not active.
• The range of each daughter beam is limited to 10 meters (scaled with Ability Range)
• Each beam from an orb will deal 25% of Prism's main damage.
• Each beam is limited to 1 target and will not change its target until it leaves its effective range or dies.

An easier solution would be to add the "press for main / hold for alternate" mechanic that some frames abilities such as Gauss's Thermal Sunder utilize.

This would mean that a single press of the ability would trigger "light" (damage bonus) while holding the ability button would trigger "shadows" (damage reduction).

Furthermore, I would love to see this change implemented on Mirage's ability Sleight of Hand; press for "light" (radial explosions), hold for "shadows" (radial blind).

I like your augment idea for her [4] Prism. It would be interesting to see it implemented.